In the spirit of today’s euphonious talk from Beardyman, and our companion piece of the weirdest sounds to grace the TED stage, celebrate all-things-music with this incredible audiation of Wikipedia. The world’s largest crowd-sourced encyclopedia got a little more melodious this week, when Stephen LaPorte and Mahmoud Hashemi of Hatnote turned the cacophony of information […]
Since TED Prize winner JR launched his INSIDE OUT project in 2011, thousands of people have contributed their faces to the world’s largest public photo gallery. And now the project has made its way to the northernmost part of the Earth. A group of 16 environmental activists used the project to protest industrial destruction of […]
Julie Taymor, the director behind Frida, Across the Universe and the Broadway reimagining of The Lion King, creates productions that tickle the senses. Filled with saturated colors, offbeat imagery, stacatto movement and big sound — each of her productions shares her unique style, yet manages to be completely distinct. In today’s talk, Taymor shares with […]
Art so often seeks to capture the beauty of the natural world — from cave drawings of animals, to paintings of landscapes, to sculptures of the human form in marble, bronze or wood. But in this playlist, find artists and designers who take this to the next level, making art based on the laws of […]
TED Talks are available in 102 languages, from Albanian to Vietnamese, thanks to the tireless work of our volunteer translators. So far, more than 10,000 volunteers have created upwards of 44,000 talk translations — and today, the TED Blog brings you a Q&A with one of them. Here, meet Wataru Narita of Tokyo, Japan. 1. […]
In today’s talk, Eli Beer shares an incredible story of how he, as a frustrated 17-year-old ambulance volunteer, was sick of sitting in traffic and getting to patients too late to save them. And so he organized a group of 15 fellow EMTs to respond to calls in their neighborhood, on foot if needed, and […]
In today’s talk, Eli Beer explains how United Hatzalah, his organization of ambucycle-riding volunteer emergency medical responders, has shaved critical minutes off of the average emergency response time — first in Jerusalem, then throughout Israel, and now in several countries around the world. The core mission of United Hatzalah (which is Hebrew for “rescue”) is […]
In his TED Talk, Gavin Pretor-Pinney urges us to look to the skies and appreciate the incredible shapes — a heart, fish or a hand waving goodbye — that can be spotted (or imagined) in clouds. But what if you want to take your cloud-spotting game to the next level? The technology and art collective […]
In today’s talk, Tania Luna shares her experience of immigrating to the United States from Ukraine as a little girl. Perfectly happy with her family’s outhouse and with chewing a single piece of Bazooka gum for a week, Luna found herself blown away by the wonders of her new country. From pizza to pennies to […]
TED Fellow Renée Hlozek — currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Astrophysics at Princeton University — recently established a fund and mentoring program to bring young South African female science undergraduates to the US for summer research. The mentorship’s first recipient, Julia Healy, just completed four weeks working alongside Hlozek at Princeton. […]
Each year, TED chooses 10 great ads to feature as part of our Ads Worth Spreading challenge. And this week, we’re featuring a whitepaper (PDF) that analyzes what makes some of those great ads great. The Ads Worth Spreading whitepaper chronicles the story behind this year’s 10 winning ads from their creative directors, and offers […]
Scientists in London have achieved a significant breakthrough on the road to curing blindness this week. Certain kinds of blindness are caused when photoreceptors — the cells in the retina that react with light and send an electrical signal to the brain — die off. Researchers at Moorfields Eye Hospital and University College London have, […]
Francesca Fedeli had a hard pregnancy. But she and her husband, Roberto D’Angelo, thought they were in the clear when their son, Mario, was born in January 2011 and seemed healthy. However, just 10 days later, Mario was diagnosed as having had a perinatal stroke. The right side of his brain was damaged, leaving him unable […]
“Is there a reason for governments to be in charge of money?” asks Paul Kemp-Robertson in today’s talk. Judging by the new raft of alternative currencies—from digital coins to point systems that reward customers of a certain brand—the answer might someday be “no.” Again. As Kemp-Robertson suggests, many people seem to trust brands more than […]
It’s an alchemic question that’s very hard for us to answer: what makes a great TED talk? In this talk, which was given to a gathering of 100+ TEDx organizers from 43 countries during the TEDx Workshop at TEDGlobal 2013, our curator Chris Anderson stresses the incredible power of a well-structured, honest talk. “We’re giving someone […]
When Roberto D’Angelo and Francesca Fideli discovered that their 10-day-old son, Mario, had suffered a stroke, they were shocked. Maria was unable to control the left side of his body and, to help their son, they opted to participate in a pilot program for mirror neuron rehabilitation. As they explain in the talk, mirror neuron […]