As a physician and epidemiologist, Gary Slutkin didn’t think he had much to contribute to the conversation about gun violence in America. But then he began to realize something — that outbreaks of violence follow the same patterns as outbreaks of tuberculosis, cholera and AIDS, all of which he’d worked on reversing during a decade in […]
In 2006, Jake Barton of the interactive media design firm Local Projects received a challenge unlike any other: to create the installations for the 9/11 Memorial Museum, which will open in 2014, with Thinc Design. September 11 is not a historical event made safe and sterile by the passage of decades and centuries. Today is just […]
Today, Apple thrilled the tech world by revealing its two new iPhones, one a candy-colored, lower-priced model. And we were very excited to see our new TED iOS7 app featured in the presentation, toward the middle of the grid above. More on that soon. In Sunday’s New York Times, Pico Iyer (watch his TED Talk) searches […]
They might not be old enough to rent a car solo or to order a glass of wine, but they certainly have what it takes to deliver a fascinating talk on a bold idea. In this playlist, we highlight incredible TED speakers under the age of 20. From Taylor Wilson, 17, and his nuclear fusion […]
The old and tired stereotype: a 20-something man sits on the couch in his parent’s basement, his shirt untucked and chin unshaven, as he excitedly pounds the buttons on a video game controller rather than getting a job. The obvious truth: video game enthusiasts are men and women, of all ages, and the grand majority […]
This week’s TED Radio Hour tries to pinpoint what exactly makes a millennial a millennial. Growing up in a world marked by a new set of challenges and opportunities — the Internet, longer lifespans, an economic crisis — today’s twentysomethings have a vastly different perspective on and approach to life from previous generations. What makes […]
18-year-old Rick Housley is developing a wristband for people with epilepsy that is capable of detecting seizures and alerting a list of contacts. In this talk from TEDxHoboken, he shares the innocuous moment that sparked his interest in this subject — on a stalled train in 2010. Housley was annoyed when his train suddenly jerked […]
At the recent TED Fellows Retreat in Whistler, Canada, artist Candy Chang set up an interactive art piece called Confessions that invited the 185 Fellows at the event to share. The installation asked each Fellow to write down a confession on a slip of paper and pin it up on a bulletin board, creating a public wall of admissions […]
Cities are a hot topic at the moment. As more and more of the world’s population gravitates toward living in them, people from all professions are coming together to figure out how to create infrastructures and environments to suit human needs and desires in the 21st century. These are huge issues, and you can be […]
Bill Nye the Science Guy (watch his TED-Ed lesson) will be joining the cast of “Dancing with the Stars.” New York Magazine says of Nye’s inclusion in the lineup — alongside Snooki, Valerie Harper and Jack Osbourne — that he is “the big get.” How long do we think it will be before he and […]
By Miguel Fernandez We all have an origin story, a moment that forever changes our life for the better. Reflecting on those moments in later days, you well up with gratitude, and with a desire to commemorate, to reach out, to reconnect. The idea is as far as most people go, and a quick Facebook […]
Back to school brings with it a slew of emotions. On the one hand, there’s the promise of seeing friends daily and the buying of new school supplies — new possibilities encapsulated in shrink-wrapped blank notebooks. But on the other hand, there’s the end of summer and the transition back to structured days, not to […]
Extreme swimmer Diana Nyad has completed her longest swim yet … at the age of 64. Over the weekend, Nyad attempted the swim from Havana, Cuba, to the coast of Florida for the fifth time, and this time finished the ambitious 110-mile swim. The swim took Nyad a total of 53 hours — and made […]
Adam Spencer isn’t just the host of the Australian radio program Triple J Breakfast Show. He also has a degree in pure mathematics and, in today’s talk, he ascends into “geek heaven” to explains his deep love of massive prime numbers, the largest of which was discovered earlier this year and is 17.5 million digits […]
Our office might be closed for summer vacation, but the TED Fellows are hard at work at the very first TED Fellows Retreat, happening now in Whistler, British Columbia. Because the Fellows have proliferated since the program officially launched in 2009, many of these extraordinary thinkers have never had a chance to meet and conspire. And thus, the TED […]
Time off is a beautiful thing. It’s also an essential — the thing we all need to breathe deeply, enjoy life, and come back to work refreshed. This was the point of Stefan Sagmeister’s talk, The Power of Time Off. In it, he shares that every seven years, he takes a year-long sabbatical. We in […]