By Thu-Huong Ha and Kate Torgovnick The morning session of TEDYouth "The Spark" was incredible. But in many ways it was just an appetizer. In the afternoon, Sessions 2 and 3 delivered talks on topics ranging from how to make an Easy Bake Oven gender-neutral to the mathematics of Pixar animation to the familial structures of elephants. And it ...

One in four people have some form of mental illness, and Ruby Wax wants to talk about it. Watch her TEDTalk, posted today and inspired by her show Losing It, to start the conversation. One project she didn't get to mention onstage at TEDGlobal: This winter, Wax started up the Black Dog Tribe, an online network for people with mental illness ...

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...

. Advertising impressario Rory Sutherland has given TEDTalks on the general life lessons to take from advertising, and the incredible importance of seemingly small details for producing big results. Now, he's released "Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man," a collection of essays and interviews on the art, science, and life of advertising. TED's...

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...

Michelle Borkin's 3-D imaging work uses tools from astronomy to help doctors visualize patients’ hearts. She makes fluid flow visualization pop with 3-D modeling, helping everyone from geophysicists to architects see their data in new ways. You have your fingers in a lot of different pots. What are you up to these days? I’m working on scie...

Every four years, the Get Out the Vote campaign invites graphic designers to make posters that rally US voters to go to the polls. Here, 14 posters that rock the vote. Question: Where would the US feature on a list of the top 25 developed countries with the highest voter turnout in the world? Answer: Nowhere. The US is #27, with 53.6% of the el...

"Words over time have a way of just oozing around," says linguist John McWhorter. He traces the evolution of five words that have spent millennia drifting from one meaning into another. Those fond of books on language may be familiar with one facet of the inherent changeability of words’ meanings. It is traditionally covered that meanings have ...

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 her public art pieces, Candy Chang uses low-tech tools such as chalk, Post-it notes, and stickers to help people make their cities more user-friendly. We sat down with Candy to ask her more ... Candy asks: If you could ask one question to all of your neighbors, what would you ask? Click here to respond on Facebook now! Or join Candy'...

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...

Cyrus Kabiru crafts striking, whimsical, colourful pieces -- most famously his one-of-a-kind spectacles, C-STUNNERS -- from recycled waste and objects he finds on the streets of Nairobi. In a candid conversation at TED2013, the Kenyan sculptor and painter told us about his journey to becoming an artist ... and how he's struggled to forge a lif...

This compilation of reading assigned to students everywhere will expand your horizons -- and your bookshelves. In the US, most students are required to read To Kill a Mockingbird during their school years. This classic novel combines a moving coming-of-age story with big issues like racism and criminal injustice. Reading Mockingbird is such an ...

Sarah Jane Pell is making preparations to live in the ocean. That’s right, under the sea -- but not until after a jaunt to the Arctic. Never one to be satisfied with the ordinary, Sarah Jane founded the Aquabatics Research Team Initiative to explore water choreography, technology, and human behavior as works of live art. Her future projects wi...

Fast-forward 20, 50, or even 100 years into the future -- what will our lives be like? Will flying cars and 3D-printed dinners be the norm, or will they remain mostly science fiction? On Saturday, November 14, kids and teens from all five boroughs of New York City explored these possibilities at the Brooklyn Museum. With 27 speakers and perf...

“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...

Around 39 million people in the world are affected by blindness -- 80% of which could be avoided if people had timely access to diagnosis and proper treatment. The problem is that in many developing countries, most eye care providers are in cities, while the majority of patients live in hard-to-reach rural areas. To bridge this gap, London-b...

This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from people in the TED community; browse through all the posts here. I have a question for you. Have you ever seen something and you wish you could have said something -- but you didn’t? And I have a second question. Has something...

In the stark sunlight and shadows of palm-lined, chain link-fenced Los Angeles, one man and two women -- all elderly -- walk hand-in-hand, embrace in parking lots, eat in diners, and lie down together at home. Meet Will, Jeanie and Adina, three people whose lives intertwined at the ages of 84, 81 and 90, respectively. Isadora Kosofsky, th...

For babies and toddlers Quantum Entanglement for Babies by Chris Ferrie This book is a wonderfully simple, visual explanation of one of the most complex and counterintuitive scientific ideas of our time. It’s fun for little ones but equally delightful for non-babies. -- Vikram Sharma (TED Talk: How quantum physics can make encryption stronger...

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...

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...

Multi-instrumentalist, composer, artist and filmmaker Usman Riaz started recording his debut album, Circus in the Sky, at 18, shaking up the music scene in Pakistan. Then he rocked the TEDGlobal 2012 stage with a world-class performance on percussive guitar, alongside his hero, Preston Reed. Now he's poised to make a global ruckus. You've acc...

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...

In 1972, Matthieu Ricard had a promising career in biochemistry, trying to figure out the secrets of E. coli bacteria. A chance encounter with Buddhism led to an about turn, and Ricard has spent the past 40+ years living in the Himalayas, studying mindfulness and happiness. In this free-wheeling discussion at TED Global in October 2014, Ricard t...

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...

Around 39 million people in the world are affected by blindness -- 80% of which could be avoided if people had timely access to diagnosis and proper treatment. The problem is that in many developing countries, most eye care providers are in cities, while the majority of patients live in hard-to-reach rural areas. To bridge this gap, London-bas...

Compiled from past TED book lists, here's a curated selection of fiction and non-fiction titles to check out now. 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 ...