About this event: We believe humankind has come to a turning point in its evolution as it must acknowledge it has gained the power to alter not only its children’s life but also their biological, technological and cognitive perspectives for the centuries to come, either in a positive or a negative way. This conclusion leads us to wonder on the stance humanity ...

Not a scientist? As David Lang shows, you can still play a meaningful role in solving science's hardest problems. It's hard to find a silver lining in the water crisis of Flint, Michigan. The striking images of jugs of brown water being held high in protest are a symbol of institutional failure on a grand scale. It's a disaster. But even as que...

This November, we're gathering in New Orleans for three days of TEDWomen -- to share talks about bridging the world today and the world we all hope to build. Today, we're announcing the first speakers on our lineup, a mix of powerful voices, creative insights and committed activism that will set the tone for our time together. Read on to learn m...

Ever since founding the first truly effective ambulance service in India, Shaffi Mather has been hooked on social enterprises. He’s gone on to set up inclusive high-quality schools, support small-scale dairy farming, and is now launching a bribe-fighting business. (Watch his talk from TEDIndia 2009.) Can you give us an overview of each of you...

From machine intelligence to post-subsistence economies, Google's Blaise Agüera y Arcas lays out 6 (okay, 7) ways everything is set to change. How will our minds be blown in the next 30 years? Well, that's quite a long time, given the acceleration in history. Still, I'll be brave and make six hypotheses. 1. Machine Intelligence I think that...

Pollution is a blight, right? Not so fast, says architect Jorge Otero-Pailos, whose projects invite us to consider the important history lessons provided by layer upon layer of dirt. We tend to think of pollution and the atmosphere as two different creatures that have come together in a wicked embrace. We dream of a technology so powerful that ...

How amazing would it be to see a wooly mammoth, raised from the dead, walking the permafrost of the North again? Or to look up at the sky and see a flock of passenger pigeons fly by? Or to witness a gastric-brooding frog hiccup tadpoles out the mouth from an embryo located in its stomach? These incredible animals, as well as others beyond ou...

For the past four years, TED has held an annual evening salon in New York City to find talents, voices and ideas that the world needs to hear. At TED@NYC, an energetic audience gathers over dinner and drinks and watches a passionate lineup of speakers deliver short, rapid-fire talks and performances. The twist? For this event, we put out an op...

Do we have the vision and the energy to confront seemingly impossible problems -- like predatory corporations, political deadlock, the wasted potential of millions of refugees? Session 5 rounded up people who are jumping right in. A call to action on fossil fuels. Costa Rica, climate advocate Monica Araya’s native country, gets almost 100 per...

Art cannot be created or destroyed -- only remixed. In a convincing talk from TEDGlobal 2012, director Kirby Ferguson explores the challenges of originality and freshness in a world where creativity takes root in what has come before. Without previous inventions we would not have the iPhone, the Model T Ford, Star Wars, Warhol’s soup cans, o...

I’ll never forget the first images of Sebastião Salgado’s that I ever saw. At the time, I was just getting into photography, and his images of the mines of Serra Pelada struck me as otherworldly, possessing a power that I had never seen in a photo before (or, if I’m honest, since). In the twenty years that I’ve been photographing, his work has...

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...

On September 12, TED welcomed its latest class to the TED Residency program, an in-house incubator for breakthrough ideas. These 21 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 — from Bulgaria to South Africa, Canada to Kansas. New R...

Marc Goodman of the Future Crimes Institute and Singularity University shares his thinking on the promise -- and threat -- of drones. For most people, drones are flying robots irrevocably associated with killing, warfare or even war crimes over the skies of Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet what started out as a purely military technology is rapidly m...

There’s a lot of news to share from the TEDizens of the world in the past month. Just a few highlights: Monica Lewinsky inspires Caitlyn Jenner. As Caitlyn Jenner introduces herself to the world, and navigates the media frenzy surrounding her new life, she has Monica Lewinsky’s TED Talk in the back of her mind. In Vanity Fair’s much-discussed p...

