Sophal Ear leads research on post-conflict countries -- looking at the effectiveness of foreign aid and the challenge of development in places like his native land, Cambodia.

How can architects build a new world of sustainable beauty? By learning from nature. Michael Pawlyn describes three habits of nature that could transform architecture and society: radical resource efficiency, closed loops, and drawing energy from the sun.

Resource inequality is one of our greatest challenges, but it's not unique to humans. Like us, mycorrhizal fungi that live in plant and tree roots strategically trade, steal and withhold resources, displaying remarkable parallels to humans in their capacity to be opportunistic (and sometimes ruthless) -- all in the absence of cognition. In a min...

"I'm a capitalist. I believe in the system. I believe you can increase the size of the pie and you could divide it well," says Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates. He offers wide-ranging insight and advice on how we might recover from the global economic fallout of the coronavirus crisis -- and use it as an opportunity to reform the sys...

What would happen if one day all of humanity's artificial satellites suddenly disappeared? Within hours, most of the planet's traffic would grind to a halt, the world economy would shut down, and most countries would declare a state of emergency. Even in the best-case scenario, our civilization would be set back by decades. So, what are the odds...

During the winter of 2018-2019, one million tons of salt were applied to icy roads in the state of Pennsylvania alone. The salt from industrial uses like this often ends up in freshwater rivers, making their water undrinkable and contributing to a growing global crisis. How can we better protect these precious natural resources? Physical organic...

As COVID-19 continues to spread, the world is facing two existential threats at once: a public health emergency and an economic crisis. Political theorist Danielle Allen describes how we can ethically and democratically address both problems by scaling up "smart testing," which would track positive cases with peer-to-peer software on people's ce...

End-of-the year news from our busy TED speakers: Let’s start with something gorgeous. The newest series of prints produced by Fabian Oefner, Photographic Paintings, highlights the process by which color comes into being. The images merge his signature science-based photography with the traditional form of a painting, exploring the propert...

Paul Collier studies the poorest people on earth -- the 1 in 9 humans living in dysfunctional countries with broken economies, places whose income gaps are so wide it's hard for westerners to wrap their minds around it. In 2007, his book The Bottom Billion broke down the problems facing this group of people, stuck in failed and failing state...

About this event: TEDxViaTirso is a moment of analysis and comparison distinguished by the TED conferences format: masterly held lectures, concentrated in 15-18 minutes, during which prestigious personalities in the fields of science, culture and economy commit themselves to the diffusion of experiences and ideas that can improve our life. Based on this mode...

On August 27, an extraordinary group of people will gather in Arusha, Tanzania, for TEDGlobal 2017, a four-day TED Conference for "those with a genuine interest in the betterment of the continent," says curator Emeka Okafor. As Okafor puts it: "Africa has an opportunity to reframe the future of work, cultural production, entrepreneurship,...

What does it take to make an everyday object -- say, a toaster -- from scratch? And does anyone know how to make it, all the way from mining for iron ore to plugging it into the electric grid? Those are the questions designer Thomas Thwaites sought to answer when he engaged in the Toaster Project. Last Tuesday, November 2, he shared his hilar...

New York restaurants and grocers scramble to get their hands on fresh, local produce. So what could be better than veggies grown right in the city? On a rooftop in Brooklyn, Viraj Puri runs Gotham Greens, a hydroponic greenhouse that cultivates delicious, fresh produce -- using a fraction of the water and space needed for conventional agricult...

In October 2019, Jane Fonda launched “Fire Drill Fridays,” weekly protests centered on climate change and calling for an end to new fossil fuels, a just transition to a renewable economy, and demands that Congress pass the Green New Deal. The protests began in Washington DC, and in February 2020, Fonda joined forces with Greenpeace and other all...

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...

In this morning’s first session of short, sharp talks from the TED Fellows, an impressive lineup of world-changers share their ideas for seeing the world in new ways -- like an AI that might help us see cancer symptoms, or a fresh view on how refugees really live, or a long-term study that's detecting a social network for fish. The mornin...

Farmer + technologist

We -- Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson -- are climate experts who focus on solutions, leadership and building community. We are a natural and a social scientist, a Northerner and a Southerner. We’re also both lifelong interdisciplinarians in love with words and the cofounders of The All We Can Save Project, in support of women...

Back in the ’90s, the golden mussel (Limnoperna fortunei) hitched a ride on ships traveling from Asia to South America. In the past decade and a half, the mussel has proliferated through South America’s river systems, destroying the native habitat and disrupting the operation of power plants and water treatment facilities. This invasive spec...

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 ...

Post-conflict reconstruction educator

Maker, innovator, and cottage industrialist Dominic Muren wants making to be open, global and modular. He's just launched his latest project, Alchematter -- an online open source platform that breaks down and spells out instructions on how to make, well, anything. He gives us the ins and outs of the site, covering everything from reverse crowd...

Environmentalist

What's that too-often quoted aphorism? "Good artists copy; great artists steal"? In this nuanced conversation, biologist and founder of Biomimicry 3.8 Janine Benyus speaks with Tim Brown, chief executive of IDEO, to discuss what's really interesting about borrowing. Tim Brown: As a creative person, I’ve always believed that I can’t be creativ...

Political economist, author and educator Sophal Ear's family escaped from the Killing Fields, a story he related in a moving 2009 TEDTalk. Now, driven to give back to Cambodia, he examines the detrimental effects of foreign aid dependence in his new book, Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy. Tell us about h...

Books can entertain, sucking you like a tornado into incredible new worlds. Books can teach, giving you a richer understanding of time periods, people and ideas you’ve never been exposed to. But books can do so much more. In today’s talk, TED's own Lisa Bu introduces us to the concept of “comparative reading,” the practice of reading book...

Have we used up all our resources? Have we filled up all the livable space on Earth? Paul Gilding suggests we have, and the possibility of devastating consequences, in a talk that's equal parts terrifying and, oddly, hopeful.

For centuries, we believed the Earth was flat, that the sun rotated around the Earth. These were absolute truths, until ... they weren't. Which of our accepted truths will fall apart in the years ahead? Financier-turned-philosopher Yannick Roudaut believes we're on the cusp of another historical reckoning -- and another renaissance.

A flying car -- it's an iconic image of the future. But after 100 years of flight and automotive engineering, no one has really cracked the problem. Pilot Anna Mracek Dietrich and her team flipped the question, asking: Why not build a plane that you can drive?

"An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport," argues Enrique Peñalosa. In this spirited talk, the mayor of Bogotá shares some of the tactics he used to change the transportation dynamic in the Colombian capital... and suggests ways to think about building smart cities of the ...