These precise re-creations of the world have the amazing ability to bring us up close to people and animals that are far away in space and time, says artist Aaron Delehanty. “I build time machines,” says artist Aaron Delehanty. Actually, his specific day job is constructing dioramas -- freeze-framed vignettes of animals and people in their habi...

By far the most viewed talk from TED2012 was given by an introvert who doesn't like talking. Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, quietly and powerfully delivered a call to action: take introverts seriously and understand what they can do in the right environment. There is, of course, mu...

Paul Rucker’s eye-opening work forces people to look at the bias and bigotry that have been sewn into the fabric of America. The silhouette of a KKK robe is unmistakable, with its ominous, hooded outline. It's a stark reminder of one of the ugliest parts of America’s past -- a past that has been bubbling to the surface again in recent years. Th...

At TEDSummit in June, we featured a talk by a young Syrian architect, Marwa Al-Sabouni. In it, she shares an important and original insight about how the roots of conflict can be traced, among other better-studied reasons, to misdirected and divisive urbanism. She offers the example of her own country, where violent conflict has been raging ...

In 1991, Shaka Senghor shot and killed a man. Yes, his is a story of atonement and rehabilitation -- but it didn't always look like things would go that way. As he says in his TED Talk, for many of his 19 years in prison, he was bitter, angry and unwilling to take responsibility for his actions. Thanks to family and mentors, Senghor did turn h...

To succeed in the next decade and beyond, we can't just optimize what we know. We need to keep learning, imagining, inventing. In a day of talks and performances, 16 speakers and performers explored how we can unlock our full potential -- human, technological and natural -- to accomplish things we never thought possible. The event: TED@BC...

Mentored from childhood by Gregory Hines and Savion Glover, Andrew Nemr has tap-danced his way through life. Now, with the Tap Legacy Foundation, he's using new technology to augment oral tradition, passing on the craft he learned at the knees of the old masters. Tell us about your life as a dancer. I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, where...

Meklit Hadero’s soulful songs have launched her explosive rise in the music world. Her sound draws from jazz, West Coast folk, and her Ethiopian roots. Meklit’s performances and community outreach projects -- in North America, Africa, or where the winds take her -- continue to enrich her music and be an integral part of its evolution. Are you a...

In 1831, Michael Faraday stood in a lecture hall and demoed an idea that changed everything: electromagnetic induction. This work paved the way for widespread use of electricity. On September 29, 2015, in the same lecture hall, attendees gathered for TEDGlobal>London to hear more ideas with the potential to shift reality. Sixteen TED speak...

Four and a half years after her popular TED Talk, the social psychologist updates the research on posture and hormones, responds to critics and discusses her current work. At the TEDGlobal 2012 conference, social psychologist Amy Cuddy gave the talk "Your body language shapes who you are," in which she detailed the effects of “power posing,” ba...

Jessica Mayberry is the founder of Video Volunteers, which trains rural Indians to use filmmaking to drive social change in their communities. The films have fostered some remarkable improvements in the villages, but according to Jessica, some of the most impressive changes are in the filmmakers themselves. Interactive Fellows Friday Feature!...

Through his organization, Baobab Health, Gerry Douglas has implemented a top-of-the-line electronic medical records system in Malawi. Many health centers in the developed world have not yet achieved what Baobab has. His secret weapons? Touch screen computers, super-high usability, and low power usage, just to name a few. Interactive Fel...

With the TED Fellows, expect the unexpected: 3D animated molecules, tethered quadcopter cameras, death row inmates turned lawyers, quantum chaos. It's the fifth-anniversary edition of TED Fellows talks, live from Vancouver, and here's what happened in Session 1. Usman Riaz, musician + artist The Fellows stage comes to life quietly with the m...

Minority Leader: How to Lead from the Outside and Make Change by Stacey Abrams (TED talk: 3 questions to ask yourself about everything you do) I work in government affairs, and the last thing I enjoy reading for pleasure are books by politicians. However, this book is different on so many levels and is a must-read -- whether you’re a political ...

