Al Gore posits an intriguing question in his newest book, on shelves tomorrow, January 29: can we change the future? But this book isn’t about peering into a crystal ball.  In The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change, Gore -- who’s spoken at TED multiple times -- breaks down the factors that are changing our world at an unprecedented pace...

When he was 26, Kailash Satyrathi left his job as an electrical engineer. It sounded like a crazy move, but he was determined to help children in India who were forced into labor. Satyrathi has spent three decades raiding factories where children are held as slaves, building a movement to make the employment of children under 14 illegal i...

“I was excited to be a part of the ‘Dream’ theme,” says Al Gore as he walks onto the TED2016 stage. “But then I found out I was leading off the nightmare section.” He admits that what we’ve doing to our world is a nightmare, and that the consequences we’re seeing are quite scary: “Every night on the news is like a nature hike through the Boo...

For week 6 of TED2020, experts in the economy and climate put a future driven by sustainable transformation into focus. Below, a recap of insights shared throughout the week. Mariana Mazzucato, economist Big idea: Government can (and should) play a bold, dynamic and proactive role in shaping markets and sparking innovation -- working t...

"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?'" —Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1866)...

Horses, parrots and mosquitos: oh my! TED2013 will commence in just nine days, and the TED Blog is gearing up for our live, minute-by-minute, coverage. One thing we can’t wait to see: which speaker will bring an animal onstage with them? (Our money is on ornithologist Kees Moeliker.) Sometimes, speakers arrive with a live animal, other times ...

With just three weeks to go before the 2012 presidential election in the US, eyes around the world are on the contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. As shown in last night's debate, the election may well come down to a few key issues. So what matters most to Americans? The TED Blog read this Gallup poll on the issues that citizens wan...

  The Global Launch kicks off Countdown, an initiative to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. Presented by TED and Future Stewards, this special event featured more than 50 speakers, activists, actors and musicians in five curated sessions of actionable and science-backed ideas, paired with moments of wonder, inspirati...

We're not sure anyone could be more excited than us for the launch of Onion Talks, the new weekly video series from The Onion. Forget imitation -- parody is the highest form of flattery. We feel honored to be worthy of satire from the masters of the craft. And we're just hoping that Area Man is the next to give a talk. With the launch of i...

Grab your friends and family, and tune in to YouTube.com/TED for the Countdown Global Launch this Saturday, October 10, 2020 at 11am ET. TED's first-ever free conference, the Global Launch kicks off Countdown, a global initiative to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. This weekend's virtual event will explain why the clim...

On July 27, 2006, the first six TED Talks were posted online. Among them was Al Gore’s talk at TED2006, “Averting the climate crisis,” given a few months before the release of his groundbreaking documentary An Inconvenient Truth. With the release of the film, climate change stormed into public awareness. Fast-forward to 2016 and things have ...

Planet Earth doesn’t exactly have a birthday. But every year on April 22, we celebrate Earth Day -- the anniversary of the moment the environmental movement went mass. According to EarthDay.org, Earth Day was founded in 1970 by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, who called for a “national teach-in on the environment” after witnessing the terrible e...

At TED2014, we challenged attendees to vote on 10 potential drivers of change in the next 30 years, via that enormously sophisticated piece of technology: the sticky note. As we could likely have predicted, there wasn't much consensus among those in Vancouver, but the range of opinions was vast and intriguing. And what do you think? Take the...

Countdown is a global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. Watch the talks, interviews and performances from the Countdown Global Launch at ted.com/countdown. Transforming big systems is a huge task. Energy, transportation, industry and infrastructure all pose their own challenges. And yet that transformation is alrea...

Time has given its annual list of the 100 Most Influential People of the Year a twist again for 2014 -- each person on the list was written about by someone who could just as easily have appeared on it themselves. Below, the many TED connections in this package, both honorees and writers, divided into the categories Titans, Pioneers, Artists, Le...

So much happening in TED-related news this week. Here, some of the highlights. Lean In: The Movie? Sony has acquired the movie rights to Sheryl Sandberg’s book, which began as a TED Talk. Speaking of books, Simon Sinek (watch his talk) recently released his new book Leaders Eat Last, about how leaders can foster a feeling of security that ca...

