Political economist, author and educator Sophal Ear's family escaped from the Killing Fields, a story he related in a moving 2009 TEDTalk. Now, driven to give back to Cambodia, he examines the detrimental effects of foreign aid dependence in his new book, Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy. Tell us about h...

When you're an artist, everything you see can seem like a canvas, a blank page with the potential for something beautiful. Alexa Meade sees this quite literally, using actual people as both subject and canvas. Painting on a 1-to-1 scale, Meade takes real-life subjects and turns them into paintings, playing with the shadow and light of the hu...

You can start referring to TED Fellow Kyrsten Sinema as Congresswoman. In a race that took nearly a week to call, Sinema has been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for Arizona’s 9th congressional district, which wraps around Phoenix. Though the race remained close through midday Monday, Sinema -- a Democrat -- was declared the victor ...

Meklit Hadero's voice is earthy and soulful, sinuous and untethered, and she's about to unleash a new album on the world. She has just launched  a crowdfunding campaign for her second solo recording, We Are Alive, and is currently touring the East Coast of the United States.We caught up with her between shows to ask about her musical vision an...

Collective wisdom might best be found when small groups of people are given a chance to discuss and deliberate, say social scientists Mariano Sigman, Joaquin Navajas, Gerry Garbulsky and Dan Ariely. Could this suggest a better way to vote? For many years, problems with democracy have been pushed under the carpet in the general belief that “demo...

Jeff Smith was blown away by some of the brilliant business ideas he heard while spending 366 days in prison between 2009 and 2010. “[Prison] was teeming with smart, ambitious men whose business instincts were in many cases as sharp as those of the CEOs who had wined and dined me six months earlier when I was a rising star in the Missouri S...

Award-winning Canadian photographer Ed Ou fell into photojournalism as a teenager, while studying political science in Jerusalem. Since then, he has blazed a trail of cinematic images covering the Egyptian revolution, the Somali Civil War, victims of radiation poisoning in the Soviet Union, and beyond, capturing moments of beauty and humanit...

Imagining a distinct border between mind and body has been a useful rule of thumb since Enlightenment philosophers dreamt it up centuries ago. It’s been particularly useful for modern medicine which has focused its scientific eye on the rational, physical body -- and for the most part left the mind with all its mutability and moods to others...

It can be easy to feel hopeless when it comes to the global climate. Meet three leaders who are actually making a difference. What does “making a real difference about climate change” mean, when clearly everything we've done so far hasn't been enough? Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 400 parts per million and rising. The Arctic ice cap hit...

Alexa Meade doesn’t paint on canvas. No, as she explains in her talk from TEDGlobal 2013, she paints on something very different -- human skin. “If I want to paint your portrait, I’m painting it on you -- physically on you. That also means you’re probably going to end up with an ear full of paint because I need to paint your ear on your ear,”...

Today, TED is thrilled to announce the 25 new members of 2012's TED Fellows class and 12 new Senior Fellows. A Lebanese open-source hardware inventor, a French computational architect and the founder of Skillshare.com are among 25 members of 2012's class of new TED Fellows. Twelve new Senior Fellows from seven countries, selected for two mor...

TEDCity2.0 is a day-long TED event for urban innovators, organizers, stewards and builders--and it's happening right now, with a hub event taking place at the Times Center in New York City, and 138 self-organized TEDx events also being held in 48 countries, including Vietnam, Malawi, Mexico and Egypt. Here's what happened in the morning s...

Underworld investigator Misha Glenny: "There are two types of companies in the world: those that know they've been hacked and those that don't." Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED Cybersecurity expert Mikko Hypponen advocates for an "Internetpol" -- an Interpol for the net. He says: "In the vast majority of online attacks, we don't ev...

With less than a week until America casts ballots in what has become one of the most controversial US presidential elections in history, TED invited the social psychologist and expert on the psychology of morality Jonathan Haidt to talk about our divisions -- and how we might heal. In conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson at TED HQ...

Here are the must-dos that you need to check off your list before you get your diploma, from entrepreneur Liz Wessel. 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 here. For those fortunate enough to be able to go,...

In an incredible session, speakers and performers laid out the biggest problems facing the world -- from political and economic catastrophe to rising violence and deepfakes -- and some new thinking on solutions. The event: TEDSummit 2019, Session 3: The Big Rethink, hosted by Corey Hajim and Cyndi Stivers When and where: Tuesday, July ...

