You've walked into a cavernous, darkened concrete space. There, centered on the floor, looking a bit like an alien lander, is a glowing plastic multi-domed structure filled with swirling mist and light. Your first instinct, because you're human, is to find a way inside. Pass through a plastic curtain into the first of five geodesic domes,...

Groundbreaking media experiment Basetrack sought to rejig how America’s wars are reported. TED Fellow Teru Kuwayama harnessed the communication tools of our time to present embedded reportage in a whole new way. Following the deployment of 1/8 – 1st Battalion, Eighth Marines – to southern Afghanistan, Basetrack’s embedded media team collabor...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Michael Tilson Thomas is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, founder and artistic director of the New World Symphony and principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Now he's up to round off this session in style, seated at a grand piano that's been wheeled onto the stage just for ...

Between the amazing speakers of TEDWomen, there's a carefully programmed mini film festival -- brilliant short films, curated by Jonathan Wells and Anyssa Samari, that set (or re-set) the mood in the theater, and celebrate the creativity of women and men around the world. Here's what played, session by session: Session 1: Showing Up Th...

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon. Moon Day is held every July 20 to commemorate this momentous feat. 43 years later, humanity is still looking to the sky, mesmerized by lunar bodies. However, it is not just Earth’s moon we’re studying anymore. With better satellites and spacecrafts we know more about th...

On the anniversary of September 11, we're proud to launch an idea that is the deepest possible antidote to terror. It's the powerful story of Zak Ebrahim, who grew up the son of a terrorist (his father helped plan the 1993 WTC bombing), and chose tolerance over hatred. This idea reaches you in a form that's new for us: It's the first in a...

This spring, TED headed on the road, visiting 14 cities across six continents on the hunt for untapped talent. The idea behind the sweeping search: to let you, the TED community, weigh in and vote on which speakers you’d like to see ascend the stage at TED2013. After holding one-night salons in Amsterdam, Bangalore, Doha, Johannesburg, Londo...

This spring, TED headed on the road, visiting 14 cities across six continents on the hunt for untapped talent. The idea behind the sweeping search: to let you, the TED community, weigh in and vote on which speakers you’d like to see ascend the stage at TED2013. After holding one-night salons in Amsterdam, Bangalore, Doha, Johannesburg, Londo...

A collaboration between TED and Japanese public broadcaster NHK is bringing TEDTalks to TV for the first time in Japan -- for Super Presentation! It's a series that harnesses TED speakers' persuasive ideas to teach English, empower a new generation of independent thinkers, and build hope one year after the Japanese tsunami. Friday night a...

The violin has been around since the 16th century; the guitar since the 15th; and the flute since, oh, about 42,000 years ago. But while most of the instruments we know and love have been around for a very, very long time, people are still making new ones. They tend to be electronic … and just a little weird. Case in point: Ge Wang, who in to...

Even Sting gets writer’s block. “One day, the songs stopped coming,” he reveals in his TED Talk. “Day after day, you face a blank page and nothing is coming. And those days turn to weeks and weeks to months and pretty soon those months have turned into years, with very little to show for your efforts. No songs.” Apparently, following the r...

. What makes a great designer? According to IDEO founder David Kelley, who gave the TED Talks “Human-centered design” and “How to build your creative confidence,” being an incredible designer isn’t necessarily about having a great aesthetic sensibility or coming up with out-of-the-box ideas. No,  Kelley says that the key characteristic is e...

Negin Farsad’s new documentary, The Muslims Are Coming!, churns hilarity out of a not-so-funny subject: Islamophobia. The film follows Farsad, a TED Fellow, and a group fellow Muslim-American comedians (Dean Obeidallah, Aron Kader, Preacher Moss, Kareem Omary, Maysoon Zayid and Omar Elba) as they tour the United States and hold comedic interv...

The description of last night’s episode of The Colbert Report reads: “At the Clinton Global Initiative University Meeting, President Bill Clinton discusses foreign aid, poverty, TED Talks, Twitter and the Colbert Galactic Initiative.” So how did TED enter the conversation? Colbert suggested that Clinton, who accepted the TED Prize in 2007 with ...

Watch this TEDTalk >> Massimo Banzi is the co-founder of the Arduino project. An interaction designer and an educator, the spirited Italian bounds onto the stage to tell us a story. "A few weeks ago, a friend gave a toy car to his 8-year-old son," he says. "But instead of going to buy one, he went to a website, he downloaded a file ...

