. At the School in the Cloud learning lab in the village of Korakati, India, students sit on colorful stools in front of computer screens, talking over Skype to educators in England and Germany. So it might be surprising to discover that this high-tech education center was built in a place that can only be […]
TED is about speakers stepping on a stage and sharing an idea in 18 minutes or less. But throughout our annual conference, short films play a vital part in the program too — opening sessions and providing moments of pause, reflection and laughter between talks. The short films shown during the conference are selected by Anyssa […]
You probably watch TED Talks on an assortment of small screens. But next week, you’re invited to experience them on the big screen. As the TED2017 conference takes place in Vancouver, Canada, special sessions will be broadcast live in movie theaters across the United States and world. On April 24, the Opening Event will bring […]
Thought-provoking, silly and sometimes somber, the interstitials shown at TED2016 provide a needed moment for a breath between talks. The videos are meant to “light up different parts of the brain,” says Anyssa Samari, who scours the internet year-round alongside Jonathan Wells to curate this kindling that keeps the intellectual fires burning. “They create balance.” […]
At TED2005, James Horner shared the secret of what made him such a powerhouse film composer — he made it a point to watch each film as a viewer rather than as a creator. “Very often directors will say, ‘That’s not what I had in mind. I shot it with this in mind.’ But when […]
Anyssa Samari finds the interstitials for TED Conferences — the short videos that run between speakers as palate-cleansers. “It’s like a Rubik’s Cube,” she says. “There are a lot of constraints—the videos can’t be too long, they need to tell a narrative, they need to be beautiful and they need to fit the theme of the session. […]
For the 50,000 people of the Faroe Islands, a self-governing country within the Kingdom of Denmark, hunting long-finned pilot whales — a dark gray species found in their waters — is a tradition that stretches back centuries. These whales are a food source, and hunting them is considered an important part of Faroese culture. Today, […]
Chris Anderson introduces this talk by saying that we were about to see a technology that could be as game-changing as Jeff Han’s touchscreen demo in 2006, a year ahead of the iPhone.
TED Talks are 18-minute talks shared with the world for free online. However, lots of these talks are given at TED Conferences, in sessions that span more than an hour, with an audience who has paid to be a part of the live experience. This leaves our video team with a balancing act: how do […]
TED was well-represented at the 87th annual Academy Awards last night. Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras took home the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for Citizenfour, and brought journalist Glenn Greenwald (watch his TED Talk) onstage with her to accept the award. The film dives into the world of Edward Snowden (watch his Q&A at TED2014), […]
You might not think TED has anything to do with Fifty Shades of Grey. We didn’t either. Until we woke up this morning to find ourselves called out in The New Yorker’s scathing review of the movie: “You get dirtier talk in most action movies, and more genitalia in a TED talk on Renaissance sculpture.” […]
Artist Bassam Tariq is determined to shine a light on the incredible diversity of Muslim life – and he does it by any means necessary. Known for his blogging project 30 Mosques in 30 Days, Tariq and a friend took a month-long road trip through all 50 states, breaking their Ramadan fast each evening in […]
Vending machines that sell human DNA. People trapped in jars and blenders. Bottles of perfume that smell like burning books. You have to expect the unexpected with Gabriel Barcia-Colombo, a New York–based artist who works with film, electronics, performance, biomaterials and more to create mind-bending interactive artworks. His latest piece, “New York Minute,” confronts commuters in […]
Since the first teaser in late 2013, we’ve been in countdown mode for Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s new outer-space epic that promises to blast us through space and time and wormholes. If you’re as excited as we are but can’t clear three hours to go see the whole movie, here’s the plot we could figure out […]
Writer/director Stewart Thorndike is working on a trio of female-driven horror films — sharp, low-budget psychological thrillers. Her first installment, Lyle, stars Gaby Hoffman as a mother trying to protect her toddler from sinister forces. Thorndike is now running a Kickstarter campaign to fund the second film, Putney, which is billed as being about “a […]
In a city of dusty orange skies and water panics, one mysterious delivery driver sees everything. “The Sand Storm,” a lyrical short film from TED Talks’ founding video director, Jason Wishnow, is filled with quietly arresting images of an imagined future China. Within the film’s nine-and-a-half minutes, Wishnow imagines how love, crime and hope will […]