Few sensations feel better than when your mind does a backflip and, all of a sudden, you are suddenly able to see things in new and unexpected ways. At TEDGlobal 2013, themed “Think Again,” you’ll have this feeling often. "The approach we adopted," explains TEDGlobal curator Bruno Giussani, "is to take a closer look at the global remix happeni...

TEDGlobal 2017 kicks off August 27–30, 2017, in Arusha, Tanzania. Ten years after the last TEDGlobal in Arusha, we'll again gather a community from across the continent and around the world to explore ideas that may propel Africa's next leap — in business, politics and justice, creativity and entrepreneurship, science and tech. Today, we're t...

Tom Thum wowed at TEDxSydney this week by doing strange things with his mouth. With just a microphone and his charisma, Thum brings the sounds of Michael Jackson, fifties jazz and scratched vinyl to the TEDx stage. In this talk, he demonstrates his “innate ability for inhuman noisemaking.” Thum's talk has amassed over 2 million hits on You...

It's tempting to argue about climate change — but this fascinating dialogue suggests that sometimes, the debate is just not worth your time. Climate expert Vicki Arroyo and risk analyst Dan Kahan discuss. Vicki Arroyo: You’ve been working in Florida recently and that makes me wonder: Can you tell me a little bit about what you’ve learned ...

Elizabeth Loftus studies false memories. As she describes in her TED Talk, The fiction of memory, she has implanted erroneous memories of childhood trauma into adult study subjects as part of her work. She has pinpointed failures in eyewitness testimonies. She’s found that misinformation can reshape taste preferences. And, she's found that p...

Three years ago, Jennifer Brea, then a PhD student in political science, was struck down by what appeared to be a severe flu. It turned out to be the beginning of a long illness -- including neurological dysfunction and extreme exhaustion -- that she has yet to recover from. Discovering that the medical community did not recognize her illnes...

Polar explorer Ben Saunders took the stage at the TEDSalon in London on November 7 to ask the question: "If everything is being done somewhere by someone and we can participate virtually, then why bother leaving the house?" A journalist had posed this question to him weeks earlier. He addressed it onstage through both his own experience of skiin...

When it comes to the internet, the Chinese government may have taken inspiration from the Great Wall of China and created the largest digital boundary in the world, blocking 500 million users from accessing the global-standard social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. But blogger Michael Anti, whose real name is Jing Zhao, explains in a ...

Announcing the speaker lineup for TEDGlobal 2011 -- happening July 11-15, 2011, in Edinburgh, and via webcast around the world. The 12 sessions of TEDGlobal expand on the overall conference theme, "The Stuff of Life," with session titles such as "Bodies," "Bad Guys," "Coded Patterns" ... TEDGlobal is hosted by Bruno Giussani, TED's Europ...

Kibwe Tavares combines his training as an architect with his love of storytelling and animation to create futuristic 3D animated/live action films with social and political depth, creating incredibly detailed, vivid, and kinetic visual environments to entice audiences. His short film, Robots of Brixton, distributed on the internet, won a speci...

Browse the Time 100 list -- and let it point you to great TEDTalks! Hillary Clinton: "Tough. Indefatigable. Patient. Smart. Knowledgeable. Superior political instincts. Funny. Loyal team player. Finds opportunities in crises and challenges. Skilled global advocate for American interests and American values. That is my job description for ...

TED has unveiled its ambitious speaker lineup for the April conference, themed "Bigger than us." Why? As Head of TED Chris Anderson puts it: "The theme 'Bigger than us' can mean so many things. AI. The arc of history. Ideas and things at a giant scale. Cosmology. Grand ambition. An antidote to narcissism. Moral purpose...." Browse the lineup ...

Last week, TED withdrew the TEDx license for the TEDxWestHollywood event. We wanted to write a short note to the community to explain why we did so. First some background: The TEDx program has included more than 5,000 local events to date. TEDx is designed to help local organizers produce independent, TED-style events in their own communities...

Not a scientist? As David Lang shows, you can still play a meaningful role in solving science's hardest problems. It's hard to find a silver lining in the water crisis of Flint, Michigan. The striking images of jugs of brown water being held high in protest are a symbol of institutional failure on a grand scale. It's a disaster. But even as que...