TEDxSanaa is the first TEDx event in Yemen -- with the theme of "inspiring hope," it will take place on December 31st, the final day of 2012. We are blown away by this beautiful image that TEDx organizer Ahmed Mohammed Sayaghi posted to his Instagram account yesterday along with the caption, "#tedxsanna on the #mountain." More details to com...

Like most employers, Chieh Huang isn't interested in hiring people who are overly rigid or who know it all. So he’s created a handful of questions to help identify them. When new employees don’t work out, the reason is rarely incompetence. That’s according to Chieh Huang, the cofounder and CEO of Boxed. Instead, he says, it’s usually their pers...

The TED-Ed Lesson “The case of the missing fractals” isn’t just an introduction to the intricate and beautiful world of fractal geometry; it’s also a fully-realized film noir short complete with plot, drama and a smattering of ridiculous puns. This cinematic creation is the product of a TED-Ed dream team, with writing by veteran TED-Ed Educat...

Turn it into a game, says technologist Esra’a Al Shafei. Thanks to features like a point system and a leaderboard, her small site for LGBTQ people in the Arab world is not only fun to use -- it’s free from harassers. Many LGBTQ people in the Middle East live under a cloud of stress and fear -- depending on where they live, they may face social ...

The TED community has been very busy over the past few weeks. Below, some newsy highlights. An app for safer email.  On March 17, Andy Yen’s company ProtonMail publicly released their mobile app for making secure email accessible, after almost two years of private beta testing. The app is available for iOS and Android. ProtonMail outlined...

When you pop a pill, do you know how it works? Most modern drugs target specific molecules, interacting with disease at the molecular level. But while we know the molecular causes of roughly 4,000 diseases, a very slim 6 percent of those diseases have a safe and effective drug to treat them. Why? Because of the incredible difficulty and cost o...

As a venture capitalist, I have a ringside seat to innovation. It is an amazing job; every day I learn about some new technology that is compelling enough that an otherwise rational human being has set aside his or her life to pursue it. It is hard not to get excited about what the future has to offer. But when Chris Anderson asked if I w...

Calling all self-proclaimed tech nerds! TED has long been known for demos that set everyone in the theatre a-buzz. Here's a look back at some memorable tech demos from TED and TEDGlobals past, to get you excited for those coming at TED2015. Hugh Herr: The new bionics that let us run, climb and dance On stage at: TED2014 Hugh Herr's ...

In the wilds of planet Earth, there exists a species so creative that it not only uses tools but is constantly rewriting the rules of what a tool can be, so cooperative that they build wildly complex systems to support each other and so consternating that its inconsistent behavior would make even the most seasoned of biologists screamed. That sp...

TED Fellow Sarah Parcak is a “space archaeologist” who uses infrared technology coupled with satellite imagery to discover previously hidden ancient structures and cities. In this exciting talk from TED2012, she shares how she helped unearth an unknown Ancient Egyptian city through satellite imaging. Now, Parcak is turning her attention t...

We are thrilled to announce the new class of Fellows for TED2015. These 21 game-changing thinkers represent 15 countries—including, for the first time in our program, Vietnam, Romania and Tunisia. They work across disciplines, at the forefront of their fields. They include a South African physicist using lasers to target HIV and cancer; a Germ...

  Here's a deep dive into a provocative topic: drones. For all the rhetoric, you might think think that this is a zero sum game: Drones will either destroy the world, or they'll save it. The truth, of course, is that, well, they're set to do both. Sophisticated developments see extraordinary advances on the part of the military, while...

Some people say that creating true innovation is like capturing lightning in a bottle. Not so, says BCG managing director Martin Reeves. It’s actually a process that can be considered, managed and adapted. Picture this: Three children are given a LEGO set with all the pieces to build a fire department. All of them want to build as many cool new...

TED begins its holiday break today. Please enjoy this playlist from guest blogger Ben Lillie, of Storycollider, and add your own suggestions in comments below. The single most powerful way to connect with another person is to tell them a personal story, or to listen to them tell one. We do it all the time: while eating with friends, when int...

In a democracy, the power resides with the people. Here’s actionable advice on how you can get your share, from civics educator Eric Liu. Power is something we are often uncomfortable naming and talking about explicitly. In our everyday talk, power has a negative moral vibe: "power-mad", "power-hungry", "power trip". But power is no more inhere...

