Groundbreaking media experiment Basetrack sought to rejig how America’s wars are reported. TED Fellow Teru Kuwayama harnessed the communication tools of our time to present embedded reportage in a whole new way. Following the deployment of 1/8 – 1st Battalion, Eighth Marines – to southern Afghanistan, Basetrack’s embedded media team collabor...

Since Johannes Kepler used Mars to explain the organization of the cosmos back in the 17th century, people have been royally obsessed with the Red Planet. And with the announcement that there’s running water on the planet, it seems we’re not getting over the fascination any time soon. Here, two confessed super-fans, Andy Weir, author of the book...

In 2010 the U.S. Army Special Operations Command created a pilot program to put women on the battlefield in Afghanistan. In this edited excerpt from her book, Ashley's War, writer Gayle Tzemach Lemmon shares the background that led to this game-changing decision. From the start of the war, U.S. Special Operations Commander Eric Olson believed t...

Infectious disease researcher Romina Libster wants us to understand: Vaccines are really not a matter of personal choice. Romina Libster (TED Talk: The power of herd immunity) has witnessed first-hand the devastation a virus can wreak on an unvaccinated community. As one of Argentina’s leading infectious disease researchers, she’s on call at th...

Ed Glaeser is a economist at Harvard, and the author of Triumph of the City, and as his business casual look he wears a bow-tie with ice-cream cones. He is also one of the world's experts on the nature of cities, and he was invited to set the stage for the TED2012 wish. "At their heart," he says, "cities are the absence of physical spa...

Blue Whale scientist

Community member Ray Givler wrote this in response to Kevin Briggs' TED Talk, The bridge between suicide and life: "A lot of intelligent people watch TED talks. Bright minds face existential questions that the majority of the population don't even consider, and they face them with greater intensity. Addressing this issue is gifted education r...

In 2007, at TEDGlobal in Arusha, Tanzania, Euvin Naidoo gave an opening talk about investing in African countries -- laying out 10 markets and metrics to watch as African nations gained capacity. Today, in a follow-up post, investor Ryan Hoover looks at these 10 metrics that Naidoo laid out -- and charts how much has changed in the past f...

In session 3 of TEDWomen 2018, hosted by social justice documentarian Jess Search, a lineup of speakers and performers -- Eldra Jackson III, Shad Begum, Emily Quinn, Shohini Ghose, Climbing PoeTree, Maeve Higgins and Lindy Lou Isonhood -- explored toxic masculinity, quantum computing, immigration, the death penalty and much more. An e...

“The political and the sexual are intimate bedfellows,” says Shereen El Feki in her talk from TEDGlobal 2013. “That is true for all of us, no matter where we live and love.” For five years, El Feki talked to people across Middle East about their bedroom behavior, and what she found over and over was a seemingly deep-rooted conservatism -- in ...

About this event: TEDxDHFastStream, a corporate TEDx event organised by the UK Department of Health gathered together around 40 members of the Department's graduate talent management scheme. Noone in the audience had previously attended a TED or TEDx event so it proved to be a real learning experience, as well as a huge change from any other corporate events they...

About this event: “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” - Victor Hugo TEDxBagaToiruu is an independently organized event to be held on Baga Toiruu Street on June 7th, 2015. Baga Toiruu Street, which surrounds the center of Ulaanbaatar, is well known for its local eateries and vibrant student population. TEDxBagaToiruu will challenge ...

Human potential is a double-edged sword; it can be turned to great good or great evil. This session is about the discovery, liberation and channeling of human potential in ways that make the world around us a better place. But first, Alsarah & the Nubatones introduce us to East African retro-pop. As Alsarah says from stage mid-set: "T...

About this event: Beyond the surface of fences and walls, TEDxDonovanCorrectional represents an expression of ideals, thoughts and emotions that collectively have the power to expand hearts, transform minds and liberate spirits. In the spirit of world-renowned TED Talks, TEDxDonovanCorrectional – a unique gathering focused on inspiration, transformation and inte...

About this event: The event showcases ideas centering around, but is not limited to the theme of 'Making Lives, Waking Hearts' and can be broadly interpreted to include ideas about: • Inclusivity, diversity and identity in contemporary times, against the backdrop of globalisation, populism and terrorist threats. Talks could range from exploring and clarifying ...

