Decades before Twitter and Facebook, the Soviet state was a leader in perceptual manipulation technology. Meet the mighty flying propaganda machine of the 1930s: the Maxim Gorky. One of Russia’s most prestigious cemeteries is set just south of downtown Moscow, adjoining a convent built in the 16th and 17th centuries. It contains the graves of...

The final session of TEDWomen 2019 is here! We can't believe it; we won't believe. But, if we must close out these three incredible days, it's good we did it by hearing from a diverse range of "wayfinders" -- incredible women who are using their wisdom and insight to light the way forward, tackle global problems and find the right balance of...

In the chaotic heart of downtown Brooklyn, a door greets you with an illustration of a man in a pink tutu and leopard print leggings tossing up a peace sign. Welcome to Space-Made—the art lab where Cameron Russell and her collaborators create Interrupt, a magazine that lets marginalized communities tell their own stories. It’s a concept that...

You’re standing on a small platform: Someone snaps you into a heavy vest, and pulls a clunky helmet over your eyes. Before you can adjust to the extra weight, suddenly the world has a strange echo, and all other noise falls away. Your surroundings are now a rumbling Tomb Raider-themed universe, and you are its hero. You’ve entered THE VOI...

40+ TED speakers recommend the books you need to read right now. OK, so it's not summer everywhere right now. But whatever the weather, it's always time to read a good book. So we compiled summer reading recommendations from TED speakers, and then organized them according to the various situations in which you might find yourself now or through...

Concerns are growing around privacy and government surveillance in today’s hyper-connected world. Technology is smarter and faster than ever -- and so are government strategies for listening in. As a lawyer for the ACLU, Jennifer Granick (TED Talk: How the US government spies on people who protest -- including you) works to demystify the mur...

Behold, your recap of TED-related news: A new Sundance grant helps indie films get seen. Making a film is hard enough -- but getting the film seen by an audience can be just as difficult, especially in this era of non-stop media shifts. To help, Sundance just launched the Creative Distribution Fellowship -- and among the first recipients ...

A ballet dancer turned soldier. A liberal lesbian pundit on Fox News. A quantum-physicist crossword puzzler. These were among the perspectives we heard at TED@NYC, a talent search event for TED2014 held last night in New York. Below, learn a little about the 28 speakers who took the stage. You’ll see some of these speakers on TED.com in the ...

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, or does 2014 make us yearn for a simpler time whe...

Secret prisons reflect a parallel legal system for prisoners who are denied access to communications, deprived of their due process rights, and hidden from public scrutiny. Investigative journalist and TED Fellow Will Potter explains. Secret prisons are operating in the United States today. Many Americans I speak with don’t believe this could p...

By Marianna Torgovnick Some documentaries show us the strange, the exotic and the unfamiliar; others make us feel anew about something so everyday, we barely thought about it before. Some of my favorite TED Talks are built around great documentary films, like Deborah Scranton's chilling "War Tapes" and Nathaniel Kahn's moving search for "...

Jessica Green wants people to understand the important role microbes play in every facet of our lives: climate change, building ecosystems, human health -- even roller derby. This University of Oregon professor (also known by her derby name “Thumper Biscuit”) is using non-traditional tools -- like art, animation, and film -– to help people v...

Historian Yuval Noah Harari offers a bracing prediction: just as mass industrialization created the working class, the AI revolution will create a new unworking class. The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be: What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms tha...

Ever worry that your kid is a jerk? Or wish they'd send a thank-you note without your forcing them to do it? Empathy can be developed and encouraged in young people. Psychiatrist Daniel Siegel and social worker Tina Payne Bryson explain how. When your toddler conks you on the head with a Tinkertoy and then laughs even though you are visibly hur...

Women the world over are no longer accepting the status quo. They're showing up and pushing boundaries. Whatever their focus and talent -- business, technology, art, science, politics -- pioneers and their allies are joining forces in an explosion of discovery and ingenuity to drive real, meaningful change. At TEDWomen 2018 -- three days ...

