In 2006, Larry Smith issued a challenge to his online community: encapsulate your life in a six-word memoir. It quickly became a phenomenon, with people all around the world chiming in. Smith is still fascinated by the short tales people tell about themselves -- especially those told by kids. And so he conceptualized the TED Book Things Don’...

Think about the things you use every day -- and about the people who make them. Leslie Chang is a journalist who has spent years in China to talk to the workers who make the products we use, voices that have been missing from much of the discussion about labor, global markets and exploitation. "This is a conversation that often brings up ...

Sometimes it seems as if the Internet has created a bold new era of openness. But if there is one place where openness appears to be lagging, it would be scientific research. The scientific community is full of intricate (and often little-known) systems that regulate and control it, sometimes to great purpose, but sometimes to its own detrim...

“You have to start with an interesting question,” says neuroscientist Beau Lotto. We’re talking over Skype with collaborator Geneviève Laurendeau, the corporate PR manager at Cirque du Soleil, to discuss their year-long science project: an experiment to measure awe. When and how do we feel awe? And: Why does it matter? One great place to ...

In response to the unprecedented impact of COVID-19, The Audacious Project, a collaborative funding initiative housed at TED, will direct support towards solutions tailored to rapid response and long-term recovery. Audacious has catalyzed more than $30 million towards the first three organizations in its COVID-19 rapid response cohort: Partners ...

As usual, the TED community has been very busy over the past week. Below, a few newsy highlights. Overlooked treasures. A bed, a watch, a shoe: all mundane items unappreciated in the moment. But through history’s eyes, they gain new meaning. In this beautiful “Portraits in Creativity” documentary, Maira Kalman talks about curating the exhib...

“Spontaneity is the most delicious part,” says Brian Henson in a master class at TED2014, hosted by Syfy. “There’s something about letting a moment happen. Your best-laid plans cannot exceed what happens spontaneously.” Henson, a master puppeteer and the chair of The Jim Henson Company, says that a love of spontaneity deeply infused his f...

Could unemployment be a factor that leads to terrorism? In today's talk, peace strategist Mohamed Ali (not to be confused with the boxer) introduces us to the youth of Mogadishu, Somalia -- 70 percent of whom are unable to find jobs. In this talk, Ali highlights just how appealing the messages of terrorist organizations and gangs can be to t...

JR is an artist with a desire to transform our collective streets -- from French public houses to Brazilian favelas. As he describes in his talk from TED2011, JR headed to the barrier wall between Israel and the Palestinian territories for his project “Face 2 Face,”  pasting massive portraits the size of houses on either side of the wall. Th...

Mission Blue supporter Richard Rockefeller reports: Light winds, clear skies, a leisurely agenda and frequent laughter belie this group's intensity of purpose. We are a collection of TEDsters, Bermudian government officials, scientists, media folk, and of course, Dr. Sylvia Earle, 2009 TED Prize Winner -- spending a few days in the azure wat...

Becoming an Old Person in Training allows us to choose purpose and intent over dread and denial and connects us empathically with our future selves, says author and activist Ashton Applewhite. What’s the best answer to “How old are you?” Tell your questioner the truth -- and then ask why it matters. Ask what shifted in their mind once they had ...

As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. A new civic gathering. To cope with political anxiety after the 2016 elections, Eric Liu has started a gathering called Civic Saturday. He explained the event in The Atlantic as “a civic analogue to church: a gathering of friends and strangers in a co...

. Colleen Flanigan, the coral reef sculptor and TED Senior Fellow, didn’t have time to get a haircut before TEDGlobal back in June. So in the spirit of the conference, themed ‘Radical Openness,' she crowdsourced one instead, letting dozens of conference-goers each take one snip of her hair. (Wired UK hailed the stunt as one of the 10 offsta...

The TED community has lots of news this week. Below, just a few highlights. NSA phone data collection ruled illegal. Yesterday, a federal appeals court ruled that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records — one of the surveillance measures revealed by Edward Snowden — is, in fact, illegal. Today, Snowden commented. “This is signific...

Born in London in 1950, Antony Gormley is one of Britain's most treasured artists. Winner of the Turner Prize, the South Bank Prize, the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture, he is an OBE, an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, an honorary doctor of the University of Cambridge and fellow of Trinity and Jesus Colleg...

