TED Talks with English transcript

Benjamin Grant: What it feels like to see Earth from space

TEDxSkoll

Benjamin Grant: What it feels like to see Earth from space
1,370,658 views

What the astronauts felt when they saw Earth from space changed them forever. Author and artist Benjamin Grant aims to provoke this same feeling of overwhelming scale and beauty in each of us through a series of stunning satellite images that show the effects human beings are having on the planet. "If we can adopt a more expansive perspective, embrace the truth of what is going on and contemplate the long-term health of our planet, we will create a better, safer and smarter future for our one and only home," Grant says.

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Noriko Arai: Can a robot pass a university entrance exam?

TED2017

Noriko Arai: Can a robot pass a university entrance exam?
1,550,497 views

Meet Todai Robot, an AI project that performed in the top 20 percent of students on the entrance exam for the University of Tokyo -- without actually understanding a thing. While it's not matriculating anytime soon, Todai Robot's success raises alarming questions for the future of human education. How can we help kids excel at the things that humans will always do better than AI?

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Carolyn Bertozzi: What the sugar coating on your cells is trying to tell you

TEDxStanford

Carolyn Bertozzi: What the sugar coating on your cells is trying to tell you
1,527,740 views

Your cells are coated with sugars that store information and speak a secret language. What are they trying to tell us? Your blood type, for one -- and, potentially, that you have cancer. Chemical biologist Carolyn Bertozzi researches how sugars on cancerous cells interact with (and sometimes trick) your immune system. Learn more about how your body detects cancer and how the latest cancer-fighting medicines could help your immune system beat the disease.

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David Baron: You owe it to yourself to experience a total solar eclipse

TEDxMileHigh

David Baron: You owe it to yourself to experience a total solar eclipse
2,074,069 views

On August 21, 2017, the moon's shadow raced from Oregon to South Carolina in what some consider to be the most awe-inspiring spectacle in all of nature: a total solar eclipse. Umbraphile David Baron chases these rare events across the globe, and in this ode to the bliss of seeing the solar corona, he explains why you owe it to yourself to witness one, too.

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Tara Winkler: Why we need to end the era of orphanages

TEDxSydney

Tara Winkler: Why we need to end the era of orphanages
1,133,188 views

Could it be wrong to help children in need by starting an orphanage? In this eye-opening talk about the bad consequences of good intentions, Tara Winkler speaks out against the spread of orphanages in developing countries, caused in part by foreign donors, and details the harm done to children when they are separated from their families and left to grow up in institutions.

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Niki Okuk: When workers own companies, the economy is more resilient

TEDxCrenshaw

Niki Okuk: When workers own companies, the economy is more resilient
1,262,890 views

Another economic reality is possible -- one that values community, sustainability and resiliency instead of profit by any means necessary. Niki Okuk shares her case for cooperative economics and a vision for how working-class people can organize and own the businesses they work for, making decisions for themselves and enjoying the fruits of their labor.

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Cathy O'Neil: The era of blind faith in big data must end

TED2017

Cathy O'Neil: The era of blind faith in big data must end
1,391,460 views

Algorithms decide who gets a loan, who gets a job interview, who gets insurance and much more -- but they don't automatically make things fair. Mathematician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil coined a term for algorithms that are secret, important and harmful: "weapons of math destruction." Learn more about the hidden agendas behind the formulas.

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Anika Paulson: How I found myself through music

TED2017

Anika Paulson: How I found myself through music
1,202,283 views

"Music is everywhere, and it is in everything," says musician, student and TED-Ed Clubs star Anika Paulson. Guitar in hand, she plays through the beats of her life in an exploration of how music connects us and makes us what we are.

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Ashton Applewhite: Let's end ageism

TED2017

Ashton Applewhite: Let's end ageism
1,528,566 views

It's not the passage of time that makes it so hard to get older. It's ageism, a prejudice that pits us against our future selves -- and each other. Ashton Applewhite urges us to dismantle the dread and mobilize against the last socially acceptable prejudice. "Aging is not a problem to be fixed or a disease to be cured," she says. "It is a natural, powerful, lifelong process that unites us all."

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Susan Pinker: The secret to living longer may be your social life

TED2017

Susan Pinker: The secret to living longer may be your social life
2,669,944 views

The Italian island of Sardinia has more than six times as many centenarians as the mainland and ten times as many as North America. Why? According to psychologist Susan Pinker, it's not a sunny disposition or a low-fat, gluten-free diet that keeps the islanders healthy -- it's their emphasis on close personal relationships and face-to-face interactions. Learn more about super longevity as Pinker explains what it takes to live to 100 and beyond.

