Rory Stewart opens this talk from TEDxHousesofParliament with a joke: “Little Billy goes to school and his teacher asks, ‘What does your father do?’ Billy replies, ‘My father plays piano in an opium den.’” But when the teacher confronts the father about his occupation, she gets a different answer. As Stewart finishes the joke, “The fathe...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Liz Diller notes that we divide space into private and public realms: “We know the legal distinctions well, and have become experts in protecting our private space, but we’re less in tune with the public.” Diller is a designer, one of the first to win a MacArthur "genius" grant in the field of architecture....

“If the Internet is the new printing press, then what is democracy for the Internet era?” asks Argentinian activist Pia Mancini in today's TED Talk (How to upgrade democracy for the Internet era), filmed this week in Brazil at TEDGlobal 2014. Without an answer to that important question, Mancini and her friends set out to create one, starting w...

All around the globe, people are feeling increasingly skeptical and mistrustful of their leaders. According to one global trust barometer, only 52% of survey respondents said that they trusted their government to do the right thing in 2011 and, in 2012, the number plummeted to 43%. As recent surveys reveal, only 18% of Italians believe their...

Join us on Facebook Live for another episode of TED Dialogues, our response to current events, adding insight, context and nuance to the conversations we're having right now. Join us Thursday, February 23, 2017 at 1–2pm on TED's Facebook page. Our speakers are two historians who will try to help us make sense of what's going on in Washington:...

By Yasheng Huang Earlier this year, economist Yasheng Huang (watch his 2011 TED Talk) sparred with Eric X. Li in the pages of Foreign Affairs on a similar topic to today's TED Talk. The TED Blog asked Huang to expand on his argument in his ongoing conversation with Li. Imagine confusing the following two statements from a cancer doctor: 1)...

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...

One of the things that baffles mere mortals about the 2008 financial crisis is that no one seems to have been held accountable for what went on. Sure, there’ve been a few public mea culpas, and sure, multimillion-dollar fines have been paid. But actual admissions of guilt? Not so much. A grand total of one Wall Streeter has gone to jail for his ...

A recent Gallup poll listed the most- and least-trusted professions in America. At the bottom of the list: car salesmen and members of Congress. It’s not hard to understand why our politicians rate so poorly — scandals, myopia, obstinance, party loyalty over common good, fiscal cliffs. All have left voters exasperated and confused. But while con...

The day after the Brexit referendum, British journalist (and recently announced Pulitzer Prize finalist) Carole Cadwalladr went to her home region of South Wales to investigate why so many voters had elected to leave the European Union. She asked residents of the traditionally left-wing town of Ebbw Vale, a place newly rejuvenated by EU i...

“Lobbying” doesn’t have to be a dirty word; instead, it means using your talents and abilities to improve the world, says civic advocate Alberto Alemanno. Every weekday for the month of January, TED Ideas is publishing a new post in a series called “How to Be a Better Human,” containing a helpful piece of advice from a speaker in the TED commun...

"Give me liberty or give me death," says global economist Dambisa Moyo, quoting Patrick Henry from 1775. In Western ideology, freedom is the most cherished value of all, and its government and economic systems have freedom deeply embedded in them. Over the past century, these systems have delivered prosperity and innovation: US incomes have ...

"Democracy is in trouble," announces political theorist Benjamin Barber as he makes his way onto the TEDGlobal stage. He continues: "We live in a  21st-century world of interdependence and brutal interdependent problems. Yet when we look for solutions in politics and democracy, we are faced with political institutions designed 400 years ago....

Chrystia Freeland writes about the power of money. As a journalist, she examines how money shapes society, impacts politics and essentially makes the world go ‘round. In today’s talk, given at TEDGlobal 2013, Freeland tackles the growing global plutocracy, looking at how 21st century democratic capitalism is making the rich richer while pulli...

Niall Ferguson: Most of the $195,000 billion of wealth in the world was made after around 1800 and most is owned by Westerners. Why did wealth accrue to the West? Ferguson says: It's not geography, it's not national character. It's ideas and institutions. Call them the "killer apps" of civilization. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED ...

Timothy Snyder grew up in America, but as a historian of 20th-century Europe at Yale, he’s spent much of his adult life in, or thinking deeply about, Central and Eastern Europe. And what he sees there — especially in looking at the Europe of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s — is a pattern that may feel familiar to people who are watching the politi...

The former Prime Minister of Greece, George Papandreou, takes the stage as the first speaker at TEDGlobal 2013. It's already been a long morning, with a few dozen protesters earlier objecting to his presence in Edinburgh outside  the conference center. And Papandreou cuts something of a pensive figure as he tells us he's set to give a speech u...

Born in Shanghai in 1968, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Eric X. Li grew up hearing a story: All human societies develop in linear progression, beginning with primitive society, moving through capitalism to socialism and, finally, Communism. Sooner or later, all of humanity, regardless of creed or culture, will reach that final st...

Welcome to the world, Prince(ss) XX! As per tradition, the birth announcement was posted on an easel in front of Buckingham Palace, listing the baby's weight and time of birth — XX lbs at XX:XX o'clock. As the world celebrates the momentous nativity of the third in line to the British throne, take some time to make sense of this baby's birth wit...

Amy Cuddy must be proud: Clay Shirky walks on stage and promptly strikes a power pose. Then he tells us of a 9-year-old Scottish girl who lives about 50 miles from here. Martha Payne started the foodblog NeverSeconds, for which she took her camera into school to document her lunches, using metrics such as "pieces of hair found in food." Firs...

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...

The open-source programming world has a lot to teach democracy, says Clay Shirky. In this fascinating talk from TEDGlobal 2012, Shirky harkens back to the early days of the printing press. At the time, a group of “natural philosophers” (who would later adopt the term “scientists”) called the Invisible College realized that the press could...

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. ...

Before we can tackle climate change, financial reform, education reform or, well, anything, there is a single issue that we in the United States must confront. As legal activist Lawrence Lessig says in today’s talk, before we can bring about change on any of the thousands of issues that matter to us, we must change a central corruption at the ro...

What's going wrong with democracy? Iavan Krastev is a political scientist to speak about crisis in Europe. Not, in his words, an inspiring topic. And he's here to talk about some of the problems with openness, in contrast to most of the talks. "You people in the church of TED," says Krastev, "are very optimistic. You believe in complexity...

The challenges we face in the 21st century are global in nature. Yet it often seems like we are woefully ill-equipped to address issues such as poverty, violence, security or public health with our large-scale political institutions. In this bold talk, Benjamin Barber suggests that we should transition away from nation states towards a sy...

On anatomy, destiny, marriage ... 1-3pm Eastern. She asks: The recent passage of gay marriage rights in New York demonstrate what I talked about in my TED lecture -- the steady historical movement away from dividing people based on anatomical differences. What do you think our democracy is going to look like in the future, given the ways t...

Ready for a Sunday binge of talks that will make your head spin? In this new playlist, twelve speakers take on our biggest issues: shifting global powers, the value of democracy, climate change, the nature of time, the future evolution of the human race. Some of these talks bring good news and some bring potential bad news -- and all of them...

. Political theorist Ivan Krastev believes that we are witnessing a “crisis of democracy.” There appears to be little dissent in Europe or the United States about whether democracy is the best form of government, Krastev says in a foreboding talk given at TEDGlobal 2012. “Democracy is the only game in town,” says Krastev. “The problem is...

David Miliband came to TED with a specific message: The global refugee crisis is not unsolvable -- and it's actually a test of those of us in the West. For Miliband, this crisis is personal, not just professional. Both his mother and father were refugees who were forced to flee their homes in World War II. "If Britain had not admitted ref...