By Baratunde Thurston So, you might know me. I ran the digital side of The Onion for a long time; I’m the author of How To Be Black. People call me to do things like host White House events on innovation, do the wrap-up at TED salons, join semi-secret cabals at MIT, and comment on the […]
What’s funny in one language isn’t necessarily funny in another. Maysoon Zayid’s “I got 99 problems … palsy is just one” presented many challenges for TED translators bringing the hilarious talk into their language. As she tells stories from her life as a Palestinian-American comedian with cerebral palsy, Zayid cracks with wordplay. For translators, it’s […]
In the middle of a tense morning session – you know, just waiting for NSA deputy director Rick Ledgett to come online, ain’t no thing — illustrator Maira Kalman comes up to tell a lovely family tale about music and pants. In 1932 when Kalman’s family left their village in Belarus (“you can say they […]
To break up a dense (and early) morning session all about Us, performance artist Ze Frank wants to do a quick human test. He asks you to raise your hand when a question applies. Answer honestly. This is a safe space. Ready? Let’s begin: Have you ever eaten a booger long past your childhood? Have you […]
This year TED says goodbye to its roaring twenties and hello to the big 3-O. To celebrate TED’s thirtieth birthday, I’m hopping in my DeLorean to take a look back in time. Has the world become a better place since we were introduced to the Sony Compact Disc at the first TED three decades ago, […]
Aparna Rao makes the kind of art that makes you go “awwwwww,” even if you are the kind of person who would never make such a noise. In today’s talk, this TED Fellow shows us a gallery of art that goes a little crazy when no one is looking, but snaps to attention when someone walks […]
Perhaps you are looking forward to a new and hopeful 2014; perhaps you see late December as the perfect time for reflection and resolution. I’m pleased to let you off the hook. This is the time when you should look back at your year and focus on the question: What TED Talks did I miss? Lucky for you, […]
Today’s talk isn’t so much a “talk” as a hilarious topsy-turvy performance by Hetain Patel that reflects on an identity forged as much from Spider-Man comics and Bruce Lee movies as by a father who emigrated from India to the United Kingdom in the 1960s. An excerpt from his latest stage work, Be Like Water, […]
Bob Mankoff lives and breathes cartoons. He’s drawn many himself — he’s had a contract with The New Yorker for more than 30 years and, in 1997, he became the magazine’s cartoon editor. It’s now his job to sift through the 1,000 or so “idea drawings” (as they’re called within The New Yorker‘s walls) that […]
Photo: James Duncan Davidson Last night Reggie Watts performed at TED@Doha, the first of TED’s Worldwide Talent Search events, during TEDxSummit. During rehearsal members of the TED staff caught up with him to talk about … whatever he wanted to talk about. I saw you perform at TEDxGotham; some people just didn’t get your style. […]