TED’s river of ideas is a constant flow -- and sometimes vital topics make their way onto our site far before they head into the mainstream. As part of the 10th birthday of TED Talks, we highlight seven Talks that foresaw big trends when they were only ripples in the pond. Wikipedia: Is it really a thing? At TEDGlobal 2005, Jimmy Wales ...

The Great Thanksgiving Listen aims to capture the stories of a generation of elders over one weekend. But really, these great questions from StoryCorps are useful every day. “Imagine if you were able to sit and listen to your great-great-grandparent and get to know them,” says Dave Isay of StoryCorps. That’s the premise behind StoryCorps’ Great...

Researching, celebrating and supporting African American food culture is Michael Twitty’s way to honor and heal those who came before. To chef and blogger Michael Twitty, a plate of stewed okra is much more than a popular soul-food dish -- it’s a form of African American history. For many years, people in New Orleans referred to okra as salade ...

Secret prisons reflect a parallel legal system for prisoners who are denied access to communications, deprived of their due process rights, and hidden from public scrutiny. Investigative journalist and TED Fellow Will Potter explains. Secret prisons are operating in the United States today. Many Americans I speak with don’t believe this could p...

Decades before Twitter and Facebook, the Soviet state was a leader in perceptual manipulation technology. Meet the mighty flying propaganda machine of the 1930s: the Maxim Gorky. One of Russia’s most prestigious cemeteries is set just south of downtown Moscow, adjoining a convent built in the 16th and 17th centuries. It contains the graves of...

In 1936 Jesse Owens broke the world record for the 100-meter dash in a mind-boggling 10.3 seconds. Yet had he raced in the 2013 World Championships, he would have had another 4 meters to go when Usain Bolt won in 9.58 seconds. That tremendous difference in performance is apparent across the sports world -- cycling, gymnastics, the NBA -- so what...

Zimbabwean designer Saki Mafundikwa has a powerful vision for the future of African art. As the founder of the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIWA), Mafundikwa is working to bring African art back to its roots. ZIWA, the first school of graphic design in Zimbabwe, and one of the first schools to emphasize the use of digital technology t...

Paleo-oncologist Katie Hunt has a personal connection to the hunt for cancer's earliest appearance in humans. When archeologist Katie Hunt was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 22, it catalyzed her curiosity about cancer -- and she soon found evidence that this modern killer is a surprisingly ancient disease. Poring over old texts and past arche...

In 2006, TED started putting talks online for free, a milestone in democratizing ideas worth spreading. Since then, the world has seen monumental shifts in history, including the rise and fall of revolutions, the roar of a deadly epidemic, the largest-ever leak of government secrets, an astronomical discovery predicted by Einstein and the el...

David Christian had little idea what was in store when he stepped on the set of The Colbert Report in November 2013. Having lived in Australia for years, Christian wasn’t familiar with the show and its special brand of political satire. And yet, sitting across the table from Stephen Colbert -- a perfectly placed Colbert Nation mug between them -...

As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. A real-world test of basic income. Too often, humanitarian aid donations of food and materials, while well-intentioned, aren’t what the recipients actually need. But what about a different approach: giving people a basic income to spend however they l...

Millions of parents worldwide still fear -- needlessly -- that vaccines cause autism. How did this dangerous false myth become so prevalent? As writer Steve Silberman shows during Pop-Up Magazine’s session at TED2015, it’s just another milestone in the decades-old history of misinformation and misunderstanding about autism. In 1943 child ...

"You're about to participate in the largest collective VR viewing in history," said Chris Milk in his talk on virtual reality at TED2016. "We are all going to watch something at the exact same time, together." A Google Cardboard and pair of Urban Ears headphones sat on every chair in the theater. We assembled the viewer, downloaded a spec...

I'd like you to take a moment to imagine this with me. You're a little girl of five years old. Sitting in front of a mirror, you ask yourself, "Do I exist?" A pretty heavy thought for a child, right? But through various artworks that reflect upon our society, I came to understand how a young Black girl can grow up feeling as if she's not s...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Michael Tilson Thomas is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, founder and artistic director of the New World Symphony and principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Now he's up to round off this session in style, seated at a grand piano that's been wheeled onto the stage just for ...

