Orly Wahba is here to talk to us about the magic of kindness. As a middle-school teacher, she wanted to make a difference in the life of her students, so she designed "Act of Kindness" cards. These super-simple cards contained directions such as "open the door for someone" or "invite someone to have lunch with you," along with an instruction...

“Hi. My name is Zak Ebrahim and I’m the son of a convicted terrorist,” said a soft-spoken man in a checkered button-down shirt, sitting in your average white-walled room. “With my story, I hope to show that if I can choose a peaceful, non-violent path that anyone can.” This was my formal introduction to Zak Ebrahim, whose profoundly compe...

  When we started TEDWomen in 2010, we felt strongly that we wanted to include a talks that break the traditional TED Talk model and present pairs of speakers instead of solos. Our first “Duet” featured the married couple Beverly and Dereck Joubert. I wrote about them on this blog earlier this month. As National Geographic Explorers in...

From the TEDx Tumblr, this inspiring story: TEDxMogadishu — the first TEDx event in Somalia — will happen tomorrow, May 17, and livestreamed around the world. Update: Read press reports from TEDxMogadishu >> On May 17, between 50 and 100 people from diverse backgrounds will attend the event to listen to Somalis discuss the reb...

For years, orthodontist Awab Alvi has been an outspoken political activist via his blog, Teeth Maestro. With the onset of disastrous flooding in his native Pakistan this July, Awab traveled to the front lines, delivering food and supplies to flood victims. Though the after effects of the floods have caused personal family tragedy, Awab's fie...

Years ago, Steven Addis’s wife photographed him holding their 1-year-old daughter on the corner of 57 Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. On her second birthday, the family happened to be back in the city, so headed to the same corner for daddy-daughter photo, round two. The next year, Addis brought his daughter back to New York -- on pu...

Courage comes in many forms. In the face of fear, it’s the conviction to dream, dare, innovate, create and transform. It’s the ability to try and try again, to admit when we’re wrong and stand up for what’s right. TED and Tommy Hilfiger both believe in the power of courageous ideas to break conventions and celebrate individuality -- it’s ...

For the past 12 years, global health advocate Alanna Shaikh has watched her father, whom she calls her “hero and mentor,” deteriorate from Alzheimer’s disease. In a poignant talk given during TEDGlobal 2012 last week, Shaikh -- a TED Fellow and the author of the TED Book What’s Killing Us -- told us that the experience has, of course, been v...

This session is for those with a pioneering spirit: where two roads diverge in the woods … these visionaries decided to fly instead. As we fire up the engines of TED2014, our 30th-anniversary conference, expect the kind of forward-thinking ideas that turn one small step for a man into a giant leap for mankind. Watch the opening video. The spe...

Some great reads from around the internet today: Journalist Joan Juliet Buck tells the story behind her infamous Vogue puff piece on Asma al-Assad (above), saying that the First Lady of Syria "duped" her. Buck now writes of al-Assad's husband, "I didn’t know I was going to meet a murderer. There was no way of knowing that Assad, the meek...

So what went down at TED on day two? Well, a lot, as it happens. As curator Chris Anderson commented rather tiredly later, "that was the most intense day of TED I can remember, ever." Here, a lightning round-up of some of the day's key moments. Edward Snowden trundles onto stage The first big surprise of the day when a small robot rolled...

Global health expert Alanna Shaikh gave an unexpected and moving talk at TEDGlobal 2012, called “How I’m preparing to get Alzheimer’s.” In it, she told the story of her father’s struggle with the disease, and outlined some strategies she'd devised in case dementia struck her later in life, too. The TED Blog was curious: How is her experiment...

If you could sit down and interview your mom, what would you ask her? Would you ask about your childhood? Her childhood? Would you re-tell old funny stories? Try to dig up some of her secrets? As an adult, the idea of interviewing your mom can seem pretty scary. Kids, on the other hand, are fearless interviewers, especially when Mom is the in...

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 ...

For over two decades, Christian Picciolini, who once led a white supremacist organization, has worked as a peace advocate and "hate breaker", helping disengage people -- including neo-Nazis, white nationalists and Islamist jihadists -- from extremist groups. In his new book Breaking Hate, he draws on the experiences of people that he's met, ...

