TED Talks Daily
Want TED Talks on the go? Everyday, this feed brings you our latest talks in audio format. Hear thought-provoking ideas on every subject imaginable – from Artificial Intelligence to Zoology, and everything in between – given by the world's leading thinkers and doers. This collection of talks, given at TED and TEDx conferences around the globe, is also available in video format. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Recent Episodes
Vigilance. Grit. Resilience. Valerie Montgomery Rice, the president and CEO of Morehouse School of Medicine, shares where she learned these key qualities of successful leadership, offering three lesso...
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Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, physician and president of Morehouse School of Medicine, shares a powerful story of resilience and leadership forged in her grandmother's little pink house in Wrens, Georgia. After being asked to step down as one of the youngest medical school deans in the country, she draws on lessons learned from the strong women who raised her to navigate public failure, transform fear into fearlessness, and emerge as a vocal advocate for diversity in healthcare, women's health rights, and educational equity.
- The Little Pink House: Foundation of Resilience
- Lesson One: Accept Loss But Not Defeat
Why are we so obsessed with productivity? Horticulturist Rebecca McMackin (who wants people to let their lawns grow wild) and author Catherine Price (who wrote a book about the power of fun) come toge...
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For more than two decades, sleep health educator Lindsay Scola attributed her never-ending exhaustion to long hours and demanding jobs. When she was diagnosed with narcolepsy, she finally got the wake...
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What does healing look like for a refugee child? That's the question educational leader Erum Mariam asked when her team built the humanitarian "play labs": small, welcoming spaces where children displ...
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Educational leader Arum Maryam shares how she brought culturally-specific play to Rohingya refugee children who fled genocide in Myanmar to camps in Bangladesh. After discovering that donated Western games like Scrabble were meaningless to these children, she created 'humanitarian play labs' filled with traditional Rohingya games, rhymes, and art. Through these culturally-rooted play spaces, over 50,000 children have found healing, confidence, and joy by reconnecting with their heritage.
- The Rohingya Crisis and Initial Discovery
- Understanding Trauma and Building the Humanitarian Play Lab
For thousands of years, the Klamath River in Northern California was home to one of the continent’s great salmon runs, creating abundance for the native Yurok Tribe … until a series of dams and a cent...
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Amy Bowers Cordalis, a Yurok tribal attorney and indigenous advocate, tells the remarkable story of the largest dam removal in American history and the world's largest salmon restoration project on California's Klamath River. After witnessing 70,000 salmon die in 2002, she dedicated her life to removing four dams that had blocked salmon migration for over a century. Through coalition-building between tribes, farmers, environmental groups, and former adversaries, they achieved the impossible—removing the dams proved cheaper than installing fish ladders, creating a $500 million agreement that valued nature, business, and indigenous rights equally. Within days of removal, salmon returned to spawning grounds they hadn't accessed in 100 years, proving nature's remarkable memory and capacity to heal.
- The Yurok Creation Story and Original Instructions
- Genocide and Environmental Devastation
What makes a good game? | Eric Zimmerman
Sep 22, 2026What’s the best way to make a project more playful? Game designer Eric Zimmerman has a counterintuitive suggestion: a few good rules. Drawing on his experience making everything from video games and t...
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Climate strategist Joojin Kim spent years convincing banks across South Korea to stop funding coal, and it worked. Now he's aiming that same playbook at a new target: maritime shipping, a hidden engin...
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Climate strategist Jujin Kim reveals why decarbonizing maritime shipping represents one of the most powerful yet overlooked levers in fighting climate change. As the sixth largest greenhouse gas emitter globally if it were a country, shipping is a climate problem on three fronts: the fossil fuels ships carry, the dirty fuel they burn, and the coal-made steel they're built from. Kim explains how his organization, Solutions for Our Climate, successfully ended coal financing in East Asia and is now targeting shipping's concentrated supply chains in South Korea to unlock ripple effects across the entire global economy.
- The Hidden Climate Crisis in Shipping
- Shipping's Triple Climate Threat
How do you navigate life's growing number of transitions with meaning, purpose and skill? Writer Bruce Feiler offers a powerful way to handle uncertain, painful and confusing times -- or "lifequakes",...
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Bruce Feiler shares insights from his Life Story Project, a three-year journey collecting hundreds of life stories across America. After his father's suicide attempts and his own cancer diagnosis, Feiler discovered that the traditional linear life model is dead. His research reveals that we spend up to half our adult lives in transition, navigating what he calls 'lifequakes'—massive bursts of change that reshape our stories. He offers a framework for mastering life transitions through five practical tips, emphasizing that transitions aren't obstacles to endure but healing opportunities that help us rewrite our life stories.
- The Death of the Linear Life
- The Reality of Lifequakes and Constant Transition
There's more health advice available than ever before — and no easy way to tell what’s worth your time. From biotech breakthroughs to smarter cancer screening, physician Dhruv Khullar and microbiologi...
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Dr. Dhruv Kular and microbiologist Zach Abbott explore the cutting edge of health science, from genetic engineering and AI in medicine to the microbiome revolution. They challenge the obsession with health metrics, advocate for a more intuitive understanding of wellness, and discuss how biotechnology can transform both medicine and our food system. The conversation navigates the gray areas between innovation and ethics, emphasizing the importance of balancing technological advancement with human values and individual agency.
- The Problem with Health Metrics
- The Future of Medicine: AI and Genetic Engineering
Climate expert Ari Matusiak spends his days working to rewire America's energy system, and he has an idea: instead of tech companies building new power plants for their AI data centers, they should in...
