December 5, 2013, was one of the most memorable days at TEDWomen — and everywhere else in the world, too. The world lost one of its great leaders, Nelson Mandela, and I will never forget the way we heard the news at the TEDWomen gathering in San Francisco. A young South African, Boyd Varty, was scheduled to give his TED Talk that day, and as ...

Interesting, informative, bizarre. Here's a round-up of interwebs reading from the past few weeks: Mushrooms are not at the top of my favorite foods list but, above, see why they are now at the top of my favorite things to watch a timelapse video of.  Shot by cinematographer Louie Schwartzberg (watch his TED Talks) and starring mushroom en...

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 ...

To make the greatest impact at our jobs -- and also feel the greatest satisfaction -- we need to tap into work’s deeper meaning, says Leah Weiss, a compassion expert and researcher. For humans, purpose can be a matter of life and death. As Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Life is never made unbearable by circ...

Researchers have identified many things -- like unpredictable laughter, pale skin, unkempt hair -- that people tend to find unsettling in others. But they’ve also realized this: We humans are pretty poor judges of who we should trust, says psychologist Julia Shaw. We sometimes use terms that ascribe negative traits to people we don’t know. Tha...

Speed Meeting at TED2012 -- 3 minutes to share who you are. Photo: Robert Leslie This thoughtful blog post from Hadiyah at Engineers Don't Blog contains four great takeaways for conference-goers: "TED2012 and why conferences will never be the same" From the post: 2. Attend a conference with a purpose. I previously despised networ...

This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from people in the TED community; browse through all the posts here. The invention of the organization -- getting different humans together to collaborate on a project -- is probably the greatest invention in the history of mankind. ...

TED Curator Chris Anderson opened this morning's first session, Progress Enigma, with a provocative question: What is the future of work? He asked the audience: According to your worldview, is the growth of innovation accelerating? Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of the audience answered yes. But is the answer so simple? Economis...

TED2013 kicks off in just 11 days. And, in the very first session, Robert J. Gordon and Erik Brynjolfsson will ascend the stage for a debate on the future of work. While Gordon will focus on how our current ecosystem of innovation is too focused on personal gadgetry, and thus isn’t setting us up to solve the big problems of the future, Brynjolfs...

So your big upcoming work thing has been cancelled. At least you’re not alone. Gatherings of all kinds, from conferences to offsites to global meetings, have been canceled because of the pandemic. But while we may be entering a recession of real-world gatherings, we have the power to stave off an accompanying boom in loneliness. Many of...

TED's own Lisa Bu takes the TED2013 stage now to tell a very personal tale of a journey through literature that began, well, with a shattered dream. Growing up in Hunan, China, in the 1970s, Bu's parents (yes, she had a Tiger Mother) believed there was only one sure way to happiness: a safe and well-paid job; no matter whether she actually l...

Three American scientists have just been awarded the Nobel Prize for their space-time breakthrough, and LIGO team astrophysicist Gabriela González tells us about all the researchers, work and technology that contributed to it. A little over 100 years ago, in 1915, Einstein published his theory of general relativity, which, despite its name, is ...

Emerging research suggests that retirement could lead to a decline in your cognitive function, says gerontologist Ross Andel. Anyone who's retired or thinking about retirement should read this to learn more. Ah, retirement. It’s the never-ending weekend, that well-deserved oasis of freedom and rest we reach after decades of hard work. As long a...

We each want to live a life of purpose, but where to start? In this luminous, wide-ranging talk, Jacqueline Novogratz introduces us to people she's met in her work in "patient capital" -- people who have immersed themselves in a cause, a community, a passion for justice. These human stories carry powerful moments of inspiration. (Recorded at TED...

“We cannot bear a pointless torment.” As is often the case with writer Andrew Solomon, you want to write down everything he says and think every sentence over for an hour, day, week. When Solomon delivers this line in his talk on forging meaning in our lives, he’s referring to a woman he interviewed for his book Far from the Tree, who experience...

For the ninth session of TED2017, hosted by TED's Editorial Director Helen Walters and Curation Director Kelly Stoetzel, we look into ourselves with seven speakers who take on subjects ranging from parenting to social interaction and heartbreak, revealing nuggets of wisdom that just might help you lead a better, more fulfilled life. The l...

