Two TEDTalks favorites, Jill Sobule and Julia Sweeney, team up for a delightful set that mixes witty songwriting with a little bit of social commentary. (Jill and Julia will be in residence next week at TED@Aspen.) (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 06:20.) Watch Jill Sobule and Julia Sweeney’s performance on TED.com, where […]
Charlie Rose interviews TED’s curator, Chris Anderson, on his show set to air tonight, February 18. The Charlie Rose Show will be broadcast on PBS affiliates throughout the country; check local listings. (In New York, the show plays at 11 pm on Channel 13.) Update: Click here for video of the show >> And here’s […]
Looking back over a long career, architect Moshe Safdie digs deep into four extraordinary projects to talk about the unique choices he made on each building — choosing where to build, pulling information from the client, and balancing the needs and the vision behind each project. Sketches, plans and models show how these grand public […]
George Dyson tells the amazing story of Project Orion, a 4,000-ton, nuclear-bomb-propelled spacecraft that could have taken us to Saturn in five years. With a priceless insider’s perspective and a cache of documents, photos and film, Dyson brings this dusty Atomic Age dream to vivid life. (Recorded February 2002 in Monterey, California. Duration: 08:31.) […]
While a few brave souls have sought to master the theremin since its “Good Vibrations” heyday, none have done so with more sly effervescence than Pamelia Kurstin. Far from being a quirky curiosity, though, Kurstin is a sensitive, emotional stylist capable of coaxing sublime melodic content out of an instrument usually doomed to B-movie sci-fi […]
Visit the TED2009 registration page to submit an application to join the waitlist for TED2009 in Long Beach, California.
Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action — and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group. As he points out, humans have been banding together to work collectively since our days of hunting mastodons. (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, […]
What if human consciousness isn’t the end-all and be-all of Darwinism? What if we are all just pawns in corn’s clever strategy game, the ultimate prize of which is world domination? Michael Pollan asks us to see things from a plant’s-eye view — to consider the possibility that nature isn’t opposed to culture, that biochemistry […]
His love and fascination for Rome dates to his days as an architecture student, but David Macaulay found the path to his book Rome Antics took some unusual (and frustrating) turns. Through failed pop-up designs, scribbled-out title possibilities, surreal sketchbook pages (think “Piranesi meets Escher”), and rambling storylines, Macaulay details each step of his winding […]
With maverick flair and a strategist’s disdain for accepted wisdom, Jaime Lerner re-invented urban space in his native Curitiba, Brazil. He talks about how to revolutionize bus transit, awaken green consciousness in a populace accustomed to litter and blight, and change the way city planners and bureaucrats worldwide conceive what’s possible within the tangled structure […]
TED and Miro announce the TED Miro player — a free, downloadable, open-source media player that comes pre-loaded with TED’s channels and content guide. UPDATED link: Download the Miro player >> Using the channels, you can browse TEDTalks by Theme — “A Greener Future,” “Africa: The Next Chapter,” and many more. And you have access […]
Robin Chase rose to fame by founding Zipcar, the world’s biggest car-sharing business, but that was one of her smaller ideas. In this presentation she travels much farther, contemplating road-pricing schemes that will shake up our driving habits and a no-fee mesh network as sprawling as the United States Interstate highway system. But how could […]
At the time of this talk, TED’s future was in the balance. Its founder, Richard Saul Wurman, had just sold the conference to Chris Anderson‘s foundation, and had announced that this 2002 conference was the last TED he would run. Many in the audience had concluded that the conference would not survive the transition to […]
Why can’t you make it through the checkout line without flipping through page after page of pregnant celebs in Us magazine? Alison Jackson knows why. In her work, she photographs the people you think you recognize doing what you really want to see. And in the process, she’s questioning our shared desire to get personal […]
Sit back and listen, as Ben Dunlap tells the story of Sandor Teszler, a Hungarian man he met at Wofford College. In telling Teszler’s dramatic life story, which arcs from the Holocaust to the American Deep South of the 1950s, Dunlap shares some deep and, ultimately, moving lessons about justice — and the power of […]
With subtle accompaniment by longtime friend Herbie Hancock, and a slide show that has opened the minds (and pocketbooks) of CEOs across the country, artist and youth activist Bill Strickland tells a quiet and astonishing tale of redemption through arts, music and unlikely partnerships. (Recorded February 2002 in Monterey, California. Duration: 35:28.) Watch Bill […]