As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. A solo crossing of Antarctica. With chilling detail, Ben Saunders documents his journey across Antarctica as he attempts to complete the first successful solo, unsupported and unassisted crossing. The journey is a way of honoring his friend Henry Worsley, […]
Human potential is a double-edged sword; it can be turned to great good or great evil. This session is about the discovery, liberation and channeling of human potential in ways that make the world around us a better place. But first, Alsarah & the Nubatones introduce us to East African retro-pop. As Alsarah says from […]
By Liz Jacobs and Thu-Huong Ha Our brains work in mysterious ways. They make us laugh, they make us cry, and sometimes, they make us 19-year old geniuses. The 11 speakers in this All-Stars session specialize in areas of the brain as diverse as personality, trauma and gender, but they all agree: Our minds […]
[ted id=1727] Taylor Wilson has been called “The Boy Who Played With Fusion” by Popular Science magazine. At age 9, Wilson stunned tour guides at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, with his complex understanding of rocket science. At 12, he set out to make a “star in a jar.” By 14, Wilson […]
Last night at SXSW, William and the Windmill was awarded one of the festival’s top two honors, taking home Grand Jury Award for Documentary Feature. The film tells the story of TED Speaker William Kamkwamba, who has come to be known by the title of his memoir, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. At age […]
William Kamkwamba built a windmill out of spare parts to provide electricity for his family in rural Malawi, after seeing a similar design in a library book. It’s an incredible story — one that set TEDGlobal 2007 ablaze. Now, Kamkwamba is the subject of a new documentary, William and the Windmill, which makes its world […]
Yesterday, TED Fellow William Kamkwamba debuted an illustrated children’s version of his memoir The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, co-written with Bryan Mealer and illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon. Since its publication in 2009, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind has been printed in 17 editions internationally. For this Young Readers edition, for ages 6 and […]
The TED Blog met with William Kamkwamba shortly after the publication of his autobiography, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Here, he answers questions about his book, his life story, his plans for the future, and offers some inspiration to others who face poverty and struggle to achieve a dream. How does it feel to […]
At age 14, in poverty and famine, a Malawian boy built a windmill to power his family’s home. Now at 22, William Kamkwamba, who speaks at TED, here, for the second time, shares in his own words the moving tale of invention that changed his life. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2009, July 2009, in Oxford, UK. […]
William Kamkwamba at TEDGlobal 2009, Session 7: July 23, 2009, in Oxford, UK. Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson William Kamkwamba took the stage this morning to tell the story of his young and remarkable life. He explains that two years ago he stood on the TED stage in Arusha, Tanzania and spoke about a […]
William Kamkwamba spoke at TEDGlobal 2007, as a shy young man who’d built his family a windmill from scrap. His story captured the world’s attention. Today he walked onstage with confidence to tell his story from that point to this. @herbkim Google ‘William Kamkwamba’ – sat next to him at dinner last night having no […]
William Kamkwamba, a young Malawi man who designed and built a windmill for his family when he was 14 — and who spoke so memorably at TEDGlobal Africa this June — is profiled on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal in a story headined “A Young Tinkerer Builds a Windmill, Electrifying a Nation.” […]
When he was just 14 years old, Malawian inventor William Kamkwamba built his family an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts, working from rough plans he found in a library book. In conversation with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Kamkwamba, now 19, tells a moving story of ingenuity and adaptation, and shares his dreams: To build a […]