Leland Melvin is an engineer, educator, former NASA astronaut and NFL wide receiver. He shares his stories of perseverance and excellence to inspire communities for lasting positive change.

We've heard a lot about robots at TED over the years. Demos of amazing specialized robots ... talk about what robots can and can't do ... and will they take jobs from humans and is that a good or a bad thing? What's missing is a concrete example of a multi-purpose robot that can indeed do many tasks. Well, it's time to meet a general robot t...

This week, over at the TEDx blog, we got really into oceans and all the fascinating creatures that hang out there. (Especially sea turtles. We’re obsessed.) We explored how baby sea turtles survive the great wide world, how dolphins blow bubble rings for underwater play, and how divers feel swimming with some of the world’s largest mammals. ...

About this event: One of the unique characteristics of the St. John’s College curriculum lies in its ability to transform the outlook of Johnnies. During the first mathematics tutorial, when we question what a point is, we challenge our preconceived notions about a point. With every text we translate, we find a new way of expressing our thoughts. With each experi...

How two Australian sisters channeled their love of STEM and coral reefs into the most glorious participatory art project. “We’re used to thinking about math as something you have to learn through textbooks and equations,” says science writer Margaret Wertheim. But through their Institute for Figuring, she and her sister, Christine, have made it...

Patterns delight the mind and eye. And yet, they sometimes lead to us getting stuck — not just in behaviors, but in systems. The speakers in Session 2, “Radical Repatterning,” can see what's beyond the status quo. Below, recaps of the talks in Session 2, in chronological order, from a speaker who will challenge how you think about math to...

Dance -- and physical activity -- should have the same status in schools as math, science and language. Psst: it may even help raise test scores, says Sir Ken Robinson. For several years, I’ve been a patron of the London School of Contemporary Dance. In 2016, I was invited to give the annual lecture in honor of founding principal Robert Cohan, ...

Architect Shigeru Ban uses paper tubes to build temporary, ecologically sustainable structures. These geometrically complex structures can be big and impressive -- like a concave complex built for Expo 2000 in Germany -- or small and functional, like the half-pipe office Ban built for himself atop the Pompadou Center in Paris. No matter thei...

Today, Nov. 19, 1-5pm Eastern: TEDYouth's speaker lineup includes a MythBuster, an oceanographer turned viral video star, the "Science Babe," and a roboticist who studies flying geckos -- plus poets, musicmakers, geeks and writers -- all giving short TED-style talks for young people. And you can watch it live for free online -- in English...

Fifteen months ago, a small device called Raspberry Pi was put on the market. Despite the glut of gleaming, do-everything devices available today, this credit-card sized, £25, Linux-run computer with nothing but a microprocessor, 512MB RAM, some ports and an SD card slot has sold more than 1 mllion pieces since its launch. What's it for, and...

As usual, the TED community has been very busy over the past week. Below, a few newsy highlights. Real estate and corruption. New York is known for its pricey real estate, and TED Prize winner Charmian Gooch suspects that some properties could be supporting global corruption. “Towers of Secrecy,” a series in The New York Times, looks at some of...

The past few weeks have brimmed over with TED-related news. Here, some highlights: This is what extinction looks like. Photographer Paul Nicklen shocked the world with footage of a starving polar bear that he and members of his conservation group SeaLegacy captured in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. “It rips your heart out of your chest,” Ni...

Arthur Benjamin is perhaps the world's leading mathemagician and, in today's talk, he aims to show the creativity, beauty and wonder that is as much a part of math as logic. Stepping onto the TEDGlobal 2013 stage, Benjamin takes us on a spirited tour of the Fibonacci numbers, where the patterns to be found go far beyond simply adding two con...

Just announced: TEDYouth's speaker lineup (so far) includes a MythBuster, an oceanographer turned viral video star, the "Science Babe," and a roboticist who studies flying geckos -- plus poets, musicmakers, geeks and writers -- among the 20+ speakers who'll join us November 19, 2011, at the Times Center in New York City. The theme for TED...

About this event: This will be a Salon on STEM education at the elementary and high school levels with a focus on the importance of engaging young girls in the disciplines of Science, Technology, Education and Mathematics throughout their school careers and in to their adult lives. We will begin the evening at 6 pm with STEM demonstrations featuring students...

