Author: tedstaff

Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of fascinating TED-related news items. Here, some highlights.

Jeff Bezos, the co-founder of Amazon (watch his TED Talk), made waves on Monday when it was announced that he will buy The Washington Post for $250 million. “The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners. We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads,” he writes to the staff of the paper in an open letter. “Journalism plays a critical role in a free society, and The Washington Post — as the hometown paper of the capital city of the United States — is especially important.”

Yves Rossy, aka “The Jetman” (watch his talk), made his first flight in the US last week, zooming through the skies alongside a B-17 bomber during the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture show in Wisconsin. Good Morning America aired a clip of the daredevil in action.

Steven Johnson (watch one of his three talks) is making a new television show. How We Got to Now with Steven Johnson will air on PBS in fall 2014. As he writes, “Each hour-long episode takes one facet of modern life that we mostly take for granted — artificial cold, clean drinking water, the lenses in your spectacles — and tells the 500-year story of how that innovation came into being.”

A TED Talk published last week showed how the high tech of Formula 1 race cars is being used to save babies. Today, in The Guardian, read how the technology that helped find Osama bin Laden is now being used to prolong the shelf life of cakes.

TED Fellow Alex Odundo has started an Indiegogo campaign to create a makerspace in Kisumu, Kenya. He tells the TED Blog, “The makerspace [will] help innovators, engineers and designers who have good ideas to walk in and be offered the tools to do their work … and to test and produce products.”

Mathematician Steven Strogatz (watch his talk) is the Very Important Puzzler in the newest “Ask Me Another” radio quiz show on NPR — which also features our contributing editor, Ben Lillie, in his role as curator of the Story Collider.

During the 2009 G20 summit protests in London, a man named Ian Tomlinson was killed by the Metropolitan police. His death was at first claimed to be by natural causes — until The Guardian sourced and published amateur footage with evidence to the contrary. After a four-year battle led by his family, the police have finally acknowledged for the first time that an officer unlawfully killed Tomlinson. This is, once again, thanks to the work of citizen journalism advocate Paul Lewis. (Watch his talk—he specifically mentions this case.)

On PBS.org, Larry Kotlikoff gives an interesting analysis of “generational accounting” — the various ways that local governments in the US cook their books to hide the cost of future liabilities, like pensions. Bill Gates called out the problem in this TED Talk, which focused on how state governments pay their retirees and short their schools.

Here’s what happens when Sir Ken Robinson (watch his most recent TED Talk) and Disney/ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney get together for a porch-side conversation about education, imagination and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Read this double interview via Fast Company.

EuroNews.com profiles TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra (watch his talk) to explore his ideas of self-organized learning.

Caitria and Morgan O’Neill, who together created the natural disaster management system Recovers.org (watch their talk), were honored as one of seven Champions of Change at the White House. Read about it on their blog.

Damon Lindelof, the writer of Lost and Prometheus (browse his playlist of five favorite TED Talks), speaks to Vulture.com about the race for bigger and better destruction moments in summer blockbuster movies. Is it a good thing?

While the US’ Discovery Channel was criticized for its Megalodon special earlier this week — a piece of speculative fiction marketed as fact — there is some accurate shark information on offer during Shark Week. TED speaker Greg Stone (watch his talk), who’s been called the Indiana Jones of the Ocean, will appear twice on August 8, once at 10pm Eastern, on “Alien Sharks of the Deep,” and then at 11pm EST, on “Shark After Dark.”

Across the globe, anyone can watch TED Talks through TED.com, our YouTube channel, our mobile apps or our iTunes podcasts. (Have you checked out TED Studies on iTunes U?) Most recently, our new SmartTV app showcases TED in beautiful high definition through television set manufacturers like Samsung and telephone IPTV providers like TELUS, letting you browse our 1500+ talks on-demand.

But our globe-trekking distribution team has also created many special TED offerings to help spread ideas with the help of local partners. Here — as we get ready for TEDGlobal 2013, themed “Think Again” — a look at the ways you can watch TED around the world, in no particular order.

China: In China, there are multiple ways to get a dose of TED inspiration. Sina, one of China’s largest media companies (it owns Weibo, the Twitter of China), hosts TED Collections, eclectic playlists of talks around topics like Business, Education and Art. Youku, the second largest video site in the world after YouTube, has TED Shows — entertaining playlists of talks around themes designed for TV and movie fans. And NetEase, renowned for its Internet portal, offers TED Studies for universities.

