Artist Zena el Khalil doesn’t have the family home she remembers from childhood. Her mother’s house in Lebanon was destroyed in a U.S. bomb attack in 1983, while her father’s house was occupied by the Israeli army for 22 years, until its withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. “Every home my grandfathers built was destroyed, bombed or occupied,” […]
From anti-jargon campaigns to how Gen X and Gen Y can collaborate, TED@StateStreet highlighted ideas to inspire leaders at every level. This TED Institute event, held in London on November 18, showcased speakers from both inside and outside the financial services company. Throughout, the focus was on innovative thinking in work culture. Below, quotes worth […]
It’s not every day that you see a desert cyclist, a Tanbour virtuoso, a Persian literature professor and a health systems expert in the same room together. But at the second TEDxTehran, held in September, they all took the stage, sharing stories of their “breakthroughs.” In the audience, representatives from TEDx events in all corners […]
Amanda Palmer’s new book grew out of a simple fact: that she couldn’t cram every relevant story into her 14-minute TED Talk. So she has expanded her talk, “The art of asking,” which focuses on how artists can (and should) ask those who love their work for help, into the book The Art of Asking: How […]
TEDYouth 2014 was an explosion of “Worlds Imagined.” On Saturday, November 15, New York students gathered for a day of punchy, inspiring talks that brought them to the Sahara Desert when it was a river wonderland for dinosaurs, to the surface of Mars as the Curiosity Rover makes its way up a mountain, and into the […]
By Kate Torgovnick May and Thu-Huong Ha In the past 30 years, 300 million people in China have left rural areas and moved to cities. Which means that a lot of thinking about the future of cities is happening here. At the TEDCity 2.0 Salon — an event held in Chengdu, China, on November 12, in […]
“I’m a storyteller.” It’s a sentence that can be found in a wide variety of TED Talks — because, really, it is the heart of what we do. This is why, for the 10th anniversary of the TED Prize in 2015, we are thrilled to award the million-dollar prize to Dave Isay, the founder of […]
The final session of TEDYouth 2014 focuses on what makes us human — the way we talk, the way we walk, the words we sing, the waves we surf. How jellyfish swim. On land, animals leave footprints that tell us a lot about their size, form and capabilities. Marine organisms do too—their footprints are “wake […]
By Cynthia Betubiza, Ella Dawson and Kate Torgovnick May Session 2 of TEDYouth 2014 offered talks to rouse the spirit and a few to gross you out. Below, recaps of these fascinating talks. Robots with rhythm. Nothing adds to a musical crescendo more than a skillful improvisation. Gil Weinberg, an engineer and musician from Georgia Tech, brings […]
By Cynthia Betubiza, Ella Dawson and Kate Torgovnick May Session 1 of TEDYouth 2014 brought us to many worlds imagined. From a look at other planets that could be like Earth, to an introduction to a mysterious dinosaur bigger than T. rex, to a beet-tastic vision for the future of food, this morning’s speakers brought wonder, passion […]
If you want to call someone a “jackass” in Brazil, you call them a “tapir.” These large, forest-dwelling mammals look a bit like a cross between a wild boar and an anteater. And while they’re often derided, they are truly amazing animals. Brazilian conservation biologist Patricia Medici is utterly devoted to tapirs. When this TED Fellow first started working with […]
Two guys, a giant red X and an extremely unreliable compact car on a journey from London to Ulaanbaatar. Sounds like an ideal vacation, right? For Nate Mook — organizer of TEDxMidAtlantic, TEDxMogadishu and TEDxEverest — there’s no other way he’d rather spend his time off. This past July, he and Steve Garguilo, organizer of […]
TEDYouth will be livestreamed on Saturday, November 15, for free — and not just in English. This event, meant for students and, well, anyone sparked by general curiosity, will be translated on the spot into both Spanish and Arabic, to make it watchable by more people around the world. Five intrepid live interpreters will make this […]
In his talk, “Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is,” Chip Kidd (a TED Books designer in his own right) gives a wonderfully concise description of what book cover designers do. He says, “My job is to ask this question: ‘What do stories look like?’” For David Shoemaker, the designer who made the […]
Kate Stone’s journey to the TED stage began, of all places, in a London bar. In 2012, TED Curator Chris Anderson and Content Director Kelly Stoetzel embarked on a worldwide talent search, traveling to 14 cities on six continents. In each city, they hosted live events to find amazing speakers, and 34 of them ended […]
Twitter was ablaze yesterday with some interesting news: Kermit the Frog had just become the first frog (albeit puppet) to give a TEDx Talk. On Thursday afternoon, the green superstar hopped on over to Jackson, Mississippi, to give a standing-ovation-grabbing talk at TEDxJackson. Kermit was a natural fit for the event, as The Muppets creator […]