Our newest Twitter feed, @TEDTranslations, tracks the latest TEDTalks available for our worldwide volunteer translator corps — plus news of interest to language fans. TED’s Open Translation Project has created more than 17,500 translations in 81 languages. Find talks in your language to work on, and browse talks that have already been translated and are […]
Inspired by an abalone shell, Angela Belcher programs viruses to make elegant nanoscale structures that humans can use. Selecting for high-performing genes through directed evolution, she’s produced viruses that can construct powerful new batteries, clean hydrogen fuels and record-breaking solar cells. At TEDxCaltech, she shows us how it’s done. (Recorded at TEDxCaltech, January 2011 at […]
We’re amazed! Thanks to everyone who made a video for TED’s Full Spectrum auditions. We’ve been screening video all week (and sat up last night watching the submissions roll in). We held this audition to give a chance to the undiscovered talent we know is out there — and especially talent that can help us […]
The feeling of security and the reality of security don’t always match, says computer-security expert Bruce Schneier. He explains why we spend billions addressing news story risks, like the “security theater” now playing at your local airport, while neglecting more probable risks — and how we can break this pattern. (Recorded at TEDxPSU, October 2010 […]
Medical ethicist Harvey Fineberg shows us three paths forward for the ever-evolving human species: to stop evolving completely, to evolve naturally — or to control the next steps of human evolution, using genetic modification, to make ourselves smarter, faster, better. Neo-evolution is within our grasp. What will we do with it? (Recorded at TED2011, March […]
Ric Elias had a front-row seat on Flight 1549, the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. What went through his mind as the doomed plane went down? At TED, he tells his story publicly for the first time. (Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in Long Beach, CA. Duration: […]
All over the planet, giant telescopes and detectors are looking (and listening) for clues to the workings of the universe. At the INK Conference, science writer Anil Ananthaswamy tours us around these amazing installations, taking us to some of the most remote and silent places on Earth. (Recorded at the INK Conference, December 2010, in […]
[ted id=1100] Last week we announced our first-ever video audition for TED. Make a one-minute application video to get started — video deadline is April 25, 2011, at 11:59pm Eastern. Finalists will be invited to our May 24 audition in New York City. (Get more details, and learn how to enter.) As the entries start […]
John Hunter puts all the problems of the world on a 4’x5′ plywood board — and lets his 4th-graders solve them. At TED2011, he explains how his World Peace Game engages schoolkids, and why the complex lessons it teaches — spontaneous, and always surprising — go further than classroom lectures can. (Recorded at TED2011, March […]
In February at TEDActive 2011, the TEDActive Projects were launched. Five teams came together to explore, collaborate and act on five vital issues: education, mobility, sustainability, social networks and travel, sharing ideas about how to create attitude shifts that might produce positive change. Now we’re taking those crowd-sourced solutions up a notch, and asking our […]
Most of us will do anything to avoid being wrong. But what if we’re wrong about that? “Wrongologist” Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility.(Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 17:57) [ted id=1126] Watch Kathryn Schulz’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, […]
By leading the Americans in his audience at TEDxPSU step by step through the thought process, sociologist Sam Richards sets an extraordinary challenge: can they understand — not approve of, but understand — the motivations of an Iraqi insurgent? And by extension, can anyone truly understand and empathize with another? (Recorded at TEDxPSU, October 2010 […]
NEW: Video auditions are closed; thank you for entering! This year we’re holding the first-ever audition for TED Talks. It will take place in New York in front of a live audience made up of TED staff and members of the TED community. The audition will be recorded, and the best talks could either be […]
Pioneering surgeon Susan Lim performed the first liver transplant in Asia. But a moral concern with transplants (where do donor livers really come from …) led her to look further, and to ask: Could we be transplanting cells, not whole organs? At the INK Conference, she talks through her new research, discovering healing cells in […]
Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that’s only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000). (Recorded at TED2011, March […]
When film critic Roger Ebert lost his lower jaw to cancer, he lost the ability to eat and speak. But he did not lose his voice. In a moving talk from TED2011, Ebert and his wife, Chaz, with friends Dean Ornish and John Hunter, come together to tell his remarkable story. (Recorded at TED2011, March […]