Canada and the UK: TED Weekends on the Huffington Post, which brings together bloggers who take ideas inspired by a TED Talk through different twists and turns, is available not only through the Huffington Post in the US, but also in Canada and the UK. Coincidentally, TED2014 — our 30^th anniversary event — will take place in Vancouver.

Japan: Public broadcaster NHK brings TED Talks to a national TV audience in Japan with the primetime series, Super Presentation! This program harnesses TED speakers’ persuasive ideas to help teach English, and empowers a new generation of independent thinkers. The show airs Friday nights at 11pm on NHK Education. Meanwhile, on June 15, Yahoo! Japan will begin offering TED Ideas in Business, a curated collection of talks designed to share wisdom in the workplace.

Argentina: Starting on June 15, TED10, our cable video on demand programming, will be available through Cablevision, the largest operator in Buenos Aires. In fact, Cablevision represents TED’s first partnership in Latin America of many more that we’re working on this very moment.

Brazil: TED is teaming up with the science and culture magazine Superinteressante to create idea visualizations — artistic representations of the underlying ideas in TED Talks. We’ll be bringing these visualizations to TED.com too. 

Australia: What about the “big screen”? No, not that lovely plasma in your living room … the BIG screens that you see in places like Time Square. In two weeks — to coincide with TEDGlobal 2013 — TED Talks will be broadcast in outdoor venues around the world, from Federation Square in Melbourne to Big Screen Plaza in New York City. Curated for outdoor viewing and transient traffic, this little experiment is another big way we’re finding to spread ideas.

Kazakhstan: Ideas Worth Spreading is a television series, which airs to a national audience on Bilim TV. The show takes the back-to-basics approach of airing TED Talks with clean introductory and closing slates, three times a day. Each evening during primetime, a TED Talk premieres in Kazakh with repeat broadcasts in Russian twice the following day.

Korea: TED Collections are available in Korean through TV Cast, a video site of Naver, the country’s dominant search engine. And just last month TED10 became available on all major cable systems in Korea, thanks to a collaboration with Home Choice. In addition, Korea Telecom serves up TED Shows to a fast-growing audience for its IPTV platform.

The Middle East: Soon MSN Arabia will join TED’s family by making TED Collections available in Arabic — covering 15 countries from Egypt to Algeria, Tunisia to Morocco. In partnership with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Higher Education, this September TED Studies will be made available to all universities for free in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Brazil: Here, TED Talks are brought to you via TED’s partnership with Netflix. TED Shows are also available on Netflix in the US.

Spain: The new TV show Buenas Ideas TED is a 13-part television series airing on TVE “La 2.” Shot documentary style, the series shows the Spanish cast and crew unpacking ideas from TED Talks as they discuss them, interview guests and visit local sites. Airs Sundays at 15:00.

Africa and beyond. Planning a trip to Namibia or Nigeria? Tune into the TED Radio Hour, an original 60-minute radio show (produced in partnership with NPR) that airs not only in the United States, but in Africa, parts of India, Australia, New Zealand, even literally up in the air with Delta Airlines. The TED Radio Hour – a sonic journey through ideas, inventions and fresh approaches to old problems – digs deeper into subjects broached on the TED stage. Hosted by Guy Raz, each episode looks at a central question, examining it through conversations with TED speakers and guests. Music and sound weave throughout each episode, bringing themes and concepts to life through vivid storytelling.

TEDGlobal 2013 kicks off June 10-14 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Check out information about attending or watching from home with TED Live »

A blue whale scientist. A mobile finance entrepreneur. A DIY neuroscientist. A comedian. A sound artist. This year’s class of TED Fellows brings together trailblazers in a wide variety of fields from locations all around the globe. The TED Fellows program is getting ready to choose its new class — so they’re looking for 20 unusual thinkers at work on fascinating ideas to join the program for TED2014 in Vancouver, Canada, March 17-21. TED Fellows not only attend the conference but take part in a slew of pre-conference workshops to amplify their work and careers, including training in public speaking, leading up to a short pre-conference TED Talk. (Like these.)

Applications for TED2014 Fellowships are open from now through June 21. Apply here »

So what’s it like to be a TED Fellow? As guitarist Usman Riaz says, “These are the most creative minds in the world.” Coral reef biologist Kristen Marhaver adds, “The TED Fellows program rewards people who take risks and try to change things with no guarantee they’ll change.”

