Mathematics gets down to work in these talks, breathing life and logic into everyday problems. Prepare for math puzzlers both solved and unsolvable, and even some still waiting for solutions. [ted id=198 width=560 height=315] Ron Eglash: The fractals at the heart of African designs When Ron Eglash first saw an aerial photo of an African […]
Rick Smolan enlisted an unusual partner for the release of his new coffee table book, The Human Face of Big Data — FedEx. Yes, Smolan orchestrated a meeting with the shipping giant so that 10,000 copies of the book would be delivered simultaneously today, November 20, to a large group of influential people around the […]
One billion is certainly in the zeitgeist. V-day, the global campaign founded by four-time TED speaker Eve Ensler to end violence against women and girls, recently unveiled its One Billion Rising initiative. The name comes from the horrifying statistic that 1 in 3 women will be beaten or abused in their lifetime — on a […]
[ted id=1618] This weekend, hundreds of video games enthusiasts lined up in the cold, waiting 12 hours-plus to be the first to get their hands on Nintendo’s new console, the Wii U. And when the game Call of Duty: Black Ops was released in 2010, gamers around the world played it for more than 600 million […]
Former Arizona State Senator Kyrsten Sinema built her political career by seeking shared values with her opposition, while looking out for the interests of families in need. Now newly elected to the US House of Representatives for Arizona’s 9th congressional district, the Democratic Congresswoman-elect, long a champion of LGBT issues, makes history as the first […]
[ted id=1552] To anyone who thinks of arts festivals as a fun bit of window dressing, David Binder’s rejoinder is: look again, and look more closely. In this spirited talk, given at TEDUniversity, the accomplished theater producer (he was behind the New York City phenomenon De La Guarda, a dance performance staged over the audience’s […]
TED speaker Rick Smolan is asking students between the ages of 13 and 18 to become “Data Detectives” for a new project he’s unveiling today — and that he will talk about at TEDYouth this Saturday. By answering a 20-question online survey, teenagers will help build a data set that will let then compare themselves to […]
“I make paper interactive,” says Kate Stone in today’s talk, given at TED2013. Because this description of her work “really confuses most people,” the best way to understand it is to see it in action. So in this talk, Stone demonstrates some of her very cool creations — like a poster that can pick the […]
Sean Caroll gives an unusual disclaimer for his new book, The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads to the Edge of a New World, out yesterday: ”You should have no trouble reading and understanding it, no matter what your physics background may be.” Carroll has long […]
[ted id=1603 width=560 height=315] A letter — be it handwritten or typed — feels like an unpremeditated revelation, a glimpse into the writer’s subconscious. Letters are, also, often rooted to the place where they were written: a cozy armchair, a backyard hammock, the corner desk of a classroom, a train. It’s this physical and temporal […]
[ted id=1614 width=560 height=315] Arunachalam Muruganantham may not seem like the most obvious person to have started a revolution in sanitary napkins — after all, he is male. But in this funny and uplifting talk, given at the TED Talent Search in Bangalore, Muruganantham describes how he is enabling women in India to make their […]
[ted id=1613 width=560 height=315] Radio host Julie Burstein has found the perfect analogy for creativity—raku pottery. A Japanese art form in which molded clay is heated for 15 minutes and then dropped in sawdust which bursts into flames, what makes this pottery so beautiful is its imperfections and cracks. Burstein interviewed hundred of artists, writers, […]
This morning at the Mozilla Festival in the UK, Mozilla launched their new web tool Popcorn Maker. (A beta version of Popcorn Maker debuted here on the TED Blog a couple weeks ago.) With Popcorn Maker, you can choose a YouTube video and add notes, live links, Twitter feeds, photos, links out to Wikipedia … […]
In July, TED Fellow Jimmy Lin and his team discovered a gene mutation that might explain 4-year-old Maya Nieder’s rare developmental disease. After years of frustrating doctors and specialists’ visits, Maya’s family may be close to an answer, thanks to Lin’s brainchild — the Rare Genomics Institute. Lin began RGI as place for patients with rare […]
[ted id=1612 width=560 height=315] The average person lies once or twice a day. And as Cornell psychology professor Jeff Hancock shares in today’s fascinating talk, given at TEDxWinnipeg, the anonymity and ambiguity of technology give us a whole new arsenal of ways to fib. He and his team have identified three new types of lies […]
[ted id=1601 width=560 height=315] More than 8 million children live in orphanages worldwide. But as Georgette Mulheir shares in today’s brave talk, given at TEDSalon London Spring 2012, an estimated 90% of them are not true orphans. These children are sent to orphanages because a single parent is not adequately able to care for them, […]