“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 […]
BRCK is best described as a “backup generator for the internet.” When it was announced, the idea of a rugged, rechargeable, mobile wifi device captured imaginations as a good way to bring robust connectivity to people in places with spotty infrastructure – particularly in developing countries. The device is the brainchild of Nairobi-based technology company Ushahidi, and was created partly out of […]
Since the first teaser in late 2013, we’ve been in countdown mode for Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s new outer-space epic that promises to blast us through space and time and wormholes. If you’re as excited as we are but can’t clear three hours to go see the whole movie, here’s the plot we could figure out […]
In Northern Canada, near the Beaufort Sea, sits a tiny hamlet with a population of less than 700, consisting of mostly Aboriginal people. It is where 80-year-olds ride their snowmobiles to buy milk, where students go on hunting expeditions for field trips, and where neighbors drop off chunks of fresh muskox meat in the evenings. […]
By Krystian Aparta They say that children learn languages the best. But that doesn’t mean that adults should give up. We asked some of the polyglots in TED’s Open Translation Project to share their secrets to mastering a foreign language. Their best strategies distill into seven basic principles: Get real. Decide on a simple, attainable […]
When Anastasia Taylor-Lind found herself in Kiev at the height of violence during Ukraine’s Independence Square protests, the documentary photographer decided to record not the fighting itself, but the human beings involved. Setting up a makeshift photo studio in an alleyway inside the barricaded square, she beckoned passers-by — the protesters themselves, and later the women who came […]
If you’re trick-or-treating tonight but haven’t thought about a costume yet — and you have 20 minutes to run to the dollar store — a modest suggestion: be a TED speaker. You’ll need:
1 pack of fuzzy pipe cleaners
1 pack of pompoms or small foam balls …