The concept behind Buenas Ideas TED, the 13-part Spanish television series that debuts today on TVE: to create a 21^st century version of the literary salon or Greek agora. The show brings together classic TED Talks — about technology, entertainment and design, about our relationships to work and to each other, and about the ways our lives will look different in the future — seamed together with smart visual effects. The premiere episode also includes an interview TEDxMadrid organizer Antonella Broglia, who told the TED Blog this summer how excited she was to see a tweet after the event from an attendee calling it “the best Saturday of my life.”

Buenas Ideas TED, directed by Miguel Castro and hosted by Xosé Castro, will premiere today — Sunday, May 26 — at 15:00 on TVE, the public broadcaster with the biggest reach in Spain. Watch it on “La 2,” where it is available both with subtitles and dubbed into Spanish. And stay tuned to the TED Blog for more information on this show.

An online petition was posted early this past weekend, asking that “the TEDGlobal conference organizers remove George Papandreou from the speakers list.”

Papandreou is the former prime minister of Greece. He was prime minister in 2009, when the euro crisis flared up. Under pressure from the markets and from Greek citizens protesting harsh austerity measures, he resigned in 2011 to make way for a national unity government.

He has been invited to share his views on these events and other themes at TEDGlobal 2013, which will take place in three weeks. With all due respect for those who have signed the petition, the TEDGlobal program won’t change. Papandreou’s experience as the PM of his country during a phase of political and economic turmoil is an interesting lens into the broader problems that continue to trouble Europe. That’s why we invited him to TEDGlobal. What he learned from his period in office gives him a rare insiders’ viewpoint, at a crucial moment for the continent.

For the record, any politicians coming to TED are asked to give a talk that is framed around ideas and insights, rather than partisanship. And like all our speakers, Papandreou is not being paid to speak at TEDGlobal.

Whether we’re conscious of it or not, design affects us in hundreds — if not thousands of ways — each day. Just think back to your morning. A designer made the decisions that went into the craftsmanship of your bed, your futon, your mattress. A designer determined the form and materials of your toothbrush, your shower, your towel — helped create the experience of your first cup of coffee or tea. Less tangibly, a designer was involved in the way you caught up on the news or checked the weather. And that’s all before you’ve even left the house!

Design can be big — think of the subway systems or highways. Design can be small — think of the details in the fonts we stare at on screens and in books. But design is truly all around us. And so Thursday night in the TED office, we held a salon called “Design is Everywhere,” hosted by our Ideas Editor, Helen Walters. Over the course of the night, four speakers gave talks on their unique approaches to design.

First up was Jake Barton, whose media design firm Local Projects creates systems for museums to unearth works in whimsical ways, and to let the citizens of a city tell their stories in their own voice. In a very moving talk, he shared how the team approached creating the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. As Barton says, September 11 exists somewhere “between current events and history” and all of us – no matter where we were at the time — are witnesses to the event. He explained how the museum sees its mission as collecting stories of that day — even from museum visitors. He also explains how names on the memorial are arranged by an algorithm attuned to “meaningful adjacencies” of personal connections.

Next, came designer Ayşe Birsel, co-founder of Birsel + Seck, who has been called, among other things, the “Queen of Toilets,” for her innovative TOTO toilet seat. She calls her design process Deconstruction: Reconstruction. Birsel talked about her workshops, in which she asks people to rethink their greatest design product: their lives. She presented thoughtful maps and charts that different clients have made of their priorities, influences and loved ones, and how it helped them reconstruct — and ultimately express — what’s meaningful to them.

In November 2012, New York’s Museum of Modern Art acquired 14 video games for its design collection — causing a few gasps among art critics. How dare they place Pac-Man and Portal alongside Picasso and Picabia?! In a very funny talk, MoMA’s design curator Paola Antonelli makes the case that, yes, video games do belong in her museum. Why? Because, as one attendee tweets: ”Video games are the purest form of interaction design.”  She details how to acquire a video game for a museum (forget the game gear, get the code) and shares her wishlist for the next few acquisitions.

And finally, in a lighthearted and sharp-witted talk — the kind you could only expect from the cartoon editor for The New Yorker magazine — Bob Mankoff offered his reflections on the nature of good humor and gave tips to would-be cartoonists. (Hint: “That’s the nature of any creative activity – you’re mostly going to be rejected.”) While sharing scores of his favorite “idea drawings,” and divulging the intentions behind the magazine’s occasional abstruseness, he showed how no joke is funny unto itself. Context is everything.

