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.
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Susan Blackmore: Memes and "temes"
Susan Blackmore studies memes: ideas that replicate themselves from brain ...
Susan Blackmore studies memes: ideas that replicate themselves from brain to brain like a virus. She makes a bold new argument: Humanity has spawned a new kind of meme, the teme, which spreads itself via technology -- and invents ways to keep itself alive
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Alisa Miller: How the news distorts our worldview
Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, talks about why ...
Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, talks about why -- though we want to know more about the world than ever -- the media is actually showing us less. Eye-opening stats and graphs.
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Amy Tan: Where does creativity hide?
Novelist Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process, looking ...
Novelist Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process, looking for hints of how hers evolved.
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Dave Eggers: My wish: Once Upon a School
Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the ...
Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools. With spellbinding eagerness, he talks about how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around the world to open
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Isabel Allende: Tales of passion
Author and activist Isabel Allende discusses women, creativity, the definition ...
Author and activist Isabel Allende discusses women, creativity, the definition of feminism -- and, of course, passion -- in this talk.
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Lakshmi Pratury: The lost art of letter-writing
Lakshmi Pratury remembers the lost art of letter-writing and shares ...
Lakshmi Pratury remembers the lost art of letter-writing and shares a series of notes her father wrote to her before he died. Her short but heartfelt talk may inspire you to set pen to paper, too.
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Zeresenay Alemseged: The search for humanity's roots
Paleoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged looks for the roots of humanity in ...
Paleoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged looks for the roots of humanity in Ethiopia's badlands. Here he talks about finding the oldest skeleton of a humanoid child -- and how Africa holds the clues to our humanity.
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Steven Pinker: What our language habits reveal
In an exclusive preview of his book The Stuff of ...
In an exclusive preview of his book The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language and how it expresses what goes on in our minds -- and how the words we choose communicate much more than we realize.
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Erin McKean: The joy of lexicography
Is the beloved paper dictionary doomed to extinction? In this ...
Is the beloved paper dictionary doomed to extinction? In this infectiously exuberant talk, leading lexicographer Erin McKean looks at the many ways today's print dictionary is poised for transformation.
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Jonathan Harris: The Web's secret stories
Jonathan Harris wants to make sense of the emotional world ...
Jonathan Harris wants to make sense of the emotional world of the Web. With deep compassion for the human condition, his projects troll the Internet to find out what we're all feeling and looking for.