An exploration of the ethics around CRISPR's gene-snipping technology yields new insights on how to harness a biotechnology that's powerful enough to alter humanity. In the world of biology -- and coming soon to the wider world -- enthusiasm and optimism continue to spread about CRISPR, a technology that allows precise editing of DNA. If you...

The theme of TED2019 is "Bigger than us," and day 1 did not disappoint. Even though it had just three sessions, they were chock full of compelling ideas and calls for action. Here are seven takeaways:  We're shining light into some really dark places. Sheperd Doeleman, head of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, takes us inside the...

On February 25, TED welcomed its latest class to the TED Residency program, an in-house incubator for breakthrough ideas. These 11 Residents will spend 14 weeks at TED's New York headquarters, working and thinking together. New Residents include: A community organizer preserving disappearing languages An LGBTQ+ digital activist ed...

Employment innovator

About this event: Are our decisions guided by free will or controlled by outside forces? As humans, we sometimes blame others for our fates or feel that our actions are guided by providence.Our actions are limited by our genes, our circumstances, and the laws of physics, so how can we possibly act to change the world around us? The answer to this question will ha...

The seven speakers lived up to the two words in the title of the session. Their talks showcased both our collective insanity -- the algorithmically-assembled extremes of the Internet -- and our humanity -- the values and desires that extremists astutely tap into -- along with some speakers combining the two into a glorious salad. Let's dig i...

Time is precious, we know. Here, compiled from past reading lists, are suggestions for two dozen short but mighty books to pick up. fiction & literature The Summer Book by Tove Jansson The quintessential celebration of summer in Scandinavia -- 22 vignettes of a girl and a grandmother on an island. Jansson is best known as the creator of M...

Researchers recently reported that they were able to edit human embryos to fix a dangerous mutation. The technology is inching closer to reality, so we need to take a stand, says biochemist Jennifer Doudna. If CRISPR can help parents conceive a disease-free child when no other options exist and it can do so safely, ought we to use it? It’s a qu...

If we want the people in our lives to put down their steak knives and seriously consider changing their diets, we need to change the conversations we’re having with them, says food innovator Bruce Friedrich. Here's what to say -- and what not to say. We can’t stop eating meat. Global consumption averages 94.8 pounds per person a year, and it’s ...

Some argue that we have a moral responsibility for future generations, but others ask: how do we know what they would want? Writer Charles C. Mann explores the confusing ethics of acting on global warming. Every few years the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issues a set of multivolume reports that attempt to portray the state o...

Odysseus…Gauguin…Robinson Crusoe...and me? Many people dream of the ultimate escape: throwing all the baggage of civilization away and taking off to live on a remote island. But few people—particularly professional couples with young kids—actually go through with it. And yet, that’s just what my family did: we left Boston, and my reliable...

About this event: Our fast changing, materialistic society is investing heavily on irresponsible lifestyle and it has created lot of issues, right from global warming to malnutrition. Slowly but certainly these issues are impacting our daily life, and we are forced to adapt to the hostile conditions. Just to list some of these critical problems, which I’m su...

About this event: Washington, DC – TEDxLeDroitPark 2019, is in its inaugural year as a community engagement Capstone event, which will take place on February 27, 2019, 6:00 p.m. in Cramton Auditorium (Doors open at 5:30). Attendees will embark on an imaginative mental journey of self- transformation through the enlightenment of information from diverse talks, pe...

About this event: It is customary to talk about technology and culture as processes related to the development and expansion of borders. However, the borders are not only expanding, they are also shifting. Presidential elections and referendums, terrorist attacks and declarations of new capitals, controversial films and offbeat rap battles… Numerous events of r...

About this event: Challenging choices. These two words summarize best who I was, who I am today, and who I will most probably be in the future to come. Hence, this TEDxYouth event is also the fruit of a risk-taking decision that was originated in June 2017 when some of my current grade 12 English B students and I organized BISS Talks. As for our event name today,...