“Design is Everywhere” was part of TED@250, a series of salons held at our New York office at 250 Hudson Street. Since our main conferences are only twice a year, TED@250 is an opportunity for talks that rethink headlines and respond to conversation happening in real time. It’s also a place for speakers with the kind of personal stories that simply work better on the small scale. Stay tuned. Some of these talks may be coming to TED.com.

The 2013 Webby winners are in, and we are thoroughly humbled by the number of times we see the word “TED” in the list. For each Webby category, there are two big winners: the Webby Winner, the site picked by judges, and the People’s Voice winner, the site that won the popular vote online. In total, TED was honored 11 times.

We’d like to offer a big congratulations to TED-Ed for winning both the Webby and People’s Voice awards in the category Education, and for also being selected as the Webby Winner for Best Practices.

We’d also like to take a moment to high-five TEDxAmsterdam for their Interactive Brain, which won the People’s Voice award in Events.

While we’re very pleased to be the Webby Winner for Best Variety (Channel), we’d like to send our love to SoulPancake for winning the People’s Voice award in the category.

TED also won the People’s Voice award for Events & Live Webcasts, the Webby award for Podcast, and we are extra proud to be double winners in the categories Use of Mobile Video and Education and Discovery.

A big thanks to everyone who voted for the People’s Voice awards online, and to the Webbys for being so incredibly supportive over the years.

TED is coming to a TV screen near you. On Tuesday, May 7, our first-ever television special will air on PBS at 10pm. Called TED Talks Education, the special is a deep dive on ideas to make our education system stronger – with talks from teachers, learning experts, education researchers and more. The speaker roster includes: host John Legend, educator Rita F. Pierson, technologist Bill Gates, grit expert Angela Lee Duckworth, education reform advocate Geoffrey Canada, chemistry teacher Ramsey Musallam, poet Malcolm London and the most-watched TED speaker ever, Sir Ken Robinson.

Set your DVR or mark your calendar now: May 7, 10pm, PBS. Above, watch a 30-second trailer for this special, a collaboration between TED, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s American Graduate Program, and PBS.

And stay tuned for much, much more, as TED will be kicking off Education Week on our site on May 6. Bonus: the day after the special airs, it will be available as a webcast — and we’ll be posting extended versions of the talks from it on TED.com.

TED, THNKR, SoulPancake, The Switch and Henry Review have all been nominated for The Webby’s People’s Voice Award in the category Online Film & Video Variety. Last week, both Kid President and Candace issued rousing calls on YouTube, asking for their fans’ help in catching up to us in the vote — which closes April 30.

We adore SoulPancake — heck, we’ve even posted a talk from Kid President on our site. So we’re sort of pleased to see that their campaign has changed the tide. SoulPancake currently has 58% of the vote to our 35%. That said, we like to win Webbies. Who doesn’t?

So who does the TED staff think should win this important race? We asked in the video at the top of this post …

As part of a public exchange of letters (his, ours, his) regarding TED’s views on the line between good and bad science, Deepak Chopra has asked us to post a talk he gave at TED in 2002 (four years before TED began free online distribution of some of its talks). Here it is:

We never posted Chopra’s talk before because, frankly, it seemed unfocused, and it used the language of quantum physics in a way we thought was misleading. We admired Deepak’s desire for a more spiritual, connected world. But in our curatorial opinion, this particular talk wasn’t right for the homepage of TED.com.

We add just one talk each weekday on our homepage, chosen from thousands of candidate talks in our archives, and strive for a broad variety of topics and styles designed to inform, entertain and inspire. We listen to, and learn from, the views of our global community, and we accept that people won’t always agree with our choices!

Today, the Guggenheim Foundation revealed its new class of Fellows. Three thousand applied and, in the end, 175 scholars, artists, scientists, writers and thinkers were selected — not just based on their accomplishments to date, but for their potential as well. We were pleased to see three TED speakers among this esteemed group:

Journalist Joshua Foer, who wowed us at TED2012 with his simple techniques for memorizing extremely long lists of numbers and words, has been named a 2013 Fellow in Creative Arts. Watch his talk, “Feats of memory anyone can do” »

Stuart Firestein, the chair of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, opened his TED2013 talk with a puzzling proverb: “It’s very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, especially when there is no cat.” Named a 2013 Fellow in Natural Sciences, read all about his talk in celebration of ignorance »

Jessica Green, also a 2013 Fellow in the Natural Sciences, gave an exciting talk at TED2013 about what can happen when microbiologists and architects work together. Watch her latest talk, “We’re covered in germs. Let’s design for that.” »

Each year, the TED Prize is awarded to an extraordinary individual with a creative and bold vision to spark global change. Think JR’s global participatory art project, Inside Out, or Sugata Mitra’s School in the Cloud. By leveraging the TED community’s resources to support the winner and investing $1 million in their idea, the TED Prize inspires leaders to dream bigger about what’s possible.

