I’ll admit it: I’m one of those annoying people who meditates, who likes to talk to non-meditators about meditation, who gets cranky when I don’t meditate, and who likes to talk to non-meditators about how cranky I get when I don’t meditate. So the n:ow machine from DuPont beckoned to me like an oasis amid the busyness of TED2019, where i...

This week, during a computer security conference in Las Vegas, researchers Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller demonstrated how easily they could hack into the systems of moving cars using just a laptop computer. Illustrating that modern devices are worryingly vulnerable to hacking, Valasek and Miller showed their ability to jerk seatbelts, turn wh...

We’re on the brink of a future beyond what we can fathom -- a future with driverless cars, designer babies, intelligent robots, and digital doppelgangers. Who will you choose to be in that future? How will it change you? Here are four fascinating questions to get you thinking. See what you would choose -- and ask your friends what they think to...

Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of TED-related news items in the ether. Here, some highlights: TED Prize winner JR (watch his talk) has shared this stunning timelapse video of 6,000 people stopping by his Inside Out photo truck in New York City, and pasting their photos on the sidewalk in Times Square. Elizabeth Gilbert (watch h...

In today’s talk, Intel engineer Maria Bezaitis brings up a fascinating point: why is the phrase “don’t talk to strangers” such a part of our cultural zeitgeist? “When we’re at our best, we reach out to people who are not like us because when we do that, we learn,” says Bezaitis, in this talk given at TED@Intel. “In today’s digital world, str...

Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of TED-related news items in the ether. Here, some highlights: Chip Kidd (watch his TED Talk) has just released a new book: a how-to guide to graphic design for kids. Read The New York Times’ Q&A with him in which he says, “I was utterly floored [when an editor wrote me about the book idea]. I sai...

As a product designer, it’s Tony Fadell’s job to imagine invisible improvements to everyday objects. That’s how he developed the iPod and revolutionized the way the world listens to music. Now at Nest, he’s trying to bring that same creativity to one of the realms that has proved most elusive for tech: household appliances. Teamed up with Go...

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...

Countdown is a global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. Watch the talks, interviews and performances from the Countdown Global Launch at ted.com/countdown. Transforming big systems is a huge task. Energy, transportation, industry and infrastructure all pose their own challenges. And yet that transformation is alrea...

Below, just a few of the intriguing headlines involving members of the TED community this week: TED Fellow Antonio Torres is creating a"living" amphitheater in Lake Forest, Illinois. Made from netted straw, wildflowers and vines, it will bloom throughout the summer and fall while it hosts performances. (Read more about Antonio’s work.) Jac...

Ed Glaeser is a economist at Harvard, and the author of Triumph of the City, and as his business casual look he wears a bow-tie with ice-cream cones. He is also one of the world's experts on the nature of cities, and he was invited to set the stage for the TED2012 wish. "At their heart," he says, "cities are the absence of physical spa...

A headline-driven sketch of Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital is, of course, incomplete. For a nuanced picture, you need to talk with someone like the architect, university lecturer and photographer Nurur Rahman Khan. Writer Alex Gallafent talks with the born-and-bred “Dhakaite.” You could, on first glance, see Dhaka as a fast and loose place, t...

David Li is the founder of Shanghai-based hackerspace XinCheJian. He shares his take on life and work in the fast-paced Chinese city with Alex Gallafent. In 2005, at the start of my first visit to Shanghai, the city clothed itself in a growling thunderstorm. When dusk fell and neon began to score the sky, the city was more Blade Runner-y than...

For the ninth session of TED2017, hosted by TED's Editorial Director Helen Walters and Curation Director Kelly Stoetzel, we look into ourselves with seven speakers who take on subjects ranging from parenting to social interaction and heartbreak, revealing nuggets of wisdom that just might help you lead a better, more fulfilled life. The l...

New Zealand is located on a continental plate boundary, so earthquakes aren't unexpected. But no one was ready for the quake that hit at 12.51 pm on February 22, 2011. "Everyone in Christchurch will never forget that moment," says Danny Squires, who lives in the city with his wife and four children. Even though they’d all experienced multipl...

