The term "compassion" -- typically reserved for the saintly or the sappy -- has fallen out of touch with reality.
At a special TEDPrize@UN, journalist Krista Tippett deconstructs the meaning of compassion through several moving stories, and proposes a new, more attainable definition for the word.
At TEDxRainier, Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another -- by listening to the humans around them and "taking statistics" on the sounds they need to know.
Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.
Patricia Kuhl studies how we learn language as babies, looking at the ways our brains form around language acquisition.
Patricia Kuhl is co-director of the Institute for Brain and Learning Sciences at the University of Washington.
She's internationally recognized for her research on early language and brain development, and studies that show how young children learn.
Rachel Simmons is passionate about teaching her students to be responsible leaders and citizens as well as accomplished artists.
Her interests range from collaborative community art projects to climate change, marine pollution and ecotourism.
Research and geography inform her work; she traveled to Antarctica in 2008 and 2009, and will visit Iceland this summer to study appropriate scale and the sustainable landscape.
The debate over foreign aid often pits those who mistrust "charity" against those who mistrust reliance on the markets. Jacqueline Novogratz proposes a middle way she calls patient capital, with promising examples of entrepreneurial innovation driving social change.
Jacqueline Novogratz founded and leads Acumen Fund, a nonprofit that takes a businesslike approach to improving the lives of the poor.
In her new book, The Blue Sweater, she tells stories from the new philanthropy, which emphasizes sustainable bottom-up solutions over traditional top-down aid.
One of the most innovative players shaping philanthropy today, Jacqueline Novogratz is redefining the way problems of poverty can be solved around the world.
Drawing on her past experience in banking, microfinance and traditional philanthropy, Novogratz has become a leading proponent for financing entrepreneurs and enterprises that can bring affordable clean water, housing and healthcare to poor people so that they no longer have to depend on the disappointing results and lack of accountability seen in traditional charity and old-fashioned aid.
They've been called the "saints of Somalia." Doctor Hawa Abdi and her daughter Deqo Mohamed discuss their medical clinic in Somalia, where -- in the face of civil war and open oppression of women -- they've built a hospital, a school and a community of peace.
Dr. Hawa Abdi and her daughters, Dr. Deqo Mohamed and Dr. Amina Mohamed, treat Somali refugee women and children, often for free.
Dr. Hawa Abdi is an OB/GYN (and a lawyer) who lives and works in Somalia with her daughters, also doctors, Dr. Amina Mohamed and Dr. Dr. Deqo Mohamed.
In 1983, she opened a small clinic in Somalia -- which became a refuge as Somalia devolved into civil war.
Her one-room clinic has grown to encompass a hospital, a school and a refugee camp for some 90,000 women and children, she estimates, who were displaced by war.