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...

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 12.51 pm on February 22, 2011. "Everyone in Christchurch will never forget that moment," says Danny Squires, who lives in the city with his wife and four children. Even though they’d all experienced multipl...

Find repose by exciting the mind. Some of the world's leading thinkers offer the books that inspired them and their work. Skim the list for your favorite speakers, or get nerdy on a topic you've always wanted to know more about. Below find 52 books, recommended by TED speakers. Creativity Creative Confidence, by Tom Kelley and David Kelley Cr...

Veterans often have a hard time returning to civilian life after war. Sebastian Junger offers a counterintuitive theory about why. In his film, The Last Patrol, Sebastian Junger thinks on why veterans sometimes have a hard time re-entering civilian life. The theory he is working on: It's hard to go from a tight-knit human experience -- eating t...

How to Be a Better Human How to be okay when things are not okay (w/ Mollie West Duffy and Liz Fosslien) (Transcript) August 29, 2022 Chris Duffy: I’m your host Chris Duffy and you’re listening to How to Be a Better Human. Okay so before we get into this episode, I have to give you a disclaimer: of all the guests we’ve ever had on the show, o...

When people with developmental disabilities have the support they need to thrive, everyone benefits. In a speech at the United Nations on April 1, Steve Silberman made the case that it's past time we all learned to honor neurodiversity. An edited version of his text follows. We are living at a very exciting time -- a time of great hope for auti...

Tough times are inevitable. Wellbeing and resilience expert Lucy Hone shares the three straightforward tactics that she used to get through her darkest days. This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from people in the TED community; browse through all the posts here. I'd l...

Lawyer and activist Nighat Dad talks about the fight to create a more accessible internet for women and other marginalized groups in her home country of Pakistan. There had never been a woman like Qandeel Baloch in Pakistan. In 2013, when she was 23 years old, her dramatic audition on Pakistan Idol went viral, and in the years that followed, sh...

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The event: Talks and performances from TED Fellows, celebrating the 10th anniversary of this life-changing, world-changing program. Session 1 is hosted by TED Fellows director Shoham Arad and TED Senior Fellow Jedidah Isler. When and where: Monday, April 15, 2019, 10:30am, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC. Opening: W...

The successful dot-coms of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s had a few things in common: they all vowed to “change the world”, had crazy-high valuations, and were wildly unprofitable. Here’s a look at one company’s rapid rise and fall -- and the bubble’s lasting impact, from internet historian Brian McCullough. If you were looking for a single compa...

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...

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Greg Gage, onstage at TED Fellows Talks. Photo: Ryan Lash On the afternoon before TED2012 mainstage sessions begin, the Center Theater was packed to the rafters for two sessions of TED Fellows talks. Here's what happened ... Christine Marie, shadow artist With a clap of thunder and a flash of light, the TED2012 Fellows talks open with...

ReThinking with Adam Grant Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas on leading with strength and sincerity February 1, 2023 [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 t...

ReThinking with Adam Grant What animal intelligence reveals about human stupidity with Justin Gregg March 7, 2023 [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 expl...

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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...

Legacy is a delightfully complex concept, and it's one that the TED@Westpac curators took on with gusto for the daylong event held in Sydney, Australia, on Monday December 11th. Themed around the idea of "The Future Legacy," the day was packed with 15 speakers and two performers and hosted by TED's Cyndi Stivers and TED speaker and monster p...

Jon Ronson is the author of The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, an exploration of what defines a psychopath. At TED2012, he told a part of that story on stage -- how he met a man named Tony who was held for years in a psychiatric prison because he faked mental illness too well, and about how Ronson himself became tra...

Marc Goodman studies how to prevent future crimes -- not in the Minority Report sense, but by thinking about the ways that current and imagined technologies could be used to commit crimes. At TEDGlobal 2012 he gave a talk on some of the ways this could play out -- showing examples of how drug cartels and terrorists could (and already do) use...

In 2009, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published the book The Spirit Level, making a bold case that economic inequality within a society, the size of the gap between rich and poor, has corrosive effects from the bottom of society right up to the top. Wilkinson spoke about their book and research this summer at TEDGlobal ...

The TED Interview Unlocking the Mysteries of our Brain | David Eagleman June 16, 2022 [00:00:00] Chris Anderson: Hello there. This is Chris Anderson, welcoming you to The TED Interview. Now then, uh, this is a, a special episode that was recorded live at the TED Conference featuring one of the most amazing minds there is out there: David Eaglem...

In 1989, children younger than 16 could be sentenced to die in the United States. Lawyer Bryan Stevenson (TED Talk: We need to talk about an injustice) represented some of these juveniles in Alabama, the state with the most children sentenced to death per capita. Read his chilling account of meeting Charlie, a 14-year-old tried as an adult for c...

Since we know TED speakers love to read, we asked them: What book could you not stop reading? Here are their eclectic picks, ready for sticking in your carry-on or for gifting. If you want to be transported to another place and time The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood This novel is set in the near future and tells a horrifying story of a...

Compiled from past TED book lists, here's a curated selection of fiction and non-fiction titles to check out now. Minority Leader: How to Lead from the Outside and Make Change by Stacey Abrams (TED talk: 3 questions to ask yourself about everything you do) I work in government affairs, and the last thing I enjoy reading for pleasure are books ...

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