The stage is set. The lights are on. The audience of more than 600 people who have traveled from all over the world to be inspired is ready. And ready or not, the speakers are thrust onto the stage, one by one. This is the first session of TEDGlobal 2017, themed “a new map,” a phrase that suggests that in these first talks, we will catch ...

As new moon-going efforts ramp up, space explorers must remember to safeguard what humans left there previously -- and also study it before it’s too late. The next several years are shaping up to be busy ones for the moon, with no fewer than 14 landings in the works. That includes the robotic missions soon to be undertaken by five privately fun...

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, says TED Curator Chris Anderson as he opens Session 2, “we used to think that democratically-powered capitalism was supposed to take over the world.” Political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously called it the “end of history.” So now what happens? Five TED speakers come to the stage to talk about the ...

Physicist Brian Green promises he will tell the audience at TED 2014 the whole history of the universe in four minutes. "Forgive me," he says, "if I leave out a detail here or there." He does it with two metaphors. One from the beginning till now, and another from now till the end. The universe today is 13.8 billion years old, and it c...

Spring has been an exciting season for TEDx. In March, the program celebrated its 4th birthday; and now — just two months later — we’re excited to announce that the TEDx YouTube channel has reached its 100 millionth video view. In 2009, the TEDx program was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading,” to empower indivi...

June 28, 2019, marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, when LGBTQ people and allies fought back in a six-night riot against a police raid on The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. Stonewall was not the first time that LGBTQ people took a stand against oppression or police harassment, but it was a major turning point in ...

How one dancer is bringing tap dance back. Think about tap dance and what comes to mind? Perhaps the virtuosity, precision and glamour of Hollywood film stars like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers ... or maybe the fluid ease of dance-world icons such as Buster Brown or Jimmy Slyde? More than likely, you’d think of old legends from a bygone era. H...

Here, some staff picks of smart, funny, bizarre and cool stuff on the interwebs this week: In case you haven't seen it yet, To This Day is a beautiful collaborative project that combines spoken word poetry and a flurry of eclectic animations to raise awareness about bullying. Watch seven TED Talks on the wonder of 3D printing. The f...

Frederic Kaplan has found an unconventional way to build a time machine. Rather than making a metal object (or, uh, a police call box) that whisks you through time and space, he wondered: Could a time machine be built out of information? In today’s TED Talk, filmed at TEDxCaFoscariU, Kaplan previews the Venice Time Machine, a collaboratio...

As the Fellows program turns five, we catch up with Iranian filmmaker Taghi Amirani – a member of the Fellows inaugural class and the first recipient of the TED Fellows Hero award – to get the scoop on the premiere of Amirani Media’s latest film, We Are Many (see the trailer, above) – a documentary on the February 15, 2003, global demonstration...

By Kate Torgovnick and Thu-Huong Ha TEDYouth is like a typical TED Conference -- with its hair let down. The talks are shorter, less formal and, well, a whole lot of fun. This year's conference was held in New Orleans and was themed around the concept, "The Spark." Here's a look at what happened in the first session, including thoughts on wha...

In journalist Mikhail Zygar’s innovative series, you can watch the events of that momentous year come to vibrant life on your phone in weekly episodes. Imagine your phone screen getting hijacked by someone else’s -- and it's the phone belonging to astronaut Neil Armstrong. All of a sudden, you start receiving urgent texts from president Lyndon ...

TED2017 begins with a manifesto: "We will not sleepwalk into a future of dread. Instead we will pursue: courage, deep human connection, imagination, thrilling possibility, understanding. The Future You is yet to be written. Let's write it together." In a comprehensive opening session -- hosted by TED's Head Curator, Chris Anderson, and st...

It’s Halloween — and the only thing scarier than Ebola this week is Ebola paranoia. Should you panic in bowling alleys? How justified is your fear of hospitals? Are mandatory quarantines even legal in the U.S., anyway? 3 ideas behind the news. Source: "Thomas Eric Duncan and Craig Spencer: Race, nationality and rhetoric of Ebola patients," Slat...

Not every dream is good. Sometimes dreams terrify you to your core, and you wake up in a cold sweat confused to find yourself safe in bed. In Session 8, we turn our attention to “Nightmare?,” from gun violence to the state of the climate. But it’s not all doom and gloom — the speakers in this session offer real ways forward. Recaps of the...