Picture a classroom teacher without a lesson plan — a teacher who instead asks students an open-ended question to explore: Can animals think? Did dinosaurs exist? What is a soul? With the opening of Newcastle University’s SOLE Central on Monday, this vision is coming to life, in a research center where the concept can be tweaked […]
The members of the TED community have been very busy this week. Below, news briefs on what a few have been up to: Who’ll pay for the Ebola vaccine? To end the Ebola epidemic, we need a vaccine — and a lot of it, fast. The challenge for drugmakers? That’s not a profitable business. Seth Berkley is […]
The “T” in TED stands for technology. So it might sound counterintuitive that we would release a book about the need to unplug. But we live in a madly accelerating world, where new technologies — for all their benefits — are making our lives more crowded, more chaotic and noisier than ever. There’s never been […]
While our rights to share John Legend’s performance of “True Colors” have now expired, we hope you’ll enjoy this powerful talk from his fellow TED star Rita Pierson: Every child needs a champion. [ted id=1728]
The past week brought lots of excitement for members of the TED community. Below, some highlights. Morgan Spurlock’s latest project, “We the Economy,” has a tagline that really explains it best. Billed as “20 short films you can’t afford to miss,” this online series brings together filmmakers and economists to answer big questions about the […]
Cocktail party trivia: Brainstorming was invented in the 1930s as a practical idea-generation technique for regular use by “creatives” within the ad agency BBDO. That all changed in 1942, when Alex Osborn — the “O” in BBDO — released a book called How to Think Up and excited the imaginations of his fellow Mad Men. […]
In 2012, the TED Prize was awarded to an idea: The City2.0, a place to celebrate actions taken by citizens around the world to make their cities more livable, beautiful and sustainable. This week, The City2.0 website evolves. On the relaunched TEDCity2.org, you’ll find great talks on topics like housing, education and food, and how […]
In the days before their event in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the team at TEDxChiangMai spent a large chunk of their time collecting stuff. All kinds of stuff — the quirky, the old, the new, the unwanted, the loved and the thoroughly weird — that could be used for a collaborative art project on the big day. […]
New York is a playground of absurdity. I’ve lived here on and off for the past decade. Since I ate my first workday lunch in a “park” in downtown Manhattan, I’ve been blindly accepting everyone’s inexplicable behavior in this city, not least of all the block-long cronut line I pass on my way to work […]
As always, members of the TED community have been very busy the past few weeks. Below, just a few of them making the news: Earlier this month, Mazda promised to fund one of four projects dreamed up by TED Fellows — based on your votes. The winner: eye surgeon Andrew Bastawrous has won for his […]
Three years ago, Rabbi Ronnie Cahana suffered a rare brain stem stroke that left him fully conscious, yet his entire body paralyzed. It’s a condition known as “locked-in syndrome.” Last month, TED Fellow Kitra Cahana spoke of her father’s experience at TEDMED (watch her talk, “My father, locked in his body but soaring free”), revealing […]
David Swancott is a retired biology teacher who lives an hour southeast of Bordeaux, France. He spends his free time bicycling, traveling and, for the past two years, being a “Skype Granny.” Swancott is a part of the “Granny Cloud,” a project created by 2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra to make teachers available online to mentor children participating […]
Whenever Fabien Cousteau opened the door of his home during June, he met the neighbors: sharks and grouper. That’s because Cousteau was living underwater for 31 days, in a deep sea lab off the coast of Florida. At TEDGlobal 2014 this morning, Cousteau spoke about Mission 31, during which he and his team conducted experiments that will […]
To introduce the sessions of TEDGlobal 2014, curator Bruno Giussani had an idea: he asked 12 different creative teams to give 12 different visions of Brazil. Below, watch them all in rapid succession.
Pakistan is facing a polio crisis from unvaccinated children, because health workers are viewed with distrust — if not outright targeted by the Taliban. (Why? In 2013, it was revealed that the CIA ran a fake vaccination campaign as cover to hunt for Bin Laden.) This moving short film is part of a campaign to help rebuild trust, […]
Khalida Brohi grew up traveling between two very different parts of Pakistan: the bustling city of Karachi, where her parents moved so that she and her sisters could go to school, and a small village in Balochistan, where her family has its roots. Brohi got a modern education, and also developed a deep reverence for her […]