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 […]
Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, passed away today after suffering from a stroke. The longest-serving Prime Minister of the 20th century, Thatcher also holds the distinction of being the only woman to hold the post. She has died at 87-years-old. Below, some TED Talks that examine Thatcher’s […]
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: Everything you thought … was wrong. You think you know how to tie your shoes, but you’re wrong. You think you understand how non-profits should work, but […]
In the early ‘80s, before MTV turned its attention to reality TV, David Bowie, Madonna and the Pretenders lit up small screens, using a new medium to showcase their songs: the music video. Recently, we’ve seen a resurgence of this art form as cinematographers, musicians and artists join together to supersize their visual creativity. But […]
Some staff picks of smart, funny, bizarre and cool stuff on the interwebs this week: First: Dragonflies are beautiful, deadly and have weird sex. [NY Times] While you’re at it, check out our playlist Insects are awesome!, above. The clap-o-meter was yesterday’s Big Data. [The Atlantic] Scientists now estimate the number of Earth-like, habitable planets in […]
Cyrus Kabiru crafts striking, whimsical, colourful pieces — most famously his one-of-a-kind spectacles, C-STUNNERS — from recycled waste and objects he finds on the streets of Nairobi. In a candid conversation at TED2013, the Kenyan sculptor and painter told us about his journey to becoming an artist … and how he’s struggled to forge a […]
Perhaps you know Ken Jennings by name, perhaps you simply know him as “that guy with the winning streak on Jeopardy.” In 2004, this trivia enthusiast won an incredible 74 consecutive times on Jeopardy, setting the record as the classic game show’s most winning contestant and securing the Guinness World Record at the time for […]
[ted id=1121] Roger Ebert, the film critic who guided American movie selections for decades, has died, a family friend revealed to newspapers today. He was 70 years old. This sad news comes just days after Ebert wrote a column in the Chicago Sun-Times, celebrating the 46th anniversary of his column and announcing a “leave of […]
A part on the outside of a spaceship that morphs, rather than requiring an astronaut to perform a risky maneuver. Plumbing pipes able to bend and flex based on the needs of the water flowing through them. Furniture that assembles itself, no screwdriver required. Buildings with the ability to repair themselves when something goes awry. […]
“Once upon a time, there was a place called Lesterland,” Lawrence Lessig begins today’s talk. “Of its 311 million people, it turns out 144,000 are called Lester,” Lessig says. In Lesterland, this .05% of the population is granted extraordinary power. Each election cycle, there’s a general election, in which the people get to vote, and […]
When engineering grad students Sanjay Dastoor, John Ulmen and Matthew Tran met at Stanford University, they lamented the fact that there was no good way to get around campus. And so, they invented one: a longboard skateboard fashioned with an electric motor. In today’s talk, given at TED2013, the three give demo their Boosted Boards […]