A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story About Schizophrenia by Sandra Allen In college, Allen’s uncle sent her his autobiography in the mail -- the story of a man suffering from schizophrenia. The autobiography was written in all capital letters on a typewriter, and Allen’s vicarious memoir, which places her uncle’s story in context, is wri...

Session 2 of Fellows talks at TED2014 was just as unexpected as Session 1. Here, read a recap of each talk in the session. Somi, singer + cultural activist East African songstress Somi brings her smoky voice to the TED Fellows stage, with "Brown, RoundThings for Sale" from her album The Lagos Music Salon. Often called a modern-day Miriam...

As technology accelerates our lives, many of us feel an urgent need to slow down. One seductive solution: A secular sabbath. Pico Iyer makes the case, in this meditative excerpt from his new TED Book, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere The idea of going nowhere is as universal as the law of gravity; that’s why wise souls from eve...

Let it be noted, says co-host Chris Anderson, that this year's TED started with a roaring cheer and with a scream of anguish. Our job this week is to explore what's amazing, in every sense of the word, from the jaw-droppingly wonderful to the shocking and urgent. So Chris and co-host Helen Walters have decided to kick off Session 1 with a qu...

Here's a list of specific steps you can take, as recommended by members of the TED community. Educate Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's New York Times bestseller How to Be an Antiracist is one of the most important books I've ever read. (Watch Dr. Kendi speak on "how to build an antiracist world" here.) He provides an empowering lens and language to unders...

In Session 2 of the TED Fellows talks, we learn about the FBI's use of informants in counterterrorism operations, how giant pouched rats are helping to save lives, laser-delivered HIV drugs, how Silicon Valley companies are working to protect our privacy -- and that's not to mention the piano solo, percussive dance and opera! Sri Lankan o...

Anyone in the room here today, at the glossy Times Center in Times Square, has been affected by the imagination and tenacity of Janette Sadik-Khan. It was her vision that created the much-loved pedestrian zones on Broadway and the cool new CitiBikes. In 2008, when Sadik-Khan took the job as New York's traffic commissioner, she saw how hard i...

Audience members give talks during a session of TED University. From Ebola to better businesses, from diabetes to disasters, the talks took on big topics: A type-A response to Type 2 diabetes. Kicking off the session, Laurie Coots shares her personal story of how she beat Type 2 diabetes and regained control over her health. For Coots, a ...

For Kellee Santiago, founder of thatgamecompany, video games are an interactive art form. Inspired by hiking, gazing at clouds, and even stories of religious conversion, her games invoke emotional responses, pushing the boundaries of video games as a communicative media. What was your first experience with video games? Well, I had played g...

After three days of astonishing speakers and bold ideas, you may be asking yourself: Where do we go now? The answer: forward. The final session of TEDWomen 2018, hosted by TEDWomen curator Pat Mitchell, featured a dynamic lineup of forward thinkers: Ariana Curtis, Galit Ariel, Majd Mashharawi, Soraya Chemaly, Katharine Hayhoe, Cecile Rich...

Three stellar main stage sessions of talks -- including the launch of the Audacious Project -- plus workshops, exhibits and TED Unplugged, a session of talks given by audience members, made for a jam-packed day 2 at TED2018. Here are some of the themes we heard echoing through the opening day, as well as some highlights from around the co...

For years, Dana Nieder has been trying to figure out why her daughter Maya suffers from extreme developmental delays. Now 4 years old, Maya is unable to speak, and has already had multiple surgeries. Countless doctors told Nieder that “something genetic” was at the root of Maya’s problems, but six genetic screenings failed to confirm their h...

We all have a story to tell. And in my work as curator of the TEDWomen conference, I've had the pleasure of providing a platform to some of the best stories and storytellers out there. Beyond their TED Talk, of course, many TEDWomen speakers are also accomplished authors -- and if you liked them on the TED stage, odds are you will enjoy spending...

Fun stuff, stuff to make you cry, serious stuff, weird stuff. Here, a recap of all the coolest stuff on the interwebs this week. More than 60 percent of 1400 Boy Scout leaders voted to lift its longtime ban on openly gay scouts. [The New York Times] . A fantastic piece by Carl Zimmer on how studying rare diseases can help mainstream medic...