Nancy Pelosi has represented San Francisco’s 12th district for 29 years, is currently the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, and made history by becoming the first woman Speaker of the House. But before all that happened, she never felt that she was on a course for public office. When the opportunity to run came along, she wa...

Some fresh advice on identifying and searching for your own community, from business innovator Nilofer Merchant. In 1990, when students at the University of Pennsylvania were asked if they would consider a career in Philadelphia -- where the school is located -- only 35 percent of them said yes. By 2010, that number was 60 percent. Some of t...

The technology advances of the last 30 years were great. But they're just the start. What's most exciting is still to come, says Nilofer Merchant. In the next 30 years, the full Star Trek story will actually come true. Already, we’ve seen many of the show’s far-fetched ideas come to fruition. Everyone now carries a communicator, aka the sm...

Welcome to "Dear Guy," TED's advice column from psychologist Guy Winch. Every month, he answers readers' questions about life, love, work and what matters most. Please send them to dearguy@ted.com; to read his previous columns, go here. Dear Guy, I'm typically not a very emotional person, but since my Labrador died almost two months ago, I s...

"Science, we generally are told, is a very well-ordered mechanism for understanding the world, for gaining facts, for gaining data," biologist Stuart Firestein says in today's TED talk. "I'd like to tell you that's not the case." Instead, Firestein proposes that science is really about ignorance -- about seeking answers rather than collec...

Today, TED Radio Hour asks two questions many of us are scared to pose: will human beings have a purpose as robots become more adept at performing tasks and projecting emotions? And as technology gets more advanced, how does interaction between human beings change? In this episode -- the third in season two -- Sherry Turkle explores whether t...

Watch this talk on TED.com Onstage at TED, Nancy Kanwisher starts by telling us one of the most surprising results from recent neuroscience discoveries: The brain is not a general-purpose processor, but a collection of specialized components, "collectively building up who we are as human beings and thinkers." Imagine, she says, walking...

OK, this post won’t tell you how to magically make each day 38 hours long (we’re still working on that). But by assessing our tasks in terms of their significance, we can free up more time tomorrow, says leadership coach Rory Vaden. This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice fr...

TED has unveiled its ambitious speaker lineup for the April conference, themed "Bigger than us." Why? As Head of TED Chris Anderson puts it: "The theme 'Bigger than us' can mean so many things. AI. The arc of history. Ideas and things at a giant scale. Cosmology. Grand ambition. An antidote to narcissism. Moral purpose...." Browse the lineup ...

Evolution. The concept surrounds us -- it's a standard part of science class, it's routinely thrown out as explaining our actions in relationships, business and behavior -- and yet, so many people hold subtle misunderstandings of what Darwin’s theory actually means. In this animated TED-Ed lesson, educator Alex Gendler gives a primer on th...

Phil Hansen has tattooed bananas, drawn a portrait on stacked Starbucks cups and created a Jimi Hendrix portrait out of matches, which he then burned. In other words, he isn’t the kind of artist who feels bound to paint on canvas. So how did Hansen happen upon such fascinating methods? By embracing a major limitation -- a hand tremor that mad...

On Nov. 18, TEDsters gathered at the UN to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the launch of the Charter for Compassion -- Karen Armstrong's 2008 TED Prize Wish. The event, TEDPrize@UN featured talks on compassion by a number of fascinating speakers. Watch the archive of the TEDPrize@UN webcast >> Photos from the event: Kare...

Women the world over are no longer accepting the status quo. They're showing up and pushing boundaries. Whatever their focus and talent -- business, technology, art, science, politics -- pioneers and their allies are joining forces in an explosion of discovery and ingenuity to drive real, meaningful change. At TEDWomen 2018 -- three days ...

Photos: James Duncan Davidson Colin Robertson is a futurist and is not someone most people have heard of. And as he began his presentation, the crowd was treated to a TED speaker's worst nightmare: The slides crashed and the Mac multi-colored pizza-wheel of death appeared. Then an error message appeared on screen. Then another, and anothe...