Jason McCue takes the stage wearing a T-shirt reading "Free Yulia in Ukraine." It's a reference to the 2011 imprisonment of Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko and a hint of what's to come in his talk: a discussion of terrorism and the law. "We are at war with a new form of terrorism," he says. The traditional perception of terrorism, t...

What I Will by Suheir Hammad I will not dance to your war drum. I will not lend my soul nor my bones to your war drum. I will not dance to your beating. I know that beat. It is lifeless. I know intimately that skin you are hitting. It was alive once hunted stolen stretched. I will not dance to your drummed up war. I will no...

In an interview on the Today Show this morning, Kevin Breel reveals why he thinks his TED Talk has gone viral: not because his story is unique, but because it is so common. Breel’s talk, given at TEDxKids@Ambleside, has been watched about 1.5 million times so far. In it, the 19-year-old reveals that, while he seemed to be living a great l...

Science funding is broken. To fix it, we need to empower a new class of makers, citizen scientists and explorers The troubling state of science funding in America goes by many names: sequestration, the profzi scheme, the postdocalypse. Because it can take extensive planning over years in academia to gain research funds from the National Science...

A few years ago, Lesley Hazleton, self-described “accidental theologist,” found herself waking each morning with the same question: What happened to Muhammad the night he received the revelation of the Koran? An agnostic Jew, Hazleton was writing a biography of the man who stood in the desert outside of Mecca in the year 610 at the moment th...

About this event: This month Sarah will be facilitating a salon looking at how in a world where mental health is talked about more openly than ever before, why are suicide rates continuing to soar? TEDx Salon events are unique, intimate gatherings that spark discussion on issues of interest to the local community. Salon events around the world range anywhere fro...

On Friday, Aaron Swartz -- the 26-year-old internet innovator who helped create RSS and had a hand in the building of Reddit -- was found dead in his apartment in an apparent suicide. Swartz, who suffered from depression, had reportedly found out just days before that a plea bargain deal with federal prosecutors had fallen apart. A longtime ...

A collaboration between TED and Japanese public broadcaster NHK is bringing TEDTalks to TV for the first time in Japan -- for Super Presentation! It's a series that harnesses TED speakers' persuasive ideas to teach English, empower a new generation of independent thinkers, and build hope one year after the Japanese tsunami. Friday night a...

About this event: TEDxRedmond curator Adora Svitak had the opportunity to speak at TED last year and created TEDxRedmond, a youth event with speakers from around the US. This will be our second year running the event. Past TEDxRedmond speakers include Jordan Romero, youngest person to climb Mt. Everest; Alec Loorz, founder of Kids vs. Global Warming; and Jessica ...

Each week, TEDx chooses four of our favorite talks, highlighting just a few of the great speakers from the TEDx community and its diverse constellation of ideas worth spreading. Below, give this week’s talks a listen. Let’s find the strength to change our slums: Boniface Mwangi at TEDxKibera While working as a photographer for a Kenyan news...

Anxiety could be the price that we have to pay for freedom, suggests psychologist Steven Pinker. When it comes to happiness, many people are underachievers. Americans are laggards among their first-world peers, and their happiness has stagnated in the era sometimes called the American Century. The Baby Boomers, despite growing up in peace and p...

About this event: Institutions deemed too big to fail have failed. Individuals deemed too small to matter have mattered. World markets have crashed and countries have gone bankrupt. We live in a world where a single ‘tweet’ can ignite a surge of emotions leading to the deconstruction of dictatorships. It’s 2012 and the new world order is chaos! Leaders are dea...

About this event: TEDxBaldwinHighSchool, now in its third year, seeks to explore what ideas are currently "changing the game". This year's event features several teachers and administrators, but focuses primarily on the new and exciting perspective of our students. Come check it out! AGENDA AFTERNOON SESSION (Begins at 12:00 PM. Anticipated End Time: 2:00 PM)...

Geena Rocero did a pretty bold thing at TED2014: She came out. The transgender fashion model chose Vancouver to reveal to the world that she was assigned male at birth. “I am here exposed … to help others live without shame and terror,” she says in today’s talk. The trans community has had a spotlight fixed on it in this year: a piece in Gran...

