TEDTalks Video: Ideas Worth Spreading

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Chip Conley: Measuring what makes life worthwhile

77 people liked this
When the dotcom bubble burst, hotelier Chip Conley went in search of a business model based on happiness. In an old friendship with an employee and in the wisdom of a Buddhist king, he learned that success comes from what you count.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Marian Bantjes: Intricate beauty by design

21 people liked this
In graphic design, Marian Bantjes says, throwing your individuality into a project is heresy. She explains how she built her career doing just that, bringing her signature delicate illustrations to storefronts, valentines and even genetic diagrams.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Charles Leadbeater: Education innovation in the slums

28 people liked this
Charles Leadbeater went looking for radical new forms of education -- and found them in the slums of Rio and Kibera, where some of the world's poorest kids are finding transformative new ways to learn. And this informal, disruptive new kind of school, he says, is what all schools need to become.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Aditi Shankardass: A second opinion on learning disorders

40 people liked this
Developmental disorders in children are typically diagnosed by observing behavior, but Aditi Shankardass knew that we should be looking directly at their brains. She explains how a remarkable EEG device has revealed mistaken diagnoses and transformed children's lives.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Hillel Cooperman: Legos for grownups

53 people liked this
Lego blocks: playtime mainstay for industrious kids, obsession for many (ahem!) mature adults. Hillel Cooperman takes us on a trip through the beloved bricks' colorful, sometimes oddball grownup subculture, featuring CAD, open-source robotics and a little adult behavior.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Clay Shirky: How cognitive surplus will change the world

75 people liked this
Clay Shirky looks at "cognitive surplus" -- the shared, online work we do with our spare brain cycles. While we're busy editing Wikipedia, posting to Ushahidi (and yes, making LOLcats), we're building a better, more cooperative world.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Ellen Dunham-Jones: Retrofitting suburbia

21 people liked this
Ellen Dunham-Jones fires the starting shot for the next 50 years' big sustainable design project: retrofitting suburbia. To come: Dying malls rehabilitated, dead "big box" stores re-inhabited, parking lots transformed into thriving wetlands.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Stephen Palumbi: Following the mercury trail

9 people liked this
There's a tight and surprising link between the ocean's health and ours, says marine biologist Stephen Palumbi. He shows how toxins at the bottom of the ocean food chain find their way into our bodies, with a shocking story of toxic contamination from a Japanese fish market. His work points a way forward for saving the oceans' health -- and humanity's.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Carter Emmart demos a 3D atlas of the universe

38 people liked this
For the last 12 years, Carter Emmart has been coordinating the efforts of scientists, artists and programmers to build a complete 3D visualization of our known universe. He demos this stunning tour and explains how it's being shared with facilities around the world.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Mitchell Joachim: Don't build your home, grow it!

34 people liked this
TED Fellow and urban designer Mitchell Joachim presents his vision for sustainable, organic architecture: eco-friendly abodes grown from plants and -- wait for it -- meat.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Benoit Mandelbrot: Fractals and the art of roughness

63 people liked this
At TED2010, mathematics legend Benoit Mandelbrot develops a theme he first discussed at TED in 1984 -- the extreme complexity of roughness, and the way that fractal math can find order within patterns that seem unknowably complicated.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Ellen Gustafson: Obesity + Hunger = 1 global food issue

29 people liked this
Co-creator of the philanthropic FEED bags, Ellen Gustafson says hunger and obesity are two sides of the same coin. At TEDxEast, she launches The 30 Project -- a way to change how we farm and eat in the next 30 years, and solve the global food inequalities behind both epidemics.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Nalini Nadkarni: Life science in prison

20 people liked this
Nalini Nadkarni challenges our perspective on trees and prisons -- she says both can be more dynamic than we think. Through a partnership with the state of Washington, she brings science classes and conservation programs to inmates, with unexpected results.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Hans Rosling on global population growth

100+ people liked this
The world's population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years -- and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth. This is the paradoxical answer that Hans Rosling unveils at TED@Cannes using colorful new data display technology (you'll see).

