Far Flung: Virtual Worlds
Traveling is tricky right now and, for most, the boundaries of our worlds have shrunk dramatically. So a lot of people are spending a lot more time in virtual places, like Sea of Thieves, Fortnite, Ultima Online and more. Explore how these online worlds help us push past real-world boundaries and have vastly new experiences, even become new vers...
Far Flung: Oberammergau
Nearly 400 years ago, a tiny town in Germany made a bargain with God: spare its people from the Black Plague and we'll put on a play in your honor... forever. And it worked! Now every decade, the entire town comes together to stage the play, drawing massive crowds to one of the largest religious spectacles in the world. But problematic parts of ...
Far Flung: Post-Pandemic Paradise in Rapa Nui
What happens to a tourist paradise when no one shows up to visit? Rapa Nui, known to many as Easter Island, typically welcomes more than 120,000 visitors each year—which is a lot for a place with only 10,000 residents. After COVID-19 shuts down flights to this remote island, citizens reimagine what their lives, their livelihood, and their home c...
Far Flung: An Indigenous Mixtape from Lima, Peru
Meet Liberato Kani, a hip hop artist in Lima, Peru -- or as he says, "the Andean Bronx". At his concerts, a typical call and response you hear is "Quechua es resistencia": Quechua is resistance. Though Quechua is spoken by nearly ten million people, Peru's native language is at risk of dying off because of anti-indigenous prejudice. Liberato and...
Far Flung with Saleem Reshamwala: Mantua Township
With each step, you slide 400,000 years back in time. Where are you? Behind a hardware store in New Jersey -- which also happens to be a massive prehistoric graveyard. The only thing that can save it from turning into an apartment complex is geologist Ken Lacovara and a community effort unlike any attempted before. Hear how this town of 15,000 t...
Shubhendu Sharma: How to grow a forest in your backyard
Forests don't have to be far-flung nature reserves, isolated from human life. Instead, we can grow them right where we are -- even in cities. Eco-entrepreneur and TED Fellow Shubhendu Sharma grows ultra-dense, biodiverse mini-forests of native species in urban areas by engineering soil, microbes and biomass to kickstart natural growth processes....
Nizar Ibrahim: How we unearthed the Spinosaurus
A 50-foot-long carnivore who hunted its prey in rivers 97 million years ago, the Spinosaurus is a "dragon from deep time." Paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim and his crew found new fossils, hidden in cliffs of the Moroccan Sahara desert, that are helping us learn more about the first swimming dinosaur -- who might also be the largest carnivorous dinos...
Dan Kwartler: Why should you read "Dune" by Frank Herbert?
A mother and son trek across an endless desert. Wearing special suits to dissipate heat and recycle moisture, the travelers aren't worried about dying of thirst. Their fears are much greater. Soon, the sound of the desert is drowned out by a hissing: a mound of sand 400 meters long bursts from the desert floor and races towards them. This is the...
David Binder: The arts festival revolution
David Binder is a major Broadway producer, but last summer he found himself in a small Australian neighborhood, watching locals dance and perform on their lawns -- and loving it. He shows us the new face of arts festivals, which break the boundary between audience and performer and help cities express themselves.
Gregory Heyworth: How I'm discovering the secrets of ancient texts
Gregory Heyworth is a textual scientist; he and his lab work on new ways to read ancient manuscripts and maps using spectral imaging technology. In this fascinating talk, watch as Heyworth shines a light on lost history, deciphering texts that haven't been read in thousands of years. How could these lost classics rewrite what we know about the p...
Maria Gallucci: The carbonless fuel that could change how we ship goods
Every day, tens of thousands of cargo ships, filled to the brim with goods, release heavy pollution into the air as they make their way across the ocean. In this eye-opening talk, reporter Maria Gallucci introduces a planet-friendly alternative that could fuel these globe-trotting vessels: green ammonia. Listen as she makes the case for this gam...
Genevieve von Petzinger: Why are these 32 symbols found in ancient caves all over Europe?
Written language, the hallmark of human civilization, didn't just suddenly appear one day. Thousands of years before the first fully developed writing systems, our ancestors scrawled geometric signs across the walls of the caves they sheltered in. Paleoanthropologist, rock art researcher and TED Senior Fellow Genevieve von Petzinger has studied ...
Katherine Eban: A dose of reality about generic drugs
Investigative journalist Katherine Eban set out to report on a seemingly straightforward question: Are generic drugs really identical to their brand-name counterparts? The answer sparked a decade of interviews, meetings with whistleblowers, on-the-ground reporting across four continents and digging into confidential FDA documents. In this alarmi...
