Could unemployment be a factor that leads to terrorism? In today's talk, peace strategist Mohamed Ali (not to be confused with the boxer) introduces us to the youth of Mogadishu, Somalia -- 70 percent of whom are unable to find jobs. In this talk, Ali highlights just how appealing the messages of terrorist organizations and gangs can be to t...

Some people who launch companies end up being wildly successful, but there’s an unpleasant truth: Many fail. Before you risk it all, here’s a quick guide to gauge whether you should go for it, from serial entrepreneur Scott Galloway. This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice f...

Founder of Malaysia’s most popular independent online news source, Premesh Chandran continues to connect and empower citizens despite the personal risks. Join the conversation by answering Fellows’ weekly questions via TED Conversations. This week, Prem  asks: We're coming up with easy tools to build exciting online maps -- wha...

Xavier Alpasa climbed out of poverty to the top ranks of the Philippines’ premier corporation -- and then realized he wanted to give it all back. As a seminarian, he helped women sewing scraps in a slum connect with top designers to create high-end fashion pieces. Now a Catholic priest, Father Xavier is working to support an ecotourism venture...

Everyone knows Detroit is in trouble. The list of problems assaulting the once-mighty Motor City is long and, from a look at national newspapers, incessantly documented. Most recently, the city filed for bankruptcy; its former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, was sentenced to 28 years in prison for public corruption. Since the booming 1950s, the cit...

Former Deputy Prime Minister of Libya and engineering professor Mustafa Abushagur takes the stage at TEDGlobal 2013 to look at where the Arab Spring has been, and where it is going. The Arab world once led human civilization in culture, philosophy, mathematics and science, but in the last century the region found itself first under coloni...

This powerful wish asks us all to build the city that the future needs. Visit theCity2.Org to join in. Here's the full text of this inspiring wish: I am the crucible of the future. I am where humanity will either flourish or fade. I am being built and rebuilt every day. I am inevitable. But I am not yet determined. I wish to be...

TED University during TEDGlobal 2011, July 12, 2011. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED During Session 2 of TED University, host June Cohen asked: Are you optimistic or pessimistic, and why? and asked for answers of one sentence. I'm optimistic because the number of TEDxes just passed 2,000 and there's no end in sight! ... because o...

Great design doesn’t just look good -- it has the potential to make lives easier and to enhance the public good. Public Interest Design, the website dedicated to examining how, has created a list of 100 makers, educators, connectors, policymakers and visualizers in the U.S. who are doing incredible work at the intersection of design and serv...

Meet Kenyan technologist, entrepreneur and TED Fellow Juliana Rotich in the latest installment of the Fellows in the Field video series. Visit the iHub, an incubator for Nairobi's young technology entrepreneurs, and learn about BRCK, a rugged mobile WiFi device with huge potential to bring connectivity to areas of the world with limited infra...

Last weekend, TED curator Chris Anderson sat down with CNN Money and shared a bold idea with host Ali Velshi: that ideas can make for a better future, with more pie for us all to enjoy. “A lot of the talks are about ways of repatterning the future. We have these different words for it -- design or invention or imagination or even entrepre...

TEDxChange, happening on April 5, is being livestreamed all over the world on TED.com and TEDxChange.org (which links to Facebook). April 5 is a Thursday, which means that you’re probably at work or school with a bunch of meetings to attend. Lucky for you, the program is only 90 minutes, and it’s worth it -- so reschedule your calls and take...

It’s just a beautiful story: a 9-year-old creates a homemade arcade out of cardboard and invites the world to come play with him. Filmmaker Nirvan Mullick was thoroughly transfixed when he stumbled upon young entrepreneur Caine Monroy’s arcade, located in his father’s auto parts store, and made a short documentary about it. Mullick’s initial ...

Juliette LaMontagne’s Breaker offers millennials a unique, hands-on alternative learning opportunity -- working on projects with serious social impact. Breaker teams take on such challenges as illiteracy and feeding the city, while gaining valuable real-world social entrepreneurship skills. Take us through the Breaker process -- how does it w...

The watch looks both futuristic and retro at the same time. A swirl of visible gears and carefully calibrated dials, it charts time in an unusual way — the hour jumps into place at the top, the minute is marked in a semicircle along the bottom, and the seconds swoop above. It’s a statement watch, the kind of piece that people inevitably ask ...