Award-winning photojournalist Boniface Mwangi captured the 2007-2008 post-election violence in Kenya unflinchingly through the lens of his camera. But the horrors he witnessed propelled him into a new career as an activist and artist. Here, Mwangi talks to the TED Blog about the events that led him to stand up against injustice, literally, r...

Enthusiastic recommendations for uplifting reads, as suggested by TED speakers and TED-Ed educators. If you’re searching for some calm The Peace of Wild Things: And Other Poems by Wendell Berry This little book of poetry is my current morning dose of calm, and I use it like a meditation if I’m feeling stressed about the day ahead. The most f...

Social violence in Guatemala, Mexican and Central American migrant communities in the United States, the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, children with cerebral malaria in Uganda -- for the past decade, photographer Jon Lowenstein has been documenting the often violent and traumatic daily lives of individuals and communities living at the ...

TED@NYC is not your usual TED event. Hosted in a New York City club, speakers here—many of whom responded to an open audition call—give rapid-fire, five-minute talks. Below, a recap of each speaker who took the stage last night during this inspiring evening. The internet can be a place of intelligent conversation, or a place of rumors and...

Political economist, author and educator Sophal Ear's family escaped from the Killing Fields, a story he related in a moving 2009 TEDTalk. Now, driven to give back to Cambodia, he examines the detrimental effects of foreign aid dependence in his new book, Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy. Tell us about h...

Steve Boyes is passionately devoted to the preservation of wilderness, as well as to restoring and protecting species and landscapes already damaged by human intervention. At TED2014, the ornithologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer spoke to the TED Blog about his work to save South Africa’s endangered Cape parrot and his campaign...

Epidemiologist Chikwe Ihekweazu was in the inaugural TED Fellows class of TEDGlobal 2007 in Tanzania. Living in the UK at the time, writing articles on public health issues in his native Nigeria, Chikwe was profoundly affected by his TED experience. Now running an influential Nigerian public health blog, an alumni program for his alma mater,...

The possibilities life affords us are endless. We can find them everywhere, at the micro and macro levels and across all fields. Do you see them? Look closer: they are there every time we use our curiosity and imagination to explore and try new things. For a second year, TED and Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, have partnered to explore t...

Marc Goodman studies how to prevent future crimes -- not in the Minority Report sense, but by thinking about the ways that current and imagined technologies could be used to commit crimes. At TEDGlobal 2012 he gave a talk on some of the ways this could play out -- showing examples of how drug cartels and terrorists could (and already do) use...

Whether your weeks ahead contain travel, vacations or just longer and lazier days than usual, our list of recommendations from TED speakers has books for all moods, activities and tastes. When you want to understand why we humans do what we do Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely (TED Talk: Our buggy...

From tech to self-help via poetry, fiction and graphic novels, here are the books you need to read. What’s the one book you're always thrilled to discover that someone else has read? We posed that question to TED speakers -- and, well, they geeked out, offering us a list of hidden gems that wouldn’t typically crop up on a holiday shopping list....

If you’ve ever seen grainy old sports footage—for example, a boxing match from the late 1800s, a Princeton/Yale game from 1903, or Babe Ruth’s famous home run from 1932—you probably noticed how different the game looks compared to its modern counterpart. The equipment looks clunky, the uniforms impossibly baggy. Even the bodies of the players lo...

The current coronavirus pandemic is a truly global one; in fact, Antarctica is the only continent with no cases (although that could change). Most nations have responded with similar measures -- stay-at-home advisories, shutdown of non-essential businesses, social distancing -- but the scope of these changes has varied and so has the human impac...

Whether you're staying put or going away, summer can be a great time to relax and try new things. So we asked TED speakers to recommend podcasts, books, TV shows, movies and more that have nourished their minds, spirits and bodies (yes, you'll find a link to a recipe for olive-cheese loaf below) in recent times. You can use the links here to ju...