Diane Benscoter talks about how she joined the Moonies — and stayed for five long years. She shares an insider’s perspective on cults and extremist movements, and proposes a new way to think about today’s most troubling conflicts. Watch Diane Benscoter’s talk from TED U 2009 on TED.com where you can download this TEDTalk, rate […]
NYU professor Clay Shirky gave a fantastic talk on new media during our TED@State event earlier this month. He revealed how cellphones, the web, Facebook and Twitter had changed the rules of the game, allowing ordinary citizens extraordinary new powers to impact real-world events. As protests in Iran exploded over the weekend, we decided to […]
While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. (Recorded at TED@State, at the US State Department, June 2009, in Washington, […]
Jane Poynter tells her story of living two years and 20 minutes in Biosphere 2 — an experience that provoked her to explore how we might sustain life in the harshest of environments. This is the first TEDTalk drawn from an independently organized TEDx event, TEDxUSC, held at the University of Southern California. (Recorded at […]
A young and enthusiastic crowd packed the 92nd Street Y on Friday night to enjoy yet another reunion of science and art at the World Science Festival — an event that featured two stars of the SciFi Channel’s hit show Battlestar Galactica, two scientists in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, and one futurist/transhumanist […]
The 2009 World Science Festival kicked off its third day of festivities on Friday with a truly original and delightful event called WSF Spotlight, which stripped away the trimmings of what you might think of as “traditional” science presentations (flat lighting? a vast echoey lecture hall? dry droning delivery?), and replaced them with a dramatically […]
Photographer Robert Leslie is sending TED some wonderful shots from the World Science Festival, happening right now in New York City. Check this Flickr set for more images from this celebration of science and curiosity … and if you’re inspired to catch an event (there’s a packed schedule of events running through tomorrow night), visit […]
Photo: Robert Leslie. Courtesy WSF Last night, the TEDBlog attended the World Science Festival‘s second night of proceedings, specifically the session titled “Nothing: The Subtle Science of Emptiness.” The evening began with a warm welcome for the illustrious journalist John Hockenberry, who described himself as our “launch vehicle into an area of sophisticated science.” He […]
The second year of the World Science Festival got off to a spectacular start last night at New York’s Lincoln Center, with a program star-studded from both science and the arts. We loved it here at TED, not just because it featured so many of our TED favorites — physicist Brian Greene (who co-founded the […]
Last week, we posted Jonathan Drori’s fascinating short talk about the Millennium Seed Bank — a massive effort to preserve the world’s threatened plant life within a global network of seed archives. It’s a big topic to cover in 3 minutes, so the TED Blog asked Drori if he had time to answer a few […]
Take 3 minutes to help celebrate World Oceans Day by helping us grant Sylvia Earle’s 2009 TED Prize wish. Our partners at Razorfish have created an ocean survey regarding the threats to marine life today. This survey will offer valuable insights into the public’s knowledge of the dangers facing our oceans. We would love to […]
In this short, optimistic talk from TED2009, Pete Alcorn shares a vision of the world of two centuries from now — when declining populations and growing opportunity prove Malthus was wrong. (Recorded at TED2004, February 2004, in Monterey, California. Duration: 17:24) Watch Pete Alcorn’s talk from TED2009 on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, […]
We are excited to report that the World Science Festival is returning for its second year next week in New York City. The five-day program of events is jam-packed with amazing sessions that explore intriguing subjects such as nothingness, the science of traffic, perception of the human face, the neural basis for our enjoyment of […]
Today, photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand launched his movie Home, an environmentally conscious tour of our planet through panoramic vistas that focuses on human impact — our mistakes and possibilities for improvement. Yann took some time out of this busy day to answer a few questions for the TEDBlog by email, going beyond his recent TEDTalk to […]
TEDsters in the Washington, DC, area may wish to attend a congressional reception tonight honoring photographer James Nachtwey, on Thursday, June 4, at the US Capitol. James Nachtwey’s TED Prize wish, in 2007, asked the world to help him share images of XDR-TB, a scary and underreported new strain of tuberculosis. The reception tonight is […]
Friends of TED write in to tell us about Kickstarter, a new crowd-enabled funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, bloggers, explorers and more. No investment, no loans, just people supporting projects for all kinds of reasons … artistic, altruistic, commercial, whatever. We’ve had tremendous success so far (only 1 month live), and […]