Mentored from childhood by Gregory Hines and Savion Glover, Andrew Nemr has tap-danced his way through life. Now, with the Tap Legacy Foundation, he’s using new technology to augment oral tradition, passing on the craft he learned at the knees of the old masters. Tell us about your life as a dancer. I grew up […]
“I feel like a cyborg,” Neil Harbisson declares in a fascinating talk from TEDGlobal 2012. Born color-blind, Harbisson lived in a “grayscale world,” he says — until 2003, when he began working with computer scientist Adam Montandon on an electronic eye that renders color as sound. Always attached to him, the appliance allows Harbisson to […]
We have all been there: standing in aisle five of the supermarket trying to decide which jar of mustard to buy. Do we go organic, or for the brand with whole mustard seeds? Or do we simply pick the one in the brightest yellow bottle? In a fascinating talk at TEDxStanford, “Sometimes it’s good to […]
It would cost you a minimum of $37,000 to enroll for a year at one of the top 10 schools in the United States, according to the U.S. News & World Report. However, anyone with a computer will now be able to take courses from half of those schools … for free. At TEDGlobal 2012, […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32PSzvYwlLE&w=530&h=298] . And … action! From artists to open-source engineers, research scientists to political activists, documentary filmmakers, inventors, social entrepreneurs and beyond, TED Fellows are an extraordinary group of innovators and iconoclasts. Today we’re launching Fellows in the Field, a series of videos that will let us look in on the world of individual Fellows, shedding light […]
When it comes to setting grand worldwide goals for development, it’s easy to imagine global leaders in suits, wheeling and dealing in the backrooms of a UN summit, without actually accomplishing much. But Jamie Drummond — the executive director of ONE, which fights poverty and disease by supporting smart policies — says that when world […]
Mina Bissell was not always the most popular person in the field of cancer research. After studying chemistry in college and getting her Ph.D. in bacteriology, the leading theory on how cancer develops — that a single cancer gene in just one of the body’s trillion cells is enough to cause the disease — simply […]
“Our modern society has a special relationship to GPS. We’re almost blindly reliant on it,” Todd Humphreys says in his TEDxTalk. “It’s built deeply into our systems and infrastructure. Some call it the invisible utility.” As GPS becomes more and more pervasive, technology is being developed to counter it — sometimes to restore privacy, but […]
What can you learn from your muscles? A lot, according to Alexander Grey, the chief technology officer of Somaxis, who has created sensors that measure muscle workload. In a talk given at TED@New York — one of 14 events that was part of the 2013 Talent Search — Grey demonstrates how people can use these sensors […]
In an interview you should ask a movie star about her movies, an author about his books, a musician about her latest album. But Randy Cohen, the original New York Times Ethicist, hopes to bypass all those boring questions on his radio show “Person Place Thing” and find out what weird passions people of note […]
Whale researcher Asha de Vos spends her days weaving a 6-meter boat through shipping lanes crowded with giant container ships, fishing boats, and marine life, collecting data crucial to the survival of the singular Sri Lankan blue whale. Tell us about the first time you saw the Sri Lankan blue whales. In 2003, I was […]
Cognitive neuroscientist John Kounios was curious: what happens in the brain when someone has a great idea? And so the Drexel University psychology professor designed an experiment to measure subjects’ brain activity as they solved problems. In a talk given at TED@New York — one of 14 events that was part of the 2013 Talent […]
Imagine flames that dance to the sounds jazz guitar. Or downloading a song simply because you like the way it looks. Or seeing Stephen Hawking’s Cambridge lectures in the stars. In a mind-expanding talk given at TED2012, design technologist Jared Ficklin demonstrated all three of these ways to literally see sound, as well as several […]
The Encyclopaedia Britannica may have ceased printing earlier this year, ending a 244-year run. But the Encyclopedia of Life is just getting started. An ambitious initiative to catalogue all the known species on planet Earth, the Encyclopedia of Life was inaugurated by famed biologist E.O. Wilson when he won the TED Prize in 2007 and […]
Daniel Ogilvie was shocked when his 4-year-old daughter ran out of her bedroom screaming, “I don’t want to be a thing that dies.” But every child goes through this moment of recognizing their mortality. A Rutgers University professor who has studied philosophy for the past 25 years, Ogilvie has become fascinated with our beliefs about […]
Pancreatic cancer is devastating. Only 5.5% of those diagnosed with the disease survive past five years, because — once it’s diagnosed — it generally has already spread around the body. And that’s where 15-year-old high school student Jack Andraka sees a major opportunity for change. In a spirited talk given at TED@New York — one […]