Robin Nagle is anthropologist-in-residence at the Department of Sanitation and longtime resident of New York City. In this interview with Alison Prato, she describes a life dedicated to, well, trash. In 1982, Robin Nagle moved to New York City from Saranac Lake, in upstate New York, to become an actor. Today, she is the anthropologist-in-resi...

In honor of Universal Children's Day, we are excited to announce TEDYouth -- November 19, 2011, at the Times Center in New York City. TEDYouth will coincide with more than 85 self-organized TEDxYouthDay events happening worldwide on November 19-21, 2011. The theme for our TEDYouth program is "Play, Learn, Build and Share." Be inspired a...

New York is a playground of absurdity. I’ve lived here on and off for the past decade. Since I ate my first workday lunch in a “park” in downtown Manhattan, I've been blindly accepting everyone's inexplicable behavior in this city, not least of all the block-long cronut line I pass on my way to work every morning. So when I started curating ...

What will life be like in the year 2035? Will the typical classroom still be full of desks, or some kind of virtual wonderland? What are the issues everyone will be talking about? What kind of work will today’s students be doing? Adults have lots of ideas, but they don’t necessarily have all the answers. If you’re between the ages of 13 a...

The TED staff got up to dance this afternoon to celebrate V-Day. This global movement, founded by TED speaker Eve Ensler, turns 15 today and is celebrating with the One Billion Rising campaign -- inviting us to stop, dance and rise against violence. One Billion Rising is dedicated to the 1 in 3 of the world’s 3 million women who have been the...

New York's Times Square regularly fills up for great public events, the crowd chanting and cheering. Rarely, however, do they chant, "Science! Science! Science!" as they did last night. An extraordinary number of people came out at 1:31am to watch the landing of Curiosity, NASA's new Mars rover. The TED Blog decided it would be fun to wat...

No television special exploring ideas on improving education in the United States would be complete without hearing from students themselves. And so it was essential that students be able to tell their own stories during our first television special, TED Talks Education, which premiered on PBS last night. To that end, we invited Market Road F...

“If you’re a teen, you’ve been called apathetic, narcissistic and social-media obsessed,” said Taylor Trudon, the youth editor at Huffington Post. Standing tall in a crisp white blazer, the 25-year-old shared how she went from keeping a high school diary — decorated with stickers and magazine clippings of John Mayer and Uggs — to becoming th...

On an unseasonably chilly Monday evening in Manhattan, hundreds stood in line in Times Square for up to two hours. As a city-dweller for seven years, I’ve seen queues this long for big Broadway openings or on New Year’s Eve. But this line was formed for a very different purpose -- for people to have their faces and stories featured in what J...

From April to June 2012, TED will be throwing 14 events around the world to search for unheard voices that need to be seen onstage at TED2013. Learn more about TED2013 Worldwide Talent Search >> Just announced: Applications are open now to appear at the event in New York! If TED@NewYork is the closest event to you geographically, ap...

In the first of a series of city-related articles, we profile Robin Nagle, anthropologist-in-residence at the Department of Sanitation and long-time resident of New York City. She describes a life dedicated to, well, trash, and documents some of her favorite locations throughout the American city's boroughs, captured in an accompanying photoessa...

Percussionist and composer Susie Ibarra is creating virtual sanctuaries for real cities. Working in collaboration with local artists, historians, architects, city planners and musicians, Ibarra and her partner Roberto Rodriguez -- who together form Electric Kulintang -- have created a musical pilgrimage that takes the public on a sound walk ...

By Shyam Sankar and Gabe Rosen The Internet is the new Wild West, a frontier big enough for every pioneer and outlaw to roam free. Today, The New York Times revealed that hackers in China had spent the last four months infiltrating its computer systems and pilfering employee passwords. As in the old West, it’s not a question of if you’ll ...

The image itself looks laid back enough — a 20-year-old man in a hoodie and jeans, walking through New York City. Except that this image is 150 feet tall and pasted on a plaza near the Flatiron Building. Cabs and cars flow around him while pedestrians scamper past. This image, created by TED Prize winner JR, is on the cover of The New Yor...

Robin Nagle has lived in New York City since 1982. As the anthropologist-in-residence at the Department of Sanitation in New York, she has more than a passing familiarity with some of the grimier parts of town. But she loves the city for more than just its garbage. In this beautiful photo essay, shot by Ryan Lash, she takes us on a whistle-stop ...

