As you read this, imagine balloons and confetti fluttering to the ground around you. Because we just posted the 2,000th TED Talk. On June 16, 2015, Margaret Heffernan’s “Why it's time to forget the pecking order at work” became the 2,000th TED Talk. It’s a talk we need now: a sharp reflection on our lives at work. While most companies are bui...

Watching curator Chris Anderson in speaker rehearsals before a TED conference feels like witnessing the zen of a longtime coach who knows his sport both inside out and backwards. Whenever a trial run of a talk feels just a little askew, a few simple sentences are whispered. Magically, the next time the talk is given publicly, it is mesmerizing -...

Since the first teaser in late 2013, we've been in countdown mode for Interstellar, Christopher Nolan's new outer-space epic that promises to blast us through space and time and wormholes. If you're as excited as we are but can't clear three hours to go see the whole movie, here's the plot we could figure out from obsessively watching trailer...

Spring has been an exciting season for TEDx. In March, the program celebrated its 4th birthday; and now — just two months later — we’re excited to announce that the TEDx YouTube channel has reached its 100 millionth video view. In 2009, the TEDx program was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading,” to empower indivi...

Thursday, April 26, 2018 – Today marks the first-ever TED en Español speaker event hosted by TED in its New York City office. The all-Spanish daytime event, held in TED's theater in Manhattan, will feature eight speakers, a musical performance, five short films and fifteen 1-minute talks given by members of the audience. 150 people are expected ...

TEDx is now 4 years old! This past Saturday, March 23, TEDx celebrated this milestone with a global birthday party, convened by TEDx organizers, volunteers and fans worldwide. There were cakes, candles, wishes and even a kite or two -- all paired with enough enthusiasm to last another four years and beyond. With 6,417 events in 149 countr...

  My high school English class had just finished reading Madame Bovary, and we were all confused. (For those of you who have not read it, please skip to paragraph two. Spoiler alert!) Emma Bovary, a listless housewife in search of the passionate love she’s read about in books, has many sordid affairs, falls deeply into debt and kills hers...

In 2015, 60 Minutes aired a story called "When TED talks, people listen," to show what happens when TED Talks are shared across the world. The segment focuses on a few key speakers, including Bryan Stevenson, Maysoon Zayid, Amy Cuddy and Monica Lewinsky, and you can watch a playlist of highlighted TED Talks here. But many of you said: You wa...

Step with me for a minute into an internet time machine. The date: June 27, 2006. The event: the first six TED Talks being posted online. “Today, for the first time ever, we’re thrilled to present some of the most remarkable talks from TEDs past,” reads a blog post from Chris Anderson written on that day. (The image above shows exactly wh...

Krisztina "Z" Holly was the first person to ever be called a TEDx organizer. Her event, TEDxUSC, took place on March 23, 2009, and had 1,200 attendees. Last year there were 6,000 applicants for those same 1,200 spots. We caught up with her at TEDxSummit. How did you get involved with TEDx (before it even existed)? One of my team members, E...

The TED community is brimming with new projects and updates. Below, a few highlights. Malaria vaccine begins wide-scale testing in Malawi. RTS,S -- the only malaria vaccine to successfully pass clinical trials -- will be made available to 360,000 children in Kenya, Malawi and Ghana in the first round of implementation testing. Immunologis...

UPDATED: To see all these talks at one click, check out our updated Playlist: The 20 Most Popular Talks of All Time. As 2013 draws to a close, TED is deeply humbled to have posted 1600+ talks, each representing an idea worth spreading. So which ideas have had the most widespread impact? Below, a look at the 20 most-watched talks as of Dec...

It is, indeed, a monumental day here at TED Towers. We're winners! Or, as June Cohen, executive producer of TED Media, described this morning's news of our winning the 2013 National Design Award for corporate and institutional achievement: "We're thrilled!" "Design and design thinking has always been core to TED's mission. After all, it's...

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...

Amy Cuddy bought a showstopper dress to wear for her talk at TEDGlobal 2012. But a few days before, she decided not to wear it. "I had agonized over what to wear. I went out and bought the most expensive dress I’ve ever bought. It was Fendi, multiple markdowns at Barneys," she told the New York Times. "But a couple of days before my talk...

