[ted id=1579 width=560 height=315] Museum exhibitions offer a complex conundrum. While museum-goers walk through, looking at art and objects of extreme historical importance, the context of a piece’s creation is often reduced to a small plaque on the wall. This is an issue that Thomas P. Campbell, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art […]
We are thoroughly impressed with contortionist Anudari, who performed last week at TEDxUlaanbaatar in Mongolia. She has been studying contortion since she was 6-years-old. But it’s not just her outrageous flexibility and ability to fold in impossible ways that makes her so fascinating to watch. It’s the fact that she can play a musical instrument […]
[ted id=1570]As computers have gotten more complex, even tech literate users have become detached from the basics of how they function. This is what Shimon Schocken and Noam Nisan noticed with their computer science students in Israel. As Schocken explains in this talk from TEDGlobal 2012, the pair decided to have their students build a […]
Enjoy these fascinating reads from across the internet: Tonight brings the first U.S. presidential debate of the 2012 election season, and Jim Lehrer has instituted new rules to make it more of a group discussion and less like a series of disjointed monologues. [Christian Science Monitor] Read the TED Blog’s Q&A with nonverbal communication expert […]
“The One World Schoolhouse fleshes out the story and vision that began with my talk at TED,” Salman Khan tells the TED Blog. His new book, out this week, lays out a bold strategy for bringing “a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.” In the book, Khan talks about such points as: Why technology will […]
Every week at TED’s New York office, one media team staffer shares 5 things on the web that intrigued, shocked or amused them. We call it: Previously on the Internet. Here are this week’s finds, from Haley Hoffman, TED’s product team consultant. Let’s agree to call them InstaGrahams The online sweet shop Baking for Good […]
Can music be a medical instrument? In a moving talk from TEDMed, Robert Gupta reveals that it certainly can be. He gives as an example the work of neuroscientist Gottfried Schlaug, one of the pioneers of melodic intonation therapy. Schlaug noticed that, while stroke victims with aphasia could not utter a sentence, they could still […]
Everything is a remix, Kirby Ferguson told us at TEDGlobal 2012, explaining that the essence of creativity is the welding together of others’ ideas to form something new. We couldn’t help but think of this when we saw an article on TheVerge.com about researchers at Zhejiang Univeristy’s CCNT lab who have combined brainwave technology and airborne robotics […]
At TEDGlobal 2012, Amy Cuddy gave a talk about the remarkable power of our posture to affect our mental state: Strike a powerful pose (in private) before a job interview, and your performance will improve. With the US election coming up, we asked Cuddy, an expert on nonverbal communication, for her insights into political posturing […]
UPDATE OCTOBER 2017: The science of power poses is one of ongoing study. Please check our update on Amy Cuddy’s talk for the latest research in this area of science. There’s one very important thing that everyone should do before heading into a job interview, giving a big speech or attempting an athletic feat. According […]
Bioarchaeologist Christine Lee reconstructs lives from ancient human remains, looking for clues as to how they lived, fought and died. In the process, she gains insight about the history of disease, the evolution of culture, the violence of human nature — and her own identity. What prompted you to become a bioarchaeologist? When I was […]
[ted id=1537] Two years ago, Lebanese-Egyptian artist and historian Bahia Shehab was invited to join an exhibit commemorating 100 years of Islamic art in Europe. The catch: she had to use Arabic script in her work. “As an artist, a woman, an Arab and a human being living in the year 2010, I only had […]
One might ask Nate Silver, the data whiz behind FiveThirtyEight.com, which shot to prominence after providing eerily accurate forecasts of the 2008 election, what makes for good predictions. His answer will come as a surprise. In his new book, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail But Some Don’t, Silver explains the […]
Shea Hembrey is 100 artists in one. At TED2011, he shared how he staged an international biennial containing works from 100 artists … all of whom he invented himself. The talk has spun into his first New York gallery exhibit, featuring work he made—this time as himself. The exhibit is called “Dark Matters,” and it’s […]
[ted id=1575] As a doctor, Ben Goldacre likes to have all the available facts about a prescription drug before he even thinks about prescribing it. However, when it comes to medicines, it’s nearly impossible to find all the existing data. As Goldacre described in this impassioned talk given at TEDMed 2012, there is a bias […]
Enjoy these fascinating reads from across the Internet: California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law yesterday making it legal for driverless cars to travel on public roadways. [Forbes] Watch Sebastian Thrun’s TEDTalk “Google’s driverless car” for a description of how such a thing works and Chris Gerdes’ talk “The future race car — 150mph, and […]