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 […]
Planet Earth doesn’t exactly have a birthday. But every year on April 22, we celebrate Earth Day — the anniversary of the moment the environmental movement went mass. According to EarthDay.org, Earth Day was founded in 1970 by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, who called for a “national teach-in on the environment” after witnessing the terrible effects […]
[ted id=1304] At TED2011, chefs Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche of the Chicago restaurant Moto showed us the unique alchemy that kept diners in their restaurant chuckling as they ate: “champagne” grapes, maki rolls printed on paper, a Cuban cigar that tastes like a Cuban sandwich, nachos that are actually dessert. Bouncing with enthusiasm, Cantu […]
Journalist Jon Ronson asks Monica Lewinsky an interesting question in this video: why did she decide to start a Twitter account? For most people, this wouldn’t be a big deal. But for Lewinsky, signing up for Twitter — or doing anything public for that matter — is a bold move. “It was another step in […]
The TED community has been moving-and-shaking as usual. Below, some newsy highlights. What you don’t know about ‘no.’ If your friend is getting ready for a job interview and asks, “Do I look good in this?,” and you answer, “No, totally!,” should they change or stride confidently out the door? This week, Kathryn Schulz writes […]
When we started StoryCorps in 2003, at first, no one came to the booth we’d set up in Grand Central Terminal. I knew that doing an interview would be an incredible experience for people, but it was a hard sell. So when we launched the StoryCorps app at the TED2015 conference, I expected silence. I […]
The stars of your favorite TED Talks have been busy over the past week. Below, a few newsy highlights. Postcards from Ferguson. A woman flushing pepper spray out of her eyes, a young black man against a fence with both hands in the air, a police car shrouded in tear gas. These are images from […]
1905 was a big year for Albert Einstein. He was 26 years old and working in the Swiss Patent Office when, in the span of seven months, he published four papers that would eventually be hugely influential. In these papers, he proposed that light could be a particle, proved that atoms existed, laid out his […]
In 1995, Kees Moeliker heard a loud bang coming from the Natural History Museum Rotterdam’s new wing. He knew exactly what it was. A curator at the museum, Moeliker had gotten used to the sound of birds hitting the glass exterior of the new wing, and had even taken to stuffing the dead birds for […]
The stars of your favorite TED Talks have been busy over the past week. Below, a few newsy highlights. Inside the mind of a murderer. What makes murderers do what they do? A BBC piece revealed that some murderers have reduced activity in their prefrontal cortex, which controls emotional impulses, and over-activity in their amygdala, […]