Vive les nerds! While the term used to be something of a put-down, meant to mock an excessive interest in math or science, it’s now often used in an almost prideful way to signify a passion for pretty much anything. And that applies to pretty much all of those who end up on the TED […]
June 18th is Autistic Pride Day, a day to celebrate the neurodiversity of people on the autism spectrum. Too often, autistic people are viewed as only autistic, and it’s seen strictly as a disorder. As always, the full picture isn’t drawn in black and white: it’s complex, full of grays. At TED, scores of speakers […]
Forecasting the stock market has a storied past of unfruitful predictions. But in today’s TED Talk, Didier Sornette shares how he and his research team have successfully identified unstable market bubbles and even predicted when they’ll pop. His findings, if accepted, could quite literally change the way we do business, by shifting how banks, traders […]
He is a part of you. Whether you are close or not, whether he was a constant part of your life or not, he impacted who you are today. You love him – except maybe when you can’t stand him. For better or worse, he is your dad. Celebrate this Father’s Day with these nine […]
By Courtney E. Martin What do sperm donation, marathon runners, disabled rockstars, and yacht racing have in common? They’ve all been subjects of the careful eye and artistic vision of British director Jerry Rothwell, the winner of the first annual Sundance Institute | TED Prize Filmmaker Award, who has received $125,000 to spend the next 18 […]
Tim Exile is at TEDGlobal this week, collecting noise. You see, he’s a UK-based electronic music producer and is putting together a few tracks based on sounds in and around the conference. On Tuesday, he went outside the theater to record the protesters rallying against George Papandreou’s politics. Then, mixing their chants with the words from Papandreou’s […]
Our photographer Duncan Davidson loves to shoot timelapses; before every TED, you can find him behind the scenes hiding cameras to snap away for hours and days. In his latest piece, he tracks the construction of a custom robot arena for Raffaello D’Andrea, whose TED Talk was posted just last night. The TED Blog asked […]
What would the world be like if it were run by city mayors? Benjamin Barber will pose this question as part of Session 8 at TEDGlobal, themed “State of the Nations.” The quirky yet powerful figure of the local mayor — cycling to work while battling civic corruption — inspires Barber in his upcoming book, If Mayors Ruled the […]
There’s a time and a place for the big picture; there’s a time and a place for the tiny one. This week, watch the playlist “The world of tiny things,” all about viewing the unseen and looking at the world on a very small scale. In this playlist, E.O. Wilson makes a plea for insects […]
Below, find some interesting and insightful pieces from around the web this week that have the TED staff intrigued: The second installment in the smart, darkly funny “Damsel in Distress” series, a three-part analysis of female tropes pervasive in video games. Contains game spoilers and violent images. [YouTube] You can also watch Part 1. We think Jackson’s Katz’s […]
At Opower, Alex Laskey and colleagues are running what they describe as “the largest behavioral science experiment in the world.” Laskey explains some of the thinking behind it in his TED Talk, “How behavioral science can lower your energy bill,” and he shared further insights into the importance of the field in this discussion with Harvard […]
Dolphins are “natural acousticians,” according to marine mammal behavioral biologist Denise Herzing. Individuals have signature whistles, just as we have names, and they can also send buzzes and tickles across long distances to physically signal one another. Echolocation clicks help them navigate in the water, and they erupt in bursts of squawks during fights. They […]
Anas Aremeyaw Anas is known for, as he calls it, the “naming, shaming and jailing” of criminals all over Ghana – yet few people would be able to pick him out of a crowd. The undercover journalist, who gave today’s talk, has brought smugglers, mob bosses and pimps to justice with an unshakeable determination to, […]
“For the past five years we’ve been running the largest behavioral science experiment in the world,” says Alex Laskey in today’s TED Talk, given at this year’s 2013 conference in Long Beach. “And, it’s working.” Laskey’s company Opower partners with utility companies to deliver personalized home energy reports, all based off the insight that people are […]
The average person takes about 150 million steps in a lifetime. What if we could turn all that movement into energy? Two innovators are working on it — including a TED@London speaker. While one has built a system to capture the energy of foot traffic, the other is harnessing the power of smooth dance moves. […]
This morning’s TED Talk from Andrew Solomon asks a deep question about parents and children. Inspired by his own upbringing, Solomon wondered how parents form bonds with extraordinary children — or, in his words, when the “vertical culture” passed from parent to child is different from the “horizontal culture” of the child’s own self-identity. As […]