Books, film, art, food -- and science and social issues -- were at the center of the talks at the sixth TEDSalon in London. The event took place on May 10 in a packed Unicorn Theatre, with the support of longtime TED partner frog. "Our bodies are made of atoms, but our lives are made of stories", host and TEDGlobal curator Bruno Giussani ...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Andrew Stanton is the writer behind the three hugely successful Pixar Toy Story movies as well as the writer and director of WALL-E, the opening sequence of which will go down in, well, my personal history as being one of the most beautiful animation pieces of all time. His new live action movie, John Carter, ...

David Miliband came to TED with a specific message: The global refugee crisis is not unsolvable -- and it's actually a test of those of us in the West. For Miliband, this crisis is personal, not just professional. Both his mother and father were refugees who were forced to flee their homes in World War II. "If Britain had not admitted ref...

"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?'" —Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1866)...

Almost twenty-three years ago, Joshua Prager experienced a moment that could only be described as “a great hinge in my life,” one that divided it “like the spine of an open book.” Just 19 years old then, Prager was in Israel for a year after high school. He was sitting in the backseat of a minibus bound for Jerusalem when a truck behind him ...

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. Today, 10.10.2020, is the climate's day of destiny: the Countdown Global Launch, a call to action on climate change and the first-ever free TED conference. L...

“I’m not arguing that this stuff shouldn’t exist,” says Juan Enriquez. “I’m saying that precisely because this stuff is so powerful, we should be careful and think about what we’re doing, instead of treating it like a lark, thinking if we post something at 2am that no one will care.” The Boston-based entrepreneur and many-time TED speaker...

“Beauty is a basic service,” says artist Theaster Gates. He brought the audience to its feet this morning during Creative Ignition at TED, as he told the story of how he went from shaper of clay to shaper of cities. For fifteen years Gates made pots, “which might seem like a humble vocation,” he says. But in this work, “You very quickly l...

As he approached his 30th birthday, artist Cesar Kuriyama noticed that time seemed to be evaporating. And thus, he began work on a project called 1 Second Everyday. “Basically, I’m recording one second of every day of my life for the rest of my life—chronologically compiling these one-second, tiny slices of my life into one single continu...

The former Prime Minister of Greece, George Papandreou, takes the stage as the first speaker at TEDGlobal 2013. It's already been a long morning, with a few dozen protesters earlier objecting to his presence in Edinburgh outside  the conference center. And Papandreou cuts something of a pensive figure as he tells us he's set to give a speech u...

Two decades ago, millions of North Koreans faced widespread famine, and many families would do just about anything to feed their children. In an edited excerpt from his memoir Under the Same Sky, Joseph Kim describes life during the famine -- and one haunting consequence of his hunger. The famine pursued us. There were days when all we had to e...

You don’t. And you’re also steering the focus away from someone who probably just wants to be heard. Here’s how to be a more considerate conversation partner, says radio host and writer Celeste Headlee. A good friend of mine lost her dad some years back. I found her sitting alone outside our workplace, just staring at the horizon. She was absol...

We can stay connected to them by creating our own special rituals, says psychologist and grief expert Kim Bateman. In 1990, one of my younger brothers died in an avalanche while extreme skiing. He was only 21, and the horrific memory I have from that time is of his body lying at the bottom of a 750-foot cliff, all his bones broken. When he was ...

If you haven’t heard of the blockbuster megahit Crazy Rich Asians, then, well, it’s possible you're living under a large rock. But whether or not you saw it, the film’s director, Jon M. Chu, has a TED Talk that goes far beyond the movie. Speaking onstage at TED2019, Chu reflects on the importance of representation onscreen and the experie...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Leymah Gbowee is a 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Today, she speaks around the world, and people ask about her drive, challenges, moments, and regrets. In 1998 she was a single mother of 4. Three months after her fourth child's birth, she went to do work as a research assistant in a small village in north...

