As we look ahead to a world with less work, or even no work, we can take control -- by using our hours with greater meaning and purpose, says business thinker Tim Leberecht. Many of us divide our days into 8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure and 8 hours of sleep. But what will happen when a large number of jobs -- some studies say as much as 50...

Jimmy Wales recalls how he assembled "a ragtag band of volunteers," gave them tools for collaborating and created Wikipedia, the self-organizing, self-correcting, never-finished online encyclopedia.

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...

By Courtney E. Martin and John Cary Editor's note: designer John Cary and journalist Courtney E. Martin are the curatorial brains behind the show, “Public Interest Design: Places, Products, & Processes,” which opened at the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco last October. The entire exhibit has been reinstalled at TED in Long Beach, an...

It’s called second-skilling: developing your skills for a new job while you’re still working. The Asian city-state is investing in its citizens so they can stay flexible and employed, says online learning advocate Barbara Oakley. In 1965, unemployment in Singapore was in the double digits. Workforce literacy was 57 percent. Singapore could have...

Steven Pinker charts the decline of violence from Biblical times to the present, and argues that, though it may seem illogical and even obscene, given Iraq and Darfur, we are living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence.

In this contested territory, women must endure a lengthy, frustrating process when they pursue a university education abroad. Here are four of their stories. “For me, two basic human rights are the right to education and the freedom of movement,” says Kuwaiti-raised Palestinian photojournalist Laura Boushnak (TED Talk: For these women, reading ...

On March 12, TED welcomed its latest class to the TED Residency program, an in-house incubator for breakthrough ideas. These 19 Residents will spend 14 weeks in TED’s New York headquarters working and thinking together; the class includes exceptional people from all over the map, including Brazil, the Netherlands and Korea. The new Reside...

In a talk that's part history lesson, part love letter to graphics, information designer Tommy McCall traces the centuries-long evolution of charts and diagrams -- and shows how complex data can be sculpted into beautiful shapes. "Graphics that help us think faster, or see a book's worth of information on a single page, are the key to unlocking ...

Boston University professor Emily F. Rothman is a leading public health scholar on sexually explicit media and its impact on adolescent dating relationships.

Imagine global security driven by collaboration -- among agencies, government, the private sector and the public. That's not just the distant hope of open-source fans, it's the vision of James Stavridis, a US Navy Admiral. Stavridis shares vivid moments from recent military history to explain why security of the future should be built with bridg...

Manga artist

The mad race to hook up a billion of India's people to the internet sounds daunting -- but it may well make it better for everyone. Politicians often talk about big plans. But rarely do they deliver on even a fraction of plans as huge and ambitious as Digital India, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July 2015. The nine-pillared progra...

ReThinking with Adam Grant The problem with setting goals with NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho November 15, 2022 [00:00:00] Adam Grant: Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to ReThinking: my podcast on the science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore n...

About this event: We are witnessing the incredible transformation of China as it seeks to (re)define itself in the global context. Once referred to as the “factory of the world” China is confronting challenges and opportunities as it navigates the transformation into its’ new identity. What will the new China look like? How will the world see China? China...

After hearing an idea that struck them at their core, these people were no longer satisfied to sit on the sidelines -- so they jumped in. Hearing an inspiring idea is like experiencing a great book or movie; it stays with you. For most people who watch a TED Talk, this occurs subtly, with the concept going into our minds where it serves as a ki...

Women are slowly moving towards parity in the boardroom, but not in the bedroom. Why are straight women having less satisfying sex than men? And what can we do about it? The world is supposed to be improving for women. Incrementally, work is being done to combat sexual harassment, improve maternity-leave, and close the wage gap. But what abo...

Do you sometimes have your most creative ideas while folding laundry, washing dishes or doing nothing in particular? It's because when your body goes on autopilot, your brain gets busy forming new neural connections that connect ideas and solve problems. Learn to love being bored as Manoush Zomorodi explains the connection between spacing out an...

Probably not. But if we want a future where more of those jobs are decent and well-paying, we -- and our institutions -- need to rise to its challenge, says economist David Autor. Here's a startling fact: in the 45 years since the introduction of the automated teller machine, those vending machines that dispense cash, the number of human bank t...

Buying gifts? It is HARD. Especially when so many gift guides offer up ideas for what to get your dad, co-worker or sister without taking into account what actually interests those specific people in your life. A better way to locate the perfect gift? Think about what captures a person’s curiosity, and then seek ideas from people in that field. ...

Poet + recording artist

“This is a little different than the mainstage at TED, in a sense that this is a little more relaxed,” says our host, the poet and TED speaker Clint Smith. “These are speakers who have not been selected specifically for the mainstage, but they’re just as talented, just as brilliant, and just as important.” A spectrum of ideas, stories, pe...

Educator + Innovator

After his mainstage talk on the opening night of TED, psychologist Steven Pinker sat down with Chris Anderson to dive into his new book, Enlightenment Now. The two examined some criticisms of the book and the thesis behind it, dug into the data, and then threw the floor open for questions, in a session that offered the luxury of time to real...

We have personal computing -- why not personal biotech? That's the question biologist Ellen Jorgensen and her colleagues asked themselves before opening Genspace, a nonprofit DIY bio lab in Brooklyn devoted to citizen science, where amateurs can go and tinker with biotechnology. Far from being a sinister Frankenstein's lab (as some imagined it),...

Four and a half years after her popular TED Talk, the social psychologist updates the research on posture and hormones, responds to critics and discusses her current work. At the TEDGlobal 2012 conference, social psychologist Amy Cuddy gave the talk "Your body language shapes who you are," in which she detailed the effects of “power posing,” ba...

Much of the recent discussion about inequality has focused on the very rich (the 0.01%) or the very poor (the bottom billion or so). But what about those people who are somewhere in the middle? Through the TED-Ed network, we asked 17 public school teachers working in locations from Kildare to Kathmandu, Johannesburg to Oslo, to tell us wha...

Pakistan contributes less than one percent to the global greenhouse gas emissions perpetrating climate change, yet one-third of the country was recently inundated with "biblical" floods that killed hundreds and displaced millions. If we're to move towards a sustainable future in the wake of such tragedies, the response will require more than jus...

Economist Yasheng Huang compares China to India, and asks how China's authoritarian rule contributed to its astonishing economic growth -- leading to a big question: Is democracy actually holding India back? Huang's answer may surprise you.

Expensive to build and often needing highly skilled engineers to maintain, artificial intelligence systems generally only pay off for large tech companies with vast amounts of data. But what if your local pizza shop could use AI to predict which flavor would sell best each day of the week? Andrew Ng shares a vision for democratizing access to AI...