While working with kids who have trouble speaking, Ajit Narayanan sketched out a way to think about language in pictures, to relate words and concepts in "maps." The idea now powers the FreeSpeech app, which can help nonverbal people communicate.

No one thinks twice about a woman wearing blue jeans in New York City -- but when Nobel laureate Malala wears them, it's a political act. Around the globe, individuality can be a crime, and clothing can be a form of protest. In a talk about the power of what we wear, Kaustav Dey examines how fashion gives us a nonverbal language of dissent and e...

All TED Talks are good. Why do only some go viral? Over the last year, a human behavior consultancy called Science of People set out to answer this question. To do so, says founder Vanessa Van Edwards, they polled 760 volunteers, asking them to rate hundreds of hours of TED Talks, looking for specific nonverbal and body language patterns....

Enjoy these fascinating reads from across the internet: Tonight brings the first U.S. presidential debate of the 2012 election season, and Jim Lehrer has instituted new rules to make it more of a group discussion and less like a series of disjointed monologues. [Christian Science Monitor] Read the TED Blog’s Q&A with nonverbal commun...

About this event: From social media to phone calls, dialogue to debate, everyone seeks to understand and be understood. Join us for a TEDx viewing party to explore the many ways humans communicate through speech, writing, and nonverbal cues. Pizza will be served!

“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 ...

At TEDGlobal 2012, Amy Cuddy gave a talk about the remarkable power of our posture to affect our mental state: Strike a powerful pose (in private) before a job interview, and your performance will improve.  With the US election coming up, we asked Cuddy, an expert on nonverbal communication, for her insights into political posturing -- an...

For many of us, working from home during COVID-19 has meant we are spending a lot of time on video meeting applications like Zoom. The effects of this have taken us by surprise. Having giant heads staring at us up close for long periods can be off-putting for a lot of us. Never mind that we feel we should fix our hair (COVID mullet anyone?), ...

Amy Cuddy digs into what our faces and bodies do when we tell a lie. Let me start with a question: How do you know if a person is lying? If you’re like most people, your first response will be something like “Liars don’t make eye contact.” In a survey of 2,520 adults in sixty-three countries, 70 percent of respondents gave that answer. People a...

Who hasn’t sent a text message saying “I’m on my way” when it wasn’t true or fudged the truth a touch in their online dating profile? But Jeff Hancock doesn’t believe that the anonymity of the internet encourages dishonesty. In fact, he says the searchability and permanence of information online may even keep us honest.

Even in the best workplaces, rude coworkers may occasionally appear. But you don’t need to smile and suffer in silence, says management researcher Christine Porath. Oh, coworkers. We spend intense amounts of our waking lives with them, but while we voluntarily chose to be with some of these people, many of them are strangers foisted upon us. ...

"Every conversation has the potential to open up and reveal all the layers and layers within it, all those rooms within rooms," says podcaster and musician Hrishikesh Hirway. In this profoundly moving talk, he offers a guide to deep conversations and explores what you learn when you stop to listen closely. Stay tuned to the end to hear a perform...

This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from people in the TED community; browse through all the posts here. Public speaking is one of the most nerve-wracking experiences that many of us face in our daily lives (although it’s dropped off the list of Americans’ biggest fear...

"Lying is a cooperative act," says professional lie detector Pamela Meyer (TED Talk: How to spot a liar). "Think about it, a lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance. Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie." Meyer works to help people see the sheer ubiquity of the falsehoods we tell and hear -- and gives advice on...

Fixable How to win people over (w/ Robin Steinberg) January 22, 2024 [00:00:00] Anne Morriss: Hello, Frances! [00:00:01] Frances Frei: Hey, beautiful. [00:00:02] Anne Morriss: Frances, today we're going to talk about something every organization needs to focus on at some point in its life cycle, which is how to tell the story of the work i...

Have you ever talked with a friend about a problem, only to realize that he just doesn't seem to grasp why the issue is so important to you? Have you ever presented an idea to a group, and it's met with utter confusion? What's going on here? Katherine Hampsten describes why miscommunication occurs so frequently, and how we can minimize frustrati...

We're taught to believe that hard work and dedication will lead to success, but that's not always the case. Gender, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation are among the many factors that affect our chances, says writer and advocate Melinda Briana Epler, and it's up to each of us to be allies for those who face discrimination. ...

(NOTE: Some of the findings presented in this talk have been referenced in an ongoing debate among social scientists about robustness and reproducibility. Read "Corrections & Updates" below for more details as well as Amy Cuddy's response.) Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psycholog...

In an astonishing talk and tech demo, software researcher Doug Roble debuts "DigiDoug": a real-time, 3-D, digital rendering of his likeness that's accurate down to the scale of pores and wrinkles. Powered by an inertial motion capture suit, deep neural networks and enormous amounts of data, DigiDoug renders the real Doug's emotions (and even how...

Don't believe predictions that say the future is trending towards city living. Urbanization is actually reaching the end of its cycle, says logistics expert Julio Gil, and soon more people will be choosing to live (and work) in the countryside, thanks to rapid advances in augmented reality, autonomous delivery, off-the-grid energy and other tech...

The internet can be an ugly place, but you won't find bullies or trolls on Stuart Duncan's Minecraft server, AutCraft. Designed for children with autism and their families, AutCraft creates a safe online environment for play and self-expression for kids who sometimes behave a bit differently than their peers (and who might be singled out elsewhe...

"Dance can elevate our human experience beyond words," says Judith Jamison, artistic director emerita of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. In between performances of excerpts from Alvin Ailey's classic works "Revelations" and "Cry," Jamison reflects on the enduring power of dance to transform history into art that thrills audiences around ...

Golan Levin, an artist and engineer, uses modern tools -- robotics, new software, cognitive research -- to make artworks that surprise and delight. Watch as sounds become shapes, bodies create paintings, and a curious eye looks back at the curious viewer.