It’s called second-skilling: developing your skills for a new job while you’re still working. The Asian city-state is investing in its citizens so they can stay flexible and employed, says online learning advocate Barbara Oakley. In 1965, unemployment in Singapore was in the double digits. Workforce literacy was 57 percent. Singapore could have...

Imagine a place for the elderly that’s also filled with the sounds of kids playing. Marc Freedman goes to Singapore to investigate a new model for intergenerational living. Sister Geraldine Tan, an energetic woman in her 60s, speaks rapidly and is given to sweeping gestures. She wears the flowing white robes of the Canossian Daughters of Charit...

Once, Lakshmi Pratury says, she was deeply troubled by the public lives of young people on the Internet, but now she has hope -- because the same kids who post their party pics online are also posting their political outrage. Her talk turns to a sad and shocking recent event: the gang-rape and torture of an Indian woman on a bus in Ne...

Architect Ole Scheeren fights against the rigid hierarchy of the skyscraper. When Ole Scheeren (TED Talk: Why great architecture should tell a story) unveiled his design for a complex of residential towers in Singapore, his clients were stunned. “There was a moment of silence, and I could feel that there was a degree of disbelief in the room.” ...

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...

TEDxYouthDay events have begun around the world! Watch the TEDxYouthDay Livestream -- or sign up for a Meetup Everywhere to watch the stream. Many events on Nov. 20, including TEDxYouth@Tokyo, TEDxYouth@HongKong, TEDxYouth@Singapore and TEDxYouth@NASA, will be collaborating through the livestream to do shout-outs and program sharing to ot...

Cross-posted from the TEDx Tumblr: Last year’s TEDWomen conference has inspired an ambitious TEDx event: TEDxWomen, a one-day bi-coastal event held in NY and LA on December 1, independently organized and hosted by Pat Mitchell and The Paley Center for Media. Speakers including Barbara Walters, singer-songwriter Morley, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Jan...

Biomineralogist Damian Palin (watch his TED Talk) collaborates with bacteria to mine valuable minerals from desalination brine, the toxic byproduct of desalinating seawater -- creating wealth from waste while protecting the environment. You work in the field of geomicrobiology. What is it, and why is it becoming increasingly important? Geo...

Reopening the economy has often been framed as a partisan issue in the US. But within households, many families are having their own arguments about how lax or strict they should be about the threat of the virus. Is it OK to have friends over? Can we invite Aunt Sally to our birthday party? Can Dad slip away to the golf course? Can Mom get a hai...

Cartier believes in the power of bold ideas to empower local initiatives to have global impact. To celebrate Cartier's dedication to launching the ideas of female entrepreneurs into concrete change, TED has curated a special session of talks around the theme "Bold Alchemy" for the Cartier Women's Initiative Awards, featuring a selection of f...

What capitalism prioritizes, the world does more of. So how can we change capitalism so that it focuses on what humans really want and need? Entrepreneur Andrew Yang has a surprising proposal. Think of the activities on the list below: Parenting or caring for loved ones Teaching or nurturing children Creating art, music, dance Working in ...

Cartier believes in the power of bold ideas to empower local initiatives to have global impact. To celebrate Cartier's dedication to launching the ideas of female entrepreneurs into concrete change, TED has curated a special session of talks around the theme "Bold Alchemy" for the Cartier Women's Initiative Awards, featuring a selection of f...

Cartier believes in the power of bold ideas to empower local initiatives to have global impact. To celebrate Cartier's dedication to launching the ideas of female entrepreneurs into concrete change, TED has curated a special session of talks around the theme "Bold Alchemy" for the Cartier Women's Initiative Awards, featuring a selection of f...

By Liz Jacobs and Helen Walters It’s often said that good design is invisible design — it makes things easy and delightful without us realizing it. But as host Chee Pearlman reminds us at the top of the session, we're here to honor the "D" in "TED." From the artistic to the architectural to the auditory, the eight speakers in this All-Sta...

Pico Iyer is a global travel writer whose stories have taken him to the snowy mountains of Japan and a film festival in Pyongyang, North Korea. But the author of the TED Book The Art of Stillness is also a champion of the art of “going nowhere,” a contemplative state of mind that makes a flight to Bhutan as calming as an afternoon in your ga...

