Ah, TEDMED, you expensive but addictive drug. I just can't get enough of you. Can it have been a whole year since that golden ticket slipped through my letterbox, admitting me, albeit for just one morning, to your exclusive world of inspiration and innovation?

You may recall...

This week I went to the launch of a brand new journal, Global Health: Science and Practice. Funded by USAID, and supported by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, George Washington University and Knowledge for Health, it hits all the buzzwords of the global health and development zeitgeist:...

I have a nerdy hobby that's usually only indulged in adversity: I love visiting foreign hospitals.

Give me the choice of viewing a museum or a hospital on vacation and I will opt for the latter -- only as a passing visitor, ideally. Foreign healthcare can be a risky business,...

If I were Rory Albanese's sister (or his sister's girlfriend), I'd have been furious. On Saturday night I went to see Albanese and his Daily Show co-stalwart Adam Lowitt at their inauguration-themed comedy show at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C., but amid the political wit,...

Browsing my speaker list at the Washington Ideas Forum a few weeks ago, billed as 'a place to hear and meet the most prominent thinkers of our time,' I couldn't help but notice that 35 out of the 41 speakers at the event were men, and being in...

Would you be comfortable if your latest tweets were used as part of the recruitment process for a university place, or for a new job? I was intrigued by an American Medical Association article drawing attention to a survey of medical school/residency recruiters published earlier this...

Is working 9-5 an anachronism? Anne-Marie Slaughter, author of The Atlantic magazine's most popular article ever, "Why Women Still Can't Have it All," thinks it is. By 'having it all,' she means simultaneously being a good mother and having a top job. And as for whether we can...

As a woman who very much believes that men and women are equal in most respects and ought to be treated as such, I feel sorry to call foul on actress Maria Bello, recently named goodwill ambassador for women by Haiti's president, for her advocacy work with women...

How relevant are national borders today? David Livingstone famously wrote in the 1850s that the innovation of railroads, steamships and telegraphs make the world one -- national borders melt away and Africa could basically be integrated into Europe. The more modern version of those modes of connection -- the plane,...

This week both my real life and my Twitter feed have been jumping with the question of post-nominal letters: what letters (if any) should you put after your name on a business card? I live in Washington D.C. where business cards are traded like gold. It's not a secret that...

If there's one thing that irritates me, it's people who think they are "holier than thou" when it comes to travel. These are the people who trump every travel experience you mention with one of their own that they consider intrepidly superior to your pedestrian efforts. Went to the local...

Last year I won a UK prize essentially for my leadership skills. This year, with nominations for the prize opening, I mentioned it to a friend here in Washington DC. "Oh no," she said. "Americans would never claim leadership in their skillset."

This concept completely floored me, because in...

A few days ago, I looked at my Facebook feed and realized that it was dominated by photographs of babies. There were interjections about little Molly's chicken pox, a (subjectively) charming pronouncement from baby Bob. Eventually, upon further scrolling, I came to some comments about the Olympics, the upcoming US...

In the lead up to Sunday's Olympic hunger event, my head kept inadvertently dubbing the event 'The Hunger Games'. On the surface, an event to call on world leaders to step up efforts to reduce child malnutrition doesn't appear to have much to do with a post-apocalyptic novel/blockbuster...

As the curtain fell on the first night of a Capital Fringe Festival play yesterday, something occurred that I found disturbing. The director took to the stage amid the clapping, hushed the audience, and made a plea: when we left the theater that night, would we please give...

What do a poor village in central Bangladesh and a glamorous reception at DC's Newseum have in common? Other than the fact that I went to both in the few days, the answer is mobile phones.

In the last several years, I've visited various rural communities in the poorest...

When I sat down to choose my new Internet provider in the U.S., I never imagined longing for Afghanistan. But after being forced to choose between the only two options, both expensive and both with equally unimpressive reviews of their services, I'm now lamenting that telecommunications in Washington, D.C. lacks...

If you had $75 billion and wanted to do something really useful with it, what should you spend it on? This is the question that has occupied the minds of 65 researchers and a panel of some of the world's top economists (including four Nobel Laureates) for the last 18...

Do we have the right to be forgotten? This rather intriguing question was posed last night by Jeff Rosen, at an Internet privacy event at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. I was particularly interested because having used the Internet since 1995-ish, I have contributed all sorts of...

Last week I found my usually-diverse Twitter feed had coalesced into a single hashtag, the trolley buses chugging through the streets of Washington, D.C. were sporting bold logos on their sides, and all around the city people were wearing giant nametags bearing their name, face, and three things they liked...