Honest communication. Sarah tells her mother that she is sleeping with a man who spanks her. Usually she is so high that it doesn't really hurt. Sarah also asked her Nanna and her Nanna's friend if they were upset about their grey pubes. And she helped them understand that they would die very very soon. Eventually they did. Sarah learned she was Jewish because everyone else treated her like a Jew. She was a very deep child. It's not like the Jews killed Baby Jesus, and btw: You are welcome for killing the 39 year old, otherwise he wouldn't …

How to take TED out into the world. Besides watching the talks, people want to know what happened at TED. 5 levels of audiences: Low - random curious strangers at the airport - send them to TED.com Guarded - friends, coworkers, family: TED is an exclusive event to go to hobnob with the smartest nerds I've ever met Elevated - a first date: Show off with famous people, like Al Gore High - The IRS: Make an effort to explain  what TED is. Severe - Yourself: Remember your TED moments.

Raghava was an artist from the beginning. After being slapped by his nun-teacher for drawing nudes as a young child, Raghava rediscovered that he could draw in 9th grade. Then, upon sealing the holistic deal with his father ("I will be disciplined, curios, learning something new everyday, hard working, self-sustaining") Raghava was allowed to quit school and become a cartoonist. After drawing a cartoon of Osama Bin Laden and being expelled from the American cartoonist association, Raghava decided it was time to go travel. When he met a crazy Italian artist, Raghava now wanted to be a painter. He …

Dennis' job is to understand the experience of beauty. What is beauty? Is it in the culturally conditioned eye of the beholder? No, natural beauty transcends cultures, and man-made beauty usually translates into all cultures. The most powerful theory to explain beauty is delivered by Charles Darwin: Beauty is is one of the ways of evolution to evoke and sustain interest in order to ensure successful procreation. Beauty increases desirability and with that the possibility of procreation, beauty causes pleasure. The ability to create beauty may also help achieve that. Symmetry. Something done perfectly. Pleasure. Beauty is universal, it's in …

Here's a trans formative story. A couple of years ago, Marian, after 10 years in graphic design changed the way she was working. Instead of following strategy and rational directions, she decided to do what she wanted to do. She followed her heart, her guts and her ego - and became amazingly popular. Her drives are to bring joy and fun, following her heart and being able to pursue what she desires. Marian has worked in sugar, pasta, tin foil, she's produced puzzles, patterns, valentines and poetry. She wonders why visual wealth is hardly used in adult literature and …

Autism is a continuum of traits. The autistic mind is a specialist mind - really good at one thing. There are three types of thinking: Photo-realistic visual thinkers (Temple) - poor at algebra Pattern thinkers - music and math Verbal thinkers - poor at drawing The autistic mind attends more to details. Temple thinks in pictures. Visual thinking has been Temple's huge advantage when designing animal facilities. In order to understand animals, one needs to attend to details of a picture. What do animals see? Strip away human interpretation and you may be able to better understand. This way, …

The problem with education today is that people replicate what's been done over and over without questioning the expected. If we truly believe that every child can achieve the highest outcome, why is it that only 40% of all school children have the intent to go to college, only one in ten actually does go and graduate from college. What if it was different? What if 100% of America's children went to a great school and to and through college? Mike and Dave have proven that this idea is not impossible. If promises were sacred... people would stop …

40% of adults have a tattoo. These tattoos include 2 unicorns having sex while one is smoking a cig, Britney Spears with her just shaven head, Patrick Swayze dressed as a Chippendale with a centaur body. An idea worth spreading!

Church struggled with how computation fits into life since he was fifteen. Today he has the answer: The key to the measuring of life is replicated complexity. Can we produce "synthetic life"? Yes, one means of producing synthetic life is manipulating existing structures to change their properties to give them radical new properties. Reading and then writing DNA. For Church, bio metrical engineering is the answer to world hunger, as it allows engineer systems need to feed the world: Bioremediated water, drought tolerant crops, golden rice, vaccines, bio asphalt and bio plastics, etc. The ultimate reach for synthetic …

Google recently discovered a security attack on the google world. Upon further investigation they identified the target of the attacks: gmail accounts of human rights activists operation in China. Was this attack authorized by the Chinese government? Google made a statement of intent to no longer allow political censorship in China. If this would result in the end of google's Chinese services, so be it. Sergey says if more companies would come forward taking similar steps and actually allow business to be sacrificed in order to protect what they think is right, the world may change a bit faster.