Almost twenty-three years ago, Joshua Prager experienced a moment that could only be described as “a great hinge in my life,” one that divided it “like the spine of an open book.” Just 19 years old then, Prager was in Israel for a year after high school. He was sitting in the backseat of a minibus […]
In the day since the Boston Marathon was interrupted by two bomb blasts – which killed three and injured more than 170 – a meme has emerged online: “Look for the helpers.” The quote comes from Fred Rogers, who shared in his tome The Mister Rogers Parenting Book, “When I was a boy and I […]
A single gram of poop contains 50 diseases, one million bacteria, 1,000 parasites, 100 worm eggs and 10 million viruses, by journalist Rose George’s tally. For people who have flushing toilets, this is something that they rarely have to think about. But for the 2.5 billion people in the world who have no toilet at […]
If you’ve Googled anything this morning, you’ve probably noticed that the site’s logo features an orb-shaped graph instead of a second ‘o,’ plus all sorts of equations like “V –E + F = 2.” The doodle is an homage to Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, who was born on this day in 1707. The man responsible […]
TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built for you in a thoughtful sequence to illuminate ideas in context. This weekend, a new playlist is available: Listen up. “We are losing our listening,” says sound consultant Julian Treasure. In these eight talks on the value of listening, Treasure gives 5 ways to listen […]
Some staff picks of smart, funny, bizarre and cool stuff on the interwebs this week: Super-duper useful mandatory homework: Get a secure password now. As xkcd explains, most people’s approach to secure passwords (a word bastardized with “random” capital letters and punctuation that’s difficult to remember) is wrong. Now go get yourself a good password. […]
Skylar Tibbits makes things that assemble themselves, with potential large-scale applications from self-adjusting water pipes to self-assembling structures in space. At his recently founded Self-Assembly Lab at MIT, he’s pioneering 4D printing — using smart materials to make objects that change shape and evolve. Here, he explains how 4D printing works, and describes his journey from architect […]
In 1812, four men met for a “philosophical breakfast” at Cambridge University: Charles Babbage, John Herschel, Richard Jones and William Whewell. Over food and drinks, they debated the state of knowledge –- imagining a world in which thinkers drew conclusions based on data, where research was done for the good of humanity rather than for […]
Ron Finley, the self-described renegade gardener, gave a hit talk at TED2013 on his gardening efforts all over South Central LA. Finley is an object of my fascination for more than one reason: In the 35 days since Finley’s talk went live, he’s left 178 comments on the site, making him the 3rd most prolific […]
Eric Dishman is used to thinking about how technology can transform the world of health care. As an Intel Fellow and general manager of the company’s Health Strategy & Solutions Group, his job is all about finding innovative new approaches to healthcare. And he’s no stranger to talking about them. At TEDMED 2009, in the […]
By Marianna Torgovnick Some documentaries show us the strange, the exotic and the unfamiliar; others make us feel anew about something so everyday, we barely thought about it before. Some of my favorite TED Talks are built around great documentary films, like Deborah Scranton’s chilling “War Tapes” and Nathaniel Kahn’s moving search for “My Father, the Architect.” Last week, […]
Chelsea Clinton has some advice for those with the greatest potential to become change-makers — the young. At TEDxTeen, held in New York City on March 16, Clinton delivered this bold talk, saying that despite negative assumptions, today’s youth are in a unique position to do good. Teens today have big advantages over those who […]
“When we think about how people work, the naïve intuition we have is that people are like rats in a maze,” says behavioral economist Dan Ariely in today’s talk, given at TEDxRiodelaPlata. “We really have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work and what the labor market looks like.” When you look carefully at […]
[ted id=1908] Guy Hoffman isn’t just a roboticist — he’s also an animator and a jazz musician. And so as he set out to build robots that communicate with people, he took inspiration from what he learned in animation school and focused on subtle, fluid movements — the kind created by going frame-by-frame. He also […]
Last week, the Associated Press announced its decision to remove the term “illegal immigrant” from the AP Stylebook. In a blog post by Director of Media Relations Paul Colford, AP’s executive editor Kathleen Carroll revealed the news: “The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term ‘illegal immigrant’ or the use of ‘illegal’ to describe a person. […]
Today, we remember the 11 million lives taken during the Holocaust — a catastrophe that thoroughly transformed our world. As we take time to honor lives lost, we look towards people like Viktor Frankl, who gave this talk “Why to believe in others.” A Holocaust survivor and renowned author, in this rare clip, Frankl discusses […]