Nairobi, Kenya is one of the undisputed hubs of creativity on the African continent -- and TED Fellows are at the center of the action. They're building global technology companies like Ushahidi and BRCK, making genre-busting music that draws on wide-ranging cultural influences and working with marginalized communities in Kenya to make sure t...

Biologist, poet and fledgling entrepreneur Ivana Gadjanski has worked on using animal toxins as a possible treatment for MS, and is growing bones and cartilage in dishes. She has also published two books of poetry in Serbia. Now she’s developing Pubsonic, an online research tool that allows users to access free medical journal papers via a graph...

Update: Meet the TED2018 Fellows! TED is looking for early-career, visionary thinkers from around the world to join the Fellows program at the upcoming TED2018 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. Do you have an original approach to your work that's worth sharing with the world? Are you working to uplift and empower your local co...

Are you an inventor or filmmaker? A scientist or entrepreneur? Do you have a unique approach to your work that is worth sharing with the world? Could you benefit from the TED platform and the support of a dynamic global community of innovators? If yes, you should apply to be a TED Fellow. This year, TED is looking for new, extraordinary t...

Chris Redlitz of The Last Mile describes the thinking behind Code.7370 San Quentin, a program to rehabilitate prisoners by teaching them to code. Six years ago, I entered San Quentin State Prison for the first time. I had never been in a prison before, especially one with as ominous a reputation as San Quentin. When I arrived, I was escorted...

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...

As always, members of the TED community have been very busy the past few weeks. Below, just a few of them making the news: Earlier this month, Mazda promised to fund one of four projects dreamed up by TED Fellows -- based on your votes. The winner: eye surgeon Andrew Bastawrous has won for his Eye Bake program. With Mazda’s help, he’ll be b...

In January of 2013, TED Fellow Cesar Harada, inventor of an open-source sailing robot, set sail on a four-month, 14-country round-the-world journey with Unreasonable at Sea, a global innovation accelerator on board a boat. Here, he tells us about how this extraordinary voyage helped crystallize his vision for how his open source sailing robo...

Andy Amadi Okoroafor, founder of creative studio Clam, loves to use imagery in different ways, from fashion to film. Here, he reveals how shortwave radio influences his work – including his internationally successful Clam Magazine -- and his latest scheme to make social entrepreneurs sexy. Interactive Fellows Friday Feature! Join the conver...

First an immunologist, then a healthcare journalist and now a writer focusing on the Arab region, Shereen El Feki also serves on the UN's Global Commission on HIV and the Law. In addition to studying social change in the Arab region, Shereen works on development with a women's university in Saudi Arabia. Interactive Fellows Friday Feature! ...

Social entrepreneurs often walk a tough road. Their ideas seek to improve life for communities that can’t afford to pay a lot, if anything, and without the support of funding options like venture capital, bank loans and stock markets, their best option to fund their ideas is generally the philanthropic sector. This requires an endless string o...

Dan Pallotta has an unconventional view of nonprofits: To innovate and really make an impact, he thinks they should function with business-minded acumen. Says Pallotta (TED Talk: The way we think about charity is dead wrong), "You want to make $50 million selling violent video games to kids, go for it. We'll put you on the cover of Wired magazin...

“It’s easy to think that corruption happens somewhere over there, carried out by a bunch of greedy despots,” says anti-corruption activist Charmian Gooch in her blistering talk from TEDGlobal 2013. “The reality is that the engine of corruption exists far beyond the shores of countries like Equatorial Guinea or Nigeria or Turkmenistan. This e...

“Economic development is of the people, by the people and for the people,” declared entrepreneur and economist Iqbal Quadir on the TED stage back in 2005. In his talk, he offered a bold vision for bottom-up development and shared a searing critique of foreign aid -- that it actually does more harm than good. His own story of innovation in his na...

“This intellectual forum started in 1984, bringing together people from three different industries, hence its 3-letter name.” This was the Final Jeopardy! prompt on January 1, 2014 -- on the very first episode of the new year. The answer, of course: What is TED. Taryn Simon (watch her two TED Talks) has a new exhibit, “Birds of the West Indie...