Like many parents, technology researcher Jordan Shapiro knew little about video games -- and what he knew, he didn't like. But that's what his kids wanted to play. Through exploration and experimentation, he found they can be used to teach valuable lessons and build togetherness. On afternoons when I have custody of my 11- and 13-year-old boys,...

The penultimate session of TEDSummit 2019 had a bit of everything -- new thoughts on aging, loneliness and happiness as well as breakthrough science, music and even a bit of comedy. The event: TEDSummit 2019, Session 5: Stages of Life, hosted by Kelly Stoetzel and Alex Moura When and where: Wednesday, July 24, 2019, 5pm BST, at the Edi...

TED Live doesn’t require finding a good seat in the auditorium. With a TED Live membership, you can watch TED2013 and TEDGlobal 2013 from the comfort of your home, share it with your classmates or screen it with your co-workers in the office. In other words, there is no one way to watch. You can grab some friends and gather around a lap...

They say that change is hard, but this is one that will be easy to roll with. TED.com has a new, improved video player, built in large part thanks to your user requests. What should you expect? For starters, higher quality video, easier-to-read (and find) subtitles, and a toolbar that makes sharing, rating and favoriting talks easy. Oh, a...

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...

TED iPhone developer Matt Drance at TED2011. Photo: Robert Leslie At the launch of the TED iPhone app, the TED Blog sat down with project leader Thaniya Keereepart and engineer Matt Drance to talk about working together, building new features and what's coming next from our mobile team. Thaniya Keereepart: I work for TED, I do product ...

Crazy Rich Asians, a new Hollywood film that is an adaptation of the best-selling book by Kevin Kwan, topped the box office over the weekend, proving the "power of diversity (again)." The romantic comedy is a major motion picture with big studio backing and a reported budget of $30 million. For Hollywood it also presents something unique:...

At TEDGlobal2012, Ramesh Raskar demonstrated his remarkable femtosecond camera, which can image a light-pulse as it travels through an object, or potentially see around corners. But Raskar's projects go far beyond even that. After the talk, in a brief Q&A with host Bruno Giussani (above) he introduced NETRA, a simple attachment for a smar...

Over the past 10 years, TED Talks videos have tracked our ever-tighter relationship with technology -- including the tools we use to access it, our interfaces ... from keyboards and mice to magic wands and sensory vests. For our guide to this evolving field, we start with MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte’s talk from the very first TED, ...

Amy Robinson maxed out her bank account to attend TEDGlobal 2010. While there, she heard Sebastian Seung of MIT give the talk “I am my connectome” and knew she had to talk to him. Two years later, Robinson—the organizer of TEDxHuntsville—saw on Twitter that Seung was launching something new: EyeWire, a game allowing citizen scientists aro...

“Throughout the history of computers, we’ve been striving to shorten the gap between us and digital information, the gap between our physical world and the world in the screen,” interface designer Jinha Lee says in today’s talk. Lee points out that the gap has become shorter and shorter—it’s now “less than a millimeter, the thickness of a...

By creating tech that lets dolphins play computer games and request belly rubs, we can understand their intelligence and perhaps even get a preview of life on other planets, says marine mammal researcher Diana Reiss. In some ways, dolphins and humans aren’t so different. We’re both intelligent, social animals, and we both rely on complex vocal ...

"The universe is teeming with planets," and Jeremy Kasdin, an astronomer at Princeton University, wants to see them. Not in the way they've been detected so far, but directly. He wants to build a space telescope that will image a planet around another star and tell if it harbors life. There is probably one per star in the galaxy, and maybe 1...

  Virtual reality is an emerging medium for artists and educators. Painting is an ancient art form; some cave paintings were made up to 40,000 years ago. In TED-Ed’s first 360° animated video, you can examine the intersection of these two ideas by exploring an ancient cave and its surroundings as educator Iseult Gillespie shares a brief h...

1905 was a big year for Albert Einstein. He was 26 years old and working in the Swiss Patent Office when, in the span of seven months, he published four papers that would eventually be hugely influential. In these papers, he proposed that light could be a particle, proved that atoms existed, laid out his theory of special relativity and offer...

By Sarah Schoengold Sugata Mitra has opened the doors of the world’s first School in the Cloud. Located inside George Stephenson High School in Killingworth, England, this one-room learning lab is a space where students can embark on their own learning adventures, exploring whatever questions most intrigue them. Students even designed ...

