TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built specially for you in a thoughtful sequence to illuminate ideas in context. This weekend, two new playlists are available: Animals that amaze and The end of oil? Animals that amaze At TED there's a certain species of speaker who is absolutely devoted to all kinds of weird beasts...

  Two years ago, a chance discussion with a group of Gulf of Mexico fishermen changed the course of Cesar Harada’s life. The TED Senior Fellow had landed his dream job at MIT in Boston, but after hearing first-hand accounts of the conditions in the Gulf following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill of 2010, Harada tendered his resignation and...

Artist Fabian Oefner works with everyday materials to create astonishing, unrecognizable images. Here's a look at how he does it. Where most people would likely see an unassuming puddle on the side of the road, Fabian Oefner (TED Talk: Psychedelic science) sees an artistic opportunity. In his new photographic series, Oil Spill, he focuses on th...

First announced at TEDxOilSpill last spring, during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge was a $1.4 million competition to goose development of new technology to clean oil off the surface of seawater. This week, the X Foundation announced a winner and runner-up. As reported in Nation...

Being announced right now in Washington, DC: A brand-new X Challenge to combat oil spills. The Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge is a $1.4 million prize to promote development of new technologies and techniques to capture spilled oil. As Peter Diamandis said at the announcement: "We are not rewarding someone for existing technology. We w...

Data is a valuable, powerful commodity -- but unlike oil, it is unlimited in quantity and in its capacity for harm, says technology thinker James Bridle. The phrase “data is the new oil” was apparently coined in 2006 by Clive Humby, the British mathematician and architect of the Tesco Clubcard, a supermarket reward program. Since then, it has b...

The Keystone XL pipeline, which has been proposed to transport oil the 1700 miles from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast, is something of a Rorschach test in the United States. Advocates of the pipeline believe that it’s the holy-grail project that will create jobs for Americans and ensure the country’s oil independence. Opponents of the pipeline w...

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would stretch 1,700 miles from Western Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas. And it has become a touchstone for the bitter fight over America's energy future. Opponents say the pipeline -- designed to bring oil from Canadian tar sands down through the United States -- would further bind future generations to outdat...

Scientist Sylvia Earle (TED Talk: My wish: Protect our oceans) has spent the past five decades exploring the seas. During that time, she's witnessed a steep decline in ocean wildlife numbers -- and a sharp incline in the number of ocean deadzones and oil drilling sites. An original documentary about Earle's life and work premieres today on Netfl...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson "We've run into a giant fracking problem," says TED curator Chris Anderson by way of introducing the next speaker, energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, who comes to the stage to talk about methods to solve the energy crisis facing the United States. Or as he puts it, his "alternative to alternative energy" and what...

Chances are, you probably haven’t heard of Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. But this rule, adopted on Monday by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), brings with it the potential for big global change. Section 1504 requires that all oil, gas and mining companies listed in the US dis...

Why learn about methane? Because it could be our chance to make a real dent in global warming, says environmentalist Fred Krupp. Methane, which is created when four hydrogen atoms bond to one atom of carbon, is a molecule that’s lighter than air. It's amazingly useful -- it’s the primary component of natural gas, which generates roughly 22 perc...

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...

Matt Kenyon’s art doesn’t just cast a sardonic eye on the systems around us, it also infiltrates and subverts them. He walks us through some of his projects. Wickedly funny and infused with technology, the work of Matt Kenyon makes you stop, makes you think. His culture-jamming, interactive works enlighten, startle and often make shocking use o...

We’re just a week into 2013, and the year seems filled with possibility. The turn of the New Year is generally an occasion to look back and reflect on the year that's passed -- the victories and defeats, the lives lost and the experiences found. But after we look back, we inevitably turn forward. We make resolutions and predictions for the y...

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...

Yesterday, Kate Stone charmed the assembled TED audience with her tales of failing exams, living on a sheep farm in Australia, and developing genuinely interactive paper. Today, she shared three simple skills she's learned along the way--and described why she thinks these are actually critical life skills. 1. Know how to dig a hole. Stone ...

When we talk about corruption, certain types of individuals come to mind, says Charmian Gooch, co-founder of watchdog NGO Global Witness. She gives some familiar examples of the type. There's the (former) Soviet megalomaniac -- such as Saparmurat Niyazov, the all-powerful leader of Turkmenistan, whose indulgences included erecting a 40-foot-...

Charmian Gooch, co-founder of anti-corruption NGO Global Witness, tracks money to expose deep-rooted global corruption. In yesterday's talk, Gooch demonstrates that dirty money goes all the way to the top, and more sinister is that these cases of corruption are well-known to leaders and corporate elites. Nobody -- banks, big oil, government ...

Planet Earth doesn’t exactly have a birthday. But every year on April 22, we celebrate Earth Day -- the anniversary of the moment the environmental movement went mass. According to EarthDay.org, Earth Day was founded in 1970 by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, who called for a “national teach-in on the environment” after witnessing the terrible e...

Here, we take a closer look at the incredible place we call home, with a collection of speakers who celebrate the Earth's natural beauty as it is now -- or who are proposing (sometimes controversial) ways to keep it that way. In this session: Karen Bass has traveled the world to explore and capture footage from every environment across the...

Edward Burtynsky finds the eerie beauty in the man-made landscapes that dot our Earth's surface. As a photographer who focuses on the relationship between humans and nature, he travels to the hidden corners of the Earth to document the way people are ravaging our planet. Below, 13 of his haunting images of altered nature. All images shown courte...

Transparency isn’t just a nice-to-do for businesses. It’s essential, says Charmian Gooch, the anti-corruption crusader who accepted the TED Prize tonight. On the TED2014 stage, Gooch revealed her wish for the world. “My wish is for us to know who owns and controls companies, so that they can no longer be used anonymously against the public g...

As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. A 4.37-lightyear starshot. Humanity has sent people to the moon and rovers to Mars. It might be about time we embark on interstellar travel. Russian philanthropist Yuri Milner, along with board member Stephen Hawking, unveiled a plan on Tuesday to sen...

Yesterday, TED Fellow William Kamkwamba debuted an illustrated children’s version of his memoir The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, co-written with Bryan Mealer and illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon. Since its publication in 2009, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind has been printed in 17 editions internationally. For this Young Readers edition, for ages 6 ...

Earlier this year, TED headed out on a worldwide Talent Search through 14 cities on six continents — Amsterdam, Bangalore, Doha, Johannesburg, London, Nairobi, New York, São Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo, Tunis and Vancouver -- to bring you fresh perspectives for TED2013. Along the way, we couldn’t help but notice how many of the 293...

The TED community has been very busy over the past few weeks. Below, some newsy highlights. Powerful thoughts on slavery’s legacy. Last week, Bryan Stevenson spoke with The Marshall Project about the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. In a Q&A, Stevenson shared his thoughts on the deeply en...

Below, we’ve highlighted a few of our favorite news stories from the TED community. Congratulations to Nobel Peace Prize nominee José Andrés! For his work in food and hunger humanitarianism, acclaimed chef José Andrés has been nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico, Andrés...

Artist Mundano traveled California with a giant bright-green cactus to convey the urgency of vanishing water. The drought in California is the worst in 1,200 years. Brazilian artist Mundano -- known for calling attention to the water crisis in his hometown of São Paulo -- recently toured the state and installed his eye-catching artworks in lake...

Game designer Jane McGonigal firmly believes that video games are not just about mashing buttons and getting to the next level. In fact, during her talk at TEDGlobal 2012, McGonigal gave several surprising statistics: that online gaming can be more effective than pharmaceuticals in treating clinical depression and that just 30 minutes a day ...