Holly Morris tells the stories of women through documentary, television, print and the web. One story she certainly didn’t expect stemmed from a reporting trip to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. She just wanted to get out of the contaminated zone as quickly as possible … and then she […]
As urban areas have exploded, a dramatic stratification is taking place. While some parts of cities have become playgrounds for the privileged, others have become home to the poor and marginalized. Often these two very different ways of life exist in close proximity, says Teddy Cruz on the TEDGlobal 2013 stage. Cruz studies the Tijuana […]
A few years ago, Lesley Hazleton, self-described “accidental theologist,” found herself waking each morning with the same question: What happened to Muhammad the night he received the revelation of the Koran? An agnostic Jew, Hazleton was writing a biography of the man who stood in the desert outside of Mecca in the year 610 at […]
The founder of the Beirut Marathon, May El-Khalil tells us how personal tragedy led her to create a peaceful haven in her all-too-often war-torn country. When the former long-distance runner was hit by a truck and left unable to perform as she had before her accident, she turned her efforts to organizing races. “I needed […]
Today on the TEDGlobal stage, two days before election in Iran, political scientist Trita Parsi argues that the Israeli-Iranian conflict is resolvable because its nature is geopolitical, not ideological. To illustrate, Parsi quotes an Israeli prime minister: “Iran is Israel’s best friend, and we do not intend to change our position in relation to Tehran.” […]
[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 […]