TED resources
Try something new for 30 days
Matt Cutts Is there something you’ve always meant to do, wanted to do, but just … haven’t? Matt Cutts suggests: Try it for 30 days. This short, lighthearted talk offers a neat way to think about setting and achieving goals.
Read More
Toward a science of simplicity
George Whitesides Simplicity: We know it when we see it — but what is it, exactly? In this funny, philosophical talk, George Whitesides chisels out an answer.
Read More
What adults can learn from kids
Adora Svitak 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.
Read More
The linguistic genius of babies
Patricia Kuhl Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another — by listening to the humans around them and “taking statistics” on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show
Read More
Speak to the heart
About the fragrance of languages and how a sick frog can save your day. Marleen is a philologist and a communication expert with a passion for storytelling and languages. On her seriously playful blog, she writes about the joys and
Read More
Why do we love? A philosophical inquiry
Skye C. Cleary Ah, romantic love; beautiful and intoxicating, heart-breaking and soul-crushing… often all at the same time! If romantic love has a purpose, neither science nor psychology has discovered it yet – but over the course of history, some
Read More
Who am I? A philosophical inquiry
Amy Adkins Throughout the history of mankind, the subject of identity has sent poets to the blank page, philosophers to the agora and seekers to the oracles. These murky waters of abstract thinking are tricky to navigate, so it’s probably
Read More
Questioning the universe
Stephen Hawking In keeping with the theme of TED2008, professor Stephen Hawking asks some Big Questions about our universe — How did the universe begin? How did life begin? Are we alone? — and discusses how we might go about
Read More
Let’s use video to reinvent education
Salman Khan Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls
Read More
Why should you read “One Hundred Years of Solitude”?
Francisco Díez-Buzo Gabriel García Márquez’s novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” brought Latin American literature to the forefront of the global imagination and earned García Márquez the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature. What makes the novel so remarkable? Francisco Díez-Buzo
Read More