The other day, I got rejected. It wasn’t over love, but nevertheless it stung: a middle school declined my offer to speak to their kids about my latest book, The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure, because it would exclude boys. At first I shrugged, said I understood and went on to other things. But the more I thought about...

Texting is not a blight on the English language, says linguist John McWhorter in today’s talk, given at TED2013. Rather, texting is a “miraculous thing”: a novel linguistic mode that’s redefining the way we communicate with each other -- for the better. McWhorter points out that texting shouldn’t be categorized as written language --but a...

When Dustin Yellin was eight years old, he buried a dollar bill, a pen and a fork inside a box, with the specific idea that aliens might find it in the future. It's unclear what he hoped might happen then or, indeed, what happened to the box, but it did start Yellin on an artistic journey of discovery in which he still merrily makes boxes. It's ...

Maria Popova of brainpickings.org shares some of her favorite books relating to dreams and dreaming. "The earth is heavy and opaque without dreams" Anaïs Nin wrote in her diary in 1940. Here are six books that explore how dreams, in both senses of the word -- the nocturnal wanderings of the unconscious mind and the motivated marches of the cons...

Our image of a great leader is outdated, says Roselinde Torres of management consultancy BCG (TED Talk: What it takes to be a great leader). That all-knowing superhero who both lords over and protects his followers is neither realistic nor effective in today’s business, she says. To prepare for a global, digital, fast-paced future, she offers th...

Many of the best TED Talks are built around stories, with speakers' personal anecdotes helping them bring their ideas to life. Here, TED head curator Chris Anderson provides us with some storytelling dos and don'ts. Plus: news about the TED Masterclass app. After watching a great talk on TED.com, many of us have wondered: “Could I do it myself?...

Rodrigo Canales begins today’s talk by bringing us to a very confusing peace march. After a battle between Mexican law enforcement and the drug cartel La Familia Michoacana turned the city of Apatzingán into a battlefield for two days in 2010, the mayor of the town decided to hold a march for peace. Thousands of citizens showed up. And while...

After being yelled at and terminated, writer Andrew Millar has finally learned how to make his mouthiness work for him. He shares some advice for his fellow dissenters and the coworkers who put up with them. I’m a dissenter, and I live to disagree. In fact, I’m what I’d call a serial dissenter. I’m provocative and relentless, sometimes to the p...

Art therapist Melissa Walker uses masks to allow service members with traumatic brain injuries to express their deepest emotions and experiences, helping them and their loved ones heal. Most people wear masks to obscure or change their identities. But through a unique art therapy program, veterans are using them to reveal truths -- often painfu...

Research-backed advice for what you need to do on your holiday break (and how long you should do it for) Most of us assume that the best way to recover our energy is to take a long, leisurely vacation. It’s as if we have a reservoir of mental energy we gradually consume at work, and we need time away from the office to refill it. According to t...

As a doctor, Ben Goldacre likes to have all the available facts about a prescription drug before he even thinks about prescribing it. However, when it comes to medicines, it’s nearly impossible to find all the existing data. As Goldacre described in this impassioned talk given at TEDMed 2012, there is a bias in medicine towards publishing stud...

Today on TED.com, you’ll notice some changes. That’s because we have launched our first major redesign since the site debuted in 2007, back when online video was just a twinkle in the Internet’s eye. You might notice that this redesign responds to the things that you, the TED community, have told us on repeat. First: You need TED to be as ea...

Lucianne Walkowicz, speaking at the TEDGlobal 2011 TED Fellows Talks, Monday, July 11, 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED Lars Jan, transmedia director: Lars creates multimedia performances that questions the boundaries between truth and fiction. Collaborating with "Paul," a character that operates in the rea...

World-changing ideas that unearth solutions and ignite progress can come from anywhere. With that spirit in mind at TED@WellsFargo, thirteen speakers showcased how human empathy and problem-solving can combine with technology to transform lives (and banking) for the better. The event: TED@WellsFargo, a day of thought-provoking talks on to...

October is National Bullying Prevention Month in the US, and chances are you know someone who’s been bullied -- or you’ve been bullied yourself. Here, I’ve curated a list of TED and TEDx Talks that I feel unpack different aspects of the problems, solutions and experiences we’re facing in our modern world of bullying – both on and offline....

