Rob Dunbar hunts for data on our climate from 12,000 years ago, finding clues inside ancient seabeds and corals and inside ice sheets. His work is vital in setting baselines for fixing our current climate — and in tracking the rise of deadly ocean acidification. (Recorded on Mission Blue Voyage, April 2010 in the Galapagos […]
Today’s playlist features modern-day explorers and adventurers: tech-savvy treasure hunters who search not for gold and rubies, but for enlightenment and answers for the future. To do some exploring yourself, check out David Gallo‘s new Expedition Titanic: an ongoing deep-sea mission to create a 3-D map of the Titanic and preserve its wonders forever. Robert […]
Cross-posted from the TEDx blog: On Monday, September 20, TED and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-host TEDxChange, a TEDx event that focuses on the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations 10 years ago. TEDxChange will look at how we’ve done in the past decade to meet the goals, and what needs […]
After 15 years in the British diplomatic corps, Carne Ross became a “freelance diplomat,” running a bold nonprofit that gives small, developing and yet-unrecognized nations a voice in international relations. At the BIF-5 conference, he calls for a new kind of diplomacy that gives voice to small countries, that works with changing boundaries and that […]
Alwar Balasubramaniam’s sculpture plays with time, shape, shadow, perspective: four tricky sensations that can reveal — or conceal — what’s really out there. At TEDIndia, the artist shows slides of his extraordinary installations. (Recorded at TEDIndia, July 2009 in Mysore, India. Duration: 16:51) [ted id=950] Watch A. Balasubramaniam’s talk on TED.com where you can download […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arz1ULELg7w] Via the Gates Foundation’s Foundation Notes blog: On Monday, Sept. 20, TEDxChange will look at the eight Millennium Development Goals set by the UN back in 2000 — and assess how close we are to reaching them by 2015. Melinda Gates made the video above to invite the world to watch online or at […]
Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education — the best teachers and schools don’t exist where they’re needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRkoMFk9fyI] Chris Anderson, curator of TED, was born in Pakistan, and last week, he and the Acumen Fund’s Jacqueline Novogratz, his wife, spent several days in the flood zones there. They visited refugee camps and flooded villages, spoke to local aid workers and unusual volunteers, and collected many stories that simply aren’t being told by […]
As a 7.0 magnitude earthquake strikes New Zealand, and millions of people are being displaced by the monsoon flooding in Pakistan, we are reminded of Mother Nature’s powerful force and our lack of control over her moods. However, today’s playlist presents lifesavers: three speakers who have found ingenious solutions to the consequences of disaster. Some […]
Rachel Sussman shows photographs of the world’s oldest continuously living organisms — from 2,000-year-old brain coral off Tobago’s coast to an “underground forest” in South Africa that has lived since before the dawn of agriculture. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2010, July 2010 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 14:09) [ted id=948] Watch Rachel Sussman’s talk on TED.com where […]
After hitting on a brilliant new life plan, our first instinct is to tell someone, but Derek Sivers says it’s better to keep goals secret. He presents research stretching as far back as the 1920s to show why people who talk about their ambitions may be less likely to achieve them. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2010, […]
His Holiness the Karmapa talks about how he was discovered to be the reincarnation of a revered figure in Tibetan Buddhism. In telling his story, he urges us to work on not just technology and design, but the technology and design of the heart. He is translated onstage by Tyler Dewar. (Recorded at TEDIndia, November […]
Human growth has strained the Earth’s resources, but as Johan Rockstrom reminds us, our advances also give us the science to recognize this and change behavior. His research has found nine “planetary boundaries” that can guide us in protecting our planet’s many overlapping ecosystems. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2010, July 2010 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 18:11) […]
Statistician Nic Marks asks why we measure a nation’s success by its productivity — instead of by the happiness and well-being of its people. He introduces the Happy Planet Index, which tracks national well-being against resource use (because a happy life doesn’t have to cost the earth). Which countries rank highest in the HPI? You […]
This Saturday’s TEDTalks playlist is about animals with a nasty sting or a deadly bite — but as our speakers reveal, these creatures have more to fear from humankind than we have to fear from them. Romulus Whitaker is smitten with snakes, and fearful for their future. He urges us to protect the river systems […]
Physics and marketing don’t seem to have much in common, but Dan Cobley is passionate about both. He brings these unlikely bedfellows together using Newton’s second law, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the scientific method and the second law of thermodynamics to explain the fundamental theories of branding. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2010, July 2010 in Oxford, UK. […]