Lesley Perkes walks onto the TED stage to tell us about her birth in 1961 in inner city Johannesburg. Her mother said she looked like a toilet brush, her hair standing on end. “I think I saw the future,” she says. Her story centers around Hillbrow Tower, the iconic, 268-meter-tall building built in 1968 […]
Designer Alastair Parvin begins this Session 4 of TED2013 with the theme “Disrupt!” When we use the word architect or designer, Parvin suggests, we mean a professional, a person paid to design. And we believe it’s only these people who can solve the world’s biggest design problems. But he says firmly: That’s wrong. When Parvin […]
Amanda Fucking Palmer wants us to re-think how we think about paying for music. She is known for her music, first as half of the Dresden Dolls, now as a solo artist. But for 5 years after graduating, Palmer made her living as a living statue called the Eight Foot Bride. (“Everyone always wanted to […]
Google cofounder Sergey Brin returns to the TED stage this morning to show off Google Glass, a hands-free, voice-activated augmented-reality headset from Google. To take a picture while you’re wearing Glass, say “take picture.” Done. “When we started Google 15 years ago,” Brin says, “my vision was that information would come to you as you […]
Danny Hillis has a book. It’s a directory of everyone in the world who had an internet address in 1982, including the names, addresses and telephone numbers. And it was a very thin phonebook. That was the community. It was a tight community where everyone knew and trusted each other. Hillis has been a fixture […]
When you hear the word “electric vehicle,” the image of a car probably pops to mind. But Sanjay Dastoor and the team at Boosted Boards have created an electric vehicle that weighs less than a bicycle, can be carried in your hand, charges off a wall outlet and runs for 1,000 kilometers on about a dollar’s worth […]
From all the breathless hype that surrounds the topic, you’d be forgiven for thinking that disruptive innovation was a common force throughout the world. Reality proves otherwise. In this session, we brought together a collection of individuals who have some right to the title of disruptor. Their work pushes at the boundaries of what’s expected […]
1. Start with a smile. “Smiling is one of the most basic, biologically-uniform expressions of all humans,” says Ron Gutman. Watch his TED Talk about the hidden power of smiling. 2. Just say hi. All it takes is one hello to open up doors. Here’s how to say “hello” in 150 different languages. 3. Remember: you are interesting! […]
When TED Radio Hour premieres on Friday, March 1st, a new — but familiar — voice will be manning the mic. Guy Raz, the former host of Weekend All Things Considered and the creator of Three-Minute Fiction, is the new host of the show, which is returning for its second season after being named Best New Audio Podcast […]
On the morning after more than a billion viewers worldwide tuned into the Academy Awards and its glitzy salute to motion pictures, 44 TEDsters trekked up to one of the most enduring signs of moviedom for a tour of the fabled Hollywood sign and an update on the successful battle to preserve the scenic hills […]
Following a rousing introduction from Sir Ken Robinson, education innovator Sugata Mitra accepted the first-ever $1 million TED Prize at TED2013. As soon as the TED Prize winner’s identity was revealed, the Twittersphere buzzed about Sugata’s vision for the future of learning. People around the world answered Sugata’s invitation to help reinvent the way kids […]
We’ve seen a number of “the young” of the conference’s theme in this session of TED2013. Now, to play us off out into the night are Sleepy Man Banjo Boys, a trio of brothers from New Jersey, the youngest of whom became a YouTube sensation in 2011 when he was only eight years old. “They’re […]
It’s a question on so many minds: what will the future of education look like? It’s something Sir Ken Robinson has asked for decades. And tonight in Session 3 of TED2013, Robinson got the opportunity to announce the winner of the 2013 TED Prize, someone who has a bold answer. “So many kids are disengaged […]
Richard Turere is 12 years old, and he lives in Kenya, in Nairobi National Park. It’s a park with lots of animals that roam freely, including lions. The lions kill livestock. So he say, “I grew up hating lions.” Turere, who took part in the Global Talent Search last year, tried to solve the problem. […]
TED’s own Lisa Bu takes the TED2013 stage now to tell a very personal tale of a journey through literature that began, well, with a shattered dream. Growing up in Hunan, China, in the 1970s, Bu’s parents (yes, she had a Tiger Mother) believed there was only one sure way to happiness: a safe and […]
In her 20s, Meg Jay saw her first psychotherapy client, Alex, who was there to talk about her guy problems. Jay didn’t take the sessions all too seriously at first. But then her supervisor gave her a wakeup call. While Jay said, “Sure she’s dating down and sleeping with a knucklehead. But she’s not gonna […]