On March 6, TED welcomed its latest class to the TED Residency program. As an in-house incubator for breakthrough ideas, Residents spend four months in the TED office with other exceptional people from all over the map. Each has a project that promises to make a significant contribution to the world, across several different fields. The new R...

For most of us, trying to picture the future is a futile exercise that leads at best to some bad ideas that should likely never be shared out loud. For people like TED Fellow Chris Woebken, it's why the present exists. Along with Elliott Montgomery, Woebken runs The Extrapolation Factory, a studio devoted to imagining future scenarios. One re...

This is the final week of nominations for the TED Prize, which means you only have three more days to nominate a person with a wish to inspire the world for the $1 million honor. Have a mentor who has molded your mind? A friend with an inspired idea? A neighbor with big plans? Tell us about them now, using the official nomination form. This ...

About this event: TEDxFCRIT brings the spirit of TED’s mission of ideas worth spreading to local communities around the globe. TEDxFCRIT events are organized by curious individuals who seek to discover ideas and spark conversations in their own community. TEDxFCRIT events include live speakers and recorded TED Talks, and are organized independently under a free l...

“The White City.” “The City of the Monkey God.” “The Place of Cacao.” Rumors of a majestic city nestled in the remote rainforest of Honduras — referred to by all of these names — have circulated for centuries, wedging their way into Honduran national identity. They seemed to be the stuff of legend. Until a team of explorers emerged from Hond...

Editor's note: This poem kicks off a new "Question Worth Asking" series: "How weird will the future be?" First up: a piece from poet and TED Fellow Ben Burke. [Dear Helen- So sorry. Didn’t have time to write that poem. But my future self sent me one yesterday. So we’re good. Crazy, right? It’s totally legit and actually from the future, so no...

Some ideas simmer below the surface. This session is dedicated to speakers who bubble them up, from a surprising management thinker to an Ebola researcher who found new inspiration in a song. Short recaps of the talks in this session... Work, the ultimate social experience. Margaret Heffernan is here to flip our thinking on what makes ...

Millions of women singlehandedly raise their children in the war-torn country, but their stories are rarely told in the media. Photographer Kiana Hayeri captures their struggles and strength in these photos. Malika is 28 years old. Just 14 when she was married off by her family, she lives with her five children in a small room in the Wazir Abad...

Teenagers love to text—their thumbs pound out an average of 3,339 texts per month. Crisis Text Line turns this into a way to help teens through their hardest times: family issues, stress or suicidal thoughts. Trained counselors text back and forth with advice and resources—and, in the process, collect (anonymous) data that could lead to bett...

Gross Domestic Product has become the yardstick by which we measure a country’s success. But, says Michael Green, GDP isn't the best way to measure a good society. His alternative? The Social Progress Index, which measures things like basic human needs and opportunity. Analysts, reporters and big thinkers love to talk about Gross Domestic Produ...

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...

New Zealand is located on a continental plate boundary, so earthquakes aren't unexpected. But no one was ready for the quake that hit at 12:51pm on February 22, 2011. Danny Squires tells Alison Prato about the experience. "Everyone in Christchurch will never forget that moment," says Danny Squires, who lives in the city with his wife and four...

Our office might be closed for summer vacation, but the TED Fellows are hard at work at the very first TED Fellows Retreat, happening now  in Whistler, British Columbia. Because the Fellows have proliferated since the program officially launched in 2009, many of these extraordinary thinkers have never had a chance to meet and conspire. And t...

More than 8 million children live in orphanages worldwide. But as Georgette Mulheir shares in today’s brave talk, given at TEDSalon London Spring 2012, an estimated 90% of them are not true orphans. These children are sent to orphanages because a single parent is not adequately able to care for them, because of rampant poverty at home, or beca...

Neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky shows us the surprising ways that our brains get mixed up between the physical and metaphorical -- and how this can pit us against each other. When humans put pigment to wall in Lascaux Cave more than 17,000 years ago, the point was to minimize the distance between object and representation, to be as close as poss...