Risk economist Didier Sornette makes bold claims on Wednesday morning at TEDGlobal 2013, during the session “Money Talks.” According to Sornette, we have been operating under a few detrimental illusions that have landed us in our current economic state: One, we have been living in an age of never-ending growth and prosperity. Well, $30 trillion […]
The most important economic fact of our time, says Chrystia Freeland, author of Plutocrats, is that we are living in an age of surging income inequality, a global phenomenon that includes the US and UK, certainly, but also Communist China, India, and, she says, “we’re even seeing it cozy social democracies like Sweden, Finland and […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJng1RhCKEM&w=560&h=315] In this pastel dystopia, a group of headless and heartless beings manufacture money. The haunting soundtrack captures the essence of this cold and impersonal world and interprets the concept of “Money Talks”. Introducing speakers ranging from risk economists to gentlemanly pick-pockets, Greg Solenström and Kim Demåne illustrate the success of their collaboration in this […]
In the immortal words of the Wu-Tang Clan, “Cash rules everything around me.” Then again, as Benjamin Franklin put it, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” So how are we to parse this thing — money — which shapes so much of our lives? This session will make you think again about economics, taking […]
Something special happens when you think again. All it takes is an insightful thought and — all of a sudden — your brain does a backflip and you see faulty assumptions underlying what you’d always taken to be true. The first day of mainstage talks at TEDGlobal 2013 brought so many of these paradigm-shifting moments […]
Health psychologist Kelly McGonigal is here to talk about stress. In particular, she’s here to make the case that stress might not, in fact, be the enemy we tend to think it is. To do this, she asks those assembled in the conference hall in Edinburgh to indicate how much stress they’ve felt in the past year. […]
Standing on the TED stage looking stunning in a blue dress, neuroscientist and author Sandra Aamodt reveals that three and a half years ago on New Year’s Eve, she made a decision: She gave worrying about her weight. Instead, she learned to eat mindfully — and lost 10 pounds. For Aamodt, who had been dieting […]
Who inspires you with their large-scale vision for change? Who offers a bold, unique solution to a global problem — and the capable leadership to make it a reality? The TED Prize is a $1 million grant, awarded annually to someone who is both a dreamer and a doer. And the best candidates invariably come from you. Perhaps you […]
“I don’t know how to introduce this, so I’ll just say, ‘Hetain Patel,’” says TED curator Chris Anderson. So no one knows what to expect, and that’s as may be, because this is some crazy right here. Patel walks onstage and crouches in a chair next to the dancer Yuyu Rau. He speaks a few […]
The end of “Exquisite Enigmatic Us,” the last session for today at TEDGlobal 2013, is appropriately rounded out by a former student of psychology, English pop singer Natasha Bedingfield. (Did you know she studied psych at university?) Popular for her hits “Unwritten” and “Pocketful of Sunshine,” Bedingfield performs “These Words” and debuts a newly written […]
Elizabeth Loftus begins her talk at TEDGlobal 2013 with the tragic story of Steve Titus, who was arrested in 1980 because he sort of matched the physical description of, and drove a similar car to, a man who had raped a woman in his area. Looking at a photo lineup, the victim told police that […]
Neuroscientist Russell Foster opens a session of TEDGlobal all about … us, asking the question: Why do we sleep? Thirty-six percent of our lives are spent asleep, which means, if you live to 90, you’ll have slept for 32 years. But we don’t appreciate sleep enough, says Foster. He quotes Thomas Edison — “Sleep is […]
Sugata Mitra’s TED Prize story may soon be coming to a theater near you. Today during the TEDGlobal 2013 session “Exquisite, Enigmatic Us,” curator Chris Anderson named British director Jerry Rothwell as the winner of the first annual Sundance Institute | TED Prize Filmmaker Award. Rothwell earned a $125,000 grant to follow Sugata Mitra over the next 18 months as he builds […]
A lovely meditation on we exquisite, enigmantic people serves to open Session 3 of TEDGlobal. Olivia Bolles, better known as Olivia Bee, is a 20-year-old American photographer from Portland, Oregon. At 14, her work was featured in an advertising campaign for Converse. Her work has since been used in campaigns for Nike, Hermes and Fiat. […]
In the wilds of planet Earth, there exists a species so creative that it not only uses tools but is constantly rewriting the rules of what a tool can be, so cooperative that they build wildly complex systems to support each other and so consternating that its inconsistent behavior would make even the most seasoned […]
Greg Asner closes Session 2 of TEDGlobal 2013, “Those Flying Things,” with a very different vision of the Earth. We spend a lot of time, money and resources conserving nature, yet, as Asner points out, we know absurdly little about it. Which is why, in an effort to advance our knowledge about biodiversity, he founded […]