[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_dwhJVq7QY&w=560&h=315] A landscape becomes a face; a face becomes a family. Converting well-known images into something completely different, this title sequence introduces speakers from a range of fields, with a funky beat. This video comes from Milky Elephant; a New York based collective specializing in animations, games, illustrations, websites and installations. Their work has included projects […]
“It’s about discarding assumptions about the Middle East, Latin America, and the way you think the world works,” Nassim Assefi described in an interview before we all got to Edinburgh for TEDGlobal 2013. This session, which she co-curated with fellow TED Fellow Gabriella Gomez-Mont, features a host of speakers who’ll be prompting us to think […]
When humans think about sex, we tend to categorise into male and female forms, says biologist and animal sex expert Carin Bondar. But for millions of years, it used to be a fusion of bodies, a “trickle of DNA shared between two or more beings,” she says. It wasn’t until about 500 million years ago […]
Rio, here we come. Next year, TEDGlobal will be held for the first time in Latin America — in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from October 6-10, 2014, on the beach of Copacabana. The theme for the event is, appropriately, “South!” and will be a celebration of the innovation, dynamism and creativity pouring out of South […]
For decades, scientists said that the human brain contains 100 billion neurons. However, when neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel hunted for the source of this often-quoted number, she couldn’t locate one. So she set out to count herself … by making brain soup. She brings a vial of brain soup with her onto the TEDGlobal 2013 stage. This […]
“Before we came on stage, I asked him, ‘What are you going to play?’ and he replied, ‘I don’t know.’” So TED curator Chris Anderson introduces the Israeli pianist Yaron Herman, who comes onto the TEDGlobal stage to play music to soothe the slightly jangled nerves of the audience. (What with the beaver mourning the loss […]
Talking as fast and fervently as a circus busker, TED Fellow Greg Gage introduces the world to RoboRoach — a kit that allows you create a cockroach cyborg and control its movements via an iPhone app and “the world’s first commercially available cyborg in the history of mankind.” “I’m a neuroscientist,” says Gage, “and that […]
There’s a question that’s been troubling journalist Sonia Shah since she was a child: What is malaria, and why is it killing so many people? This morning during the session “Listening to Nature,” journalist Shah looks at the complexities making it so hard for humanity to rid itself of this killer disease, which kills hundreds […]
Our supermarket produce aisles would look very, very bare without bees. As MacArthur Fellow Marla Spivak explains on the TEDGlobal stage, this is something we should all be extremely concerned about: the dramatic drop in bee populations that’s been taking place over the past seven years. (Read The New York Times’ take on the especially scary drop in […]
Bernie Krause is here to talk about soundscapes, the unique sound signatures he says are the foundation of every habitat, if only you know what you’re listening for. He certainly knows; the sound engineer has been recording in the wild for the past 45 years. “There was a time when I considered natural soundscapes to be […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3hN36gQEeQ&w=560&h=315] Buzzing past a hummingbird with its beak in a flower, narrowly avoiding a lawnmower and peeking in on a couple getting intimate in the bedroom — all part of a day in the life of a bee, which introduces session 5 of TEDGlobal 2013. The natural scenes of this water-color animation come from Brett […]
This session asks us to pay closer attention to what nature has to tell us — both about itself and about the world around us. We’ll investigate a variety of sources — from the soundscapes of ecosystems to the neurons of cockroaches to the extraordinary sex lives of animals. Here are the speakers who appeared […]
Losing a passport shortly before an international flight probably wouldn’t strike most people as an obvious moment to reflect upon alternative currencies. Jennifer Healey, a research scientist at Intel, would likely argue otherwise. She lost hers right before flying to TEDGlobal to speak at the TED Institute. Instead of panicking and melting down at immigration, […]
Toby Eccles doesn’t believe that the private and public sectors have to operate separately for social change. And he and his colleagues at Social Finance have been working since 2010 to prove it — with a new financial instrument known as social impact bonds. They are, as Eccles says, “not a new intervention, therapy or […]
“Do you think it’s possible to control someone’s attention, or even their behavior? To me that would be the perfect superpower,” says Apollo Robbins at TEDGlobal 2013. “I’ve spent the last 20 years studying human behavior in an unconventional way: by picking pockets.” Robbins, whom The New Yorker called a “theatrical pickpocket” in their profile of […]
Governments’ role in spurring innovation is a controversial one. In rough terms, political debates about public spending usually go something like this: One side argues governments should only spend on the most basic public goods and do whatever they can to keep out of the way of the private sector that grows the economy and […]