TED.com is about to go quiet for the weeks of July 27 and August 3, 2020, while most of the TED staff takes our annual two-week summer holiday. Yes, we all, or almost all, go on holiday at the same time. (No, we don't all go to the same place.) We've been doing it this way now for more than a decade. Our summer break is a little lifehack that...

By Kylie Dunn What do you get when you cross a 39-year-old perfectionist with 54 TED Talks and far more honesty than any person probably needs to experience? You get my Year of TED. I’ve been inspired by TED Talks for years, and felt the urge to do something noteworthy and challenging to ring in my fortieth year on the planet. Inspira...

One researcher's quest to end discrimination against single people. Bella DePaulo, now in her sixties, has always been single. For some time, she thought the marriage bug would bite her, until she realized it wouldn’t—and she didn’t want it to. DePaulo, who describes herself as “single at heart,” relishes the lifestyle. What she doesn’t love is...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Ken Mogi, a Ph.D and researcher from the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Tokyo, bears a flag nearly twice his height, bright blue, covered with images of koi fish and Japanese letters. He begins by reminding us about a tragically transformative day in his country on March 11, 2011 that would change tens if...

The latest TV show from TED’s creative team spins ideas from TED Talks in new directions -- en español. Soy TED, a new Spanish-language TV series about big ideas, premieres on Vme TV this Friday, September 25, at 7pm EST. Each episode of Soy TED centers on a theme — from happiness to exploration to drones — built around a few key TED Ta...

Today’s talk, which posits a fascinating metaphor for sex beyond baseball, comes from a passionate and dedicated sexuality educator. Al Vernacchio teaches his students that it’s not just getting the facts right that counts, but understanding the nuances of human sexuality and its place in society. Inspired by the teaching philosophy that Ver...

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...

In her 20s, Meg Jay saw her first psychotherapy client, Alex, who was there to talk about her guy problems. Jay didn't take the sessions all too seriously at first. But then her supervisor gave her a wakeup call. While Jay said, "Sure she's dating down and sleeping with a knucklehead. But she's not gonna marry the guy." Her supervisor respon...

We are absurdly anxious about success, says popular philosopher Alain de Botton (TED Talk: Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success). In his talk from 2009, he suggests that many of our modern values -- like our sense of limitless possibility and upward growth -- can actually lead us to stress harder about how well we're doing. B...

X certainly marks the spot. The TEDx program was launched in 2009 to bring the mission of spreading ideas to the local level, with independent organizers curating their own events for their own communities. This week, the program is celebrating many milestones. Not only did yesterday mark the 5,000th TEDx event -- this week also brings th...

What if one person could change the world? What if we could harness our collective talent, insight and wisdom? And what if, together, we could spark a movement with positive impact far into the future? For a third year, UPS has partnered with TED to bring experts in business, logistics, design and technology to the stage to share ideas fr...

Find repose by exciting the mind. Some of the world's leading thinkers offer the books that inspired them and their work. Skim the list for your favorite speakers, or get nerdy on a topic you've always wanted to know more about. Below find 52 books, recommended by TED speakers. Creativity Creative Confidence, by Tom Kelley and David Kelley Cr...

Some heartfelt advice from writer Bill Bernat, who’s been there When I lived with severe depression and social anxiety, I found it extremely difficult to talk to strangers. Yet the one conversation that uplifted me more than any other occurred in the dining hall of the mental health wing of a mountain-town hospital. I met a woman who told me th...

Yesterday, Twitter user @ademoor wrote: Thinking of organizing a #TEDtalk video night w/ some friends. What's your absolute favorite must-see talk? Great question! We RT'ed on @TEDNews. And the replies are worth sharing: @WackyFiasco: I really appreciated Dan Gilbert's talk on happiness ... @ozteethtweet: hans rosling, can't get ...

You and other change agents have been commenting in full force in response to TED and The Huffington Post’s year-end collaboration to bring you 18 ideas that will shape 2012. The ideas are in, and the conversation is hot. Since last Thursday’s launch viewers have been sharing ideas of every variety, from the practical repercussions of Seb...

