Tags > History
Stories for "history"
The Big Idea: 5 ways to be a more thoughtful traveler
By Chelsea Catlett
There's a difference between traveling to a place and vacationing there. Vacationing renders visions of relaxation and minimal effort, whereas traveling evokes thoughts of an adventure where Wi-Fi hotspots are few and far between. Here are some ways to think differently about the places you visit and the people you see before stepping out of […]
10 years of TED Talks keeping pace with history
By Cynthia Betubiza
In 2006, TED started putting talks online for free, a milestone in democratizing ideas worth spreading. Since then, the world has seen monumental shifts in history, including the rise and fall of revolutions, the roar of a deadly epidemic, the largest-ever leak of government secrets, an astronomical discovery predicted by Einstein and the election of […]
The history of a spectrum: Steve Silberman live at TED2015
By Thu-Huong Ha
Millions of parents worldwide still fear — needlessly — that vaccines cause autism. How did this dangerous false myth become so prevalent? As writer Steve Silberman shows during Pop-Up Magazine's session at TED2015, it's just another milestone in the decades-old history of misinformation and misunderstanding about autism. In 1943 child psychologist Leo Kanner wrote about his eleven […]
Why this might just be the most significant TED Talk ever posted
By tedchris
I want to give you the back story behind today's TED Talk and make the case that it's one of the most significant we've ever posted. And I'm not just talking about its incredible animation. I'm talking about its core idea. Two years ago the psychologist Steven Pinker and the philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, who are […]
6 unexpected historical figures with the civic hacker mindset
By Catherine Bracy
Hacking has always been an important component of healthy democracies. Despite the bad connotation the word often has these days — indicating rogue criminals breaking into computer systems, stealing identities, spying or worse — hacking is really just any amateur innovation on an existing system. And that "system" doesn't have to be a technical one. […]
A different kind of sex change: See how quickly a society can shift its sexual attitudes
By Morton Bast
"The political and the sexual are intimate bedfellows," says Shereen El Feki in yesterday's talk. "That is true for all of us, no matter where we live and love." For five years, El Feki talked to people across Middle East about their bedroom behavior, and what she found over and over was a seemingly deep-rooted […]
Mapping history: How Google Maps and Nat Geo are layering old and new space (just like today's TED Talk)
Frederic Kaplan has found an unconventional way to build a time machine. Rather than making a metal object (or, uh, a police call box) that whisks you through time and space, he wondered: Could a time machine be built out of information? In today's TED Talk, filmed at TEDxCaFoscariU, Kaplan previews the Venice Time Machine, […]
David Christian's Big History gets much, much … bigger
David Christian had little idea what was in store when he stepped on the set of The Colbert Report last month. Having lived in Australia for years, Christian wasn't familiar with the show and its special brand of political satire. And yet, sitting across the table from Stephen Colbert — a perfectly placed Colbert Nation […]
Why are we getting smarter? Further reading on the "Flynn effect"
By Jessica Gross
In the 1980s, psychologist James Flynn discovered that, over the past century, our average IQ has increased dramatically. The difference, in fact, is so stark that the phenomenon garnered its own name: the Flynn effect. In today's talk, Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents', given at TED2013, Flynn explains that if you […]
Building the 9/11 Memorial Museum: Reflections as opening day approaches
By TED Guest Author
In today's moving TED Talk, Jake Barton of the design firm Local Projects shares the idea at the core of the yet-to-open National September 11 Memorial Museum: that museum-goers need to be included in the telling of the story. "The event is so recent, somewhere between history and current events," says Barton, explaining that more […]