TED Global Issues

Jeffrey Brown: How we cut youth violence in Boston by 79 percent

An architect of the "Boston miracle," Rev. Jeffrey Brown started out as a bewildered young pastor watching his Boston neighborhood fall apart around him, as drugs and gang violence took hold of the kids on the streets. The first step to recovery: Listen to those kids, don't just preach to…

27 May 2015 18 min

Chimps have feelings and thoughts. They should also have rights

Chimpanzees are people too, you know. Ok, not exactly. But lawyer Steven Wise has spent the last 30 years working to change these animals' status from "things" to "persons." It's not a matter of legal semantics; as he describes in this fascinating talk, recognizing that animals like chimps have extraordinary…

22 May 2015 14 min

Pamela Ronald: The case for engineering our food

Pamela Ronald studies the genes that make plants more resistant to disease and stress. In an eye-opening talk, she describes her decade-long quest to help create a variety of rice that can survive prolonged flooding. She shows how the genetic improvement of seeds saved the Hawaiian papaya crop in the…

5 May 2015 17 min

Alice Goffman: How we're priming some kids for college — and others for prison

In the United States, two institutions guide teenagers on the journey to adulthood: college and prison. Sociologist Alice Goffman spent six years in a troubled Philadelphia neighborhood and saw first-hand how teenagers of African-American and Latino backgrounds are funneled down the path to prison — sometimes starting with relatively minor…

4 May 2015 16 min

Gary Haugen: The hidden reason for poverty the world needs to address now

Collective compassion has meant an overall decrease in global poverty since the 1980s, says civil rights lawyer Gary Haugen. Yet for all the world's aid money, there's a pervasive hidden problem keeping poverty alive. Haugen reveals the dark underlying cause we must recognize and act on now.

21 Apr 2015 22 min

Barat Ali Batoor: My desperate journey with a human smuggler

Photojournalist Barat Ali Batoor was living in Afghanistan — until his risky work forced him to leave the country. But for Batoor, a member of a displaced ethnic group called the Hazara, moving home to Pakistan proved dangerous too. And finding a safer place wasn't as simple as buying a…

13 Apr 2015 10 min

Dan Ariely: How equal do we want the world to be? You'd be surprised

The news of society's growing inequality makes all of us uneasy. But why? Dan Ariely reveals some new, surprising research on what we think is fair, as far as how wealth is distributed over societies ... then shows how it stacks up to the real stats.

9 Apr 2015 8 min

Kevin Rudd: Are China and the US doomed to conflict?

The former prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd is also a longtime student of China, with a unique vantage point to watch its power rise in the past few decades. He asks whether the growing ambition of China will inevitably lead to conflict with other major powers — and suggests…

8 Apr 2015 20 min

Bill Gates: The next outbreak? We’re not ready

In 2014, the world avoided a horrific global outbreak of Ebola, thanks to thousands of selfless health workers — plus, frankly, thanks to some very good luck. In hindsight, we know what we should have done better. So, now's the time, Bill Gates suggests, to put all our good ideas…

7 Apr 2015 8 min

Vincent Cochetel: I was held hostage for 317 days. Here's what I thought about…

Vincent Cochetel was held hostage for 317 days in 1998, while working for the UN High Commissioner on Refugees in Chechnya. For the first time, he recounts the experience — from what it was like to live in a dark, underground chamber, chained to his bed, to the unexpected conversations…

18 Mar 2015 19 min

Ismael Nazario: What I learned as a kid in jail

As a teenager, Ismael Nazario was sent to New York’s Rikers Island jail, where he spent 300 days in solitary confinement — all before he was ever convicted of a crime. Now as a prison reform advocate he works to change the culture of American jails and prisons, where young…

12 Mar 2015 11 min

Ilona Szabó de Carvalho: 4 lessons I learned from taking a stand against drugs a

Throughout her career in banking Ilona Szabó de Carvalho never imagined she’d someday start a social movement. But living in her native Brazil, which leads the world in homicidal violence, she realized she couldn’t just stand by and watch drugs and guns tear her country apart. Szabó de Carvalho reveals…

9 Mar 2015 14 min

James A. White Sr.: The little problem I had renting a house

Fifty-three years ago, James A. White Sr. joined the US Air Force. But as an African American man, he had to go to shocking lengths to find a place for his young family to live nearby. He tells this powerful story about the lived experience of "everyday racism" — and…

24 Feb 2015 14 min

Bruce Aylward: Humanity vs. Ebola. The winning strategies in a terrifying war

“Ebola threatens everything that makes us human,” says Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organization. With calm measure, he walks us through how the Ebola epidemic exploded — and how international alarm only fed the exponential growth of the problem. He shares four strategies critical to beating Ebola — and…

5 Feb 2015 19 min

Severine Autesserre: To solve mass violence, look to locals

Severine Autesserre studies the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is in the middle of the deadliest conflict since World War II; it's been called "the largest ongoing humanitarian crisis in the world.” The conflict seems hopelessly, unsolvably large. But her insight from decades of listening and engaging: The conflicts are…

5 Feb 2015 16 min

Khadija Gbla: My mother’s strange definition of empowerment

Khadija Gbla grew up caught between two definitions of what it means to be an “empowered woman.” While her Sierra Leonean mother thought that circumsizing her — and thus stifling her sexual urges — was the ultimate form of empowerment, her culture as a teenager in Australia told her that…

30 Jan 2015 18 min

Severine Autesserre: To solve mass violence, look to locals

Severine Autesserre studies the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is in the middle of the deadliest conflict since World War II; it's been called "the largest ongoing humanitarian crisis in the world.” The conflict seems hopelessly, unsolvably large. But her insight from decades of listening and engaging: The conflicts are…

29 Jan 2015 16 min

Matthieu Ricard: How to let altruism be your guide

What is altruism? Put simply, it's the wish that other people may be happy. And, says Matthieu Ricard, a happiness researcher and a Buddhist monk, altruism is also a great lens for making decisions, both for the short and long term, in work and in life.

21 Jan 2015 16 min

Robert Swan: Let's save the last pristine continent

2041 will be a pivotal year for our planet. That year will mark the end of a 50-year agreement to keep Antarctica, the Earth’s last pristine continent, free of exploitation. Explorer Robert Swan — the first person to walk both the North and South Poles — is on a mission…

16 Jan 2015 16 min

Robert Muggah: How to protect fast-growing cities from failing

Worldwide, violence is on the decline, but in the crowded cities of the global south — cities like Aleppo, Bamako and Caracas — violence is actually accelerating, fueled by the drug trade, mass unemployment and civil unrest. Security researcher Robert Muggah turns our attention toward these “fragile cities,” super-fast-growing places…

16 Jan 2015 14 min