TED Studies, created in collaboration with Wiley, are curated video collections — supplemented by rich educational materials — for students, educators and self-guided learners. in What Makes Us Human?, TED speakers tackle humanity’s oldest and deepest questions by playing with primates, excavating ancient remains, and DNA-mapping family trees. E...

More and more women are being incarcerated in the US -- before they’ve been found guilty of crimes. Here’s how the bail system affects women and what can be done. Robin Steinberg’s big idea -- The Bail Project, a national revolving bail fund designed to make sure people can await trial from their own homes, not from jail -- was one of the first...

About this event: Speaker line up for TEDxFargo: Michael Strand Strand completed an artist's residency at the Artigas-Miro Foundation in Barcelona, Spain. He also worked as chair of the art department at Concordia University-Nebraska. He now works as the department head of the ceramics department at NDSU. His talk will be entitled "The Space Between Art an...

About this event: Beacon, like most river towns up and down the Hudson, is reinventing itself. The days of big industry, of the Hudson as an artery of commerce, are long gone. So too, though, are the days of abject depression and population flight. Along the Hudson today, there is a newfound optimism and a sense of civic pride. And it is boldness and creativity t...

TED Prize winner Sylvia Earle inspired all of us to care deeply about the ocean and to think deeply about how we can protect it. But the ocean is vast and the challenges are numerous. Where do we begin to understand the complex beauty that is the ocean? One great place to start: The new mission-blue.org. It's a home for ocean news and initia...

Watch Benedetta Berti's TED Talk, "The surprising way groups like ISIS stay in power" >> It is virtually impossible to look at the news without being bombarded with graphic images of the ‘Islamic State’ (aka ISIS/ISIL/Dae’sh). Part of our fascination with the macabre activities of this group has to do with its sheer violence and brutali...

Lope Gutiérrez-Ruiz’s eye-popping magazines and celebrated festivals are creating “pathways to coexistence and tolerance.” Interactive Fellows Friday Feature: Join the conversation by answering Fellows’ weekly questions via Facebook. This week, Lope  asks: What do organized communities achieve more efficiently than government? What could ...

The world’s most dangerous animal isn’t the lion, tiger or bear. It’s actually the mosquito. “Mosquitos have killed more humans than any other creature in human history,” says Haydn Parry in today’s talk. “The mosquito has killed more humans than wars and plague.” Every year, about a million and a half people succumb to malaria -- even with ...

Which is the bigger threat to wildlife: Radioactivity or humans? Wildlife ecologist Jim Beasley has gone into the contaminated zones around Chernobyl and Fukushima to learn the answer, and his findings are both sobering and heartening. When humans are evacuated after a nuclear disaster, what happens to the environment -- soil, plants and trees,...

In the future, how will we define meat? At home one night earlier this month, I prepared a salad with simulated chicken made from pea and soy proteins. Later I had some cheese derived from almond milk, which I came across, in a testament to its verisimilitude, next to the dairy camemberts and bries at Whole Foods, rather than shelved with the...

Enjoy these fascinating reads from across the internet: What can the healthcare system learn from chain restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory, Pizza Hut and Red Lobster? Atul Gawande explores. [New Yorker] Watch Atul’s brilliant talk from TED2012, “How do we heal medicine?” . In 2009, American students ranked 23rd in the world in sc...

TEDActive is like attending TED, only without having to sit in an auditorium for hours at a time. TEDActive attendees get to watch the talks from TED2013 while lounging around the La Quinta Resort and Spa in Palm Springs -- and they also get take part in smile-inducing participatory art projects and go on all kinds of field trips for adults....

Sequencing an extinct genome is no longer a pipe dream, says evolutionary biologist and ancient DNA specialist Hendrik Poinar in today’s talk. It’s a modern reality, and we’re not too far from seeing a revived extinct species walking the Earth again -- maybe even a woolly mammoth. In this talk from TEDxDeExtinction, Poinar talks about how he and...

In Northern Canada, near the Beaufort Sea, sits a tiny hamlet with a population of less than 700, consisting of mostly Aboriginal people. It is where 80-year-olds ride their snowmobiles to buy milk, where students go on hunting expeditions for field trips, and where neighbors drop off chunks of fresh muskox meat in the evenings. Here, the su...

Cities are the the 21st century’s dominant form of civilization -- and they're where humanity's struggle for survival will take place. Robert Muggah and Benjamin Barber spell out the possibilities. Half the planet's population lives in cities. They are the world's engines, generating four-fifths of the global GDP. There are over 2,100 cities wi...