Kate Stone’s journey to the TED stage began, of all places, in a London bar. In 2012, TED Curator Chris Anderson and Content Director Kelly Stoetzel embarked on a worldwide talent search, traveling to 14 cities on six continents. In each city, they hosted live events to find amazing speakers, and 34 of them ended up being invited to devel...

Cross-posted from TEDWomen curator Pat Mitchell's blog on the Huffington Post. When Hanna Rosin, the first speaker at the very first TEDWomen conference in 2010, delivered her talk she had titled “The End of Men,” she had only just begun the research for what became her bestselling 2012 book by the same name. And as the editors at ...

At day two of TED@PMI, six speakers shared ideas about creating change, shifting perspectives and connecting across diverse communities. (Check out the day one recap as well.) The event: TED@PMI, a two-day virtual event showcasing project leaders who turn ideas into action and impact. Hosted by PMI President and Chief Executive Officer Su...

“The politics of joy” is a phrase that resonates through this session of TED Fellows talks. These talks, by and large, come from people who’ve taken a hard look at the world and its problems and decided to engage joyfully, with creativity, fresh insight and heart. From a soccer project that empowers young refugees, to an SMS service for cow ...

The event: TED Salon: "Rethink," hosted by TED business curator Corey Hajim and TED tech curator Alex Moura When and where: Thursday, June 6, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York City The partner: Brightline Initiative, with Brightline executive director Ricardo Vargas warming up the audience with opening remarks Music: Dark p...

Teen reporters Sadie Cruz and Nia Ashley conducted lots of interviews with speakers at the TEDYouth conference on November 17. Their Q&As will run on the TED Blog over the next few weeks. Below, an interview conducted by Nia. The Flight Director of the Mars Curiosity Mission, Bobak Ferdowsi, is best known for landing a two-ton rover o...

At the end of every December, we at the office get a little indignant that some of our favorite TED Talks from the year didn't seem to do as well as we'd hoped. Some amazing talks, for whatever reason -- whether they're too absurd, niche or quirky, or simply were posted at a less than ideal time -- don't resonate at first blush with our audience...

The final session of TED2019 was a spectacle. From powerful calls to civic engagement and ancestorship to stories of self and perseverance, the session wrapped an incredible week and soared through the end with an unforgettable, totally improvised wrap-up. The event: Talks and performances from TED2019, Session 12: Meaning, hosted by TED'...

Women’s perspectives matter -- but with movie casts and crews dominated by men, Hollywood has long suggested otherwise. One way to fix this: support female filmmakers. Here’s a curated list of picks from writer, actor and activist Naomi McDougall Jones. The good news: a greater number of women were nominated for Oscars this year than in previou...

With endearing honesty and vulnerability, Raghava KK tells the colorful tale of how art has taken his life to new places, and how life experiences in turn have driven his multiple reincarnations as an artist -- from cartoonist to painter, media darling to social outcast, and son to father.

Need a new reason to get up in the morning? Enrich your life by finding and developing your next passion, with tips from psychology researcher Angela Duckworth. Ever watch The Great British Bake-off? It’s an addictive reality TV show about the hunt for Britain’s best amateur baker. Few of the contestants cook for a living -- baking is simply th...

Are machines going to save or destroy us? It's a question we've been grappling with since we first put 1s and 0s together to create computer code. And it feels like we're no closer to answering it; machines are growing smarter by the day, and while they're taking us to places we've never imagined, we seem to be losing turf as the supreme thinkin...

The event: TEDSummit 2019, Fellows Session, hosted by Shoham Arad and Lily Whitsitt When and where: Monday, July 22, 2019, 9am BST, at the Edinburgh Convention Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland Speakers: Carl Joshua Ncube, Suzanne Lee, Sonaar Luthra, Jon Lowenstein, Alicia Eggert, Lauren Sallan, Laura Boykin Opening: A quick, witty perf...

David Blaine is the master of the endurance stunt.  In 1999, he was buried alive in a clear box underneath three tons of water. Over the course of seven days, about 75,000 people stopped by to watch him in his self-made tomb. In 2008, Blaine attempted to set the Guinness World Record for holding his breath underwater in front of a packed cro...