Nominations for the 2014 TED Prize are now open. We’re looking for nominees who know how to capture imaginations and make a measurable impact. We know you share our passion for world-changing ideas. That’s why we’re counting on you to nominate a visionary you respect that is capable of leading a high-impact collaborative action.

From now through June 1, you are invited to nominate yourself or someone else – perhaps a co-worker, a friend, a mentor or even an innovator you admire from afar – for the 2014 TED Prize.

• Nominate yourself and make your wish »

• Nominate someone else (we will ask them for their wish) »

Because winning the TED Prize is a life-changing experience, we want to make sure that you fully understand the process. Applications will be reviewed by the TED Prize jury, who will consider the power of each finalist’s wish for the world and the potential impact of their execution plan. The TED Prize jury will select the winner in December of 2013 and work with them on their plan. The TED Prize winner will reveal their wish and accept their award at the TED Conference in Vancouver, BC in February 2014.

For more information about the nomination process and tips on what makes a good wish, head to the TED Prize website. Or look the very informative infographic below.

The annual Webby Award nominations are in, and we are thrilled to see our name in this incredibly fascinating mix multiple times. TED has been nominated for six awards – “Online Film & Video: Variety,” “Variety (Channel),” “Events & Live Webcasts,” “Social: Education & Discovery,” “Mobile & Apps: Podcasts,” and “Mobile & Apps: Best Use of Mobile Video.” Meanwhile, TED-Ed has been nominated for “Websites: Education” and “Websites: Best Practices.” And TEDxAmsterdam’s interactive brain, which captured conversations as the event unfolded, has been nominated for “Website: Events.” 

Also exciting: on Monday night, TED’s own Thaniya Keereepart accepted the Shorty Award for “Best Branded YouTube Channel.” The Shorty Awards honor the best in social media, and require all acceptance speeches to be less than 140 characters. Here is ours:

“Spreading ideas takes more than just Twitter. You need a community. Translators! TEDxers! TEDsters: This is for you!”

It’s just a teeny, tiny question: How did the universe begin?

Today, TED-Ed has unveiled a new lesson that answers this in less than four minutes, “The beginning of the universe, for beginners.” This is the first of five animated lessons developed by CERN scientists and brought to life by TED-Ed’s talented animators. The other four animations – which tackle the topics of Dark Matter, Anti-Matter, Big Data and the Higgs Boson — will premiere at TEDxCERN on May 3rd and will be shared on TED-Ed that same day.

The lesson above, “The beginning of the universe, for beginners,” was conceived by CERN physicist Tom Whyntie. It explains how cosmologists and particle physicists explore questions like, “How is the universe expanding?” by replicating the heat, energy and activity of the first few seconds of our universe — immediately following the Big Bang.

To see the premiere of the next four lessons in real time, tune in to the TEDxCERN live webcast on May 3rd, from 14:00 to 20:00 (CEST). It will be available to the public here »

TEDxCERN will feature talks from scientists and big thinkers of all kinds. For more information on TEDxCERN, visit their website, or follow them on Facebook or Twitter.

TEDxChange, themed “Positive Disruption,” kicks off shortly — at 9am (PDT) at the Gates Foundation campus in Seattle, Washington — and anyone, anywhere is invited to watch along through the livestream at TED.com or via TEDxChange.org. Yesterday, we gave you three reasons to tune in and shared with you the amazing speakers who’ll take the stage, from host Melinda Gates to a pair of 15-year-olds who are working to eradicate polio from their communities.

