If you look closely at the Lideta Mercato -- a shopping mall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, designed by TED Fellow Xavier Vilalta -- you will notice a unique pattern on its skin, inspired by the beautiful, bold patterns found on Ethiopian women’s dresses. But if you look closer, you will also notice something else: that the design is based on fra...

Meklit Hadero’s soulful songs have launched her explosive rise in the music world. Her sound draws from jazz, West Coast folk, and her Ethiopian roots. Meklit’s performances and community outreach projects -- in North America, Africa, or where the winds take her -- continue to enrich her music and be an integral part of its evolution. Are you a...

Tuesday afternoon at the TEDx Africa Skype station, host Kelo Kubu chatted with TEDx events in South Africa, Ghana and Ethiopia. It was on the verge of midnight in Johannesburg when Bongi Mkhabela of TEDxSoweto talked with TEDWomen attendees about the importance of listening to different perspectives -- a strong theme in Session 1. Halla Tom...

More than a billion people in the world lack access to basic health care. It’s a hard truth that Raj Panjabi pointed to as he accepted the TED Prize in 2017 — globally, there’s a shortage of accredited health workers, and many people living in remote areas are all but cut off from care. There’s a proven way to making sure they get it: Train l...

Meklit Hadero's voice is earthy and soulful, sinuous and untethered, and she's about to unleash a new album on the world. She has just launched  a crowdfunding campaign for her second solo recording, We Are Alive, and is currently touring the East Coast of the United States.We caught up with her between shows to ask about her musical vision an...

Congratulations to the first class of admitted students at AIMS Senegal, the newest AIMS center and the latest achievement from cosmologist and TED Prize winner Neil Turok and his NextEinstein Initiative. In 2008 Turok wished for the TED community to help “unlock and nurture scientific talent across Africa, so that within our lifetimes ...

Why did Albert Einstein have such a unique scientific mind? Because he came from a disadvantaged background, says TED Prize winner Neil Turok. “When new cultures enter science, especially disadvantaged cultures, transformation can happen,” he said today in his opening remarks at the Next Einstein Forum Global Gathering 2016. “I believe th...

The “T” in TED stands for technology. So it might sound counterintuitive that we would release a book about the need to unplug.  But we live in a madly accelerating world, where new technologies -- for all their benefits -- are making our lives more crowded, more chaotic and noisier than ever. There’s never been a greater need to slow dow...

If you ever find yourself in the northernmost town in the world, look carefully. Built into the side of a sandstone mountain is a glowing blue façade on top of a concrete tunnel; it might be the door to the secret headquarters of a Bond villain. And like Bond’s greatest villains, its purpose is at once deeply pessimistic and oddly hopeful. ...

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...

Harry Potter, Pip of Great Expectations, Superman, Cinderella, Lisbeth Salander, Batman, Jane Eyre, Matilda, Moses, Luke Skywalker, Oliver Twist, Celie of The Color Purple. As Lemn Sissay points out in this powerful talk from TEDxHousesofParliament, literature and popular culture is rife with characters who grew up without their biological ...

In today’s talk, economist Charles Robertson turns up the heat on an idea that’s been simmering for several years: that Africa is seeing rapid economic growth. Looking at statistics and at the precedents set by China and India, Robertson brings this idea to a full boil, saying that economists haven’t been nearly optimistic enough in their pr...

After decades spent documenting faith communities around the world, photographer Monika Bulaj understands that our religions are more similar than we realize. Polish photographer Monika Bulaj was sorting through her archive in early 2017 when she discovered an image she’d accidently exposed twice. Back in 2005, she had taken two photographs on ...

Uganda is an eye-opening example of how displaced people can lift up a nation, say economics professor Paul Collier and refugee researcher Alexander Betts. Uganda hosts more than 500,000 refugees, making it the third-largest host country in Africa (after Ethiopia and Kenya). Its refugees come from a wide variety of unsettled neighboring countri...

Vicki Arroyo knows a thing or two about climate change. A lawyer by training, she is the executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center, which works on policies to help government leaders (and the world) deal with climate change’s inevitable disruptions. But that's not the only reason she's familiar with climate change. As she tells us,...