We can do so with careful planning, recovering the ideals of compassion, peace and equity, and standing together in the face of hate, says Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. Life, down here on earth, is holy. It is also exceptionally fragile. It is hevel, a Hebrew word meaning a mere breath. Almost in his last words, Moses tells his people, “I call hea...

A reformed computational neuroscientist, professor Read Montague takes the stage and admits he's nervous. Then he asks the audience to put their hands up if they think they have a behavioral superpower. "Oh! I actually see hands! TED really is a superconference." Montague is here to talk about people, relationships, and brains. As he tell...

As we crisscrossed the globe to find you fresh perspectives for TED2013 in our worldwide Talent Search, a common theme emerged: cultural heritage in the 21st century. The tangible, intangible and natural elements that define our ways of life touch every aspect of our existence — from language to landscapes to religion to architecture. And th...

This morning, a group of around 35 protesters showed up outside the Lyceum Theater in Edinburgh to object to the appearance at TEDGlobal of the former Prime Minister of Greece, George Papandreou. We went over to speak to the protesters, to find out why they were demonstrating and to ask them if they had a question we might put to Papandreou ...

Our electronic devices are often blamed -- at times, rightfully so -- for alienating us from our inner lives and from each other. But what if we could use them to cultivate self-compassion, not distraction? Technology expert Chris Dancy suggests how. I’m sorry to tell you, there's no app for instant inner peace. If you have depression or anxiet...

Photos: James Duncan Davidson John Bohannon and Black Label Movement are not ones for the ordinary. "Remember that conversation you had as a kid, with your parents, about sex or drugs. It's a myth. We don't talk to kids about that stuff. It's embarrassing." They emerge on stage, dancing to string music. But this is not a performance...

2019 is starting off big for the TED community -- below, some highlights. Jim Yong Kim resigns from the World Bank. In an unexpected move, Jim Yong Kim announced that he will be stepping down from his position as President of the World Bank by the end of the month. According to The New York Times, he will be joining a development-focused...

A vast gulf in care Vikram Patel asks us to imagine two men who live in the same town. They have the same education, the same jobs, and everything else the same. Both present at a hospital with chest pains -- but one is treated and one is not. Why? The second one has a mental illness. That is one of the biggest reasons people with ment...

Growing old in traditional societies Jared Diamond is the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, which was a provocative answer to the question of why Europe dominated the world for much of recent history. More recently, he has written The World Before Yesterday, an investigation of traditional societies, and what the modern world might le...

America’s war in Afghanistan has been its longest, and arguably its most grueling -- and yet for 13 years it's also been strangely invisible. For those of us far removed from the front lines, it can be almost perplexing to remember the battles being fought in our name. Sebastian Junger’s work helps bring them back into focus. In 2010, he release...

Being lucky in love isn't like being struck by lightning -- it’s a lot less random (and painful). Psychologist Barry Schwartz and biological anthropologist Helen Fisher share their opinions on the subject. “A lucky relationship is created, not discovered,” Barry Schwartz said when Barnaby and I called him one morning. A longtime professor at...

In today’s talk, Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo describes how China’s growing presence in Africa is challenging a centuries-old tenet of Western political thought.   For more than 200 years, Moyo argues, liberal democracy has ruled the roost. Particularly in the West, it's long been considered the political system most likely to d...

How to explain the stunning political upheaval of 2016 -- Brexit in the UK and Donald Trump’s election to the presidency in the US -- as well as the current and ongoing atmosphere of division, discontent and disquiet that fills many people’s lives? One simple answer: “We’ve lost our story,” says Jerusalem University historian Yuval Harari, i...

In the past 30 years, major advances have been made when it comes to treating several serious diseases. Today, there are 85% fewer deaths from leukemia and 63% fewer fatalities from heart disease than there were then. Meanwhile, while AIDS was once considered a death sentence, people with the disease can now live to old age. Not to mention that ...

TIME Editor-at-Large Bobby Ghosh covers global affairs and the Middle East. For five years he served as the magazine's Baghdad bureau chief and, by the end of his tenure, was the longest serving print journalist in Iraq. Most recently Ghosh wrote a cover story on Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, arguably the most important man in the Middle...

Think quick: what was the best film of 2012? Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook or Zero Dark Thirty? This question will be decided tonight at the 85th annual Academy Awards. As you prepare your Oscars ballot and debate whether Seth MacFarlane will make a great ...