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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Dan Dennett: Dangerous memes
Starting with the simple tale of an ant, philosopher Dan ...
Starting with the simple tale of an ant, philosopher Dan Dennett unleashes a devastating salvo of ideas, making a powerful case for the existence of memes -- concepts that are literally alive.
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Rives: A mockingbird remix of TED2006
Rives recaps the most memorable moments of TED2006 in the ...
Rives recaps the most memorable moments of TED2006 in the free-spirited rhyming verse of a fantastical mockingbird lullaby.
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Susan Savage-Rumbaugh: The gentle genius of bonobos
Savage-Rumbaugh's work with bonobo apes, which can understand spoken language ...
Savage-Rumbaugh's work with bonobo apes, which can understand spoken language and learn tasks by watching, forces the audience to rethink how much of what a species can do is determined by biology -- and how much by cultural exposure.
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Wade Davis: Dreams from endangered cultures
With stunning photos and stories, National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis ...
With stunning photos and stories, National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis celebrates the extraordinary diversity of the world's indigenous cultures, which are disappearing from the planet at an alarming rate.