Secret prisons reflect a parallel legal system for prisoners who are denied access to communications, deprived of their due process rights, and hidden from public scrutiny. Investigative journalist and TED Fellow Will Potter explains. Secret prisons are operating in the United States today. Many Americans I speak with don’t believe this could p...

Imagine a place for the elderly that’s also filled with the sounds of kids playing. Marc Freedman goes to Singapore to investigate a new model for intergenerational living. Sister Geraldine Tan, an energetic woman in her 60s, speaks rapidly and is given to sweeping gestures. She wears the flowing white robes of the Canossian Daughters of Charit...

On August 31, 2009, politician Malte Spitz traveled from Berlin to Erlangen, sending 29 text messages as he traveled. On November 5, 2009, he rocked out to U2 at the Brandenburg Gate. On January 10, 2010, he made 10 outgoing phone calls while on a trip to Dusseldorf, and spent 22 hours, 53 minutes and 57 seconds of the day connected to the i...

Laurence Kemball-Cook on his Pavegen at TEDYou during TEDActive 2012, March 1, 2012. Photo: Michael Brands / TED TEDActive's TEDYou Session 2 has it all: smiles, education (reform) reform, dances for disability, interrupting cows, kung fu and robotic twins. Leigh Rowan, “The Zaniness of the Frequent Flyer”: Leigh Rowan, COO of Moderne Co...

The TED community has been very busy over the past few weeks. Below, some newsy highlights. Powerful thoughts on slavery’s legacy. Last week, Bryan Stevenson spoke with The Marshall Project about the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. In a Q&A, Stevenson shared his thoughts on the deeply en...

The open-source programming world has a lot to teach democracy, says Clay Shirky. In this fascinating talk from TEDGlobal 2012, Shirky harkens back to the early days of the printing press. At the time, a group of “natural philosophers” (who would later adopt the term “scientists”) called the Invisible College realized that the press could...

With just three weeks to go before the 2012 presidential election in the US, eyes around the world are on the contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. As shown in last night's debate, the election may well come down to a few key issues. So what matters most to Americans? The TED Blog read this Gallup poll on the issues that citizens wan...

Want to reframe your view of what lies ahead? Innovation consultant Ari Wallach shares three transformative ways of thinking that could help us tackle our toughest problems. I’ve been a futurist for 20 years, working with businesses and nonprofits to try to anticipate and meet impending challenges. When I first started out, I’d sit down with pe...

We’re distracted like never before -- and our phones are probably the biggest culprit. But there is a way you can live with one and still get things done. Productivity expert Chris Bailey shares what worked for him. When your mind is even slightly resisting a task, it will look for novel things to focus on. And it doesn’t need to look far -- on...

It seems like a story made for the movies: the first general-purpose computer was actually programmed by a half-dozen female math whizzes. Yet for too long, their efforts have been largely unknown. Lawyer and digital-rights advocate Kathy Kleiman describes her quest to learn about them and bring them some overdue recognition. When I was a colle...

Uncovering your micro-motives -- that collection of super-specialized things that make your particular heart sing -- are key to finding fulfillment and success at work, say social scientists Todd Rose and Ogi Ogas. And there's a fun way to identify them: observing how you judge others. Social scientists Todd Rose and Ogi Ogas (of the Harvard Gr...

When humans think about sex, we tend to categorise into male and female forms, says biologist and animal sex expert Carin Bondar. But for millions of years, it used to be a fusion of bodies, a "trickle of DNA shared between two or more beings," she says. It wasn't until about 500 million years ago that we developed structures akin to the pen...

Designer Emily Pilloton believes that education not only enriches the mind but the heart as well. And, in the best cases, it can also enhance a community. With that goal in mind, Pilloton and her partner Matthew Miller started Studio H, a program to bring design-based instruction and learning into the high school classroom, with students cre...

If your relationship with your mother -- or with motherhood in general -- is complicated, well, congratulations, you’re human. But it also means that Mother’s Day can be tough, as the internet serves up candy-and-flowers special offers and simplistic good wishes that may describe a version of mothering you don’t identify with. Dear ones: ...

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...