You could, on first glance, see Dhaka as a fast and loose place, the kind of city that draws people in, churns them around and spits them out after a few tough years. Many in Dhaka face circumstances similar to those in other South Asian cities: poverty, limited education, exploitation. Dhaka itself sits at or near the bottom of rankings of ...

As the sharing economy gains market share, it needs more support and structure to grow in the right directions. For more than a decade, the sharing economy has functioned as a sort of benign, artsy cousin of the world's corporate capitalist machine. Lately, though, the advances of Uber, Airbnb et al have brought much attention (and money) to th...

The phrase “truth or dare” is a false binary -- facing the truth often requires daring action, and vice versa. That’s why, at TED2015: Truth and Dare, the two go hand-in-hand. TED2015 happens March 16-20 in Vancouver and Whistler, and we dare to think this will be the most provocative, invigorating, mind-shifting TED yet. The 58 speakers on o...

Figuring out how to walk quickly from A to B is easy. Just plug two addresses into your favorite map app, and off you go. But sometimes getting to a place as quickly as possible isn't the priority. At least, so thought Barcelona-based Yahoo! Labs researcher Daniele Quercia (TED Talk: Happy maps). Along with two colleagues, Rossano Schifanella an...

Picture this: Three kids are given a LEGO set with the pieces to build a fire department. All of them want to build as many new toys as possible. The first kid goes straight for the easy wins. He puts a tiny red hat on a tiny minifig: presto, a firefighter! In this way, he quickly makes several simple toys. The second kid goes by intuiti...

Henry Evans is an enthusiastic world traveler. In the past year, he has visited Vermillion, South Dakota; Sydney, Australia; and Qusar, Azerbaijan. He’s explored halls of the Smithsonian, gone scuba diving in California, and flown over Bora Bora. He is in the midst of finagling a trip to space. Evans, it should be noted, does all this trav...

Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of fascinating TED-related news items. Here, some highlights. Jeff Bezos, the co-founder of Amazon (watch his TED Talk), made waves on Monday when it was announced that he will buy The Washington Post for $250 million. “The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its ow...

Epidemiologist Larry Brilliant remembers the day in 1974 when, while working for the United Nations in India, a mother handed him her young son, who had died only moments earlier from smallpox. Brilliant also remembers the day, about a year later, when he traveled by speedboat to an island in Bangladesh and met a 3-year-old girl who had surv...

Transformation starts with the spark of something new. In a day of talks and performances about transformation, 16 speakers and performers explored exciting developments in science, technology and beyond -- from the chemistry of everyday life to innovations in food, "smart" clothing, enzyme research and much more. The event: TED@DuPont: T...

According to the United Nations, by the year of 2050, 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. So what will the city of the future look like? These are some of the questions that dominate our conception of “The City 2.0”: How will we transport ourselves? Where will we grow our food? How will we power our homes, our office...

Could US economic growth be over? That's the provocative question that economist Robert J. Gordon begins with. And it's a big question. He points to travel: In 1900 travel was via the open buggy, at 1% the speed of sound. Sixty years later we travelled at 80% of the speed of sound in a Boeing 707. And since then, at a consumer level, we haven'...

Early one morning, hours before the sun would rise, Lebanese-Egyptian artist, activist and historian Bahia Shehab was alone on the streets of Cairo, spray-painting a stenciled message that spoke out against the stripping of veiled women. It's a campaign she discussed in “A thousand times no,” her inspiring TED Talk, and it was not only a beaut...

Imagine a world where your car drives itself, your fridge does the grocery shopping, and robots work alongside you. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence are turning that world into a near-future possibility. But what will that future really look like, and how will it change our lives? We spoke with three artificial intelligence expe...

Like most employers, Chieh Huang isn't interested in hiring people who are overly rigid or who know it all. So he’s created a handful of questions to help identify them. When new employees don’t work out, the reason is rarely incompetence. That’s according to Chieh Huang, the cofounder and CEO of Boxed. Instead, he says, it’s usually their pers...

“I don't think protected bicycle ways are a cute architectural feature. They are a right, just as sidewalks are,” says Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, in today’s talk. “Protected bikeways also are a powerful symbol of democracy, because they show that a citizen on a $30 bicycle is equally important to one in a $30,000...