[ted id=1638 width=560 height=315] The term “fiscal cliff” is controversial. So Adam Davidson, the New York Times Magazine columnist and co-host of NPR’s Planet Money, prefers to call it “the self-imposed, self-destructive arbitrary deadline about resolving an inevitable problem.” In today’s talk, filmed in TED’s New York office on Monday, Davidson explains what the fiscal […]
[ted id=1634 width=560 height=315] Years ago, Steven Addis’s wife photographed him holding their 1-year-old daughter on the corner of 57 Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. On her second birthday, the family happened to be back in the city, so headed to the same corner for daddy-daughter photo, round two. The next year, Addis […]
“The birds and the bees” and “the facts of life.” These are the terms adults have come up with when it comes to talking to kids about sex. At TED2012, writer John Bohannon showed dismay at the fact that adults don’t feel comfortable talking to kids about sex, or drugs for that matter, without resorting […]
[ted id=1633 width=560 height=315] Neuroscientist Molly Crockett has a secret to share: if you want to make better decisions, eat a grilled cheese sandwich. In today’s talk, filmed at the TEDSalon in London, Crockett shares how she accidentally had a part in circulating this message. Several years ago, Crockett and her fellow researchers set out […]
When biologist E.O. Wilson won the TED Prize in 2007, he wished that we all “work together to help create the key tool that we need to inspire preservation of Earth’s biodiversity.” With that, the Encyclopedia of Life began the outrageous task of cataloguing all of the Earth’s known species. Cynthia Parr spoke at TED2012 to give updates on […]
TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built for you in a thoughtful sequence to illuminate ideas in context. This weekend, two new playlists are available: How to tell a story and A cure for cancer? How to tell a story How do you tell a good story? Does it need a beginning, […]
Enjoy this sampling of the stories from around the internet that captured our interest this week: Can a disabled form of HIV be used to fight cancer? A story in The New York Times delves into an experimental treatment. Earlier this week, Markham Nolan shared how his team verifies videos from war-torn regions to make […]
TED Fellow Jon Lowenstein makes us look at the painful social issues that we may otherwise ignore through his bold photography. His project, “Shadow Lives, USA,” documents the journey of Mexicans and Central Americans migrating to the United States, recording their struggle as they reached American soil. The image above shows Gabriela Cruz — who grew up in […]
Tech geek and entrepreneur Faisal Chohan builds online solutions and services with social value — including Pakreport, which crowdsourced disaster-mapping in response to Pakistan’s 2010 floods. His latest project, Saaf Pindi, won a $10,000 grant from TED’s City 2.0 initiative to map poor sewerage infrastructure in urban Pakistan, seeking solutions to the global sanitation problem. Tell […]
[ted id=1631 width=560 height=315] Ben Saunders spent 10 weeks walking from the north coast of Russia to the North Pole, and around to the north coast of Canada. For a full 72 days in 2004, Saunders was the only human being within a span of 5.4 million square miles, surviving an average temperature of -35C […]
Kind of like skateboarding without the skateboard, parkour is a physical art form in which practitioners, run, jump, twist and flip off the landscapes around them. In this video trailer for TEDxYouth@Alexandria, several adventurous young TEDx’ers backflip their way through the Egyptian city, spreading the power of “x” as they show off their parkour maneuvers. […]
Marcus Byrne begins today’s talk with the words: “What I want to do today is share my passion for poo with you.” But before you delve into a Freudian analysis, you should probably know that Byrne is an entomologist who studies dung beetles, of which there are about 6,000 species across the planet. As Byrne […]
The Klong Toey Community Lantern — a community space in the oldest and largest of Bangkok’s slums — was built very quickly. Not quite as quickly as shown in this three-minute timelapse video, but construction for the project took just three weeks thanks to the help of the community. But while construction went fast, Norwegian […]
TIME Editor-at-Large Bobby Ghosh covers global affairs and the Middle East. For five years he served as the magazine’s Baghdad bureau chief and, by the end of his tenure, was the longest serving print journalist in Iraq. Most recently Ghosh wrote a cover story on Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, arguably the most important man in […]
[ted id=1629 width=560 height=315] Comedian Maz Jobrani has some advice for anyone who happens to be Middle Eastern and getting on a plane in the United States. “As a Middle Eastern male, I know there’s certain things I’m not supposed to say on an airplane in the U.S. I can’t walk down the aisle and […]
By Daniel Colón-Ramos I could not have designed a better experiment if I had tried. I am a neuroscientist and I am the father of two-year old triplets—two identical and one fraternal. As a professor at Yale University, I spend most of my time designing experiments, researching or teaching about the brain and the nervous […]