After watching the collection of talks on Mapping and Manipulating the Brain, read a thoughtful recap of the major points in this TED Study, and learn where experts believe things are headed. Towards a holistic, scientific understanding of brain function and human consciousness A recurring theme throughout the TEDTalks in Mapping and Manipulatin...

Former Deputy Prime Minister of Libya and engineering professor Mustafa Abushagur takes the stage at TEDGlobal 2013 to look at where the Arab Spring has been, and where it is going. The Arab world once led human civilization in culture, philosophy, mathematics and science, but in the last century the region found itself first under coloni...

At TED2011, Deb Roy shared his talk, “The birth of a word,” describing when he and his wife, Rupal Patel, brought home their baby boy for the first time. The pair sought to shoot a different kind of home video: in every room of their house, a camera recorded eight to ten hours of footage a day. After three years, Roy had roughly 90,000 hours of ...

About this event: On Jan.17th, 2015, we will launch TEDxFactory798 at Pavilion, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art. The theme this time is Singularity. Singularity is a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence will have progressed to the point of human intelligence. Once Singularity has been reached, new rule will dominate the world. Ray Kurzweil...

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...

It’s a few months after graduation, which means the luckiest new college grads are knee-deep into internships and entry-level jobs. How to stand out? Business writer Margaret Heffernan suggests: Start by taking a coffee break with your coworkers. Companies grow best, she suggests, when workers are connected by social bonds. Heffernan’s TE...

By Baratunde Thurston So, you might know me. I ran the digital side of The Onion for a long time; I’m the author of How To Be Black. People call me to do things like host White House events on innovation, do the wrap-up at TED salons, join semi-secret cabals at MIT, and comment on the teevee. The underlying constant in my multi-hyphenate ...

Jean-Baptiste Michel has sold a small sculpture to the Whitney Museum of American Art. A major museum acquiring a piece—that’s a big moment for any artist. But this sculpture is the very first piece of art Michel ever created. Michel is the data researcher who showed what you can learn using Google’s Ngram Viewer at TEDxBoston in 2011, an...

So, you might know me. I ran the digital side of The Onion for a long time; I’m the author of How to Be Black. People call me to do things like host White House events on innovation, do the wrap-up at TED salons, join semi-secret cabals at MIT, and comment on the teevee. The underlying constant in my multi-hyphenate life is running my creative c...

The weeks after TEDGlobal require serious debriefing. Throughout the course of the conference -- which took place June 10 to 14 in Edinburgh, Scotland -- the mind is crammed full of so many fascinating ideas that it takes some time to process them. As we look back on the conference, and continue to post talks from it, the TED Blog wanted to ...

Just like school ... not! TEDYouth is like a TED Conference for high school students, starring a lineup of speakers working at the top of their fields of culture, science, technology and art. You'll hear about scientific discoveries and crazy art projects that will surprise you, make you laugh and blow your mind a little. TEDYouth will ta...

As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. Farewell to Cassini -- and here’s to the continuing search for life beyond Earth. In mid-August, PBS released a digital short featuring Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist and the leader of the imaging team for the Cassini mission to Saturn. In the short...

Less than 24 hours before TED and just a few miles away in sunny Beverly Hills, the TED2012 house band gathers for its third day of rehearsal. It’s a very cool group of dudes, jamming away in the hidden, but fascinating Gibson Showcase Theater, where guitars of the one-of-a-kind variety dangle from the walls, threatening to fill the room with ...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Paul Gilding starts his TEDTalk with four words that say almost everything: "The Earth is full." It's a terrifying concept. Have we really strained, mined and otherwise depleted the planet's resources to the point where social collapse is inevitable? Gilding believes we have, and he launches into a defense of ...

About this event: Is space travel our salvation? Perhaps, but just not in the ways we might have thought. The sky is a deeply rooted metaphor of the infinite, the untouchable celestial realm inhabited by gods. Those who traveled to the moon reacted genuinely in unscripted ways about where they went, what they traveled through, and how moved they were to see Ea...