Making this TED-Ed video required (a) a lot of knitting and (b) a ton of boxes of Nerds. When it came time to animate the lesson “How do cancer cells behave differently from healthy ones?” from educator George Zaidan, our TED-Ed animators had a crazy idea for how to make cell division come alive -- using seeds and beans to animate what hea...

The TED2011 program guide -- containing short speaker bios and sharp portraits by Siegfried Woldhek, plus a magazine of info about TED projects -- is available in a couple of electronic forms this year, for the first time at a Long Beach TED. First to drop: the TED2011 iPad app. Using some new software, Adobe helped us port the program ...

We're thrilled to announce opening of registration for TED2012: Full Spectrum. Under this theme, we are assembling our most diverse group of speakers ever, with just this in common: they have something remarkable to share, and they are able to share it in a remarkable way. We're inviting them to develop "full spectrum" presentations: blizzar...

“I feel like a cyborg,” Neil Harbisson declares in a fascinating talk from TEDGlobal 2012. Born color-blind, Harbisson lived in a “grayscale world,” he says -- until 2003, when he began working with computer scientist Adam Montandon on an electronic eye that renders color as sound. Always attached to him, the appliance allows Harbisson to...

Four years ago, TED Senior Fellow Ayah Bdeir founded littleBits “so everyone could unleash their inner inventor — without having to be an engineer.” Since then, many people have used littleBits' electronic building blocks to do just that — and two of them happened to speak at TEDWomen 2015. Want to find out how how guitarist Kaki King cre...

The TED iPad project was inspired by a number of requests coming in from TED fans wishing to see TEDTalks on mobile devices. In the past, the development community has graciously volunteered building various applications on both iPhone and Android platforms. When the iPad came out, we saw an opportunity to try our hand with our first foray i...

How long have you been staring at a screen? Chances are this is not the beginning of your day on your mobile device or computer -- and it’s very unlikely to be the end of it. You reading this blog post is only a moment in your digital day, nestled among Facebook updates, Twitter posts, Tumblr reblogs, YouTube videos and, of course, more arti...

Jean-Baptiste Michel has sold a small sculpture to the Whitney Museum of American Art. A major museum acquiring a piece—that’s a big moment for any artist. But this sculpture is the very first piece of art Michel ever created. Michel is the data researcher who showed what you can learn using Google’s Ngram Viewer at TEDxBoston in 2011, an...

“Spontaneity is the most delicious part,” says Brian Henson in a master class at TED2014, hosted by Syfy. “There’s something about letting a moment happen. Your best-laid plans cannot exceed what happens spontaneously.” Henson, a master puppeteer and the chair of The Jim Henson Company, says that a love of spontaneity deeply infused his f...

In the opening of Miwa Matreyek’s TED performance, a pair of shadowy hands wave over a plate, and an apple halves itself. From there, goldfish swirl around the plate, before morphing into birds and flying away. For the first minute, you think you are watching video -- an intricate blend of real-life footage and animation. But soon you realize th...

J.J. Abrams’ talk has perhaps the best title of all time: “The mystery box.” In it, the Star Trek director and Lost co-creator reveals how, years ago, he purchased a box at a magic shop that promised $50 of magic for $15. Only, he has never had the heart to open it because “it represents infinite potential.” In his fast-paced talk, Abrams re...

Edward Snowden appeared on the TED stage earlier today via a telepresence robot, which he was able to control remotely. So after giving the talk, "Here's how we take back the internet" -- which is now live on TED.com now (after our production team edited it in record time) -- Snowden didn't sign off. He decided to have a little fun and roam ...

Have 10 minutes to spare? Want to spend them on something inspiring? How about something jaw-dropping? Our new "Surprise Me" feature delivers. Just tell us how much time you have (15 minutes? 40?) and what you're in the mood to watch (Something funny? Fascinating? Persuasive?) and we'll generate a custom playlist that matches the moment. ...

Harry Marks' career happened at the intersection of typography, technology and television. His vision has influenced the look of modern video -- picture those fluidly moving, 3D letters that fly over the TV screen to introduce a news broadcast or pop a sports score onto the screen. His influence on this field is absolutely foundational; it's t...