Erika Gregory: The world doesn't need more nuclear weapons
Today nine nations collectively control more than 15,000 nuclear weapons, each hundreds of times more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We don't need more nuclear weapons; we need a new generation to face the unfinished challenge of disarmament started decades ago. Nuclear reformer Erika Gregory calls on today's rising leade...
Melinda Gates: What nonprofits can learn from Coca-Cola
Melinda Gates makes a provocative case: What can nonprofits learn from mega-corporations like Coca-Cola, whose global network of marketers and distributors ensures that every remote village wants -- and can get -- an ice-cold Coke? Maybe this model could work for distributing health care, vaccinations, sanitation, even condoms ...
Mark Applebaum: The mad scientist of music
Chris Anderson: It's time for infectious generosity. Here's how
What would happen to humanity if generosity went viral? Sharing transformative stories from around the world, head of TED Chris Anderson outlines why the time has come for the internet to realize its power to supercharge small acts of kindness, changing lives at a scale never experienced before. Learn how to cultivate a generous mindset — with o...
Sajan Saini: The hidden network that makes the internet possible
In 2012, a team of researchers set a world record, transmitting 1 petabit of data— that's 10,000 hours of high-def video— over a fifty-kilometer cable, in a second. This wasn't just any cable. It was a souped-up version of fiber optics, the hidden network that links our planet and makes the internet possible. What is fiber optics and how does it...
Will Hurd: A wall won't solve America's border problems
"Building a 30-foot-high concrete structure from sea to shining sea is the most expensive and least effective way to do border security," says Congressman Will Hurd, a Republican from Texas whose district encompasses two times zones and shares an 820-mile border with Mexico. Speaking from Washington, DC in a video interview with former state att...
Amy Webb: How I hacked online dating
Amy Webb was having no luck with online dating. The dates she liked didn't write her back, and her own profile attracted crickets (and worse). So, as any fan of data would do: she started making a spreadsheet. Hear the story of how she went on to hack her online dating life -- with frustrating, funny and life-changing results.
Iseult Gillespie: The myth of Pegasus and the chimera
Shielded from the gorgon's stone gaze, Perseus crept through Medusa's cave. When he reached her, he drew his sickle and brought it down on her neck. From Medusa's neck sprung two children. One was a giant wielding a golden sword; the other was the magnificent, winged horse, Pegasus. No bridle could contain him— until one fateful day. Iseult Gill...
Elizabeth Gilbert: Success, failure and the drive to keep creating
Elizabeth Gilbert was once an "unpublished diner waitress," devastated by rejection letters. And yet, in the wake of the success of 'Eat, Pray, Love,' she found herself identifying strongly with her former self. With beautiful insight, Gilbert reflects on why success can be as disorienting as failure and offers a simple -- though hard -- way to ...
Michelle Knox: Talk about your death while you're still healthy
Do you know what you want when you die? Do you know how you want to be remembered? In a candid, heartfelt talk about a subject most of us would rather not discuss, Michelle Knox asks each of us to reflect on our core values around death and share them with our loved ones, so they can make informed decisions without fear of having failed to honor...
Jedidah Isler: The untapped genius that could change science for the better
Jedidah Isler dreamt of becoming an astrophysicist since she was a young girl, but the odds were against her: At that time, only 18 black women in the United States had ever earned a PhD in a physics-related discipline. In this personal talk, she shares the story of how she became the first black woman to earn a PhD in astrophysics from Yale -- ...
Roz Savage: Why I'm rowing across the Pacific
Richard Preston: The mysterious lives of giant trees
Wade Davis: The worldwide web of belief and ritual
Stephen Petranek: 10 ways the world could end
Far Flung: Mexico City
Harnessing the creativity of a megalopolis isn't easy, but Mexico City shows us how it's done. Follow a real-life superhero who dons a luchador mask and cape to protect his fellow residents from speeding cars, learn how citizens are hacking their way to a better public transport system, and see what it takes to crowd-source a constitution from a...
Far Flung: The poetry of Nepal's bridges
To get to school, work, or another town in Nepal, it helps if you don't have a fear of heights. That's because this mountainous terrain (it's home to Mount Everest after all) is connected via THOUSANDS of bridges. Whether permanent or seasonal, made of bamboo and rope or pulleys and wire, suspended above incredible mountains or rapid waters, the...