“Cookies” and “activism” -- those words don’t usually go together. But self-taught baker Jasmine Cho has managed to turn her cookies into canvases to tell deliciously compelling true stories about Asian-American changemakers. The child of Korean immigrant parents, Cho says she grew up in Los Angeles feeling part of a demographic that was “invis...

Crystal Giants by Giovanni Badino This book shows clearly how the reality of nature can go far beyond human imagination. Badino and the explorers of La Venta bring the reader on the exploration of one of the most astonishing places of the world, the Giant Crystal Cave of Naica, discovered in a silver mine in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 2000. This und...

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...

To celebrate 10 years of TED Talks, we went back through the archives to show you how fast biotechnology has changed over the past ten years, and some interesting moments along the way. We start with some history in a talk by James Watson, who co-discovered the first models of DNA’s structure with his partner Francis Crick, as a 23-year-o...

“This is a little different than the mainstage at TED, in a sense that this is a little more relaxed,” says our host, the poet and TED speaker Clint Smith. “These are speakers who have not been selected specifically for the mainstage, but they’re just as talented, just as brilliant, and just as important.” A spectrum of ideas, stories, pe...

TED Fellows and Senior Fellows have just opened TED2015 with a bang in the beautiful Kay Meek theatre in Vancouver. In the first session, discover: how bacteria can be programmed to detect and treat cancer, a yellow legal pad that smuggles transgressive data into the halls of power, what makes non-state armed groups tick, hyperactive superma...

On the morning of TED2017's first day, our TED Fellows continue to blow minds in session 2 of the TED Fellows Talks -- including a science demo featuring carnivorous plants, some gorgeous cultural mashups, and an introduction to the fish who won evolution. Do plants have brains? Well, no, but they’re certainly not dumb. And, in the case o...

Artist Zena el Khalil doesn't have the family home she remembers from childhood. Her mother's house in Lebanon was destroyed in a U.S. bomb attack in 1983, while her father's house was occupied by the Israeli army for 22 years, until its withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. "Every home my grandfathers built was destroyed, bombed or occupied," sa...

So much has disappeared from the islands of my childhood. Will the paniolo be next? My infatuation with Hawaiian cowboys began on O‘ahu’s North Shore, a quiet district enlivened by big waves and show-off surfers. On Sundays we country kids would sneak to a rugged polo field laid out parallel to the beach. We’d ogle the Honolulu high society gat...

Ever bowled with a Muslim? Why not? Negin Farsad wants to know. The comedian and filmmaker’s new documentary The Muslims Are Coming! follows a group of Muslim-American comedians as they travel through Middle America setting up street actions -- Hug a Muslim, Bowl with a Muslim, Ask a Muslim -- skewering stereotypes and turning Islamophobia i...

Here's a huge list of TED speaker-recommended books, with all the diversity of titles and topics you might expect. No matter your mood, preference or occasion, we’ve got you covered. When you’re lying in the sun Any book by Isaac Asimov I have stacks of collections of science-fiction short stories. I grab these before getting on a long f...

There’s something so cool about finding a new podcast to love -- each little download opens a door to new ideas, new jokes, new ways of seeing the world. Working at TED, as you might guess, many of us have strong opinions about this. Beyond the podcasts we all love: This American Life, Radiolab, The Moth, Serial, and of course our own TED Ra...

How can we make advances in technology that don't require massive job losses? Work with nature to protect both the planet and humanity? Ensure all people are treated equitably? In a day of talks, interviews and performances, 17 speakers and performers shared ideas about a future in which people, technology and nature thrive interdependently....

Artist Bassam Tariq is determined to shine a light on the incredible diversity of Muslim life – and he does it by any means necessary. Known for his blogging project 30 Mosques in 30 Days, Tariq and a friend took a month-long road trip through all 50 states, breaking their Ramadan fast each evening in mosques along the way and documenting the pe...

Dying and death confront every new doctor and nurse. In this book excerpt, Atul Gawande asks: Why are we not trained to cope with mortality? I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn’t one of them. I was given a dry, leathery corpse to dissect in my first term -- but that was solely a way to learn about human anatomy...

Should parents be able to select their children’s talents and personalities? Whatever your opinion, it is precisely the kind of question that Julian Savulescu wants you to take seriously. A professor of practical ethics at the University of Oxford, Savulescu thinks deeply about the ethics of the biological enhancement of the human race. In hi...