Some people think outside the box. TED Fellows think outside the lines and corners, but also outside the medical establishment and media landscape — even outside the solar system. Below, read short recaps of the talks in the first session of TED Fellows talks at TED2016, from a group of trailblazers just getting lift-off ... Beautiful ...

Two hundred years ago, the Luddites rebelled against weaving technology. In 1964, US President Lyndon B. Johnson received “The Triple Revolution” memo that laid out the threat of job displacement due to automation. We’ve been concerned about technology displacing humans for a long time, says futurist Martin Ford. And that's had a strange ...

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, poli...

Time is precious, we know. Here, compiled from past reading lists, are suggestions for two dozen short but mighty books to pick up. fiction & literature The Summer Book by Tove Jansson The quintessential celebration of summer in Scandinavia -- 22 vignettes of a girl and a grandmother on an island. Jansson is best known as the creator of M...

Here, some great finds from across the internet, for your reading pleasure: Others may dream of the beach this summer, but we secretly wish we were at Rare Book School, a five-week long camp that brings together librarians and antiquarian enthusiasts at the University of Virginia. The school has been taught by William Noel, who gave the g...

You might know artist Liu Bolin by his outline. He paints himself to disappear into backgrounds, becoming a ghost-like presence in his images. (Watch his TED Talk, “The invisible man.”) It's a trick of the eye designed to make a point. In his latest piece, “The Future,” he aims to raise awareness about the United Nations’ Global Goals. Th...

Jack Andraka is not your typical teenager. The high schooler spends his free time in the science lab concocting better, cheaper ways to spot disease. One such project -- a test for the early detection of pancreatic cancer -- won Andraka first place in the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. As Andraka explains in his ta...

Micro-mechanician Bill Robertson builds sophisticated, fully working replicas of rare tools, gadgets and houses from the 17th and 18th centuries. His exquisite creations put history’s hidden details in the palms of our hands. Many of us have fond memories of playing with dollhouses, most of which were machine-made of plastic. But the first doll...

In 2013, TED published more than 250 talks, each with an idea worth spreading. And yet, certain ideas seemed to resonate throughout the year, as if speakers at different events were singing parts of the same choral symphony. As 2013 draws to a close, here is a look at some of the big ideas we parsed this year. Consider it the rousing finale ...

On stage at TED Global 2011 Justin Hall-Tipping set forth a bold agenda for funding innovation - one that makes room for radical changes and complete re-thinking of what’s possible. TED’s Ben Lillie tracked him down to follow up on the process of innovation, and his plans for the future. You made this point that we often get stuck on this...

TED2018 hit its stride on day 3, with talks from explorers of space and oceans, builders of cities and bridges, engineers of the future and many more. Here are some of the themes we heard echoing through the opening day, as well as some highlights from around the conference venue in Vancouver. Are we alone in the cosmos? The universe is 13...

Today, infectious diseases race across the world, and one country’s health problem can affect the entire global economy. For these and other reasons, Alanna Shaikh says global health is a matter of “mutual survival.” While working her day job at an international aid organization, Alanna moonlights as a (refreshingly frank) blogger on internati...

Researchers recently reported that they were able to edit human embryos to fix a dangerous mutation. The technology is inching closer to reality, so we need to take a stand, says biochemist Jennifer Doudna. If CRISPR can help parents conceive a disease-free child when no other options exist and it can do so safely, ought we to use it? It’s a qu...

Earlier this month, Merriam-Webster announced that 2017's word of the year is feminism. Searches for the word on the dictionary website spiked throughout the year, beginning in January around the Women's March, again after Kellyanne Conway said in an interview that she didn't consider herself a feminist, and during some of feminism's many po...

For the Session 3 of the conference, TED Head of Curation Helen Walters says, “We’re throwing off all pretense of cool.” Seven speakers are queued up to discuss the latest advances in their fields of technology. And while the gadgets do all different things, they share one crucial function: the power to make jaws drop. How wireless si...