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Tom Gruber: How AI can enhance our memory, work and social lives

TED2017

Tom Gruber: How AI can enhance our memory, work and social lives
2,030,318 views

How smart can our machines make us? Tom Gruber, co-creator of Siri, wants to make "humanistic AI" that augments and collaborates with us instead of competing with (or replacing) us. He shares his vision for a future where AI helps us achieve superhuman performance in perception, creativity and cognitive function -- from turbocharging our design skills to helping us remember everything we've ever read and the name of everyone we've ever met. "We are in the middle of a renaissance in AI," Gruber says. "Every time a machine gets smarter, we get smarter."

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Richard J. Berry: A practical way to help the homeless find work and safety

TEDxPennsylvaniaAvenue

Richard J. Berry: A practical way to help the homeless find work and safety
1,303,663 views

When Richard J. Berry, the mayor of Albuquerque, saw a man on a street corner holding a cardboard sign that read "Want a job," he decided to take him (and others in his situation) up on it. He and his staff started a citywide initiative to help the homeless by giving them day jobs and a place to sleep -- and the results were incredible. Find out how your city can replicate Albuquerque's model with this frank and optimistic talk.

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Peter Calthorpe: 7 principles for building better cities

TED2017

Peter Calthorpe: 7 principles for building better cities
2,298,685 views

More than half of the world's population already lives in cities, and another 2.5 billion people are projected to move to urban areas by 2050. The way we build new cities will be at the heart of so much that matters, from climate change to economic vitality to our very well-being and sense of connectedness. Peter Calthorpe is already at work planning the cities of the future and advocating for community design that's focused on human interaction. He shares seven universal principles for solving sprawl and building smarter, more sustainable cities.

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Jack Conte: How artists can (finally) get paid in the digital age

TED2017

Jack Conte: How artists can (finally) get paid in the digital age
1,289,224 views

It's been a weird 100 years for artists and creators, says musician and entrepreneur Jack Conte. The traditional ways we've turned art into money (like record sales) have been broken by the internet, leaving musicians, writers and artists wondering how to make a living. With Patreon, Conte has created a way for artists on the internet to get paid by their fans. Could payment platforms like this change what it means to be an artist in the digital age?

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Damon Davis: Courage is contagious

TED2017

Damon Davis: Courage is contagious
1,189,894 views

When artist Damon Davis went to join the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after police killed Michael Brown in 2014, he found not only anger but also a sense of love for self and community. His documentary "Whose Streets?" tells the story of the protests from the perspective of the activists who showed up to challenge those who use power to spread fear and hate.

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Anjan Chatterjee: How your brain decides what is beautiful

TEDMED 2016

Anjan Chatterjee: How your brain decides what is beautiful
2,701,069 views

Anjan Chatterjee uses tools from evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience to study one of nature's most captivating concepts: beauty. Learn more about the science behind why certain configurations of line, color and form excite us in this fascinating, deep look inside your brain.

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Alexander Wagner: What really motivates people to be honest in business

TEDxZurich

Alexander Wagner: What really motivates people to be honest in business
1,661,864 views

Each year, one in seven large corporations commits fraud. Why? To find out, Alexander Wagner takes us inside the economics, ethics and psychology of doing the right thing. Join him for an introspective journey down the slippery slopes of deception as he helps us understand why people behave the way they do.

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Manoush Zomorodi: How boredom can lead to your most brilliant ideas

TED2017

Manoush Zomorodi: How boredom can lead to your most brilliant ideas
3,416,855 views

Do you sometimes have your most creative ideas while folding laundry, washing dishes or doing nothing in particular? It's because when your body goes on autopilot, your brain gets busy forming new neural connections that connect ideas and solve problems. Learn to love being bored as Manoush Zomorodi explains the connection between spacing out and creativity.

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Anne Madden: Meet the microscopic life in your home -- and on your face

TED2017

Anne Madden: Meet the microscopic life in your home -- and on your face
1,428,263 views

Behold the microscopic jungle in and around you: tiny organisms living on your cheeks, under your sofa and in the soil in your backyard. We have an adversarial relationship with these microbes -- we sanitize, exterminate and disinfect them -- but according to microbiologist Anne Madden, they're sources of new technologies and medicines waiting to be discovered. These microscopic alchemists aren't gross, Madden says -- they're the future.

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Ronald Sullivan: How I help free innocent people from prison

TEDxMidAtlantic

Ronald Sullivan: How I help free innocent people from prison
885,852 views

Harvard Law professor Ronald Sullivan fights to free wrongfully convicted people from jail -- in fact, he has freed some 6,000 innocent people over the course of his career. He shares heartbreaking stories of how (and why) people end up being put in jail for something they didn't do, and the consequences in their lives and the lives of others. Watch this essential talk about the duty we all have to make the world a bit more fair every day, however we can.