And here’s more motivation to watch. Below, just a few of the great talks that have been given at TEDxChanges past:

• Melinda Gates: Let’s put birth control back on the agenda
• Hans Rosling: The good news of the decade?
• Melinda Gates: What nonprofits can learn from Coca-Cola
• Mechai Viravaidya: How Mr. Condom made Thailand a better place

Watch the webcast »

Few sensations feel better than when your mind does a backflip and, all of a sudden, you are suddenly able to see things in new and unexpected ways. At TEDGlobal 2013, themed “Think Again,” you’ll have this feeling often. “The approach we adopted,” explains TEDGlobal curator Bruno Giussani, “is to take a closer look at the global remix happening before our eyes as power shifts, culture and technology intersect, and hopes and anxieties collide. Many things we think we know may have to be reconsidered — and that’s what this program is designed to explore.” With speakers including biologists, economists, neuroscientists, architects, technologists, activists, artists, a “gentleman thief” and the former Prime Minister of Greece, the program is packed with speakers who take bold new looks at the topics that most intrigue us.

TEDGlobal 2013 will take place June 10 to 14, 2013, in Edinburgh, Scotland — one of the world’s best-preserved medieval cities. The conference is also watchable all across the globe with a TED Live membership. Here, the list of this year’s incredible speakers and performers. Click on their name to read much more or check out the full lineup, with bios, here »

Session 1: Moments of Truth

• John Kenny, Carnyx player
• Michael Sandel, Political philosopher
• Steve Howard, Corporate innovator
• Jose Miguel Sokoloff, Anti-guerrilla creative
• Manal Al-Sharif, Women’s rights activist
• Tariq Harb, Classic guitar virtuoso
• Uri Alon, Systems biologist

Session 2: Those Flying Things

• Raffaello D’Andrea, Autonomous systems visionary
• Lian Pin Koh, Drones ecologist
• Andreas Raptopoulos, Airborne logistics activist
• Daniel Suarez, Sci-fi author
• Elizaveta, Musical alchemist
• Greg Asner, Airborne ecologist

Session 3: Exquisite Enigmatic Us

• Hetain Patel, Visual artist
• Russell Foster, Circadian neuroscientist
• Elizabeth Loftus, False memories scholar
• Sandra Aamodt, Neuroscientist and science writer
• Kelly McGonigal, Science-help psychologist
• Natasha Bedingfield, Singer, songwriter 

Session 4: Money Talks

• George Papandreou, Former Prime Minister of Greece
• Annette Heuser, Rating agency reformer
• Toby Eccles, Social investment visionary
• Didier Sornette, Risk economist
• Apollo Robbins, Gentleman thief
• Mariana Mazzucato, Innovation economist

Session 5: Listening to Nature

• Bernie Krause, Natural sounds legend
• Marla Spivak, Bees scholar
• Sonia Shah, Science writer
• Greg Gage, Neuroscientist
• Yaron Herman, Jazz pianist
• Holly Morris, Explorer and filmmaker
• Carin Bondar, Wild sex biologist

Session 6: World on Its Head

• Nassim Assefi, Doctor, novelist, Guest Host
• Gabriella Gomez-Mont, Creativity Officer, Guest Host
• Juan Pardinas,Economic policy innovator
• Trita Parsi, Historian
• Tania Bruguera, Performance artist
• Dina El Wedidi, Singer
• Lesley Hazleton, Accidental theologist
• May El-Khalil, Founder of the Beirut Marathon
• Teddy Cruz, Architect and urbanist

Session 7: Regeneration

• Molly Stevens, Biomaterials researcher
• Siddharthan Chandran, Regenerative neurologist
• Grégoire Courtine, Spinal cord researcher
• Mark Kendall, Biomedical engineer
• Naomi Wolf, Author and social critic
• Le Trio Joubran, Oud trio

Session 8: State of the Nations

• Renata Salecl, Democracy thinker
• Eric X. Li, Investor and political scientist
• Shereen El Feki, Arab sexuality expert
• Lissie, Singer and songwriter
• Benjamin Barber, Political theorist

Session 9: Forces of Change

• Adrian Hong, Advisor, strategist, Guest Host
• Erik Hersman, Blogger, technologist, Guest Host
• Dambisa Moyo, Global economist
• Charles Robertson, Emerging-markets economist
• Toby Shapshak, Technology writer
• Just a Band, Funk band
• Mustafa Abushagur, Former Prime Minister-Elect of Libya
• Joseph Kim, North Korean refugee

Session 10: Imagined Beauty

• Gavin Pretor-Pinney, Cloudspotter
• Arthur Benjamin, Mathemagician
• Alexa Meade, Visual artist
• Stephen Burt, Poetry critic
• Zhang Xin, Builder
• Pico Iyer, Global author

