On Monday, the INK Conference (which is being held in partnership with TED) and the Rajeev Motwani Foundation hosted US President Barack Obama at an Expo on democracy and open government. The organizers were tasked with the critical job of showcasing new Indian innovations that might improve the relationship between citizens and government. ...

Michelle Borkin's 3-D imaging work uses tools from astronomy to help doctors visualize patients’ hearts. She makes fluid flow visualization pop with 3-D modeling, helping everyone from geophysicists to architects see their data in new ways. You have your fingers in a lot of different pots. What are you up to these days? I’m working on scie...

Human beings: we are approximately 100 trillion cells, and yet so much more. In his talk “Conception to birth -- visualized,” Alexander Tsiaras shows the incredible journey we all take from a single cell to a crying baby born into the world. In a video that makes use of micromagnetic resonance imaging, Tsiaras shows the stunning pace of deve...

As designer Manuel Lima points out in his TED Talk, A visual history of human knowledge, the network has become a powerful way to visualize much of what is going on in the world around us. “Networks really embody notions of decentralization, of interconnectedness, of interdependence,” says Lima. “This way of thinking is critical for us to solve ...

We know from the likes of Robert Ballard and Edith Widder (seriously, watch her priceless reaction to seeing close-up footage of a giant squid for the first time) that deep-sea exploring can pay off, big time. But deep-sea expeditions are still far from easy, and sometimes even the best-laid plans still go awry. This week, we heard sad news ...

In his TEDGlobal 2013 talk, Fabian Oefner shares breathtaking images at the nexus of art and science, which beautifully capture unique moments of physical and chemical drama. Formally trained in art and design, Oefner says that he has always been interested in science. Though he can’t pinpoint the exact moment when he became interested in pai...

. Artist Julie Freeman creates kinetic sculptures, compositions and animations from nature-generated data. Think: the motion of fish swimming, or the quiver of moths' wings. This week, Freeman revealed a new piece of work from the TED Fellows stage. Called "We Need Us," it's an online, data-driven artwork that explores the nature of metadata. ...

Here, some staff picks of smart, funny, bizarre and cool stuff on the interwebs this week: Happy Birthday, Upworthy! Here are 11 lessons our friends at Upworthy learned in their first year on the Internet. [Upworthy] Jay Horwitz, media relations director for the Mets, is the Barry Bonds of butt dialing. He frequently booty calls everyone i...

A scary discovery from Arctic ice researcher David Barber -- that hints at wild weather to come. On July 1, David Barber will pack a trunk full of warm clothing and scientific gear and head 1,500 kilometers north, right to the heart of the Arctic. It will be his 35th Arctic field trip. As chief scientist aboard the Amundsen, an icebreaker doubl...

The massive layer of ice covering Greenland melted at a faster rate in July than at any other time in recorded history, with 97% of the entire ice sheet showing signs of significant thaw. The unprecedented rapid melting, which was captured in images taken from several satellites and released by NASA, alarmed scientists and deepened fears about...

Richard Turere, 13, grew up hating lions. In Nairobi National Park, where he lives, lions roam freely and often targeted his family’s livestock at night. And yet Turere also hated the only solution his community had come up with to stop lion attacks on cows -- killing the majestic creatures. “I had to find a way of solving this problem,” says...

Art so often seeks to capture the beauty of the natural world -- from cave drawings of animals, to paintings of landscapes, to sculptures of the human form in marble, bronze or wood. But in this playlist, find artists and designers who take this to the next level, making art based on the laws of nature and the invisible workings of biology i...

Amy Robinson maxed out her bank account to attend TEDGlobal 2010. While there, she heard Sebastian Seung of MIT give the talk “I am my connectome” and knew she had to talk to him. Two years later, Robinson—the organizer of TEDxHuntsville—saw on Twitter that Seung was launching something new: EyeWire, a game allowing citizen scientists aro...

  Super Cells is the new TED Book by Nina Tandon and Mitchell Joachim, who take us on an eye-popping tour of the tantalizing array of inventions already being created with nature’s elemental building block, the cell. They argue that we’re entering a new technological revolution, one in which we can create smarter technologies by making ce...

The event: An afternoon session of talks and performances from TED Fellows, hosted by TED Fellows director Shoham Arad and TED Senior Fellow Jedidah Isler. When and where: Monday, April 15, 2019, 2pm, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC. The talks, in brief: Erika Hamden, an astrophysicist who builds telescopes at th...

Looking for a few great talks to inspire you for a great year ahead? TED's content+editorial team staffers pick their favorites -- including some don't-miss talks you might have passed by in this busy year. To spark your curiosity ...  Fawn Qiu: Easy DIY projects for kid engineers Don't you hate it when an operating-system upgrade means...

We asked three TED Fellows who work in the briny depths -- whale researcher Asha de Vos, coral reef biologist Kristen Marhaver and artist Colleen Flanigan -- to discuss how science and art are working in tandem to help the world fully appreciate our vanishing marine life. Describe what you do and what you’re working on. And where are you on...

Our office might be closed for summer vacation, but the TED Fellows are hard at work at the very first TED Fellows Retreat, happening now  in Whistler, British Columbia. Because the Fellows have proliferated since the program officially launched in 2009, many of these extraordinary thinkers have never had a chance to meet and conspire. And t...

Whether your weeks ahead contain travel, vacations or just longer and lazier days than usual, our list of recommendations from TED speakers has books for all moods, activities and tastes. When you want to understand why we humans do what we do Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely (TED Talk: Our buggy...