In 2015, 60 Minutes aired a story called "When TED talks, people listen," to show what happens when TED Talks are shared across the world. The segment focuses on a few key speakers, including Bryan Stevenson, Maysoon Zayid, Amy Cuddy and Monica Lewinsky, and you can watch a playlist of highlighted TED Talks here. But many of you said: You wa...

By Liz Jacobs and Thu-Huong Ha   Our brains work in mysterious ways. They make us laugh, they make us cry, and sometimes, they make us 19-year old geniuses. The 11 speakers in this All-Stars session specialize in areas of the brain as diverse as personality, trauma and gender, but they all agree: Our minds matter. Below, read a deta...

There is an 8 out of 10 chance that you are one of the poorest people in the world. However, when I say you’re poor, I’m not talking about your bank account (although material poverty is indeed a pressing concern for many of us). Rather, I mean you are time poor: You have too many things to do and not enough time to do them. Time poverty affe...

Day 3 of TED2019 featured three sessions of talks, a live podcast taping -- and some world-changing ideas. First, some news: You could give the next best TED Talk. If you have an idea the world needs to hear, put your name forward to speak at next year’s TED conference! We’ve just opened applications in our TED2020 Idea Search, a world...

Many nations of Africa have suffered so many misfortunes for so long -- poverty, diseases, famines, wars -- that it sounds refreshing and even strange to hear someone talk about the day Africa won’t need aid from other countries. Other cultures around the world have been so conditioned to photos of displaced or malnourished Africans that the...

The penultimate session of TEDSummit 2019 had a bit of everything -- new thoughts on aging, loneliness and happiness as well as breakthrough science, music and even a bit of comedy. The event: TEDSummit 2019, Session 5: Stages of Life, hosted by Kelly Stoetzel and Alex Moura When and where: Wednesday, July 24, 2019, 5pm BST, at the Edi...

Writer A.J. Jacobs was going through life feeling more grumpy than grateful. To start cultivating a thankful attitude, he decided to show some appreciation to the people behind his daily cup of coffee. Here’s what he discovered when he met his barista. Gratitude is not an emotion that comes naturally to me. My innate disposition is moderately g...

The Book. Few things are as universal, as ubiquitous and as transformative. On this Book Lovers Day, we’ve compiled talks that examine all the facets that make books great. Do you judge a book by its cover, like Chip Kidd, or get absorbed into a compelling narrative like Andrew Stanton? Were you taken to new lands by foreign authors like Lis...

We all have an area, closet, shelf or drawer that remains a mess, despite our best efforts. Well, these tips might finally help you clear it, from author Gretchen Rubin. 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; browse through all the posts h...

Limitations, schimitations. At TED2013, Phil Hansen shared the story of how he thought his art career was over when he developed a severe hand tremor. Instead, by learning to “embrace the shake,” Hansen became a creative powerhouse, constantly coming up with new ways to transcend his limitation. And so we wondered: what if we asked Phil Hanse...

Linguist and psychologist Steven Pinker's talk at the end of TED2018 Session 1 argued enthusiastically that humanity has, as a whole, made remarkable progress toward prosperity, peace and happiness — backing up his assertions with charts that showed an optimistic trajectory. But is that the whole story? A roundtable of TED Fellows — includin...

18-year-old Rick Housley is developing a wristband for people with epilepsy that is capable of detecting seizures and alerting a list of contacts. In this talk from TEDxHoboken, he shares the innocuous moment that sparked his interest in this subject -- on a stalled train in 2010. Housley was annoyed when his train suddenly jerked to a sto...

To improve your ability to think creatively, try one of these changes to your work routine. Every seven years, designer Stefan Sagmeister (TED Talk: The power of time off) closes his New York design studio for a year-long sabbatical. During each sabbatical, he pursues “little experiments, things that are always difficult to accomplish during th...

Is it possible to define, measure and even increase how wise a person is? Psychiatrist Dilip Jeste is attempting to answer those questions. To assess our health, we weigh ourselves, measure our blood pressure, and check our cholesterol. But one scientist is trying to figure out the connection between our well-being and something much more diffi...

This month, TED celebrates a very special anniversary -- ten years since we published our first six TED Talks online. It was a bold, some said foolhardy experiment to take what happened at a small conference in Monterey, California, and share it with anyone who might be interested. And boy, were you interested! Because of you, TED Talks h...