Counting the days ’til TED2015? Yeah: we are, too. Before the conference begins on March 16, dive into a great book written by one of our speakers. Books from speakers in Session 1, “Opening Gambit” National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear, by David Rothkopf. The foreign policy specialist examines the way U.S. […]
Eco-entrepreneur Alasdair Harris is passionate about conserving marine biodiversity, and he’s doing it in unusual ways. While most marine conservationists focus on what’s in the water, Harris’ company Blue Ventures works with people in poverty-stricken coastal communities to engage them in rebuilding tropical fisheries and in the process of protecting both their ecosystems and livelihoods. The company’s approach: eco-tourism. We spoke […]
The phrase “truth or dare” is a false binary — facing the truth often requires daring action, and vice versa. That’s why, at TED2015: Truth and Dare, the two go hand-in-hand. TED2015 happens March 16-20 in Vancouver and Whistler, and we dare to think this will be the most provocative, invigorating, mind-shifting TED yet. The […]
High school senior Yash Khatavkar takes issue with the fact that, as he was learning Spanish, his elementary school only offered one hour of Spanish instruction per week. Even as he got older, he felt like Spanish classes in school just weren’t enough to move him past the point of having to translate between English and […]
Just like you, we at TED get inundated with email. And just like you, many of us think of an overflowing inbox as a guilt-inducing, anxiety-laden reminder of things left undone. As TED’s User Experience Architect, I like my inbox the same way I like my designs: simple, orderly, and communicating clearly what to do […]
The TED community has been very busy in the start of this new year. Below, a few TEDsters with news to share. Landing a rocket on a boat: simple enough. Putting a man on the moon and a rover on Mars are exceptional feats, but that’s in the past. Elon Musk is now attempting a […]
Last week, I saw Barbara Walters’ list of “The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2014.” It included interesting thinkers like Elon Musk (watch his TED Talk) and George R.R. Martin (the author of Game of Thrones), along with crowd-pleasers like Taylor Swift and Oprah. But reading this list of almost exclusively marquee names made me think about some of the people […]
We all lead lives that move 1,000 miles per minute. In his TED Book, The Art of Stillness, Pico Iyer posits a bold idea: that in our chaotic time, the greatest luxury is actually the ability to go nowhere and do nothing. To Iyer, it’s this time for quiet, inward, still reflection that snaps all […]
Before Jackie Hodges arrived for orientation at Tufts University School of Medicine, she got a gift from her soon-to-be med school: a free download of the e-book The Upstream Doctors by Rishi Manchanda. In this book, Manchanda — who has worked for a decade as a doctor in community clinics around South Central Los Angeles […]
A few years ago, ethno-botanist Mark Plotkin injured his foot. A visit to a doctor at home had him feeling pain-free for a few months, but things changed when he headed to the Amazon rainforest for work. There, a local shaman noticed his limp and offered him a palm tree wrap along with a specially-brewed […]
The final session of TEDYouth 2014 focuses on what makes us human — the way we talk, the way we walk, the words we sing, the waves we surf. How jellyfish swim. On land, animals leave footprints that tell us a lot about their size, form and capabilities. Marine organisms do too—their footprints are “wake […]
Cocktail party trivia: Brainstorming was invented in the 1930s as a practical idea-generation technique for regular use by “creatives” within the ad agency BBDO. That all changed in 1942, when Alex Osborn — the “O” in BBDO — released a book called How to Think Up and excited the imaginations of his fellow Mad Men. […]
Ten years ago, epidemiologist Chikwe Ihekweazu helped fight an outbreak in South Sudan. This TED Fellow now runs the health consultancy EpiAFRIC, writes about public health issues in his native Nigeria, and is soon to start a four-week rotation on the ground fighting the Ebola epidemic. So as the outbreak continues, he sat down for […]
Cancer detection technologist Jorge Soto is developing a simple, non-invasive, open-source test for early detection of multiple forms of cancer. He demonstrated a working prototype of this cancer detection platform for the first time today on the TED stage in Brazil.
Back in the ’90s, the golden mussel (Limnoperna fortunei) hitched a ride on ships traveling from Asia to South America. In the past decade and a half, the mussel has proliferated through South America’s river systems, destroying the native habitat and disrupting the operation of power plants and water treatment facilities. This invasive species now threatens the delicate […]
By Kate Torgovnick May and Krystian Aparta Music is the universal language. So why, then, do so many songs get translated? Sometimes, bands adapt their lyrics into English to reach international audiences—which explains why so few of us can sing ABBA in the band members’ native Swedish. Other times, songs are adapted into local languages […]