TED Theme: Words About Words
Language is the stuff of thought -- the more we know about it, the better we will understand ourselves. These speakers are trying to crack the mystery. Linguist Steven Pinker inspects the structure of sentences -- and discovers insight into human nature. Susan Savage-Rumbaugh finds ...
Language is the stuff of thought -- the more we know about it, the better we will understand ourselves. These speakers are trying to crack the mystery. Linguist Steven Pinker inspects the structure of sentences -- and discovers insight into human nature. Susan Savage-Rumbaugh finds a key to human language in the behavior of bonobo apes -- just as paleoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged shows us a set of 3.3-million-year-old hominid fossils that offer clues to the origins of speech. Erin McKean, meanwhile, gleefully collects and catalogs the products of modern wordmakers into a dictionary without limits.
Show all Visit Show Website http://www.ted.com/index.php/the...Recently Aired
-
HD
Mark Forsyth: What's a snollygoster? A short lesson in political speak
Most politicians choose their words carefully, to shape the reality ...
Most politicians choose their words carefully, to shape the reality they hope to create. But does it work? Etymologist Mark Forsyth shares a few entertaining word-origin stories from British and American history (for instance, did you ever wonder how George Washington became "president"?) and draws a surprising conclusion. (From TEDxHousesofParliament in London)
-
HD
Terry Moore: Why is 'x' the unknown?
Why is 'x' the symbol for an unknown? In this ...
Why is 'x' the symbol for an unknown? In this short and funny talk, Terry Moore gives the surprising answer.
-
HD
William Noel: Revealing the lost codex of Archimedes
How do you read a two-thousand-year-old manuscript that has been ...
How do you read a two-thousand-year-old manuscript that has been erased, cut up, written on and painted over? With a powerful particle accelerator, of course! Ancient books curator William Noel tells the fascinating story behind the Archimedes palimpsest, a Byzantine prayer book containing previously-unknown original writings from ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes and others.
-
HD
Jean-Baptiste Michel: The mathematics of history
What can mathematics say about history? According to TED Fellow ...
What can mathematics say about history? According to TED Fellow Jean-Baptiste Michel, quite a lot. From changes to language to the deadliness of wars, he shows how digitized history is just starting to reveal deep underlying patterns.
-
HD
Jean-Baptiste Michel + Erez Lieberman Aiden: What we learned from 5 million books
Have you played with Google Labs' Ngram Viewer? It's an ...
Have you played with Google Labs' Ngram Viewer? It's an addicting tool that lets you search for words and ideas in a database of 5 million books from across centuries. Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel show us how it works, and a few of the surprising things we can learn from 500 billion words. (Filmed at TEDxBoston.)
-
HD
Mark Pagel: How language transformed humanity
Biologist Mark Pagel shares an intriguing theory about why humans ...
Biologist Mark Pagel shares an intriguing theory about why humans evolved our complex system of language. He suggests that language is a piece of "social technology" that allowed early human tribes to access a powerful new tool: cooperation.
-
HD
Daniel Tammet: Different ways of knowing
Daniel Tammet has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia -- meaning ...
Daniel Tammet has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia -- meaning that his perception of words, numbers and colors are woven together into a new way of perceiving and understanding the world. The author of "Born on a Blue Day," Tammet shares his art and his passion for languages in this glimpse into his beautiful mind.
-
HD
Mike Matas: A next-generation digital book
Software developer Mike Matas demos the first full-length interactive book ...
Software developer Mike Matas demos the first full-length interactive book for the iPad -- with clever, swipeable video and graphics and some very cool data visualizations to play with. The book is "Our Choice," Al Gore's sequel to "An Inconvenient Truth."
-
HD
Roger Ebert: Remaking my voice
When film critic Roger Ebert lost his lower jaw to ...
When film critic Roger Ebert lost his lower jaw to cancer, he lost the ability to eat and speak. But he did not lose his voice. In a moving talk from TED2011, Ebert and his wife, Chaz, with friends Dean Ornish and John Hunter, come together to tell his remarkable story.
-
HD
Patricia Ryan: Don't insist on English!
In her talk, longtime English teacher Patricia Ryan asks a ...
In her talk, longtime English teacher Patricia Ryan asks a provocative question: Is the world's focus on English preventing the spread of great ideas in other languages? (For instance: what if Einstein had to pass the TOEFL?) It's a passionate defense of translating and sharing ideas. (Filmed at TEDxDubai.)
