A powerhouse of scientific leadership in Africa, Christian Happi sequences and studies the genomes of infectious diseases like Ebola, HIV and coronavirus.
Psychologist Angela Duckworth studies the traits that allow us to stick to our goals — and she chose four great talks that explore other facets of how human beings behave.
Clay Shirky argues that the history of the modern world could be rendered as the history of ways of arguing, where changes in media change what sort of arguments are possible -- with deep social and political implications.
As Dave Eggers says, "The best TED Talks make sense of complicated ideas and trends, and have an elegant simplicity to them. It’s plenty of time to get across a clear and bold idea.” Below, his notes on 4 great talks.
Eduardo Paes is the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, a sprawling, complicated, beautiful city of 6.5 million. He shares four big ideas about leading Rio -- and all cities -- into the future, including bold (and do-able) infrastructure upgrades and how to make a city "smarter."
Design veteran Kevin Bethune argues that designers' talents are often undervalued in business. He says that all designers have four key superpowers: x-ray vision, shapeshifting, extrasensory perception (ESP) and the ability to make others superhuman. Sound unbelievable? Watch and learn what can happen when designers are given space in the workpl...
Emotional abuse can be incredibly damaging, increasing a person's chances of developing depression and anxiety. But these behaviors can be subtle and difficult to spot, both from within and outside a relationship. It also often makes people doubt their perceptions of their own mistreatment. How can we recognize these patterns in real life? Viann...
At age 12, Freeman Hrabowski marched with Martin Luther King. Now he's president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where he works to create an environment that helps under-represented students -- specifically African-American, Latino and low-income learners -- get degrees in math and science. He shares the four pillars of U...
With the invention of the atomic bomb, humanity gained the power to destroy itself for the first time in our history. Since then, our risk of either extinction or the collapse of civilization has steadily increased. Just how likely are we to destroy ourselves? And what poses the greatest threat to our survival? Dig into four existential threats ...
Regret is one of our most powerful emotions -- and also one of the most misunderstood. Over the past two years, author Daniel H. Pink has collected a trove of more than 16,000 regrets from people in 105 countries in an effort to better understand this mysterious emotion. He shares the key patterns that emerged (it all boils down to the same four...
With many women of color considering exiting the workforce due to unfair conditions, it's time to reshape systems in order to put an end to this massive loss of talent. Exposing the harmful repercussions of racist, toxic organizational cultures, soul coach Rha Goddess and corporate inclusion visionary Deepa Purushothaman share four pathways to r...
In this hilarious, whirlwind tour of the last four billion years of evolution, paleontologist and TED Fellow Lauren Sallan introduces us to some of the wildly diverse animals that roamed the prehistoric planet (from sharks with wings to galloping crocodiles and long-necked rhinos) and shows why paleontology is about way more than dinosaurs.
In the face of artificial intelligence and machine learning, we need a new radical humanism, says Tim Leberecht. For the self-described "business romantic," this means designing organizations and workplaces that celebrate authenticity instead of efficiency and questions instead of answers. Leberecht proposes four (admittedly subjective) principl...
As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights.
An underwater museum. Off the south coast of Lanzarote, 12 to 14 meters beneath the sea, lies artist Jason DeCaires Taylor’s latest museum, Museo Atlántico, which opened on January 10. Three years in the making, the installation is not only an artisti...
By Kylie Dunn
What do you get when you cross a 39-year-old perfectionist with 54 TED Talks and far more honesty than any person probably needs to experience? You get my Year of TED.
I’ve been inspired by TED Talks for years, and felt the urge to do something noteworthy and challenging to ring in my fortieth year on the planet. Inspira...
It’s a challenge for anyone with a cause: How do you frame the issue so that people feel excited to get involved? For some causes, the answer is asking people to dump a bucket of ice on their head. For others, making that personal connection is even more tricky.
This is exactly how a small group of attendees felt when they were posed with...
A kidney donation chain could narrow the huge gap between organ supply and demand. Kidney matchmaker and transplant surgeon Jayme Locke explains how.
In a typical year, roughly 100,000 people in the United States are anxiously waiting on the list for a kidney transplant, and only about 17,000 of them end up getting donor organs -- 11,000 from d...