Session 11: Tech Impact

• An Xiao Mina, Creative technologist
• Eben Upton, Raspberry Pi inventor
• Anant Agarwal, Education innovator
• Alessandro Acquisti, Privacy economist
• Tim Exile, Electromusician
• Abha Dawesar, Novelist

Session 12: All Together Now

• Chrystia Freeland, Plutocracy chronicler
• Charmian Gooch, Anti-corruption activist
• Michael Porter, Business strategist
• RuthAnne, Singer and songwriter
• Salvatore Iaconesi, Open-source engineer and artist
• Br. David Steindl-Rast, Monk

For a photo layout of the sessions » 

And for much more information on each and every speaker » 

Last week, TED withdrew the TEDx license for the TEDxWestHollywood event. We wanted to write a short note to the community to explain why we did so.

First some background: The TEDx program has included more than 5,000 local events to date. TEDx is designed to help local organizers produce independent, TED-style events in their own communities, by licensing the TEDx logo under specific guidelines. No money is exchanged: The organizers don’t pay for the license, and TED does not finance the events.

Withdrawing an existing license is not a decision we would ever make lightly; it has only happened once before. But the reasoning is clear in this case: The program planned for TEDxWestHollywood fell outside the boundaries of what’s permitted under a TEDx license. We raised our concerns with the organizer several times, beginning in December. But we could not reach a mutually agreeable path in which she could produce an event that fit her vision while remaining under the TEDx license. We have had discussions with the organizer, and as a goodwill gesture have offered to cover the costs associated with the TEDx branding. She plans to produce the event under a different name, and we wish her and the event well.

Every TEDx organizer agrees to a license that’s conditional on following a clearly published series of rules intended to promote our shared mission. Anyone who attends a TEDx event anywhere in the world should be able to expect a TED-like experience, and one that excludes:

– political talks that use us-vs.-them language to polarize a discussion
– commercial talks that blatantly pitch a product or company
– talks that present one spiritual view as the “truth”
– talks that use the language of science to present speculative claims as fact

This final category had become a public challenge for TEDx, and in response we released in December a clarifying letter about science on the TEDx stage. All TEDx hosts were notified; the guidelines were reviewed with the host of TEDxWestHollywood.

Over the past several months, many in the TED and TEDx community have reached out to us, expressing concern over the direction this particular event had taken. When we looked at the program as a whole, our assessment was that it didn’t meet the TEDx guidelines for solid science. The program theme (which has since been edited online) was described this way:

Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm? will deal with the need to change our fundamental value system or worldview to one in which humanity pulls together, superseding the current worldview where whoever has the most toys wins. The new ideation will be based on what science tells us is a quantum universe, with everything being interconnected and interdependent — one organism that needs to function for the good of the whole.

This language alone raised a red flag. (Characterizing the universe as a single organism is not a tenet of quantum physics.) As more details became available, we made the curatorial judgment that the program was not appropriate for TEDx. Our decision was not based on any individual speaker, but our assessment of the overall curatorial direction of the program.

To be clear: This event is not being “censored.” The event organizer is still planning to hold an event with the same speaker lineup. It just won’t be under a TEDx license. According to the organizer, the event will be held April 14, and we wish the team well with it.

This was a difficult decision, but we believe we have to be vigilant in our enforcement of the key TEDx rules, in order to keep the TED and TEDx platforms credible for scientists — and all speakers — who present, and to respect the contributions of the TEDx organizers who curate imaginative programs within the guidelines.

We listen carefully to our community, and welcome your thoughts on this. Please join the conversation here.

At TED2012, Jon Ronson wove a mind-bending tale that asks: How can we truly tell who is a psychopath? What’s the line between crazy and sane? Jon Ronson: Strange answers to the psychopath testAnd is it something we can truly delineate, or are we trying to discern black and white in a color-soaked world?

Today’s TEDWeekends on the Huffington Post picks up this question, using Ronson’s talk as a jumping-off point to talk about the concept of “normalcy.” Here, three essays from the weekly HuffPo feature to pique your interest.

Jon Ronson: The Story of a Man Who Faked Insanity

Whenever someone comes on TV or the radio sounding potentially like a psychopath — Lance Armstrong, etc. — we all get drunk with our psychopath spotting powers. I get millions of tweets asking me if they are one. I also get offers to be a talking head on TV. I try to always say no because whilst it would be nice to make hay while the sun shone, it’s quite morally corrosive (not to mention massively unethical) to diagnose someone off the TV.

