Aphorism enthusiast and author James Geary waxes on a fascinating fixture of human language: the metaphor. Friend of scribes from Aristotle to Elvis, metaphor can subtly influence the decisions we make, Geary says.

Hint: it has something to do with why we believe the earth is flat until we're taught otherwise in school. Neuroscientist Mariano Sigman explains how the process of learning involves a certain amount of un-learning what we intuitively know. Common sense suggests that learning consists of acquiring new knowledge. Socrates, though, proposed tha...

TED Fellow Lars Jan, the director of the multi-disciplinary art lab Early Morning Opera, is seeking everyday personal rituals from collaborators -- perhaps, you? -- for a work-in-progress called HOLOSCENES. This public-performance installation -- inspired by humanity's relationship with climate change and flooding -- will be made up of three...

On stage at TEDGlobal 2011, Geoffrey West talked about the universal mathematics that govern cities and corporations. Knowing only the population of a city, he can predict the number of patents, the crime rate, the average walking speed and many other features of a city. Before the conference, TED's Ben Lillie reached him in his office at...

How to Be a Better Human The meaning of embodiment w/ Prentis Hemphill June 3, 2024 [00:00:00] Chris Duffy: You are listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. A topic that has come up a lot on this podcast and in my conversations with friends and family off the podcast is the way that our brains and our bodies are connec...

Open manufacturing evangelist

Civilization rests upon the existence of language, says language creator David Peterson. In a talk that's equal parts passionate and hilarious, he shows how studying, preserving and inventing new languages helps us understand our collective humanity -- and gives a quick lesson on High Valyrian, one of two languages he created for "Game of Throne...

Books can entertain, sucking you like a tornado into incredible new worlds. Books can teach, giving you a richer understanding of time periods, people and ideas you’ve never been exposed to. But books can do so much more. In today’s talk, TED's own Lisa Bu introduces us to the concept of “comparative reading,” the practice of reading book...

In an exclusive preview of his book The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language and how it expresses what goes on in our minds -- and how the words we choose communicate much more than we realize.

If you think democracy is some kind of inevitable, default setting for the world, then you aren't going to have it for very long, says historian and author Timothy Snyder. From World War I to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Snyder dives into the structures that uplift and tear down political systems, offering a historical perspective on the cur...