Ghetto Life 101 changed my life. I started working on this radio documentary 25 years ago — I gave tape recorders to two kids growing up in the Ida B. Wells Homes in Chicago, one of the most notorious public housing projects in America, and asked them to document a week in their lives. LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman were 13 and 14 years old a...

In this talk from TEDxJerusalem, TED Fellow Adital Ela shares her journey in sustainability. While traveling in India, she came across a chai vendor who sold his tea in small, clay cups that patrons could use and then simply toss on the ground when they were done. These cups didn’t create any waste, because it was earth returning to earth. Th...

At the end of every December, we at the office get a little indignant that some of our favorite TED Talks from the year didn't seem to do as well as we'd hoped. Some amazing talks, for whatever reason -- whether they're too absurd, niche or quirky, or simply were posted at a less than ideal time -- don't resonate at first blush with our audience...

Just by living our plugged-in lives, each of us is producing a constant stream of data. Little snippets are left behind of what we search, what we buy, where we go, what we tweet ... This endless flow of numbers is referred to as “big data,” data sets so large that they require sophisticated parsing to give them meaning. But big data has the...

At TED2014, we challenged attendees to vote on 10 potential drivers of change in the next 30 years, via that enormously sophisticated piece of technology: the sticky note. As we could likely have predicted, there wasn't much consensus among those in Vancouver, but the range of opinions was vast and intriguing. And what do you think? Take the...

There's a quiet corner at TED, with two comfortable chairs, a table with some paper and pencils, and a well-placed box of tissues. And on Wednesday night, after Dave Isay of StoryCorps shared his TED Prize wish, TEDsters flooded into Citi Ventures' The Art of Listening exhibit. This social space was an homage to Isay's oral history project —...

Prosthetics as sculpture, the maternal benefits of breast milk, Cuba’s radical approach to free medical education. These are just a few of the subjects tackled at TEDMED 2014: Unlocking Imagination, hosted last week simultaneously in San Francisco and Washington, DC, with a stage program directed by TED Fellow, physician, novelist and activi...

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...

From age 6 through age 11, Shabana Basij-Rasikh risked her life to go to school. The Taliban had banned girls in Afghanistan from studying at universities and other educational institutions and, thus, Basij-Rasikh dressed as a boy, posing as an escort for her older sister. Together, the two would place their books in grocery bags and sneak off t...

Matt Greoening poses with attendee Juliana Olsson. Photo: Gene Driskell, INK Conference, Lavasa, 2010 The last two sessions of the INK Conference were among the best of the three-day experience in Lavasa, India. On Sunday, December 12, attendees made it to the conference center bright and early to see talks by artist Raghava KK, The Simpsons ...

Photos: James Duncan Davidson Bill Nye, The Science Guy, would like to discuss with us our place in space. Not with black holes, or multiverses, but here on Earth, where his dad was born. In World War II, Bill Nye's dad was building an airstrip on Wake Island, in the middle of the Pacific, when it was bombed. He was captured on Chrismas E...

Session 5 of TEDWomen 2019 is all about seeking meaning: in our political lives, creative lives, healthcare systems, criminal justice and beyond. The event: TEDWomen 2019, Session 5: Meaning Seekers, hosted by Helen Walters and Anna Verghese When and where: Thursday, December 5, 2019, 5pm PT, at La Quinta Resort & Club in La Quinta...

Seduction happens in many forms. The speakers in this session highlight unexpected twists on the topic — a romance of dueling banjos, the allure of insects, and our ever-widening definition of love. Short recaps of the talks in this session... What we learn from insect sex. "You could have an insect-of-the-month calendar and not have to r...

Ever since founding the first truly effective ambulance service in India, Shaffi Mather has been hooked on social enterprises. He’s gone on to set up inclusive high-quality schools, support small-scale dairy farming, and is now launching a bribe-fighting business. (Watch his talk from TEDIndia 2009.) Can you give us an overview of each of you...

By Helen Walters and Kate Torgovnick TED Fellow Meklit Hadero kicks off the second session of TEDWomen 2013. Her sultry singing, backed by a trumpet, bass and drums, is just the right way to get the room back, focused and in gear for a packed session. It’s (sadly, still) rare enough to find a female CEO. It’s rarer still to find two si...