In 2009, Simon Sinek gave the talk “How great leaders inspire action” to an audience of 50 people in a small room at TEDxPugetSound. It quickly became the second most-watched talk on TED.com. Sinek, of course, felt honored by the growing popularity of his talk—and by the opportunity to inspire people to think more deeply about the sense of p...

The stories we tell define us. In the Thursday-night session of TED2017, a singer, an artist, a poet, an author, two podcasters and Bollywood's biggest star showed us what our stories mean today -- and gave a preview of what they'll look like in the future. Below, recaps of the talks from Session 10, in chronological order. A little bi...

To keep pace with our ever-changing world, we need out-of-the-box ideas that are bigger and more imaginative than ever. The speakers and performers from this session explore these possibilities, challenging us to think harder about the notions we've come to accept. The event: TEDSummit 2019, Session 4: Business Unusual, hosted by Whitney ...

TEDActive lets you watch every single talk of TED2013, but without having to sit in an auditorium for hours at a time. TEDActive attendees get to watch the conference while lounging around the La Quinta Resort and Spa in Palm Springs, taking part in participatory art projects and going on all kinds of field trips for adults. (Check out the 1...

TED Fellows and Senior Fellows have just opened TED2015 with a bang in the beautiful Kay Meek theatre in Vancouver. In the first session, discover: how bacteria can be programmed to detect and treat cancer, a yellow legal pad that smuggles transgressive data into the halls of power, what makes non-state armed groups tick, hyperactive superma...

We’re just a week into 2013, and the year seems filled with possibility. The turn of the New Year is generally an occasion to look back and reflect on the year that's passed -- the victories and defeats, the lives lost and the experiences found. But after we look back, we inevitably turn forward. We make resolutions and predictions for the y...

  Summer: the season for cracking open a good book under the shade of a tree. Below, we’ve compiled about 70 stellar book recommendations from members of the TED community. Warning: not all of these books can be classified as beach reads. And we think that is a good thing. Picks from Elizabeth Gilbert, author  The Principles of Uncertainty ...

When great minds meet, everybody benefits. So, when meetings are good, they’re great. But if they’re bad (as most office meetings are, be honest with yourself), they’re anything but beneficial. You may say to yourself, or quietly argue to this article during your sad desk lunch: “But I am doing work. I’m sitting and talking and brainstorming abo...

Ghetto Life 101 changed my life. I started working on this radio documentary 25 years ago — I gave tape recorders to two kids growing up in the Ida B. Wells Homes in Chicago, one of the most notorious public housing projects in America, and asked them to document a week in their lives. LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman were 13 and 14 years old a...

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...

Sharing an idea isn’t like snapping your fingers — things don’t just instantly change. But as more people hear an idea over time, it can trickle into people’s thinking -- and shifts, both subtle and extreme, can happen as a result. In a TEDWomen session called “The 19th Minute,” host Courtney E. Martin invited several guests to talk about wh...

To celebrate 10 years of TED Talks, we went back through the archives to show you how fast biotechnology has changed over the past ten years, and some interesting moments along the way. We start with some history in a talk by James Watson, who co-discovered the first models of DNA’s structure with his partner Francis Crick, as a 23-year-o...

It’s an experience that can inspire road rage in even the calmest person: an urban traffic jam where cars crawl along at a pace of inches per hour.  As Jonas Eliasson, a professor of transportation at Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), explains in today’s talk, traffic congestion occurs in almost every major city across the globe, d...

Let’s face it: it's hard to get stuff done. How can we, together, realize our most ambitious dreams? To celebrate the efforts of smart people who are changing the world while doing business as usual, TED has partnered with the Brightline Initiative, a non-commercial coalition of leading organizations dedicated to helping leaders turn idea...

In her blockbuster TED Talk, Susan Cain has a call to action: Take introverts seriously, and understand what they can do in the right environment. Ben Lillie called her up for an extended conversation about the terrors of public speaking, how her issue is one of civil rights, and the neuroscience behind personalities. What was it like giving a ...

If you ever find yourself in the northernmost town in the world, look carefully. Built into the side of a sandstone mountain is a glowing blue façade on top of a concrete tunnel; it might be the door to the secret headquarters of a Bond villain. And like Bond’s greatest villains, its purpose is at once deeply pessimistic and oddly hopeful. ...