As we celebrate the last three decades of ideas at TED, we’re looking ahead and asking ourselves: what’s next? Each of the speakers in this session looks boldly toward the future, from a media visionary to an entrepreneur reimagining education to two powerful talks on overcoming a difficult past. Here are the speakers who appeared […]
If you walked up the twisting mahogany staircase of the Vancouver Club on Tuesday, past an ominous portrait of a man in a kilt and an empty ballroom with its curtains dancing in the wind, you’d happen upon a dimly lit room filled with TED2014 attendees. Here, about 100 gathered to hear Neil Gaiman read […]
With 12 mainstage sessions and 5 sessions of All-Stars, there wasn’t much time for exploring Vancouver during TED2014. As a great prequel to the conference, Car2Go offered up vehicles so attendees could enjoy a spin around the city. It also provided a map of some spots to check out, featuring locations selected by five TED Fellows: Kitra Cahana, Alex Macdonald, […]
Sergeant Kevin Briggs recently retired from the California Highway Patrol after 23 years of service, the majority of which included patrolling the southern end of Marin County, which includes the Golden Gate Bridge. And that means that he has frequently responded to suicide attempts. The bridge, while an iconic structure, has also been the site […]
Why do so many people today experience parenthood like a kind of crisis? That’s the question Jennifer Senior sets out to answer on the final day of TED2014. The parenting section of Barnes & Noble is packed with books for eco-friendly kids, gluten-free kids, science-minded kids. For Senior, those shelves don’t seem helpful — they […]
Sarah Jones is an actor and monologuist who comes on stage to explain her own diverse background. “I grew up in a family that was multi-everything, black and white, Caribbean, Irish American, German American, there was Dominican music playing from the stereo, Christians and Jews (that’s a long story).” But then, before we quite know what’s happening, […]
Simon Sinek begins his talk with the story of former U.S. Army Captain William D. Swenson. In 2009, Swenson was on an operation in Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border, when his column was ambushed. It was bad; many were injured. During this ambush, Swenson called for air support and ran through enemy fire to rescue the wounded. […]
The Raspyni Brothers are a delightfully irreverent pair who also happen to be world-class jugglers. At TED2014, they riff on Einstein’s dancing skills, reality TV and texting — all while juggling and balancing drum heads, wooden eggs and glasses of water with perfect coordination. As six-time TED speakers, the Raspynis also take a sec to […]
We live most of our lives wired and wound up, rarely pausing to relax or unplug from the daily grind. Our speakers in this session discuss the consequences of our ever-hectic lives, and remind us of the qualities we sometimes forget to foster. They include an author discussing why modern parenthood is out of whack, […]
The wild ride continues on March 20, 2014: Day 4 at TED2014. Here are some highlights from this Thursday: NSA deputy director Richard Ledgett responds to Edward Snowden The day after Edward Snowden made a surprise visit to the TED stage via telepresence robot, the morning opened on a buzzing but tense note with Richard Ledgett joining […]
Writer, teacher and MIT Media Fellow Shaka Senghor gives the last talk of Session 10: Passion at TED2014, and he starts with a literal bang: When he was 19, he shot and killed another man. At the time, he was a young drug dealer “with a quick temper and a semi-automatic pistol.” Speaking to us […]
Author Isabel Allende is 71. Her husband is 76, her parents are in their late 90s and her dog, Olympia, is 16. So she’s confronting the issue of aging head-on and thinking hard about how to live passionately through the process. “Society decides when we are old, usually at 65,” says Allende. “But really, we start […]
Devonté Hynes is a producer, singer, composer, author, and more. He’s spent a lot of his career helping other musicians produce their work, or writing for others. But he also has an amazing solo career as Blood Orange. At TED, he plays the piano and explains how he sees music. And he really sees music […]
On October 25, 2013, adventurer Ben Saunders and his teammate Tarka L’Herpiniere set out to complete Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s failed 1912 polar expedition — a four-month, 1,800-mile journey from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole and back. At the start of the expedition, L’Herpiniere and Saunders each dragged 200 kilograms by sledge, […]
Masarat Daud wears the burka — but she didn’t always. As a younger woman at university in Dubai, she thought: “People would think I was so religious, no one would want to be friends with me!” She wore western clothes, to the amusement of her parents. But her mother began suggesting she wear the burka, […]
Art historian Sarah Lewis’s first job was at the Museum of Modern Art. While there, she was entranced by an exhibit of works by the artist Elizabeth Murray. So Lewis was intrigued to hear from the painter that she felt several pieces hanging on the walls fell short. For one piece, Murray confessed that she’d found […]