In 1995, Kees Moeliker heard a loud bang coming from the Natural History Museum Rotterdam’s new wing. He knew exactly what it was. A curator at the museum, Moeliker had gotten used to the sound of birds hitting the glass exterior of the new wing, and had even taken to stuffing the dead birds for […]
In today’s moving TED Talk, Jake Barton of the design firm Local Projects shares the idea at the core of the yet-to-open National September 11 Memorial Museum: that museum-goers need to be included in the telling of the story. “The event is so recent, somewhere between history and current events,” says Barton, explaining that more […]
[ted id=1482] Nikola Tesla, named by The Oatmeal the “greatest geek who ever lived,” was born on this day in 1856. And on the occasion of his 157th birthday, we’d like to share this great talk about the inventor who held more than 700 patents, including ones for alternating current, the radio, the remote control, the […]
Michael Pritchard is very likely the only person to have stood on the TED stage and uttered the immortal phrase, “Let’s get a bit of that poo in there.” At TEDGlobal 2009 in Oxford, he demonstrated his then-new product, the Lifesaver bottle, which can be used to turn filthy, rabbit-dropping-infested water into sparklingly clean liquid […]
Jonny Mizzone didn’t come from Alabama with a banjo on his knee. No, this 11-year-old virtuoso hails from the state of New Jersey, where he and his two older brothers discovered the magic of bluegrass legends J.D. Crowe, Ralph Stanley, Clarence White and Earl Scruggs through YouTube. When he was eight years old, Mizzone posted […]
With the increased teaching of English around the globe, world languages are dying at a rate of one every 14 days. In her classic talk from TEDxDubai, Patricia Ryan — an English speaker who has lived and taught in Arabic countries for over 30 years — argues that the focus on English is limiting creative […]
To an outsider, the Chinese language “seems to be as impenetrable as the Great Wall of China,” says ShaoLan Hsueh in today’s talk, given at TED2013. Hsueh’s mission over the past few years has been to break down that barrier, making reading and writing in Chinese accessible to people who didn’t grow up doing it. […]
Rita Pierson is the kind of teacher you wish you had. An educator for 40 years, she is funny, sharp and simply has a way with words — so much so that today’s talk feels a bit like a sermon. In this talk, Pierson shares the secret to teaching students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds […]
At concerts, lighters once swayed in the air during poignant moments, the audience belting out lyrics together in a moment of catharsis. Today, the group sing-alongs still happen, but the air shines with a different glow: the light of cell phones. Last week, while seeing a favorite band, I couldn’t help but notice the sea […]
I’ll never forget the first images of Sebastião Salgado’s that I ever saw. At the time, I was just getting into photography, and his images of the mines of Serra Pelada struck me as otherworldly, possessing a power that I had never seen in a photo before (or, if I’m honest, since). In the twenty […]
Economists Robert Gordon and Erik Brynjolffson see very different things when they look at the stagnation of the U.S. economy in recent years. It’s almost as if they’re looking at an optical illusion image – one seeing a candlestick while the other sees two faces just inches apart. In today’s talks, they both outlined their […]
A single gram of poop contains 50 diseases, one million bacteria, 1,000 parasites, 100 worm eggs and 10 million viruses, by journalist Rose George’s tally. For people who have flushing toilets, this is something that they rarely have to think about. But for the 2.5 billion people in the world who have no toilet at […]
In 1812, four men met for a “philosophical breakfast” at Cambridge University: Charles Babbage, John Herschel, Richard Jones and William Whewell. Over food and drinks, they debated the state of knowledge –- imagining a world in which thinkers drew conclusions based on data, where research was done for the good of humanity rather than for […]
[ted id=1908] Guy Hoffman isn’t just a roboticist — he’s also an animator and a jazz musician. And so as he set out to build robots that communicate with people, he took inspiration from what he learned in animation school and focused on subtle, fluid movements — the kind created by going frame-by-frame. He also […]
Today, we remember the 11 million lives taken during the Holocaust — a catastrophe that thoroughly transformed our world. As we take time to honor lives lost, we look towards people like Viktor Frankl, who gave this talk “Why to believe in others.” A Holocaust survivor and renowned author, in this rare clip, Frankl discusses […]
Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, passed away today after suffering from a stroke. The longest-serving Prime Minister of the 20th century, Thatcher also holds the distinction of being the only woman to hold the post. She has died at 87-years-old. Below, some TED Talks that examine Thatcher’s […]