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Carl Safina: The oil spill's unseen culprits, victims

33 people liked this
The Gulf oil spill dwarfs comprehension, but we know this much: it's bad. Carl Safina scrapes out the facts in this blood-boiling cross-examination, arguing that the consequences will stretch far beyond the Gulf -- and many so-called solutions are making the situation worse.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Matt Ridley: When ideas have sex

100+ people liked this
At TEDGlobal 2010, author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It's not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Ethan Zuckerman: Listening to global voices

50 people liked this
Sure, the web connects the globe, but most of us end up hearing mainly from people just like ourselves. Blogger and technologist Ethan Zuckerman wants to help share the stories of the whole wide world. He talks about clever strategies to open up your Twitter world and read the news in languages you don't even know.



Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Adora Svitak: What adults can learn from kids

19 people liked this
Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids' big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups' willingness to learn from children as much as to teach.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

James Randi's fiery takedown of psychic fraud

49 people liked this
Legendary skeptic James Randi takes a fatal dose of homeopathic sleeping pills onstage, kicking off a searing 18-minute indictment of irrational beliefs. He throws out a challenge to the world's psychics: Prove what you do is real, and I'll give you a million dollars. (No takers yet.)

Monday, April 11, 2011

Steven Cowley: Fusion is energy's future

45 people liked this
Physicist Steven Cowley is certain that nuclear fusion is the only truly sustainable solution to the fuel crisis. He explains why fusion will work -- and details the projects that he and many others have devoted their lives to, working against the clock to create a new source of energy.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Kevin Kelly tells technology's epic story - Kevin Kelly (2009)

4 people liked this
In this wide-ranging, thought-provoking talk from TEDxAmsterdam, Kevin Kelly muses on what technology means in our lives -- from its impact at the personal level to its place in the cosmos.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Philip K. Howard: Four ways to fix a broken legal system - Philip K. Howard (2010)

7 people liked this
The land of the free has become a legal minefield, says Philip K. Howard -- especially for teachers and doctors, whose work has been paralyzed by fear of suits. What's the answer? A lawyer himself, Howard has four propositions for simplifying US law.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Eric Topol: The wireless future of medicine - Eric Topol (2009)

5 people liked this
Eric Topol says we'll soon use our smartphones to monitor our vital signs and chronic conditions. At TEDMED, he highlights several of the most important wireless devices in medicine's future -- all helping to keep more of us out of hospital beds.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds - Temple Grandin (2010)

9 people liked this
Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works -- sharing her ability to "think in pictures," which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Pawan Sinha on how brains learn to see - Pawan Sinha (2009)

5 people liked this
Pawan Sinha details his groundbreaking research into how the brain's visual system develops. Sinha and his team provide free vision-restoring treatment to children born blind, and then study how their brains learn to interpret visual data. The work offers insights into neuroscience, engineering and even autism.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Raghava KK: Five lives of an artist - Raghava KK (2010)

2 people liked this
With endearing honesty and vulnerability, Raghava KK tells the colorful tale of how art has taken his life to new places, and how life experiences in turn have driven his multiple reincarnations as an artist -- from cartoonist to painter, media darling to social outcast, and son to father.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory - Daniel Kahneman (2010)

13 people liked this
Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy -- and our own self-awareness.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Fortune Cookie Quote Of The Day

Fortune

Harsha Bhogle: The rise of cricket, the rise of India - Harsha Bhogle (2009)

7 people liked this
The tale of a major global cultural phenomenon: Cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle describes the spectacular arrival of fast-paced 20-20 cricket as it parallels the rise of modern India. He traces the game from its sleepy English roots to the current world of celebrity owners and million-dollar player contracts.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Gary Flake: is Pivot a turning point for web exploration? - Gary Flake (2010)

3 people liked this
Gary Flake demos Pivot, a new way to browse and arrange massive amounts of images and data online. Built on breakthrough Seadragon technology, it enables spectacular zooms in and out of web databases, and the discovery of patterns and links invisible in standard web browsing.

Friday, April 1, 2011

James Cameron: Before Avatar ... a curious boy

5 people liked this
James Cameron's big-budget (and even bigger-grossing) films create unreal worlds all their own. In this personal talk, he reveals his childhood fascination with the fantastic -- from reading science fiction to deep-sea diving -- and how it ultimately drove the success of his blockbuster hits "Aliens," "The Terminator," "Titanic" and "Avatar."

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