A few weeks ago, I was driving to the grocery store listening to an interview between a mother and daughter, Elizabeth and Sara Bell. I was astonished to hear the intimacy of their conversation. Elizabeth wants to interview her mother, who is 65 and suffering from dementia, because she is afraid that the disease will […]
At TED2009, Joachim de Posada shared a spin on the marshmallow test — he re-created the famous experiment with kids in Colombia, to see if they’d react differently from the suburban California children who were the subjects of the first test. In Colombia, he found one clever girl who ate the inside of the marshmallow, […]
Alice Miller was born in a body that didn’t feel like hers. Every day, Yee Won Chong has to debate whether to use the men’s restroom or the women’s. Geena Rocero found success as a fashion model — but kept her birth gender a secret for nearly a decade, fearing what others would think. All […]
(Editor’s note, as of Nov. 1, 2019: Ameenah Gurib-Fakim stepped down as president of Mauritius in March 2018, following accusations that she misused a credit card given to her by a nonprofit. Read more here.) You’ve heard of a philosopher king. But what about a biologist president? Ameenah Gurib-Fakim — the biologist who gave the […]
It is Dead Duck Day 2015 — the 20th anniversary of the day in 1995 when a mallard duck flew into a glass window outside the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, fell to the ground dead, and then became part of the first scientifically observed instance of homosexual necrophilia in mallard ducks. Now, each June 5, curator Kees Moeliker […]
Sharing an idea isn’t like snapping your fingers — things don’t just instantly change. But as more people hear an idea over time, it can trickle into people’s thinking — and shifts, both subtle and extreme, can happen as a result. In a TEDWomen session called “The 19th Minute,” host Courtney E. Martin invited several […]
The first TED took place in February 1984 in a theater that looked like a college lecture hall, complete with swivel desks at each seat. More than 30 years later, TEDWomen is happening this week in the same theater at the Monterey Conference Center. In a nice piece of symmetry, it will be one of […]
Lots of happenings in the TED community this week. Below, some highlights. Police on trial in Afghanistan. This week, Kimberley Motley represented the family of Farkhunda, a 27-year-old woman who was brutally murdered, in an Afghan court against 19 policemen who are accused of standing by while she was set on fire, run over and […]
If you could sit down and interview your mom, what would you ask her? Would you ask about your childhood? Her childhood? Would you re-tell old funny stories? Try to dig up some of her secrets? As an adult, the idea of interviewing your mom can seem pretty scary. Kids, on the other hand, are […]
The TED community has lots of news this week. Below, just a few highlights. NSA phone data collection ruled illegal. Yesterday, a federal appeals court ruled that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records — one of the surveillance measures revealed by Edward Snowden — is, in fact, illegal. Today, Snowden commented. “This is […]
Henry Evans is an enthusiastic world traveler. In the past year, he has visited Vermillion, South Dakota; Sydney, Australia; and Qusar, Azerbaijan. He’s explored halls of the Smithsonian, gone scuba diving in California, and flown over Bora Bora. He is in the midst of finagling a trip to space. Evans, it should be noted, does […]
When someone makes a StoryCorps interview, they’ll usually talk about the most important people in their lives, remember the best and worst moments they’ve lived through, and pass on wisdom they’ve gleaned over the years. So it comes as no surprise that memories of parents are often the star of the show. Our facilitators tell us […]
The TED community has been busy as usual this week. Below, some newsy highlights. On the ground in Baltimore. Last Monday night, Paul Lewis used Twitter’s live video app, Periscope, to document the demonstrations and riots that erupted after Freddie Gray’s funeral in Baltimore. In a series of videos, he interviewed residents of the city, including […]
The image itself looks laid back enough — a 20-year-old man in a hoodie and jeans, walking through New York City. Except that this image is 150 feet tall and pasted on a plaza near the Flatiron Building. Cabs and cars flow around him while pedestrians scamper past. This image, created by TED Prize winner JR, […]
As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. Human rights for chimps? This week, TED2015 speaker Steven Wise and his organization, The Nonhuman Rights Project, successfully argued for Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees who have been used for medical experimentation at Stony Brook University, to be defended […]
Mother’s Day is coming up. And since my TED Talk was about how meaningful it was to record a StoryCorps interview with my father, I was inspired to take this chance to interview my beloved mom, Jane Isay. My mom has been an editor and writer for more than 40 years — she edited H.G. Bissinger’s Friday […]