TEDTalks Video: Ideas Worth Spreading

Friday, September 30, 2011

Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos augmented-reality maps

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In a demo that drew gasps at TED2010, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos new augmented-reality mapping technology from Microsoft

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food

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Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Peter Eigen: How to expose the corrupt

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Some of the world's most baffling social problems, says Peter Eigen, can be traced to systematic, pervasive government corruption, hand-in-glove with global companies. At TEDxBerlin, Eigen describes the thrilling counter-attack led by his organization Transparency International.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

George Whitesides: A lab the size of a postage stamp

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Traditional lab tests for disease diagnosis can be too expensive and cumbersome for the regions most in need. George Whitesides' ingenious answer, at TEDxBoston, is a foolproof tool that can be manufactured at virtually zero cost.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Jamie Heywood: The big idea my brother inspired

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When Jamie Heywood's brother was diagnosed with ALS, he devoted his life to fighting the disease as well. The Heywood brothers built an ingenious website where people share and track data on their illnesses -- and they discovered that the collective data had enormous power to comfort, explain and predict.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Sendhil Mullainathan: Solving social problems with a nudge

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MacArthur winner Sendhil Mullainathan uses the lens of behavioral economics to study a tricky set of social problems -- those we know how to solve, but don't. We know how to reduce child deaths due to diarrhea, how to prevent diabetes-related blindness and how to implement solar-cell technology ... yet somehow, we don't or can't. Why?

Saturday, September 24, 2011

VS Ramachandran: The neurons that shaped civilization

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Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran outlines the fascinating functions of mirror neurons. Only recently discovered, these neurons allow us to learn complex social behaviors, some of which formed the foundations of human civilization as we know it.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Derek Sivers: How to start a movement

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With help from some surprising footage, Derek Sivers explains how movements really get started. (Hint: it takes two.)

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

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Questions of good and evil, right and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But Sam Harris argues that science can -- and should -- be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a good life.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Nick Veasey: Exposing the invisible - Nick Veasey (2009)

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Nick Veasey shows outsized X-ray images that reveal the otherworldly inner workings of familiar objects -- from the geometry of a wildflower to the anatomy of a Boeing 747. Producing these photos is dangerous and painstaking, but the reward is a superpower: looking at what the human eye can't see.




Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Dan Buettner: How to live to be 100+

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To find the path to long life and health, Dan Buettner and team study the world's "Blue Zones," communities whose elders live with vim and vigor to record-setting age. At TEDxTC, he shares the 9 common diet and lifestyle habits that keep them spry past age 100.




Monday, September 19, 2011

Kiran Bir Sethi teaches kids to take charge

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Kiran Bir Sethi shows how her groundbreaking Riverside School in India teaches kids life's most valuable lesson: "I can." Watch her students take local issues into their own hands, lead other young people, even educate their parent




Sunday, September 18, 2011

Herbie Hancock's all-star set

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Legendary jazz musician Herbie Hancock delivers a stunning performance alongside two old friends -- past drummer for the Headhunters, Harvey Mason, and bassist Marcus Miller. Listen to the end to hear them sweeten the classic "Watermelon Man."




Saturday, September 17, 2011

David Blaine: How I held my breath for 17 min

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In this highly personal talk from TEDMED, magician and stuntman David Blaine describes what it took to hold his breath underwater for 17 minutes -- a world record (only two minutes shorter than this entire talk!) -- and what his often death-defying work means to him. Warning: do NOT try this at home.




Friday, September 16, 2011

Anthony Atala on growing new organs - Anthony Atala (2009)

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Anthony Atala's state-of-the-art lab grows human organs -- from muscles to blood vessels to bladders, and more. At TEDMED, he shows footage of his bio-engineers working with some of its sci-fi gizmos, including an oven-like bioreactor (preheat to 98.6 F) and a machine that "prints" human tissue.




Thursday, September 15, 2011

Sivamani: Rhythm is everything, everywhere

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Percussionist Sivamani delivers one of TED's liveliest and most inventive performances yet. He uses traditional Western and Eastern instruments to create a rhythmic tour de force, along with a tub of water, corrugated metal, spoons, luggage, our stage props and even a little audience participation.




Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Eve Ensler: Embrace your inner girl

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In this passionate talk, Eve Ensler declares that there is a girl cell in us all -- a cell that we have all been taught to suppress. She tells heartfelt stories of girls around the world who have overcome shocking adversity and violence to reveal the astonishing strength of being a girl.




Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction

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Listening to stories widens the imagination; telling them lets us leap over cultural walls, embrace different experiences, feel what others feel. Elif Shafak builds on this simple idea to argue that fiction can overcome identity politics.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Derek Sivers: Weird, or just different?

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"There's a flip side to everything," the saying goes, and in 2 minutes, Derek Sivers shows this is true in a few ways you might not expect.




Sunday, September 11, 2011

Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

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The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who's reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED's Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished -- and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Naif Al-Mutawa: Superheroes inspired by Islam

43 people liked this

In "THE 99," Naif Al-Mutawa's new generation of comic book heroes fight more than crime -- they smash stereotypes and battle extremism. Named after the 99 attributes of Allah, his characters reinforce positive messages of Islam and cross cultures to create a new moral framework for confronting evil, even teaming up with the Justice League of America.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Dimitar Sasselov: How we found hundreds of potential Earth-like planets

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Astronomer Dimitar Sasselov and his colleagues search for Earth-like planets that may, someday, help us answer centuries-old questions about the origin and existence of biological life elsewhere (and on Earth). Preliminary results show that they have found 706 "candidates" -- some of which further research may prove to be planets with Earth-like geochemical characteristics.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Tan Le: A headset that reads your brainwaves

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Tan Le's astonishing new computer interface reads its user's brainwaves, making it possible to control virtual objects, and even physical electronics, with mere thoughts (and a little concentration). She demos the headset, and talks about its far-reaching applications.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Kevin Stone: The bio-future of joint replacement

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Arthritis and injury grind down millions of joints, but few get the best remedy -- real biological tissue. Kevin Stone shows a treatment that could sidestep the high costs and donor shortfall of human-to-human transplants with a novel use of animal tissue.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as irrational as ours

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Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in "monkeynomics" shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Sheena Iyengar on the art of choosing

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Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from

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People often credit their ideas to individual "Eureka!" moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the "liquid networks" of London's coffee houses to Charles Darwin's long, slow hunch to today's high-velocity web.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Susan Shaw: The oil spill's toxic trade-off

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Break down the oil slick, keep it off the shores: that's grounds for pumping toxic dispersant into the Gulf, say clean-up overseers. Susan Shaw shows evidence it's sparing some beaches only at devastating cost to the health of the deep sea.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

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Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.
Original video source (DanielPink_2009G.mp4)

Thursday, September 1, 2011

John Delaney: Wiring an interactive ocean

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Oceanographer John Delaney is leading the team that is building an underwater network of high-def cameras and sensors that will turn our ocean into a global interactive lab -- sparking an explosion of rich data about the world below.

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