Randy Kennedy of the New York Times got an interview with JR, winner of the 2011 TED Prize, for this morning's Times. From the story: Reached by telephone on Wednesday morning on a bus in Shanghai, where he was headed to work on a largely unauthorized photo-pasting project to draw attention to the city

Just like school ... not! TEDYouth is like a TED Conference for high school students, starring a lineup of speakers working at the top of their fields of culture, science, technology and art. You'll hear about scientific discoveries and crazy art projects that will surprise you, make you laugh and blow your mind a little. TEDYouth will ta...

Between them, Dave Isay, TED Prize winner and founder of StoryCorps, and Brandon Stanton, founder of Humans of New York, have collected more than 75,000 stories from regular people around the world. Isay collects his stories as audio files, while Stanton takes a photo and then interviews his subject -- but they've both developed fascinating ...

Cockroaches. Moldy walls. Stolen deposits. Bad landlords happen to all of us, and it can be impossible to tell before moving into a property whether the experience will be a good one, especially in housing-short cities like New York, where landlords seem to hold the cards. But TED Fellow Yale Fox is looking to change that with RentCheck -- a...

Every runner has a story. Five years ago, I would never have imagined using the word “marathoner” to describe myself; I could barely run around the block, much less 26.2 miles. But one autumn Sunday, I woke up to the sounds of cheering and live music; the New York City Marathon was passing right outside my apartment building, and, for the...

Why, hello there—you middle or high school student in the New York City area. One thing you’ll want to do today, besides your homework: apply to attend TEDYouth 2014. Applications are now open! A free day of TED Talks and assorted hijinx, TEDYouth 2014 will take place at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday, November 15, from 11am to 6pm. At t...

A day at the beach means something very different to TED Fellow Asha de Vos, a marine biologist who has spent the past three years charting an unusual population of blue whales just 12 miles off the coast of Sri Lanka, the country where she was born. While most blue whales migrate from tropical waters to polar waters, which are more nutrient-r...

Artist JR’s latest project turns the floor of the David H. Koch Theater, home of the New York City Ballet, into a swirl of bodies. For it, JR photographed the company’s dancers and assembled their portraits into a 6,500-square-foot mural that stretches the length of the lobby. Walking on the floor is surreal, as each dancer appears life-size...

As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. A subway line with museum-worthy art. After 45 years of construction and $4.5 billion spent, the first section of New York City’s Second Avenue subway line opened on January 1 with four stations. Maybe the best feature of the new line? The amazing art...

Ever wondered where you might see revolutionary graffiti* in Cairo? Or been at a loss to find a Cuban cafe con leche** in New York City? Or really needed a beer in Madrid*** but wanted off the tourist-beaten track? Wonder no more. Our recent series profiling interesting innovators who live and work in cities around the world included a list of t...

Writer, cartoonist and New York City transplant Nathan W. Pyle is the creator of the street-savvy, GIFed-out NYC Basic Tips and Etiquette. Lubna Batool, an 11th-grade New Yorker, is a big admirer of his work, which gives newcomers to the city the little tips no one else will—like that one $20 umbrella will outlast four $5 umbrellas and that ...

Watch the full-length version of "Sleep," Eric Whitacre's new work, sung by a YouTube-powered choir of more than 2,000 singers from around the world. The nine-minute work was premiered last night at the Paley Center in New York -- and on YouTube. And watch Eric Whitacre's TEDTalk, where he talks about his creative process and the artisti...

TED@NYC is not your usual TED event. Hosted in a New York City club, speakers here—many of whom responded to an open audition call—give rapid-fire, five-minute talks. Below, a recap of each speaker who took the stage last night during this inspiring evening. The internet can be a place of intelligent conversation, or a place of rumors and...

Liu Bolin (TED Talk: The invisible man)  takes the artist statement to another level -- by actually disappearing into what he wants to say. Bolin makes some rather bold statements about consumerism, mass culture -- even the Chinese government -- rather quietly, by creating and wearing suits that allow him to blend seamlessly into the background ...

While the TED Blog chills for the next two weeks, take a break to read some of our favorite pieces from around the Internet over the past seven days: A fascinating, at times hilarious, look at business management practices in high-threat terrorist organizations. [Foreign Affairs] A profile of Laura Poitras, the documentary filmmaker who helped...