David Christian had little idea what was in store when he stepped on the set of The Colbert Report in November 2013. Having lived in Australia for years, Christian wasn’t familiar with the show and its special brand of political satire. And yet, sitting across the table from Stephen Colbert -- a perfectly placed Colbert Nation mug between them -...

Yves Rossy (watch his talk) is known as the “Jetman,” because he zips through the air on a pair of jet-powered wings. Last week, he flew around Japan’s Mount Fuji. Nine times. And then spoke to Business Insider about it. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams (watch his talk) talks to The New York Times about his most recent venture, Medium -- ...

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...

Immigration can be a deeply polarizing topic. But at heart, immigration policies and practices reflect no less than our attitude towards humanity. At TEDSalon: Border Stories, we explored the reality of life at the US-Mexico border, the history of the US immigration policy and possible solutions for reform -- and investigated what's truly at...

Physicist Brian Green promises he will tell the audience at TED 2014 the whole history of the universe in four minutes. "Forgive me," he says, "if I leave out a detail here or there." He does it with two metaphors. One from the beginning till now, and another from now till the end. The universe today is 13.8 billion years old, and it c...

TED2017 begins with a manifesto: "We will not sleepwalk into a future of dread. Instead we will pursue: courage, deep human connection, imagination, thrilling possibility, understanding. The Future You is yet to be written. Let's write it together." In a comprehensive opening session -- hosted by TED's Head Curator, Chris Anderson, and st...

When Salman Khan shared his vision for “a free world-class education for anyone anywhere” at TED2011, he turned the education world on its head. As he introduced Khan Academy -- a virtual classroom that uses video lessons to create an individualized, self-paced learning experience -- his alternative model fueled the nascent dialogue about online...

Crystal Giants by Giovanni Badino This book shows clearly how the reality of nature can go far beyond human imagination. Badino and the explorers of La Venta bring the reader on the exploration of one of the most astonishing places of the world, the Giant Crystal Cave of Naica, discovered in a silver mine in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 2000. This und...

In an experimental Session 6, Bill Gates hosted and guest-curated the speaker lineup. David Christian charts our course from the Big Bang to today: "To understand complexity, you have to survey the whole history of the universe. So let's do it." Amina Az-Zubair on the UN Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria: "We are making p...

The stage is set. The lights are on. The audience of more than 600 people who have traveled from all over the world to be inspired is ready. And ready or not, the speakers are thrust onto the stage, one by one. This is the first session of TEDGlobal 2017, themed “a new map,” a phrase that suggests that in these first talks, we will catch ...

She’s best described as the modern-day Indiana Jones. Using infrared imagery from satellites, she identifies ancient sites lost in time. In Egypt, she helped locate 17 potential pyramids, plus 1,000 potential forgotten tombs and 3,100 possible lost settlements. That’s in addition to her discoveries throughout the Roman Empire. Sarah Parca...

In a time that feels unsettled and uncertain, technology and those who create it will play a crucial role in what’s coming next. How do we define that future, as opposed to letting it define us? At a special TED Salon held as part of the Dell Technologies World conference and hosted by TED's Simone Ross, four speakers shared ideas for buildi...

Among many TED Conversations, below we are highlighting some of the TED.com community's most-discussed ones: Technology doesn't create loneliness, it reveals it -- Join the conversation here >> Willis Phu: "When relationships become out of balance, would technology really fill the void or is it a vapid substitution? Like Dr. Turkle s...

As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. Flip the switch. Sangeeta Bhatia is the senior author on a paper that makes the genome editing power of CRISPR responsive to ultraviolet light. As detailed in academic journal Angewandte Chemie, the researchers developed a system where gene editing oc...

This year, TED turns 30. It's a big, round anniversary -- the kind that brings with it a welcome moment of reflection. In this session, we look backward and see how far the world has come in the past three decades. These speakers turn back the clocks and offer bold new ways to think about recent history. Here are the speakers who appeared...

What is the city of the future? What will it look like? How will it come to be? This weekend, from Taipei to Melbourne to Mexico City, over 100 local organizers will offer their answers at TEDx events in honor of TEDCity2.0, a day-long TED event celebrating urban innovation. TED challenged organizers to remix the official TEDCity2.0 posters, ...