I tell you who would be even more unethical than me if they went on TV to diagnose someone from afar as a psychopath: any forensic psychiatrist or psychologist or anyone who works in that field as an expert. The Psychopath Test is a cautionary tale to not do that, in fact. It’s as much a book about confirmation bias as it is about psychopaths. Read the full essay »

Dr. Harold Koplewicz: Defending Psychiatrists and the DSM

In Jon Ronson’s rather entertaining TED Talk, he has a little fun at the expense of psychiatrists. That’s fair, but let’s look at what he says. He asks: “Is it possible that the psychiatric profession has a strong desire to label things that are essential human behavior as a disorder?”

To which I would answer: The psychiatric profession has a strong desire to find a way to help people who are suffering — and the family members who struggle alongside them. Suffering is, of course, “essential human behavior,” but when people are miserable, and suicidal, and dangerous to themselves and others, we have an ethical obligation to try to help them. And to alleviate their suffering, we need to understand it. Read the full essay »

Laura Cococcia: Psychopathy, a Cultural Reality?

Stalin, Draper, Caulfield, Salander. No, it’s not the latest name of Mad Men‘s pivotal ad agency. It’s part of a list of people one could classify as psychopaths.

“Strange answers to the psychopath test,” the TED Talk by journalist Jon Ronson, explores the nature and definition of psychopathy. As research, Ronson visits a tough-as-nails CEO he suspects of psychopathy as well as an inmate of a psychiatric facility who claims he pretended to be a psychopath to avoid going to prison. Through the talk, he questions whether psychopathy is a legitimate category of mental illness, or if it’s just a construct we use to explain away actions in our fellow humans that are less than nice, less than normative, that make us non-psychopaths feel uneasy. Read the full essay »

30-y-o global ideas conference seeks hot architecture talk.

Are you an architect, architecture critic, historian of architecture or otherwise involved with architecture and design? Have you always wanted to give a TED Talk?

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of TED, our 2014 conference will include several talks that look back on three decades of advances in a handful of fields. Until June 30, 2013, we are seeking proposals for an 18-minute, multimedia presentation that will take the TED audience through the most important developments in the past 30 years of architecture and suggest where the field is going — or needs to go — in the future.

Presentations may be developed and submitted by individuals or teams, though only one presenter will take the stage. The ideal presentation will:

• be highly visual
• be geared toward an audience of interested generalists
• help non-architects grasp the most important changes in the field, including technological advances, changing materials, and shifting ideas about the relationship between the built environment, human beings, and the natural world
• show the audience what the built world looked like in 1984, what it looks like now, how we got from there to here, and where we are (or should be) heading

We are not looking for an Architecture 101-style lecture. What we are looking for: a creative strategy for conveying, with intelligence and gusto, the recent architectural developments that matter most.

Interested parties should submit a short description (no more than 300 words) of the proposed presentation. Please include a synopsis of the architectural developments you regard as crucial, as well as your vision for how best to take an audience on a thrilling tour of recent architectural history.

Proposals should be submitted to [email protected] by June 30, 2013.

At TEDxWhitechapel on January 13, 2013, Graham Hancock gave a passionately argued talk in which he described the transformative impact that ayahuasca (containing the drug DMT) had had on him and argued that responsible adult usage of such drugs was a fundamental right. The talk was viewed more than 130,000 times on YouTube.

TED’s scientific advisors who viewed the talk expressed to us grave concerns about it. For example, it suggests a world view in which DMT can connect users directly to “seemingly intelligent entities which communicate with us telepathically.” Graham Hancock does state he makes no claim to the reality status of these entities, but he also argues that they can teach and heal us, claims that are well outside orthodox scientific thinking.

Our advisors recommended that the talk be should not be distributed without being framed with caution. So… this is that caution. We invite scientists, skeptics, knowledge-seekers and supporters — and Graham himself, if he’s willing — to join in a conversation over this talk.

Is this an idea worth spreading, or misinformation? Good science or bad science? What’s the evidence for either position?

There’s only one rule for the conversation. Comments need to be phrased in respectful terms. Those that are intemperate or unnecessarily insulting will be removed.

Join the conversation here, where it’s possible to upvote comments, sort by recency or rating, and see all comments in one page. We look forward to the discussion.