If a meet-cute is going to happen at TED2015, it will likely happen downstairs on the first level at the Harmonograph Swingset. This modern-day, hand-crafted timber swing, a take on a 19th-century invention, records harmonic frequencies as visual art. The swingset is made of two seats, set at right angles and connected to two poles […]
The glossy pages of magazines offer fascinating people, absorbing stories and photos that transport you to faraway places. During Session 8 of TED2015, a magazine will spring into three dimensions on the stage, thanks to Pop-Up Magazine. See, every now and then, we hand over the reins to a guest curator. At TED2011, Bill Gates and Juan Enriquez […]
Pico Iyer is a global travel writer whose stories have taken him to the snowy mountains of Japan and a film festival in Pyongyang, North Korea. But the author of the TED Book The Art of Stillness is also a champion of the art of “going nowhere,” a contemplative state of mind that makes a […]
There are a lot of great jobs at TED, but Colette Lynch and her Vancouver-based team might just have the best. They lead “food and beverage curation” for our conferences and, like our program curators, spend all year researching and prepping: sifting through food blogs, visiting farmers markets, meeting with culinary visionaries and, of course, […]
This week, Apple turned the iPhone into a medical research tool with the launch of ResearchKit. This open-source framework, described in the video above, lets a medical researcher set up a project to gather anonymous patient data on diseases like asthma, breast cancer and diabetes. Using their own smartphones, patients who join a project can […]
This morning, the Solar Impulse 2 — a plane powered only by the sun — took off from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, sailing past the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque on the first leg of its journey around the world. This flight is the culmination of 12 years of dreaming by TED speaker […]
“The White City.” “The City of the Monkey God.” “The Place of Cacao.” Rumors of a majestic city nestled in the remote rainforest of Honduras — referred to by all of these names — have circulated for centuries, wedging their way into Honduran national identity. They seemed to be the stuff of legend. Until a […]
On this weekend’s episode of Super Soul Sunday, Oprah Winfrey asks TED Books author Pico Iyer to explain more precisely what he means by the word ‘stillness.’ It’s not so much about meditation, he says. “It’s sanity and it’s balance, and it’s a chance to put things in perspective,” he says. Like so many others, […]
The core of StoryCorps is listening. It’s about honoring another human being by simply listening to them. The joke, of course, is that I’m a terrible listener. I really am — ask anybody. I’m just so easily distracted by my phone or email. I’m terrible. But that’s why StoryCorps is so important. It’s about learning […]
Please enjoy your weekly roundup of news briefs from members of the TED community: A 21st-century break-in. Security futurist Marc Goodman knows that technology can make both life and crime easier. In a post on Boing Boing excerpted from his book Future Crimes, he tells the story of an auto trading company that installed tiny remote-controlled boxes […]
Some people might not take kindly to being called a knucklehead by their boss. Not Noah McQueen. But if your boss were President Barack Obama, you’d probably give him a pass, too. In a Storycorps interview that aired this morning, President Obama interviewed McQueen, an 18-year-old White House mentee in the My Brother’s Keeper initiative, which celebrates its first […]
In the small village of Roka in western Cambodia, 272 people have tested positive for HIV since the end of 2014. Among those diagnosed: an 82-year-old celibate Buddhist monk, several babies and 19 members of the same family. This tragic outbreak has been traced to a source: Yem Chrin, a popular medical practitioner who operated […]
As usual, the TED community has been very busy over the past week. Below, a few newsy highlights. Seafaring robots. TED Fellow Cesar Harada’s startup, Scoutbots, was recently named one of Fast Company’s Top 10 Innovative Companies in China. Based in Hong Kong, Scoutbots uses open-source technology and highly bendable, durable materials to create autonomous […]
On Tuesday, college students Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, her husband, Dean Barakat, 23, and her sister, Razan Abu-Salha, 19, were shot and killed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The community is reeling from the news; thousands attended a vigil on the University of North Carolina campus last night, while on social media, the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter has […]
The TED community has been busy in the past week. Below, a few TEDsters with news to share. Accepting people for who they say they are. In a knockout new video for The What’s Underneath Project, iO Tillett Wright shared her journey of gender and self-discovery, taking off a single article of clothing with each […]
When TED asked Hannah Fry to write a book on the mathematics of finding true love, Fry happened to be — of all places — on her honeymoon. “[My husband and I] have been together for a really long time, so the whole newlywed thing didn’t quite apply,” she says. “But I did feel like […]