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10 tips for better slide decks. When your slides rock, your whole presentation pops to life.

10 tips for better slide decks

At TED2014, David Epstein created a clean, informative slide deck to support his talk on the changing bodies of athletes. Photo: James Duncan Davidson/TED. 10 talks you won't be able to stop thinking about. Now playing Here's a TED first: an animated Socratic dialog!

10 talks you won't be able to stop thinking about

In a time when irrationality seems to rule both politics and culture, has reasoned thinking finally lost its power? Watch as psychologist Steven Pinker is gradually, brilliantly persuaded by philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein that reason is actually the key driver of human moral progress, even if its effect sometimes takes generations to unfold. 10 places where anyone can learn to code. Teens, tweens and kids are often referred to as “digital natives.”

10 places where anyone can learn to code

Having grown up with the Internet, smartphones and tablets, they’re often extraordinarily adept at interacting with digital technology. How to give a persuasive presentations: A Q&A with Nancy Duarte. Stepping onto the TED or TEDx stage — or speaking in front of any group of people, for that matter — is truly nerve-wracking.

How to give a persuasive presentations: A Q&A with Nancy Duarte

Will you remember everything you wanted to say, or get so discombobulated that you skip over major points? Will the audience be receptive to your ideas, or will you notice a guy in row three nodding off to sleep? Presentation expert Nancy Duarte, who gave the TED Talk “The secret structure of great talks,” has built her career helping people express their ideas in presentations. The author of Slide:ology and Resonate, Duarte has just released a new book through the Harvard Business Review: The HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations.

The TED Blog talked with Duarte in her California office about what makes a killer presentation, as well as about how giving her own TED Talk shaped her thoughts on presenting. Why we shouldn’t judge a country by its GDP. Analysts, reporters and big thinkers love to talk about Gross Domestic Product.

Why we shouldn’t judge a country by its GDP

Put simply, GDP, which tallies the value of all the goods and services produced by a country each year, has become the yardstick by which we measure a country’s success. But there’s a big, elephant-like problem with that: GDP only accounts for a country’s economic performance, not the happiness or well-being of its citizens. With GDP, if your richest 100 people get richer, your GDP rises … but most of your citizens are just as badly off as they were before.

That’s one of the reasons the team that I lead at the Social Progress Imperative launched the Social Progress Index in 2014. Together, these 12 components form the Social Progress framework. Chart 1: The top 68 countries on The Social Progress Index It’s interesting, but not particularly surprising, that the results at the top of the 2015 Index are actually pretty similar to last year’s. Vincent Cochetel: I was held hostage for 317 days. Here's what I thought about… A TED speaker coach shares 11 tips for right before you go on stage. Gina Barnett advises a speaker before the annual TED Conference.

A TED speaker coach shares 11 tips for right before you go on stage

Below, her best last-minute public speaking tips. Photo: Ryan Lash/TED The weekend before a TED conference, each speaker rehearses their talk in the TED theater. The Church of TED. Photo CHANCES are you will not attend TED this year.

The Church of TED

Tickets to the gathering that begins Monday in Vancouver are sold out, this despite or rather because of the fact that gaining entry to the ideas conference entails more than pulling out your credit card. There’s a velvet rope of an application process, and questions to answer: “How would a friend describe your accomplishments?” 25+ apps that the TED staff swears make their everyday lives easier.

At our small, fast-moving nonprofit company, everyone does a couple of jobs — and productivity apps help us manage roles that shift between coding, writing/designing and running a full-scale conference twice a year.

25+ apps that the TED staff swears make their everyday lives easier

We asked the TED staff what apps they can’t live without. 10 talks you won't be able to stop thinking about. Did Shakespeare write his plays? - Natalya St. Clair and Aaron Williams. Our discussion of Shakespeare’s identity draws from a few sources.

Did Shakespeare write his plays? - Natalya St. Clair and Aaron Williams

A great reference is Slate’s episode, How Mathematicians Determine Authorship. Most claims in the video are based on a study by Craig and Kinney, Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship. What makes Shakespeare’s prose so easy to memorize? Could it be the patterns found in Shakespeare’s text? Check out David Freeman and Gregory Taylor’s TED-Ed Original to learn more about “Why Shakespeare Loved Iambic Pentameter.” Because of the transition from print media to digital media, stylometry has recently grown as a topic of interest for researchers. Learn more about stylometry by reading: “What’s In a Word-list?” Interested in linguistics? The best demos at TED. Culture The Best Props at TED TED2013, “The Young.

The best demos at TED

The Wise. The Undiscovered,” begins in just 20 days and we at the TED Blog are gearing up to bring you live reporting on each of the 70 speakers who’ll be ascending the stage, not to mention assorted news from the scene in Long Beach, California. One thing we hope to see […] The art of meaningful conversation  Que gagne-t-on à perdre son temps ? - Pierre Cassou-Noguès est l'invité de Raphaël Enthoven dans "Philosophie" Elizabeth Lesser: Take "the Other" to lunch. Hans and Ola Rosling: How not to be ignorant about the world.

Work smarter. Taryn Simon: Photographs of secret sites. Want to be happy? SLOW DOWN. In 1972, Matthieu Ricard had a promising career in biochemistry, trying to figure out the secrets of E. coli bacteria. A chance encounter with Buddhism led to an about turn, and Ricard has spent the past 40+ years living in the Himalayas, studying mindfulness and happiness. In this free-wheeling discussion at TED Global in October 2014, Ricard talked with journalist and writer Pico Iyer about some of the things they’ve learned over the years, not least the importance of being conscious about mental health and how to spend time meaningfully. An edited version of the conversation, moderated by TED Radio Hour host Guy Raz, follows. The architecture of death: why TED Fellow Alison Killing wants to rethink building for dying. Alison Killing thinks a lot about death … and specifically, how its ubiquitous, hidden presence shapes our cities. In Death in Venice, her June 2014 exhibition on the topic, Killing mapped London’s death-associated architectural features — hospitals, cemeteries, crematoria, and so on — making visible the invisible mechanics of death and dying.

Business 101: A reading list for lifelong learners. Business 101, with Nilofer Merchant First, read these 2 foundational books… 1. Talks to inspire New Year's Resolutions. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow, the secret to happiness. Jeff Iliff: One more reason to get a good night’s sleep. Cameron Russell: Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model. 25+ apps that the TED staff swears make their everyday lives easier. Talks that just might save your relationship. Now playing Infidelity is the ultimate betrayal. But does it have to be? Relationship therapist Esther Perel examines why people cheat, and unpacks why affairs are so traumatic: because they threaten our emotional security.

In infidelity, she sees something unexpected — an expression of longing and loss. A must-watch for anyone who has ever cheated or been cheated on, or who simply wants a new framework for understanding relationships. The art of meaningful conversation  10 talks you won't be able to stop thinking about. Rufus Griscom + Alisa Volkman: Let's talk parenting taboos. Michael Norton: How to buy happiness. The struggle of mental health. Rachel Sussman: The world's oldest living things.

Why the eff didn’t you watch these TED Talks? The 2014 edition. The most popular talks of 2014. Bill Gates: Innovating to zero! Benjamin Zander: The transformative power of classical music. Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do. Jamila Lyiscott: 3 ways to speak English. Matthew O'Reilly: “Am I dying?” The honest answer. Stephen Cave: The 4 stories we tell ourselves about death. Chris Hadfield: What I learned from going blind in space. Chris Hadfield: What I learned from going blind in space.