I can't tell you how completely shocked I am to win the TED Prize. For those of you who haven't heard of StoryCorps, it's a Brooklyn-based nonprofit I founded 11 years ago that, so far, has given 100,000 Americans the chance to record audio interviews about their lives. Participating in StoryCorps couldn’t be easier: you invite a loved one (...

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 ...

As usual, the TED community has been very busy over the past week. Below, a few newsy highlights. Real estate and corruption. New York is known for its pricey real estate, and TED Prize winner Charmian Gooch suspects that some properties could be supporting global corruption. “Towers of Secrecy,” a series in The New York Times, looks at some of...

As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. Bike on the Seine … literally. Carlo Ratti Associati unveiled a concept for the Paris Navigating Gym, a boat that would use the energy from passengers’ stationary-bike workouts to propel itself through Paris along the Seine. Aboard the 20-meter-long v...

Francesca Fedeli had a hard pregnancy. But she and her husband, Roberto D’Angelo, thought they were in the clear when their son, Mario, was born in January 2011 and seemed healthy. However, just 10 days later, Mario was diagnosed as having had a perinatal stroke. The right side of his brain was damaged, leaving him unable to move the left si...

Shortly after model Geena Rocero gave the TED Talk “Why I must come out,” she was Skyping with an LGBTQ activist in Hong Kong. This activist mentioned how powerful it would be for Chinese speakers to be able to watch the talk. Rocero logged on to TED.com to find out how she could get her talk translated. To her surprise, she found that Ch...

"Lying is a cooperative act," says professional lie detector Pamela Meyer (TED Talk: How to spot a liar). "Think about it, a lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance. Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie." Meyer works to help people see the sheer ubiquity of the falsehoods we tell and hear -- and gives advice on...

Bora Yoon builds soundscapes out of instruments and found objects from assorted centuries and cultures, weaving an unlikely and undulating web of immersive sound. As a live performer, the Korean-American composer, vocalist and sound architect often seeks interesting spaces in which to work, creating music specifically for each site. Now she'...

Keith Chen is a Yale economist who made a stir earlier this year with an intriguing working paper relating economics and language -- a paper that is yet unpublished, Bruno is careful to note onstage. Chen is onstage at TED to hash over the question, which is sparking ongoing debate and refinement (read a key blog post and Chen's response); h...

Here, your weekly recap of TED-related news: Science writer John Bohannon (watch his TED talk) runs the annual Dance Your Ph.D. contest. This year’s winners must be seen to be believed. In the video above: a dance that explains sperm cell competition in chickens. Bloomberg BusinessWeek has a brilliant, troubling cover story on the drowning...

With just one week left to go until TED2014, our speakers are putting the final touches on their talks. But that’s hardly all they’ve been up to. This week, check out which speaker has a bold prediction about artificial intelligence, which one put out a call for a more creative condom design, which one wrote about the science of goat arousal and...

At TEDGlobal, educator Eddie Obeng highlighted a disconcerting thought -- that the answers we learned in school aren’t necessarily true anymore.Kakenya Ntaiya: A girl who demanded school Kakenya Ntaiya runs a very unusual school in her Maasai village -- a school for girls. In this powerful talk from TEDxMidAtlantic, she shares how she started th...

Humans have sex like apes Christopher Ryan begins his talk with a strong reminder, "We didn't descend from apes. We are apes." A special kind, but we are one. We're closer to chimps and bonobos than they are to any other primate. But he wants to know, "What kind of ape are we? Particularly in terms of our sexuality." That's a subje...

Welcome to the world, Prince(ss) XX! As per tradition, the birth announcement was posted on an easel in front of Buckingham Palace, listing the baby's weight and time of birth — XX lbs at XX:XX o'clock. As the world celebrates the momentous nativity of the third in line to the British throne, take some time to make sense of this baby's birth wit...

"I sell dreams, and I peddle love to millions of people," says Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywood's biggest star and the host of the upcoming TED Talks India: Nayi Soch. In a charming, funny, insightful and self-aware talk, Khan traces the movements of his life -- and leaves us with hard-earned wisdom. "I've been made to understand there are lots ...