You can -- at a visionary social enterprise called Plastic Bank, which is not only improving people’s lives but keeping junk from going into the ocean. Imagine a store where you could buy what you need using your plastic garbage. Not just food or household items like detergent but valuable goods such as minutes for your cell phone, WiFI, school...

Today, Negroponte is back to open TED, to reflect on predictions he's made in the past and to spin some new ones for the future. His point is that when someone tells you that you are "dead wrong," that you just might be onto something. Negroponte takes us on a lightning-paced tour of his career, beginning in the 1960s when he worked on comp...

Jane Chen knew that, for her low-cost baby incubator to save lives, moms would need to love it. But she had no idea that one of the world’s most famous moms—Beyoncé—would become one of her biggest supporters. Last week, Beyoncé announced a $125,000 donation to Embrace Innovations, Chen’s organization that makes the low-cost infant warmer,...

How does TED complement a program of speakers sharing bold ideas, tough truths and jaw-dropping creative visions at TEDGlobal 2017 in Arusha? With interstitials: the beautiful, funny, inspiring, silly, short video breaks screened in between speakers. Pulling from a global pool of creativity, talent and thoughtfulness, this year's TEDGlobal in...

By Courtney E. Martin What do sperm donation, marathon runners, disabled rockstars, and yacht racing have in common? They’ve all been subjects of the careful eye and artistic vision of British director Jerry Rothwell, the winner of the first annual Sundance Institute | TED Prize Filmmaker Award, who has received $125,000 to spend the next ...

One year ago, TED launched The Audacious Project — an initiative to help change-makers with big, bold ideas for tackling global challenges find the support to make their visions a reality. What's happened since has been amazing. Thousands of people in the US are awaiting trials at home rather than in jail cells now because of the work of The...

Dear [Your Name Here], At the TED Fellows program, we look for extraordinary young innovators, inventors and leaders—like you—from many categories of human endeavor: scientists of all sorts, engineers, artists, filmmakers, photojournalists, entrepreneurs, NGO founders, technologists, inventors, human rights activists and more. Our goal is...

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 ...

TED University Session 2 began with a difficult challenge, especially for 8:45 in the morning: describe yourself in six words. After several TEDGlobal 2013 attendees bravely took the stage to share their introductions, Kelly Stoetzel urged her co-host June Cohen to share her own six-word self-description. Cohen, who runs TED’s Media Team, ra...

Paul Collier studies the poorest people on earth -- the 1 in 9 humans living in dysfunctional countries with broken economies, places whose income gaps are so wide it's hard for westerners to wrap their minds around it. In 2007, his book The Bottom Billion broke down the problems facing this group of people, stuck in failed and failing state...

Physicians Raj Panjabi and Seth Berkley are on a mission to ensure that every person in the world has access to decent medical care. In a conversation, they discuss the obstacles standing in their way and the bold ideas that could help overcome them. Around the world right now, more than one billion people don’t have access to basic health care...

Want to do something to help the world’s more than 25 million refugees? Any business -- no matter its size -- can give them a boost, says Melissa Fleming, chief spokesperson for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. On Saturday, June 9, I had the honor of co-hosting the first-ever TEDx event held at a refugee camp -- it took place at Kenya’s Kakuma Cam...

Buying gifts? It is HARD. Especially when so many gift guides offer up ideas for what to get your dad, co-worker or sister without taking into account what actually interests those specific people in your life. A better way to locate the perfect gift? Think about what captures a person’s curiosity, and then seek ideas from people in that field. ...

After his mainstage talk on the opening night of TED, psychologist Steven Pinker sat down with Chris Anderson to dive into his new book, Enlightenment Now. The two examined some criticisms of the book and the thesis behind it, dug into the data, and then threw the floor open for questions, in a session that offered the luxury of time to real...

This week, East African singer Somi releases her first major-label album, The Lagos Music Salon, in the United States. Already, it is #1 on the iTunes Jazz Chart, #1 on the Amazon Jazz Vocal Chart, and #1 on the Amazon Pop Vocal Chart. The TED Blog caught up with the jazz-soul vocalist and songwriter—who was was born in Illinois to Rwandan and...