School can be rife with stress, anxiety, panic attacks and even burnout -- but there's often no formal policy for students who need to prioritize their well-being. Hailey Hardcastle explains why schools should offer mental health days and allow students time to practice emotional hygiene without stigma. Follow along to learn how she and a team o...

Build Back Better features thought leaders and change agents evaluating our pre-pandemic systems and practices in an effort to create a more sustainable, efficient and just world. (Made possible with the support of Qatar Foundation)

In Zimbabwe in the 1980s, Mary Bassett witnessed the AIDS epidemic firsthand, and she helped set up a clinic to treat and educate local people about the deadly virus. But looking back, she regrets not sounding the alarm for the real problem: the structural inequities embedded in the world's political and economic organizations, inequities that m...

Teens don't get enough sleep, and it's not because of Snapchat, social lives or hormones -- it's because of public policy, says Wendy Troxel. Drawing from her experience as a sleep researcher, clinician and mother of a teenager, Troxel discusses how early school start times deprive adolescents of sleep during the time of their lives when they ne...

We believe we should work hard in order to be happy, but could we be thinking about things backwards? In this fast-moving and very funny talk, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that, actually, happiness inspires us to be more productive.

The hard choices -- what we most fear doing, asking, saying -- are very often exactly what we need to do. How can we overcome self-paralysis and take action? Tim Ferriss encourages us to fully envision and write down our fears in detail, in a simple but powerful exercise he calls "fear-setting." Learn more about how this practice can help you th...

If we did, we’d all be kinder and more compassionate, both to each other and to ourselves when our hearts get broken, says psychologist Guy Winch. I have worked with scores of heartbroken people over the past twenty years, and I remember many of them vividly. This is not surprising, as the ease with which we recall events is heavily influenced ...

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...

This morning, we kick off TED2017 in the new Community Theater with a program of fresh ideas, music and dance from the TED2017 Fellows and Senior Fellows. These Fellows are change-makers from many fields -- design, tech, education, business, science and many more -- offering a peek at the future us. Stanford Thompson opens the TED Fellows...

Taken for Granted Tuesday, June 22, 2021 Adam Grant: Hey WorkLifers, it’s Adam Grant. Welcome back to Taken for Granted, my podcast with the TED Audio Collective. I’m an organizational psychologist. My job is to think again about how we work, lead, and live. Today, I’m talking to one of my favorite authors... John Green: I'm John Green and I ...

By Paul Farmer At the end of almost a decade spent in teaching hospitals and clinics, most (we hope all) physicians have honed their clinical acumen by focusing on the care of the patient who is right in front of them. Perhaps this is as it should be: as patients, we don't want our doctors (or nurses or social workers) distracted by "outs...

Jane McGonigal is a game designer with an apparently simple idea: some of the billions of hours we spend playing games can be used to solve real world problems, and it can be done by playing games. Her new book, Reality Is Broken, explores the power of games to change people's lives. It's just out this week. The TED Blog caught up with her in th...

The current coronavirus pandemic is a truly global one; in fact, Antarctica is the only continent with no cases (although that could change). Most nations have responded with similar measures -- stay-at-home advisories, shutdown of non-essential businesses, social distancing -- but the scope of these changes has varied and so has the human impac...

Here's a huge list of TED speaker-recommended books, with all the diversity of titles and topics you might expect. No matter your mood, preference or occasion, we’ve got you covered. When you’re lying in the sun Any book by Isaac Asimov I have stacks of collections of science-fiction short stories. I grab these before getting on a long f...

Whether your weeks ahead contain travel, vacations or just longer and lazier days than usual, our list of recommendations from TED speakers has books for all moods, activities and tastes. When you want to understand why we humans do what we do Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely (TED Talk: Our buggy...

Tuesday, March 16, 2021 Adam Grant: Hey WorkLifers, it’s Adam Grant. Season 4 is right around the corner, but today I wanted to share a special conversation in our “Taken For Granted” series. I’m talking to Daniel Kahneman. Danny won a Nobel Prize in Economics. He’s been named one of the most influential economists in the world. But he’s not o...

A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story About Schizophrenia by Sandra Allen In college, Allen’s uncle sent her his autobiography in the mail -- the story of a man suffering from schizophrenia. The autobiography was written in all capital letters on a typewriter, and Allen’s vicarious memoir, which places her uncle’s story in context, is wri...

You procrastinate because you're lazy, right? Wrong. The truth is more complex -- and far more interesting. Learn how to stop putting off important tasks ... with a little help from master procrastinator Margaret Atwood. (Audio only) Listen to more of WorkLife at TED.com/podcasts

Jane Goodall hasn't found the missing link, but she's come closer than nearly anyone else. The primatologist says the only real difference between humans and chimps is our sophisticated language. She urges us to start using it to change the world.

Philip Zimbardo knows how easy it is for nice people to turn bad. In this talk, he shares insights and graphic unseen photos from the Abu Ghraib trials. Then he talks about the flip side: how easy it is to be a hero, and how we can rise to the challenge.