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Ari Matusiak presents a solution to rising energy bills driven by AI data centers' massive power demands. He proposes 'homegrown energy'—a model where tech companies invest in household upgrades like solar panels, heat pumps, and batteries instead of building new power plants. This approach could provide a third of AI's power needs while reducing consumer energy bills by up to $2,000 annually, creating a win-win scenario for communities and tech companies alike.
- The Rising Energy Crisis in America
- The AI Power Demand Explosion
In seven years as a political prisoner in Venezuela, activist Leopoldo López kept asking one question: Who holds the keys to freedom? Now the leader of an alliance of dissidents and exiles from more t...
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Katie Paris quit her career in Washington, DC, to figure out how to make politics feel less like strangers shouting at each other and more like friends looking out for each other. In this practical ta...
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The wiggly wonder of music | Jacob Collier
Sep 15, 2026Grammy-winning musician Jacob Collier has a name for the feeling that moves through a great piece of music: the wiggle. Watch him break down the idea into its three parts — melody, rhythm and harmony ...
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Musician and composer Jacob Collier delivers an inspiring TED Talk about 'the wiggle' - his theory that the same qualities that make music move us can help us navigate life's challenges. Through a live performance of 'What a Wonderful World' and engaging explanations, he explores three types of musical wiggles (melody, rhythm, and harmony) and reveals how these principles teach us to be flexible, resilient, and open to life's curveballs rather than rigid and brittle.
- Opening Performance: What a Wonderful World
- Introducing The Wiggle Concept
After working for years in film, fashion and graphic design, visual artist Kelly A. Boesch found a new collaborator to work with: AI. She walks through how she uses the technology to create dreamlike ...
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Visual artist and filmmaker Kelly Besch shares her journey of incorporating AI into her creative process, demonstrating how it has become a collaborative tool that bridges the gap between imagination and creation. She addresses common questions about AI art's legitimacy while showcasing her work in images, film, and music, ultimately arguing that AI represents the beginning of a creative renaissance when guided by human intention and emotion.
- Kelly's Creative Transformation Through AI
- Expanding Into AI Video and Music Production
How to turn setbacks into success | Amy Shoenthal
Sep 13, 2026Success rarely happens in a straight line, with setbacks all but guaranteed along the way. What's the best way to recover? Leadership coach Amy Shoenthal lays out the four phases of the "setback cycle...
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Why is it so hard for men to open up? A journalist and an entrepreneur answer | Joshua Johnson and Blake Mycoskie
Sep 12, 2026Is conversation a lost art, or is it just evolving? Journalist Joshua Johnson and social entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie answer questions on everything from the male loneliness crisis to what it actually ...
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Blake Mikoski and Joshua Johnson engage in a raw, vulnerable conversation about male loneliness, the art of deep connection, and how to have meaningful conversations in an increasingly disconnected world. They share personal stories about their fathers, discuss the importance of asking good questions, and reveal practical strategies for building authentic relationships. The conversation covers everything from Blake's 19-year adventure club with friends to Joshua's poignant experience trying to connect with his estranged father before his death.
- The State of Real Conversation
- How Lonely Men Can Start Connecting
3D printing promised to reinvent how we make things, but it's mostly stuck producing prototypes with a high level of waste. Designer and TED Fellow Schendy Kernizan found a different way — by printing...
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Manufacturing innovator and TED Fellow Skendi Kernizan introduces a revolutionary 3D printing technology that eliminates gravity's constraints by printing objects inside a reusable gel. This process enables custom, soft-material manufacturing without molds or waste, bridging the gap between prototyping and production. Growing up in Haiti taught him to innovate with limited resources, and his personal experience with rigid medical braces inspired his focus on products that conform to the human body rather than forcing bodies into standard shapes.
- The Limitations of Traditional 3D Printing
- Drawing Calligraphy in Space: How the Technology Works
What does a war look like when you sit still long enough to draw it? Reportage artist and TED Fellow George Butler sketches the people that the news passes by: a 99-year-old survivor of the Holodomor ...
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Reportage artist George Butler shares his two-decade journey documenting war zones through drawings rather than photographs. Speaking at TED 2026, he argues that the news fails us by promoting destruction over humanity, while his slow, deliberate drawing process allows him to witness and share the deeply human stories behind the headlines—from a 99-year-old woman who survived multiple wars to an architect who drew him back from his hospital bed. Butler makes a compelling case for slowing down and cherishing human connection rather than consuming news, revealing that drawing is ultimately just an excuse to give people time and truly see them.
- The Scene in Kramatorsk: Destruction vs. Humanity
- Drawing as a Different Way of Seeing
How does bullying take root? Social psychologist Amy Cuddy got an inside view of this question after she became the target of a coordinated campaign to discredit her. Drawing on her own experience and...
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Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shares her harrowing experience of being targeted by a sustained bullying campaign from academic colleagues after her viral TED Talk on power posing. She explains how bullying differs from conflict, the predictable stages it follows, and most importantly, how collective action through 'social bravery' can stop these patterns. Drawing on eight years of research, she reveals that bullies need audiences to succeed and that refusing participation can render them powerless.
- From Viral Success to Targeted Attacks
- The Devastating Personal Impact
Wealth inequality gets talked about as an economic problem. Writer Xochitl Gonzalez makes the case that it's a civic one, too — a slow, quiet threat to democracy. Drawing on her research into the psyc...
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Writer and inequality expert Xochitl González explores how social class shapes identity, behavior, and political views in America. Drawing from personal experience and scientific research, she examines how growing up with or without financial security fundamentally affects worldview, decision-making, and engagement with democracy. González argues that extreme wealth inequality has created a class apartheid that threatens democracy itself, as different socioeconomic groups live increasingly separate lives with divergent values and political priorities.
- The Coffee Incident: When Past Trauma Meets Present Reality
- The Hidden Impact of Social Class on Identity