This summer, the country that perfected soccer proved it’s just as formidable a foe off the pitch as it is on. On the first day of the 2014 World Cup, 29-year-old Juliano Pinto, paralyzed from his chest to his toes, did the seemingly impossible: He gave the opening kick just by thinking. Eighteen months earlier, Brazilian neuroscientist M...

The race toward the Smart House of the future is barreling along, from Jibo the creepy home sidekick and Pepper the punny robot to near-military-grade vacuums. Yet between us and robotic domestic bliss, there remain some deceptively simple problems that take a large amount of computing. Friction is very hard to account for. To get a robot to...

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...

Via the TED Fellows blog: The TED Fellows Team is ecstatic to announce the remarkable individuals that comprise the 2011 TEDGlobal Fellowship class! This group of extraordinary people will join us at TEDGlobal 2011 in Edinburgh, UK. Among them you'll find: an stellar astronomer; a Jordanian comic creator and social media entrepreneur; an artist...

First, watch this wonderful new promo for TED’s mobile app -- a wander through five countries and communities, linked by a love for great ideas. TED's filmmakers asked the help of five TEDx organizers to make a video highlighting TED’s mobile app, the result became something much more: visual evidence that ideas bring people together. ...

No stranger to the TED stage, Raghava KK returns with exciting updates on his work. Raghava is experimenting with EEG headsets that use brain waves to bring new, dynamic perspectives into his work. His upcoming works include: Mona Lisa 2.0, whose face changes based on Raghava's mood; a depiction of Gandhi that changes based on whether yo...

Reading TED Books just became even easier. All current titles are now available on Barnes and Noble's e-reader, the Nook. Future titles will be, too. TED Books are readable on Amazon's Kindle as well as any device that uses the Kindle app (Mac, Windows, Android and Blackberry, among them).  

What makes us happy? It’s one of the most complicated puzzles of human existence -- and one that, so far, 87 speakers have explored in TEDTalks. In today’s talk, Matt Killingsworth (who studied under Dan Gilbert at Harvard) shares a novel approach to the study of happiness -- an app, Track Your Happiness, which allows people to chart their ...

You can -- at a visionary social enterprise called Plastic Bank, which is not only improving people’s lives but keeping junk from going into the ocean. Imagine a store where you could buy what you need using your plastic garbage. Not just food or household items like detergent but valuable goods such as minutes for your cell phone, WiFI, school...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson There are no words to describe Reggie Watts.  His words appear to make sense, particularly on their own: "Fear is all around us. We also have anti-fear. It's hard to measure." Or, "but it is in our best self interest to understand the typography of our lives." It's not just because the phrases he uses make ...

At TED2012, DIY neuroscientist and TED Senior Fellow Greg Gage shocked the TED audience when he cut the leg off a live cockroach onstage to demonstrate his Spiker Box – a device that allows anyone to see and hear spikes in the neural activity of insects. A year later, his company Backyard Brains is coming up with new science education prod...

Allan Savory has spent decades studying the devastating effects of "desertification": healthy land degrading into deserts all around the world and accelerating climate change in the process. On the TED2013 stage, Savory offered a fascinating idea for reclaiming degraded land -- using livestock to mimic the behavior of herds that used to roam ...

In the Huffington Post, Cameron Sinclair reports: Today is a very big day for my 2006 TED Prize. Thanks to this. It's granted. Done. Finito. Complete. "This" is a brand-new iPad app called Open Architecture. It uses the power of Sinclair's Open Architecture Network to help users discover and explore innovative building projects. Thi...

TEDYouth session two has just finished. You can read about each of the 12 speakers below, and also see summaries of the Session 1 speakers here. Olivier Guyon, Optical Physicist and Astronomer Olivier designs powerful telescopes that search for exoplanets — earth-like planets that exist outside of our solar system. The problem with search f...

These TEDTalks explore the saying, “Good things come in small packages.” A world with lifesaving microchips, the perfectly engineered foot, and vast worlds constructed on pinheads seem fantastical, but the following speakers have turned their ingenious ideas into fascinating realities. Frederick Balagadde: Bio-lab on a microchip The sub-...