A heads-up, if you happen to be near Rotterdam, in the Netherlands -- ornithologist Kees Moeliker (watch his TED Talk) and friends will be celebrating the annual Dead Duck Day on June 5, at 17:55, on the lawn outside the glass-enclosed wing of Rotterdam's Natural History Museum. Attendance is free. At this year's event, Moeliker will unveil ...

Back to school brings with it a slew of emotions. On the one hand, there’s the promise of seeing friends daily and the buying of new school supplies -- new possibilities encapsulated in shrink-wrapped blank notebooks. But on the other hand, there’s the end of summer and the transition back to structured days, not to mention the challenge of sw...

Watch James Flynn's TED Talk: "Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents' Jim Flynn is an expert in intelligence famous for his research on the Flynn effect, the phenomenon that humanity's IQ has been dramatically increasing since the 1930s. He opens Session 11 today on the last day of TED2013 to help answer the question, "Who ar...

Photo: Ryan Lash Remember Y2K? Jamie Drummond starts by taking us back to the most anticipated year in human history: 2000. "Remember that? Y2k, the dotcom bubble... the deep-down inchoate yearning that our millennium moment should mean more than a two and some zeros." Incredibly, he says, our leaders agreed, and as a result produce...

In response to the historic moment of mourning and anger over the ongoing violence inflicted on Black communities by police in the United States, four leaders in the movement for civil rights -- Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff, CEO of Center for Policing Equity; Rashad Robinson, president of Color Of Change; Dr. Bernice Albertine King, CEO of the King Ce...

Photo: Michael Brands If watching a TEDTalk inspires insights (see this post for more) -- imagine giving one. From speakers' own blogs: Here's what Brené Brown learned >> The first lesson I learned is about vulnerability (no suprise). The folks in the picture are raising their hands in response to two questions that I asked du...

As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. New clues about the most mysterious star in the universe. KIC 8462852 (often called “Tabby’s star,” after the astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, who led the first study of the star) intermittently dims as much as 22% and then brightens again, for a reason n...

Day five of TED2016 contained one session filled with big ideas, but also an opportunity to look back at the conference as a whole. Below, the major themes that ran through the course of the week. We’re ready for our moonshot moment. The most-evoked image of the conference? Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon. Speakers including Dan P...

TED’s river of ideas is a constant flow -- and sometimes vital topics make their way onto our site far before they head into the mainstream. As part of the 10th birthday of TED Talks, we highlight seven Talks that foresaw big trends when they were only ripples in the pond. Wikipedia: Is it really a thing? At TEDGlobal 2005, Jimmy Wales ...

"We're on spaceship Earth," begins Will Marshall during Session 9 of TED2014. "It's fragile and finite -- and we need to take care of it." He shows a satellite image of Earth. Yes, it's beautiful, says Marshall, but it's outdated. The information is old, and he says, "We can't fix what we can't see." Satellite imaging, says Marshall, is b...

Not every dream is good. Sometimes dreams terrify you to your core, and you wake up in a cold sweat confused to find yourself safe in bed. In Session 8, we turn our attention to “Nightmare?,” from gun violence to the state of the climate. But it’s not all doom and gloom — the speakers in this session offer real ways forward. Recaps of the...

Onstage at TED2011, physicist Janna Levin talked about how gravitational wave detectors are about to produce revolution in astronomy and cosmology: instead of simply seeing the universe, we'll now be able to hear it as well, the ripples of spacetime itself. In addition to being a groundbreaking cosmologist, she's a novelist, memoirist and ar...

We're six weeks into TED2020! For session 6: a celebration of beauty on every level, from planet-trekking feats of engineering to art that deeply examines our past, present, future -- and much more. Elizabeth "Zibi" Turtle, planetary scientist  Big idea: The Dragonfly Mission, set to launch in 2026, will study Titan, the largest moon o...

Welcome to the Anthropocene! An asteroid slams into Earth and catalyzes the extinction of roughly 75 percent of the plants and animals at the time, including all of the dinosaurs besides birds. A gang of ice sheets that sprawled across the planet begins to recede, leaving behind massive changes on Earth’s continents. Events like these are class...