The TED staff has returned to our downtown New York office in the wake of the chaos churned by Hurricane Sandy. All day, there has been just one question on our minds: How can we help? The temperature will be creeping below freezing tonight, while many pockets of the East Coast remain without power and […]
[ted id=1607 width=560 height=315] What makes us happy? It’s one of the most complicated puzzles of human existence — and one that, so far, 87 speakers have explored in TEDTalks. In today’s talk, Matt Killingsworth (who studied under Dan Gilbert at Harvard) shares a novel approach to the study of happiness — an app, Track Your Happiness, […]
New York is slowly but surely coming back to life after being battered by Hurricane Sandy. Nearly all of Manhattan has electricity, and subway lines are being restored. But not every area of the city is faring so well. As The New York Times noted on Saturday, many of the city’s public housing facilities — […]
Multi-instrumentalist, composer, artist and filmmaker Usman Riaz started recording his debut album, Circus in the Sky, at 18, shaking up the music scene in Pakistan. Then he rocked the TEDGlobal 2012 stage with a world-class performance on percussive guitar, alongside his hero, Preston Reed. Now he’s poised to make a global ruckus. You’ve accomplished a […]
[ted id=1600 width=560 height=315] Faith Jegede would prefer that you not call her normal. In today’s powerful talk, given at the TED Talent Search London stop, Faith Jegede introduces you to her two brothers — Remy, 22, and Samuel, 16 — who are both autistic and extraordinary. “Remy’s speechless but he communicates joy in a […]
In his recent TEDTalk, “What doctors don’t know about the drugs they prescribe,” Ben Goldacre sounded a warning about the vast numbers of pharmaceutical studies that go unpublished. “Positive findings are about twice as likely to be published as negative findings,” said Goldacre, noting that this is a big problem because it means doctors are […]
Happy All Hallows Evening, TEDsters! While you carve your pumpkins and put the final touches on your costume, here are 12 talks to get you further into the Halloween spirit. Emma Teeling: The secret of the bat genome Bats have a bad reputation, says Emma Teeling in today’s talk given at TEDxDublin. While people generally […]
Stepping onto the TED or TEDx stage — or speaking in front of any group of people, for that matter — is truly nerve-wracking. Will you remember everything you wanted to say, or get so discombobulated that you skip over major points? Will the audience be receptive to your ideas, or will you notice a […]
[ted id=1599 width=560 height=315] Sanjay Pradhan was thrilled when, at age six, a cart full of sweets was wheeled to his family’s doorstep in Bihar, India. The gift, however, was intended as a bribe for his father, who was responsible for building roads in India’s poorest state. “My father had developed a firm stance against […]
Hurricane Sandy is currently hovering over the Atlantic Ocean, threatening a large swath of the United States’ East Coast, from North Carolina to Maine. With coastal areas evacuated, wind and rainfall picking up quickly and many transportation systems shut down in anticipation of flooding, millions of people are currently at home, just waiting for roughest […]
[ted id=1595 width=560 height=315] Rory Stewart opens this talk from TEDxHousesofParliament with a joke: “Little Billy goes to school and his teacher asks, ‘What does your father do?’ Billy replies, ‘My father plays piano in an opium den.’” But when the teacher confronts the father about his occupation, she gets a different answer. As Stewart finishes […]
Tech and social entrepreneur Jon Gosier launched the Apps4Africa competition in 2009 to reward and jumpstart African innovators and entrepreneurs. As the competition enters its third year, Jon is finding ways to help provide long-term, holistic support for winners, helping to scale sustainable businesses across nations and the continent. Tell us a bit about yourself […]
[ted id=1602 width=560 height=315] On the TED stage, illusionist Marco Tempest has explored the nature of truth and lies, brought a stick figure to life, charted the meaning of magic and told the sad tale of inventor Nikola Tesla. In his latest performance, given this summer at TEDGlobal, Tempest turns his eye to a magician’s […]
[ted id=1598] Air conditioning used to be a luxury — but as Doris Kim Sung points out in this talk from TEDxUSC, modernized society has become thoroughly air-conditioning reliant. This is largely a problem of materials, says Sung, a professor at the USC School of Architecture. Many new buildings — especially skyscrapers — are built […]
Just by living our plugged-in lives, each of us is producing a constant stream of data. Little snippets are left behind of what we search, what we buy, where we go, what we tweet … This endless flow of numbers is referred to as “big data,” data sets so large that they require sophisticated parsing […]
Dennis Hong shared seven species of robots in his talk at TEDxNASA 2009, from the soccer-playing DARwIn to the cliff-gripping CLIMBeR. In this new video, Hong — the director of the Virginia Tech robotics lab RoMeLa — introduces us to CHARLI, a lightweight robot designed to walk and move like a human. Or, you know, […]