The last 6 months have been like no other. Since March 2020, every person on the planet has had their life shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic in some way. In the midst of the hardship and challenges, there’s been the sense among many people that this period has helped us evaluate our lives and focus on what’s truly important. And maybe, just ...

Via TED Curator Chris Anderson's personal blog: After a couple of weeks in beta, the new TED Books app launched today on iPad and iPhone and I'm incredibly excited about it. Here's why. 1. It brings together all of our authors in one irresistible package. 16 current titles with new ones to be released every two weeks. 2. It's free. I t...

Monday on the TED Fellows stage, Tom Rielly did something unprecedented in the history of the Fellows -- he singled out one for recognition. Presenting the newly minted TED Fellows Hero award to Iranian-British filmmaker Taghi Amirani, he said, "This person has gone above and beyond in writing, participating, a certain amount of kvetching, m...

A friend’s diagnosis can feel overwhelming and confusing, but you don’t need to let fear and uncertainty keep you from being there for them. Journalist Suleika Jaouad offers some practical advice for how you can help. At age 22, Suleika Jaouad was fresh out of college and ready to take steps towards a career as a war correspondent. “But the rea...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Chris Anderson comes on stage to acknowledge that the TED stage is more often the domain of the techno-optimist than the doomer. So, in somewhat stark contrast with Paul Guilding, the founder, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, Peter Diamandis now takes the stage. Diamandis starts off his talk wi...

The few days before a holiday are brutal. It doesn’t matter if you have a lot of work on your plate or have midterms to study for -- your mind just wants to be distracted from it all. And so, we bring you the best TED Talks for procrastinating, so you don’t have to feel completely guilty for not doing what you are supposed to be doing. After all...

Deepen your understanding of Ecofying Cities with these carefully crafted educational exercises that let you get the most out of this TED Studies subject. Activity 1 It's difficult to measure something as complex as sustainability. For example, what's the best way to measure energy and resource use? Think about the problem at different scales. ...

About this event: TEDxVictoriaSalon: Health For the first time ever TEDxVictoriaSalon will be featuring a mix of live speakers and TED and TEDx Talks focusing on the theme of "Health." This Salon will bring together health care policy makers, health care providers, and networking enthusiasts for an engaging evening of inspirational thought and meaningful conve...

According to our best estimates, TED has surpassed a billion video views! Our most recent metrics show that TED Talks are being viewed at a rate of 1.5 million times a day -- which means that a new viewing commences 17 times a second. We in the TED office cannot thank you enough for helping us reach this milestone of 1,000,000,000 views -- n...

There's a worrying trend in online advertising. Many sites are reporting falling click-through rates -- and marketers are responding by resorting to ever more aggressive ways of ambushing your attention. We're launching an initiative to find a better way! TED's mission is "ideas worth spreading." You, our audience, are expert at identifying ...

NEW: Video auditions are closed; thank you for entering! This year we're holding the first-ever audition for TED Talks. It will take place in New York in front of a live audience made up of TED staff and members of the TED community. The audition will be recorded, and the best talks could either be posted on TED.com or win an invitation f...

Chris Bailey might be the most productive man you’d ever hope to meet. At least, that’s his goal. In May of this year, he committed to a year-long project in which he would do anything and everything to make his life more efficient. So far, that has included living in isolation, only using his smartphone for an hour a day, and getting up at ...

About this event: What is TEDxYUE, and why? Inspired by the idea of TED, a team of students from 29 universities and colleges in Guangdong Province, China joined together. Their purpose is to hold a TEDx event which can attract more audience telling them that there is something called TED. Their event is called TEDxYUE. YUE is the abbreviated name of Guang...

The TED community always has lots of news to share. Below, some highlights from the past two weeks. Lessons for the South — from Germany. “Can the American South, still grappling with the legacy of slavery and segregation, learn something from Germany’s grappling with Nazism?” Anand Giridharadas asked this question of four scholars who study bo...

Enjoy a sampling of the stories from around the internet that captured our interest this week: This look at the dramatic rise of MOOCs and other online college offerings points out a basic conundrum: can these courses make money? [The New York Times] Several TED speakers have given talks about online education this year: Peter Norvig des...