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Ingrid Betancourt: What six years in captivity taught me about fear and faith

TED2017

Ingrid Betancourt: What six years in captivity taught me about fear and faith
881,039 views

In 2002, the Colombian guerrilla movement known as the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) kidnapped Ingrid Betancourt in the middle of her presidential campaign. For the next six years, Betancourt was held hostage in jungle prison camps where she was ravaged by malaria, fleas, hunger and human cruelty until her rescue by the Colombian government. In this deeply personal talk, the politician turned writer explains what it's like to live in a perpetual state of fear -- and how her faith sustained her. (In Spanish with English subtitles)

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Joseph Redmon: How computers learn to recognize objects instantly

TED2017

Joseph Redmon: How computers learn to recognize objects instantly
2,471,805 views

Ten years ago, researchers thought that getting a computer to tell the difference between a cat and a dog would be almost impossible. Today, computer vision systems do it with greater than 99 percent accuracy. How? Joseph Redmon works on the YOLO (You Only Look Once) system, an open-source method of object detection that can identify objects in images and video -- from zebras to stop signs -- with lightning-quick speed. In a remarkable live demo, Redmon shows off this important step forward for applications like self-driving cars, robotics and even cancer detection.

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Françoise Mouly: The stories behind The New Yorker's iconic covers

TEDNYC

Françoise Mouly: The stories behind The New Yorker's iconic covers
1,251,020 views

Meet Françoise Mouly, The New Yorker's art director. For the past 24 years, she's helped decide what appears on the magazine's famous cover, from the black-on-black depiction of the Twin Towers the week after 9/11 to a recent, Russia-influenced riff on the magazine's mascot, Eustace Tilley. In this visual retrospective, Mouly considers how a simple drawing can cut through the torrent of images that we see every day and elegantly capture the feeling (and the sensibility) of a moment in time.

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Grace Kim: How cohousing can make us happier (and live longer)

TED2017

Grace Kim: How cohousing can make us happier (and live longer)
2,237,287 views

Loneliness doesn't always stem from being alone. For architect Grace Kim, loneliness is a function of how socially connected we feel to the people around us -- and it's often the result of the homes we live in. She shares an age-old antidote to isolation: cohousing, a way of living where people choose to share space with their neighbors, get to know them, and look after them. Rethink your home and how you live in it with this eye-opening talk.

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Titus Kaphar: Can art amend history?

TED2017

Titus Kaphar: Can art amend history?
1,527,150 views

Artist Titus Kaphar makes paintings and sculptures that wrestle with the struggles of the past while speaking to the diversity and advances of the present. In an unforgettable live workshop, Kaphar takes a brush full of white paint to a replica of a 17th-century Frans Hals painting, obscuring parts of the composition and bringing its hidden story into view. There's a narrative coded in art like this, Kaphar says. What happens when we shift our focus and confront unspoken truths?

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Marc Raibert: Meet Spot, the robot dog that can run, hop and open doors

TED2017

Marc Raibert: Meet Spot, the robot dog that can run, hop and open doors
4,082,182 views

That science fiction future where robots can do what people and animals do may be closer than you think. Marc Raibert, founder of Boston Dynamics, is developing advanced robots that can gallop like a cheetah, negotiate 10 inches of snow, walk upright on two legs and even open doors and deliver packages. Join Raibert for a live demo of SpotMini, a nimble robot that maps the space around it, handles objects, climbs stairs -- and could soon be helping you out around the house.

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Iyad Rahwan: What moral decisions should driverless cars make?

TEDxCambridge

Iyad Rahwan: What moral decisions should driverless cars make?
1,147,381 views

Should your driverless car kill you if it means saving five pedestrians? In this primer on the social dilemmas of driverless cars, Iyad Rahwan explores how the technology will challenge our morality and explains his work collecting data from real people on the ethical trade-offs we're willing (and not willing) to make.

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Kristen Marhaver: Why I still have hope for coral reefs

TED2017

Kristen Marhaver: Why I still have hope for coral reefs
1,348,832 views

Corals in the Pacific Ocean have been dying at an alarming rate, particularly from bleaching brought on by increased water temperatures. But it's not too late to act, says TED Fellow Kristen Marhaver. She points to the Caribbean -- given time, stable temperatures and strong protection, corals there have shown the ability to survive and recover from trauma. Marhaver reminds us why we need to keep working to protect the precious corals we have left. "Corals have always been playing the long game," she says, "and now so are we."

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