Users Inside the $10,000-a-Ticket Conference Where Billionaires Fund the People Trying to Save Us From … Billionaires TED2026: glacial ice, surveillance drones, ancient grains, and $1.4 billion for allegedly world-changing projects. Ted2026 Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. I’m looking into a freezer box at the fall of the Roman empire. “It’s right here,” glaciologist Alison Criscitiello says, pointing to a nearly invisible gray smudge behind the glass, on a 5-foot-long, 1,550-year-old bisected cylinder of ice. “This is the volcanic ash.” We’re all crowding around to see it: the barely visible blur left by the triplet of eruptions that tipped a civilization into collapse.…