10 years of changing views on climate change, in TED Talks
10 years of TED Talks show how the conversation around climate change has developed, from awareness-raising to dire warnings to a growing sense that we can actually do something about it.
Tags > Impact of ideas
Stories for "impact of ideas"
A TEDx event crosses the US-Mexico border, to show that ideas can’t be fenced in
Adriana Eguia Alaniz started her talk in the United States, speaking English. She ended it in Mexico, speaking Spanish. Welcome to TEDxMonumento258, an event held across the US-Mexico border. On September 4, 2015, attendees gathered in both San Diego and Tijuana to watch as ideas permeated the border fence that divides the cities. The organizers […]
A community for those who like to be alone, grown out of a blockbuster TED Talk
Scott Drummond had been in the Air Force for eight years. It was 1994, and he was eligible to become a commissioned officer, the Air Force’s version of a manager. The average person gets the job after three interviews. Drummond interviewed 16 times over the next ten years before he got the job. Looking back […]
Retired TEDx organizers make meaningful connections — locally and around the world
As Randy Bretz neared the end of his long career in TV and radio production, he knew the traditional retirement agenda wasn’t for him. “I don’t golf, and I don’t fish,” he said via Skype from his home in Lincoln, Nebraska. While he kept busy with church, volunteer work, doting on his 13 grandkids and […]
Surprise! You’re the president: A conversation with the first female president of Mauritius
(Editor’s note, as of Nov. 1, 2019: Ameenah Gurib-Fakim stepped down as president of Mauritius in March 2018, following accusations that she misused a credit card given to her by a nonprofit. Read more here.) You’ve heard of a philosopher king. But what about a biologist president? Ameenah Gurib-Fakim — the biologist who gave the […]
How a TED Talk helped put women’s health research on the political agenda
“Women’s health is an equal rights issue as important as equal pay.” When Paula Johnson uttered this sentence on the TEDWomen 2013 stage, the audience broke into spontaneous applause. “At that moment, it said to me they got it,” she says. Johnson has been working for decades to raise awareness about how diseases behave differently […]
5 new technologies that help disabled and bedridden people experience the world again
Henry Evans is an enthusiastic world traveler. In the past year, he has visited Vermillion, South Dakota; Sydney, Australia; and Qusar, Azerbaijan. He’s explored halls of the Smithsonian, gone scuba diving in California, and flown over Bora Bora. He is in the midst of finagling a trip to space. Evans, it should be noted, does […]
AK-47s transformed into jewelry and watches, thanks to a chance meeting in a TED hallway
The watch looks both futuristic and retro at the same time. A swirl of visible gears and carefully calibrated dials, it charts time in an unusual way — the hour jumps into place at the top, the minute is marked in a semicircle along the bottom, and the seconds swoop above. It’s a statement watch, the […]
The jaguar stone in the City of the Monkey God: Mark Plotkin on the lost city his team just rediscovered
“The White City.” “The City of the Monkey God.” “The Place of Cacao.” Rumors of a majestic city nestled in the remote rainforest of Honduras — referred to by all of these names — have circulated for centuries, wedging their way into Honduran national identity. They seemed to be the stuff of legend. Until a […]
What is a “smart” syringe? By 2020, you’ll be getting all your shots with one
In the small village of Roka in western Cambodia, 272 people have tested positive for HIV since the end of 2014. Among those diagnosed: an 82-year-old celibate Buddhist monk, several babies and 19 members of the same family. This tragic outbreak has been traced to a source: Yem Chrin, a popular medical practitioner who operated […]
Drew Curtis of Fark.com is running for governor of Kentucky. How a TED Talk inspired his campaign—and why he hopes it’ll inspire you too
Drew Curtis is not a politician. The curator of Fark.com, the legendary online community of news jokes and funny Photoshops, he proudly proclaims this fact on homepage of his latest website. This declaration is only surprising because, just a few inches above, the intention of the website is revealed: “Drew Curtis for Governor.” See, politics […]
Coming out in a TED Talk? That was hard. Watching the talk with my co-workers? Even harder.
For Morgana Bailey, it was nerve-wracking enough to step on the TED stage and reveal that she is a lesbian — a fact she’d kept hidden for 16 years. But walking into a viewing party to watch the talk with her co-workers? That brought a whole new level of anxiety. “I live in a very […]
“If not now, when?”: How a TEDx community supported a speaker’s family through the unthinkable
“What makes you think that you have 80 or 90 years to live?” Laura Rozo posed this serious and almost morbid question to the audience at TEDxUNC in February 2013. She walked onto the stage confidently and calmly, soaking in the applause as the final, surprise speaker of the day. She wore a red turtleneck […]
An unusual investment company, inspired by honeybees (and TED)
Nature and investing. On the surface, these things do not sound like they have a lot to do with each other. But to TEDster Katherine Collins, the two are intrinsically linked. After 18 years at Fidelity Investments, and while enrolled at Harvard Divinity School to try to figure out what to do next, Collins found […]
A class of medical students thinks “upstream,” thanks to the gift of a book
Before Jackie Hodges arrived for orientation at Tufts University School of Medicine, she got a gift from her soon-to-be med school: a free download of the e-book The Upstream Doctors by Rishi Manchanda. In this book, Manchanda — who has worked for a decade as a doctor in community clinics around South Central Los Angeles […]
New ideas from a small island: A support group for women in business, inspired by TEDxNicosiaWomen
One morning, as Anna Koukkides-Procopiou was rushing out of her house on the way to the office, her daughter said, “Mommy, I want you here. Why don’t you want me?” This set off a long period of contemplation, and eight months later, she left the business world and reinvented herself as an activist — and […]