At TED2013 this spring, 34 passionate speakers made it onto the program via a worldwide, 14-city, six-continent Talent Search. The theme of the conference was “The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered,” and the speakers discovered through the Talent Search Tour gave talks that sent the conference crowd flying to their feet. See: Rose George, Ph...

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 need a vacation. I know I’m not the only one feeling this right now. It’s a sentiment I’ve been hearing a lot from friends and on social media, and it’s no sur...

Day 4 of TED2019 played on some of the more powerful forces in the world: mystery, play, connection, wonder and awe. Some themes and takeaways from a jam-packed day: Sleep is the Swiss Army knife of health. The less you sleep, the shorter your life expectancy and the higher your chance of getting a life-threatening illness like Alzheimer'...

Still hurting for gift ideas? Never fear. The inventive and iconoclastic TED Fellows are coming to the rescue with the recent fruit of their labors. These inspired and unusual items -- from Chinese-inflected banjo music to a remote-controlled underwater vehicle -- are sure to delight your loved ones. Just be gentle stuffing that all-terrain vehi...

30-y-o global ideas conference seeks hot architecture talk. Are you an architect, architecture critic, historian of architecture or otherwise involved with architecture and design? Have you always wanted to give a TED Talk? To celebrate the 30th anniversary of TED, our 2014 conference will include several talks that look back on three deca...

William Kamkwamba built a windmill out of spare parts to provide electricity for his family in rural Malawi, after seeing a similar design in a library book. It’s an incredible story -- one that set TEDGlobal 2007 ablaze. Now, Kamkwamba is the subject of a new documentary, William and the Windmill, which makes its world premiere at the SXSW ...

Try these five strategies to step out of your routine and wake up to the life around you, says urban explorer Eugene Quinn. This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community. To see all the posts, go here. Boredom. Wanderlust. These feelings com...

At Opower, Alex Laskey and colleagues are running what they describe as "the largest behavioral science experiment in the world.” Laskey explains some of the thinking behind it in his TED Talk, "How behavioral science can lower your energy bill," and he shared further insights into the importance of the field in this discussion with Harvard ...

Each week, TEDx chooses four of our favorite talks, highlighting just a few of the enlightening speakers from the TEDx community, and its diverse constellation of ideas worth spreading. Below, give this week’s talks -- all about love! -- a listen. Logic needs love: Jacob Berkson at TEDxSussexUniversity Love does not exist outside of reaso...

Oculus VR may have won the headlines today by, you know, being acquired by Facebook for $2 billion. But last week it won the hearts and minds of the TED crowd. First, former NFL punter Chris Kluwe showed footage of a guy wearing an Oculus Rift headset and riding a virtual rollercoaster (video shown, bottom -- jump to the 1:10 mark to watch t...

Photo: Duncan Davidson Aaron Reedy starts by taking us on a quick tour of evolution, natural selection and Darwin. But what's more interesting than what we know, he adds, and the question all curious students ask him: How do we know all this? The best way to answer this question is to give examples: Fossils: "We've seen snakes with leg...

Sarah Jones is an actor and monologuist who comes on stage to explain her own diverse background. "I grew up in a family that was multi-everything, black and white, Caribbean, Irish American, German American, there was Dominican music playing from the stereo, Christians and Jews (that's a long story)." But then, before we quite know what's hap...

This spring, TED headed on the road, visiting 14 cities across six continents on the hunt for untapped talent. The idea behind the sweeping search: to let you, the TED community, weigh in and vote on which speakers you’d like to see ascend the stage at TED2013. After holding one-night salons in Amsterdam, Bangalore, Doha, Johannesburg, Londo...

Vijay Kumar and his autonomous flying robot. Photo: James Duncan Davidson People watch TED to find insights across many different disciplines -- and over this past week, bloggers have been sharing what they learned, what insights struck them, at TED2012. Below are a few. (Find more writing about TED2012 in last week's roundup ... and read...

Texting is not a blight on the English language, says linguist John McWhorter in today’s talk, given at TED2013. Rather, texting is a “miraculous thing”: a novel linguistic mode that’s redefining the way we communicate with each other -- for the better. McWhorter points out that texting shouldn’t be categorized as written language --but a...