Elizabeth Gilbert has written a memoir so famous that strangers think she’s the author of the book … based on the movie. It sounds like a problem any writer would love to have, but to Gilbert, writing post-Eat Pray Love, seemed an impossible task. Says Gilbert in the final Wednesday session at TED2014, “How in […]
Who are we? What are we doing here? Such thoughts plague more than just angst-filled teenagers. In this session, speakers take a piercing look at these and other complex questions, challenging preconceived notions of who we really are (let’s not forget microbes), how the brain works — and how consciousness fits into the equation. Here […]
In January, Alex Trebek read the following Final Jeopardy! prompt: “This intellectual forum started in 1984, bringing together people from three different industries, hence its 3-letter name.” The answer, of course: What is TED? Tonight, Jeopardy! took its TED enthusiasm to the next level, with a full category about TED Talks. See if you can answer some […]
So what went down at TED on day two? Well, a lot, as it happens. As curator Chris Anderson commented rather tiredly later, “that was the most intense day of TED I can remember, ever.” Here, a lightning round-up of some of the day’s key moments. Edward Snowden trundles onto stage The first big surprise […]
Here’s a moment that a certain formerly absurdly hormonal teenage girl had been looking forward to for some time. As had many others in the audience, to judge from the rapturous applause that greets Sting as he takes the TED stage. He plays some songs from his upcoming Broadway musical, The Last Ship. It’s the story […]
“TED Prize winners are heroes,” says longtime TEDster Jeff Skoll, as he introduces this year’s TED Prize winner. “They often go on to exceed even their own most audacious goals.” Watch Charmian Gooch’s TED Talk >> This year, by sheer coincidence, the Skoll Foundation and TED chose to honor the same person with their annual awards—Charmian […]
Chris Anderson invited Bill and Melinda Gates to the TED2014 stage for what turned out to be a personal and charming Q&A. This is an edited version of that conversation. Anderson began with the provocation, “On the basis that a picture’s worth a thousand words, I asked them to dig from their archive to explain […]
In 2006, filmmaker Jehane Noujaim won a TED Prize with her wish to bring the world together for one day of film. Today during Session 4: Wish, she talks about her latest film, The Square. The Oscar-nominated documentary follows the lives of a group of protestors during the Egyptian Revolution. Their mantra: “We will no […]
Throughout Zak Ebrahim’s childhood, his father — El-Sayed Nosair — planned terrorist attacks on a dozen New York City landmarks, including tunnels, synagogues and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. On November 5, 1990, when Ebrahim was 7 years old, his father shot and killed Rabbi Meir Kahane, the then-leader […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFdqvCL2W2k&w=586&h=330] By Natasha Scripture Sugata Mitra thinks big. At last year’s TED, he unveiled his dream to transform primary education. Instead of a teacher, a chalkboard and a generic curriculum, the recipient of the 2013 TED Prize asked us to imagine an environment that empowered children to learn on their own, with the guidance of […]
In a surprise talk tonight, Allan Adams took the stage to explain a remarkable discovery announced just yesterday. And since he’s here and is amazing, Randall Munroe of xkcd illustrated the talk. As Adams tells us, if you look into the night sky, you see stars … and if you look further, you see more stars. […]
What powers the journey to a better future? Some really big wishes, and even bigger ideas. Our speakers in this session all have the tenacity, hope and relentless optimism necessary to believe that we can make progress in solving some of the most intractable problems of our time. Here are the speakers who appeared in […]
Edward Snowden appeared on the TED stage earlier today via a telepresence robot, which he was able to control remotely. So after giving the talk, “Here’s how we take back the internet” — which is now live on TED.com now (after our production team edited it in record time) — Snowden didn’t sign off. He […]
By Liz Jacobs and Thu-Huong Ha Our brains work in mysterious ways. They make us laugh, they make us cry, and sometimes, they make us 19-year old geniuses. The 11 speakers in this All-Stars session specialize in areas of the brain as diverse as personality, trauma and gender, but they all agree: Our minds […]
By Liz Jacobs and Kate Torgovnick Are we on the brink of a resource crisis? All signs point to yes. As the human population grows, the planet is buckling under the pressure of our needs. In this inaugural All-Stars session, 11 classic TED speakers return to the stage to share their deep concern for preserving […]
“The whole planet needs a lot of energy,” begins Michel Laberge, in an understatement. So far, he says, we’ve been running on fossil fuels, and it’s been difficult to find something as cost-effective to replace them. Laberge is a fan of nuclear power, which he thinks is the best solution to that problem in the […]