Cartier believes in the power of bold ideas to empower local initiatives to have global impact. To celebrate Cartier's dedication to launching the ideas of female entrepreneurs into concrete change, TED has curated a special session of talks around the theme "Bold Alchemy" for the Cartier Women's Initiative Awards, featuring a selection of f...

Whether or not you believe in it, the zodiac system is a useful way to understand Chinese culture, says writer ShaoLan Hsueh. Do you know your Chinese zodiac sign? According to tradition, it reveals more than simply your age -- it’s a window into your personality, career, love prospects, and future good (or bad) fortune. For ShaoLan Hsueh (TED ...

Cartier believes in the power of bold ideas to empower local initiatives to have global impact. To celebrate Cartier's dedication to launching the ideas of female entrepreneurs into concrete change, TED has curated a special session of talks around the theme "Bold Alchemy" for the Cartier Women's Initiative Awards, featuring a selection of f...

When you watch a video on TED.com, we’re proud of the advertisement you see afterward -- it’s not your usual blaring video ad. We ask all of TED.com’s sponsors to make their post-roll video as thoughtful and idea-driven as the TED Talk it’s helping to support. In fact, we’ll sometimes work with the sponsor to create original video just for us...

Ed Glaeser is a economist at Harvard, and the author of Triumph of the City, and as his business casual look he wears a bow-tie with ice-cream cones. He is also one of the world's experts on the nature of cities, and he was invited to set the stage for the TED2012 wish. "At their heart," he says, "cities are the absence of physical spa...

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...

Photo retouchers don’t have the best of reputations. As Becci Manson put it in a moving talk at TEDGlobal 2012, “We’re pale gray creatures who hide in dark windowless rooms and generally avoid light. We make skinny models skinnier and perfect skin more perfect.” But sometimes, a retoucher’s work is far beyond skin deep. In March 2011, ...

[embed]https://www.ted.com/talks/angel_hsu_how_china_is_and_isn_t_fighting_pollution_and_climate_change?language=en[/embed] As usual, the TED community is making headlines. Below, some highlights. Does local action make a difference when fighting climate change? Environmental scientist Angel Hsu teamed up with experts at several climate re...

Cities are the the 21st century’s dominant form of civilization -- and they're where humanity's struggle for survival will take place. Robert Muggah and Benjamin Barber spell out the possibilities. Half the planet's population lives in cities. They are the world's engines, generating four-fifths of the global GDP. There are over 2,100 cities wi...

Social geographer Danny Dorling explodes the traditional maps of the world and creates lively, ever-changing depictions of why and how we live. Channeling our twin urges to explore and understand, we geographers strive to uncover the hidden connections of human existence. These seven maps -- produced with cartographer Benjamin Hennig -- offer n...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson The TED Prize Wish, revealed today at TED2012, asks global citizens to help the world's cities to become inclusive, innovative, healthy, soulful and thriving. To help make this happen, TED is offering an online platform that will allow people to sign up, register skills and interest, and connect with each othe...

Artist Janne Willems has collected more than 11,000 drawings in 30 countries from strangers showing the moments we remember and treasure. Artist Janne Willems (TEDxGroningen Talk: Discovering a world of happiness) spends almost every day doing the exact same thing. But don’t pity her; instead, envy her for her view into people’s hearts and soul...

For week 4 of TED2020, leaders in international development, history, architecture and public policy explored how we might rebuild during the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing protests against racial injustice in the United States. Below, a recap of their insights. Achim Steiner, head of the United National Development Programme Big id...

TED2013’s tagline is: “The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered.” And this year’s class of TED Fellows will be representing all three. The TED Fellows program brings together young innovators from around the globe, all with insightful, bold ideas that have the potential to influence our world. In addition to attending TED2013, the Fellows will ...

Times of crisis can foster innovation and illumination. The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the ability of world leaders to respond to its enormous and interlocking challenges. Some have stumbled, while some have risen to the occasion. Avivah Wittenberg-Cox -- the CEO of 20-first, a global gender-balance consultancy based in the UK ...