On Sunday night, Ben Affleck accepted the Academy Award on behalf of his film Argo as it was named the Best Picture of 2012. And today, he appeared on the TED2013 stage kicking off Session 10, "Secret Voices." "This is not a TED Talk. I will not be interesting or funny. This will not be exciting in any way," he said. "Though I feel a litt...

The launch of Countdown, a global initiative to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis, is just a few weeks away. Initiated by TED and Future Stewards, Countdown is a global initiative that aims to mobilize millions to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Speakers will outline what a healthy, abundant, zero-emission futur...

During day three of TED2016, we felt both wonder and terror. Below, some of the strongest messages cutting through a day of incredible talks. A swarm of autonomous robots, as magical as fireflies. When you hear the word ‘drone,’ you probably think of something either useful or scary. But could they have aesthetic value? Raffaello D'Andrea...

The world has shifted, and so has TED. We need brilliant ideas and thinkers more than ever. While we can’t convene in person, we will convene. Rather than a one-week conference, TED2020 will be an eight-week virtual experience -- all held in the company of the TED community. Each week will offer signature TED programming and activities, ...

In 2015, 60 Minutes aired a story called "When TED talks, people listen," to show what happens when TED Talks are shared across the world. The segment focuses on a few key speakers, including Bryan Stevenson, Maysoon Zayid, Amy Cuddy and Monica Lewinsky, and you can watch a playlist of highlighted TED Talks here. But many of you said: You wa...

"I've never seen color and I don't know what color looks like. I come from a grayscale world," says artist Neil Harbisson, to gasps from the audience. Yet this is not an "oh me miserum" story. Instead, Harbisson is here to tell us that in 2003, he started a collaborative project to create an electronic eye to help him detect the color freque...

Polar ice doesn't care who's in the White House. It just melts. In the sixth session of TED2017, hosted by TED's Head Curator Chris Anderson, we hear blunt talk on climate change -- taking a 30,000-foot view from the clouds and examining some market-based solutions for cleaning the planet. Below, recaps of the talks from Session 6, in chronol...

As TED’s social media editor, I have seen a lot of nasty comments. I’ve seen grown men and women deride a 14-year-old girl for her choice of dress. I’ve seen them say they're revolted by a beautiful transgender woman. On every talk about race, I’ve seen a slew of racist comments. But none have ever been as bad as the comments we got when we publ...

Countdown is a global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. Watch the talks, interviews and performances from the Countdown Global Launch at ted.com/countdown. The climate crisis demands leadership at every level. Governments, cities and businesses are three key players in designing and implementing the necessary trans...

Think quick: what was the best film of 2012? Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook or Zero Dark Thirty? This question will be decided tonight at the 85th annual Academy Awards. As you prepare your Oscars ballot and debate whether Seth MacFarlane will make a great ...

One morning when she woke up, Jill Bolte Taylor felt pain behind her left eye similar to what she’d felt biting into an ice cream cone. Soon, her own appearance -- from her hands to her reflection -- felt utterly bizarre to her. Next she lost her balance and then her internal chatter simply stopped -- years of thinking dissolving into silenc...

Larry Lessig has been referenced twice this morning, first by Wikihouse's Alastair Parvin and secondly by the musician Amanda Palmer. So it seems only right and proper that the Harvard Law professor should round off this session of TED2013. He's here to talk about Lesterland, a fictional land with a population of 311 million people of whom th...

  With TED2016 quickly approaching, what better way to get ready than with a good book (or two, or three)? Before the conference starts on February 15, explore these reads by some of our speakers. Life in the future: Exegesis by Astro Teller. A science-fiction tale of a self-aware, artificially intelligent machine and its creator grappl...

On day three of TED2017, we got an exploration of the mind, new ideas on climate change and thoughts on how our world is hyper global and at the same time hyper local. Below, some highlights. Perception is a hallucination. Surprise! In Session 4, Anil Seth made a convincing case that we’re hallucinating all the time. In a delightfully dis...