There’s something so cool about finding a new podcast to love — each little download opens a door to new ideas, new jokes, new ways of seeing the world. Working at TED, as you might guess, many of us have strong opinions about this. Beyond the podcasts we all love: This American Life, Radiolab, The […]
For decades, the farmers of East Africa have battled the African whitefly, a tiny insect that infests the cassava crop. Cassava, also called manioc, arrowroot or tapioca, is an important food all over the world — more than half a billion people (yes, billion with a b) rely on cassava for their daily meals. For East African farmers, a whitefly infestation can completely destroy the year’s […]
“Women’s health is an equal rights issue as important as equal pay.” When Paula Johnson uttered this sentence on the TEDWomen 2013 stage, the audience broke into spontaneous applause. “At that moment, it said to me they got it,” she says. Johnson has been working for decades to raise awareness about how diseases behave differently […]
First impressions are full of promise — and anxiety. On Tuesday night, five speakers in TED’s New York office shared a salon that explored the hidden opportunities, truths and humor in these split-second assumptions. First up, NYU associate professor Adam Alter showed how exploiting a simple human trait could actually make us more generous. “We […]
All TED Talks are good. Why do only some go viral? Over the last year, a human behavior consultancy called Science of People set out to answer this question. To do so, says founder Vanessa Van Edwards, they polled 760 volunteers, asking them to rate hundreds of hours of TED Talks, looking for specific nonverbal and body language patterns. […]
Did you know that bacteria can be programmed as though they were computers? Bioengineer and artist Tal Danino is working out how to instruct bacteria to enter cancerous tumors — where it can detect and treat the disease noninvasively. And when Danino isn’t tinkering with bacteria’s healing potential, he makes artwork with it. With Danino’s TED talk posted just yesterday, he […]
Three artists. One five-minute performance. Less than 48 hours. No, this is not a math problem. It was the scenario presented to choreographer Bill T. Jones, cellist Joshua Roman and vocalist Somi at the start of the TED2015 conference. June Cohen, TED’s executive producer of media, offered a challenge to these three: Could they craft […]
Imagine being able to ask a panel of TED speakers: Will having more money make me happy? Will new innovations give me a longer life? A new technology from IBM Watson is set to help people explore the ideas inside TED Talks videos — by asking the questions that matter to them, in natural language. […]
Our 29-member Technology Team is spread out. TED HQ is in New York, but our team includes developers who live in six other states — from Florida to Oregon, with a stopoff in South Dakota — and two other countries. (Yes, tech talent doesn’t always reside in New York and San Francisco.) There are big […]
The watch looks both futuristic and retro at the same time. A swirl of visible gears and carefully calibrated dials, it charts time in an unusual way — the hour jumps into place at the top, the minute is marked in a semicircle along the bottom, and the seconds swoop above. It’s a statement watch, the […]
About one-tenth of the world’s population is left-handed — and archaeological evidence suggests that it’s been this way for the last 500,000 years. But why do a small percentage of people carry this trait, and what does it mean about them that they do? These were the questions that inspired educator Danny Abrams and animator Lisa LaBracio […]
TED speaker Virginia Postrel swears by the app Anti-Social when she needs to focus on her writing. Jon Gosier considers his iPhone 5 “the Swiss Army knife of electronic gadgetry,” and relies on Waze for “directions and avoiding speeding tickets.” Meanwhile, Heather Barnett never reads a single book at a time — she usually has […]
Today, as the winners of the 2015 Webby Awards were announced, our jaws hit the floor. Between TED and TED-Ed, we won a total of 11 awards — which means we’re tied with Always’ #LikeAGirl campaign for the most Webby Awards of the year. TED.com won seven awards, for Websites: Events (both the judges’ award and the fan-voted […]
In agricultural entrepreneur Trang Tran’s native Vietnam, farmers traditionally burn the straw and husks that remain after the rice harvest. This practice happens at least twice a year for two months at a time, releasing noxious smoke and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Tran’s solution: using rice straw to cultivate mushrooms. Her social enterprise Fargreen is […]
In 2015, 60 Minutes aired a story called “When TED talks, people listen,” to show what happens when TED Talks are shared across the world. The segment focuses on a few key speakers, including Bryan Stevenson, Maysoon Zayid, Amy Cuddy and Monica Lewinsky, and you can watch a playlist of highlighted TED Talks here. But many of you said: You want to watch all the talks […]
On tonight’s episode of 60 Minutes, a segment called “TED Talks” tells the story of three TED speakers whose talks rippled out into the world, transforming their own lives as well as the lives of many people who watched. Amy Cuddy shared a deeply personal story that sparked her research into “power posing”; Bryan Stevenson used his talk […]