TED Talks are available in 97 languages, from Albanian to Vietnamese, thanks to the tireless work of our translators. So far, more than 8,800 volunteers have created the upwards of 34,000 translated talks. To celebrate this huge accomplishment, every week the TED Blog will be bringing you a Q&A with one of our most prolific […]
“Raise your hand if you think that basic research on fruit flies has anything to do with understanding mental illness in humans,” David Anderson begins today’s talk, given at TEDxCaltech. While few hands shoot in the air, Anderson goes on to explain the connection — that research conducted by manipulating brain chemicals in fruit flies […]
Two years ago today, a massive earthquake rocked Japan and sent a tsunami raging over its shores. Nearly 19,000 people were killed; more than 300,000 were displaced. TED Fellow Serge Mouangue was living in Tokyo at the time. A native of Cameroon, he had been exploring the similarities between West African and Japanese cultures in art, […]
In 1994, Dan Pallotta created the AIDS Rides — a series of long-distance fundraising cycling journeys that netted $108 million for HIV/AIDS research and services within the space of eight years. Later, his Breast Cancer 3-Day walks netted $194 million in an even shorter period of time. Both had their best years ever in 2002. […]
After his 6-year-old son taught himself to use a computer, 2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra wanted to test the idea that kids can learn on their own, by discovery rather than formal training. So Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in the wall near a slum in New Delhi, set up an Internet-connected […]
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: What does the future look like? It’s the question none of us is sure how to answer: What will the world look like in 20 years? And […]
Shane Koyczan has a way with words. “I’ve been shot down so many times I get altitude sickness just from standing up for myself,” he says, beginning today’s talk. “That’s what we were told—stand up for yourself. But that’s hard to do if you don’t know who you are.” Koyczan appeared on the TED2013 stage […]
Imagine a city skyline — a jagged line of peaks, drops and plateaus — all filled with rooftop farms. This is the dream of Roman Gaus, CEO of UrbanFarmers, which aims to turn city roof space into a place to grow fresh food and even raise fish. Gaus has contributed an essay to the new […]
Kakenya Ntaiya was engaged at 5-years-old, her family members regularly whispering in her ear, “Your husband just passed by.” This was the traditional path that unfolded before girls in the Maasai village in Kenya where Ntaiya grew up. “In Maasai culture, the boys are brought up to be warriors, the girls are brought up to […]
After more than 13 years of research convinced him that children have the ability to learn almost anything on their own, 2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra aspires to shape the future of learning by building a School in the Cloud, helping kids “tap into their innate sense of wonder.” In the spirit of Mitra’s […]
Phil Hansen has tattooed bananas, drawn a portrait on stacked Starbucks cups and created a Jimi Hendrix portrait out of matches, which he then burned. In other words, he isn’t the kind of artist who feels bound to paint on canvas. So how did Hansen happen upon such fascinating methods? By embracing a major limitation […]
Imagine a squid so big that, when sprawled out, it is the size of a two-story house. Edith Widder has now seen this enormous ocean creature, once the stuff of nautical legend, six times. In today’s talk, Widder shares how we now have filmed proof of the giant squid’s existence, thanks to a mission conducted […]
On February 4, 2012, ocean filmmaker and educator Mike deGruy was killed in a helicopter crash while on assignment in Australia, along with pilot and filmmaker Andrew Wright. DeGruy (pronounced “degree”) was an Emmy-winning science documentarian and a mainstay of Shark Week; he also worked on James Cameron documentaries about the Titanic and Bismarck and […]
One of the things we’re interested in exploring here at TED is … what happens after a talk? Most often, a speaker is telling us a story without an ending — a tale that’s just beginning rather than coming to an end. That’s certainly the case with TED2013 speaker Alastair Parvin, whose project, Wikihouse, is really just […]
Allan Savory isn’t afraid to own up to the “greatest blunder” of his life. In his incredible talk from TED2013, Savory shares his life’s work managing grasslands in Africa, weaving a gripping tale out of what seems like an unlikely topic. In the 1950s, Savory helped create large national parks in Africa. But as people […]
A haunting black-and-white video screened during the TED Fellows talks depicted people speaking into a device and then walking — at first taking halting steps, then more confident strides. As the video unfolds, the camera zooms in on the faces of the walkers — revealing that they are blind. With his team, TED Senior Fellow […]