Many young people turn to pornography for information and advice. With this reality comes an opportunity: We can utilize it to start important conversations with them about sex and relationships, says public health researcher Emily Rothman. With pornography and teenagers, conventional wisdom suggests the two be kept as far apart as possible. Bu...

After more than 13 years of research convinced him that children have the ability to learn almost anything on their own, 2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra aspires to shape the future of learning by building a School in the Cloud, helping kids “tap into their innate sense of wonder.” In the spirit of Mitra’s invitation to the world to “ask ki...

Each week, we collect sharp critique, thought-provoking questions or interesting insights in response to TED Talks. This week's haul includes thoughts on the late Rita Pierson's call to educational arms, a response to Peter Saul's thoughtful talk about dying, and personal feedback to Stella Young's argument that just because she's in a wheelchai...

In all of its formats, in all the ways we listen and watch, the media is extremely powerful in how it represents -- or underrepresents or misrepresents -- women. Unless we're prepared to change the way women are portrayed in the stories we tell, we're not prepared for real change. In Session 4 of TEDWomen 2016 at the Yerba Buena Center fo...

This week in the U.S., almost every flickering device will try to spoon-feed you some distressing news footage — and then help you wash it down with a double-liter of fizzy partisan punditry. What's the impact on your health and mindset? 3 ideas behind the week’s headlines. Source: “What to do when the news gets you down,” Wisconsin Public Ra...

Is the world getting worse every day in every way, as some news media would have you believe? No. In fact, the most reliable data shows that in meaningful ways -- such as child mortality rate, literacy rate, human lifespan -- the world is actually, slowly and measurably, getting better. Hans Rosling dedicated the latter part of his distin...

As we look ahead to a world with less work, or even no work, we can take control -- by using our hours with greater meaning and purpose, says business thinker Tim Leberecht. Many of us divide our days into 8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure and 8 hours of sleep. But what will happen when a large number of jobs -- some studies say as much as 50...

Lars Jan, a TED Fellow, creates multimedia performances that probe the ubiquity of screens and propaganda in our culture. Today, his show ABACUS—billed as "a multimedia talking tour of our hyper-networked world to come"—opens at BAM's Fisher Fishman Space in Brooklyn, New York. It's a show delivered by his invented persona, Paul Abacus, abou...

By Courtney E. Martin and John Cary Editor's note: designer John Cary and journalist Courtney E. Martin are the curatorial brains behind the show, “Public Interest Design: Places, Products, & Processes,” which opened at the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco last October. The entire exhibit has been reinstalled at TED in Long Beach, an...

It’s called second-skilling: developing your skills for a new job while you’re still working. The Asian city-state is investing in its citizens so they can stay flexible and employed, says online learning advocate Barbara Oakley. In 1965, unemployment in Singapore was in the double digits. Workforce literacy was 57 percent. Singapore could have...

In this contested territory, women must endure a lengthy, frustrating process when they pursue a university education abroad. Here are four of their stories. “For me, two basic human rights are the right to education and the freedom of movement,” says Kuwaiti-raised Palestinian photojournalist Laura Boushnak (TED Talk: For these women, reading ...

On March 12, TED welcomed its latest class to the TED Residency program, an in-house incubator for breakthrough ideas. These 19 Residents will spend 14 weeks in TED’s New York headquarters working and thinking together; the class includes exceptional people from all over the map, including Brazil, the Netherlands and Korea. The new Reside...

The mad race to hook up a billion of India's people to the internet sounds daunting -- but it may well make it better for everyone. Politicians often talk about big plans. But rarely do they deliver on even a fraction of plans as huge and ambitious as Digital India, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July 2015. The nine-pillared progra...

After hearing an idea that struck them at their core, these people were no longer satisfied to sit on the sidelines -- so they jumped in. Hearing an inspiring idea is like experiencing a great book or movie; it stays with you. For most people who watch a TED Talk, this occurs subtly, with the concept going into our minds where it serves as a ki...

Women are slowly moving towards parity in the boardroom, but not in the bedroom. Why are straight women having less satisfying sex than men? And what can we do about it? The world is supposed to be improving for women. Incrementally, work is being done to combat sexual harassment, improve maternity-leave, and close the wage gap. But what abo...

Probably not. But if we want a future where more of those jobs are decent and well-paying, we -- and our institutions -- need to rise to its challenge, says economist David Autor. Here's a startling fact: in the 45 years since the introduction of the automated teller machine, those vending machines that dispense cash, the number of human bank t...

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. ...

“This is a little different than the mainstage at TED, in a sense that this is a little more relaxed,” says our host, the poet and TED speaker Clint Smith. “These are speakers who have not been selected specifically for the mainstage, but they’re just as talented, just as brilliant, and just as important.” A spectrum of ideas, stories, pe...

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...

Four and a half years after her popular TED Talk, the social psychologist updates the research on posture and hormones, responds to critics and discusses her current work. At the TEDGlobal 2012 conference, social psychologist Amy Cuddy gave the talk "Your body language shapes who you are," in which she detailed the effects of “power posing,” ba...

Much of the recent discussion about inequality has focused on the very rich (the 0.01%) or the very poor (the bottom billion or so). But what about those people who are somewhere in the middle? Through the TED-Ed network, we asked 17 public school teachers working in locations from Kildare to Kathmandu, Johannesburg to Oslo, to tell us wha...