TED Talks with English transcript

10:04

TED2013

Jason Pontin: Can technology solve our big problems?

2013-02-281,587,751 views

Readability: 5.3

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In 1969, Buzz Aldrin’s historical step onto the moon leapt mankind into an era of technological possibility. The awesome power of technology was to be used to solve all of our big problems. Fast forward to present day, and what's happened? Are mobile apps all we have to show for ourselves? Journalist Jason Pontin looks closely at the challenges we face to using technology effectively ... for problems that really matter.

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12:06

TEDGlobal 2013

Fabian Oefner: Psychedelic science

2013-06-121,896,701 views

Readability: 3.7

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Swiss artist and photographer Fabian Oefner is on a mission to make eye-catching art from everyday science. In this charming talk, he shows off some recent psychedelic images, including photographs of crystals as they interact with soundwaves. And, in a live demo, he shows what really happens when you mix paint with magnetic liquid--or when you set fire to whiskey.

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17:28

TEDSalon NY2013

Amy Webb: How I hacked online dating

2013-04-117,847,043 views

Readability: 3.7

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Amy Webb was having no luck with online dating. The dates she liked didn't write her back, and her own profile attracted crickets (and worse). So, as any fan of data would do: she started making a spreadsheet. Hear the story of how she went on to hack her online dating life -- with frustrating, funny and life-changing results.

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13:55

TEDMED 2013

Kelli Swazey: Life that doesn't end with death

2013-04-171,731,286 views

Readability: 5.1

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In Tana Toraja, weddings and births aren't the social gatherings that knit society together. In this part of Indonesia, big, raucous funerals are at the center of social life. Anthropologist Kelli Swazey takes a look at this culture, in which the bodies of dead relatives are cared for years after they have passed away -- because relationships with loved ones don't simply end when breathing does.

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15:41

TEDSalon NY2013

Malcolm Gladwell: The unheard story of David and Goliath

2013-09-197,134,861 views

Readability: 3.8

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It's a classic underdog tale: David, a young shepherd armed only with a sling, beats Goliath, the mighty warrior. The story has transcended its biblical origins to become a common shorthand for unlikely victory. But, asks Malcolm Gladwell, is that really what the David and Goliath story is about?

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11:01

TEDxKids@Ambleside

Kevin Breel: Confessions of a depressed comic

2013-05-054,475,224 views

Readability: 2.7

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Kevin Breel didn't look like a depressed kid: team captain, at every party, funny and confident. But he tells the story of the night he realized that -- to save his own life -- he needed to say four simple words.

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09:51

TEDxHousesOfParliament

Onora O'Neill: What we don't understand about trust

2013-06-251,700,340 views

Readability: 3.5

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Trust is on the decline, and we need to rebuild it. That's a commonly heard suggestion for making a better world ... but, says philosopher Onora O'Neill, we don't really understand what we're suggesting. She flips the question, showing us that our three most common ideas about trust are actually misdirected.

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18:41

TED2013

James Flynn: Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents'

2013-03-014,330,212 views

Readability: 3.9

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It's called the "Flynn effect" -- the fact that each generation scores higher on an IQ test than the generation before it. Are we actually getting smarter, or just thinking differently? In this fast-paced spin through the cognitive history of the 20th century, moral philosopher James Flynn suggests that changes in the way we think have had surprising (and not always positive) consequences.

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18:34

TED2013

Stuart Firestein: The pursuit of ignorance

2013-02-282,046,254 views

Readability: 3.5

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What does real scientific work look like? As neuroscientist Stuart Firestein jokes: It looks a lot less like the scientific method and a lot more like "farting around ... in the dark." In this witty talk, Firestein gets to the heart of science as it is really practiced and suggests that we should value what we don't know -- or "high-quality ignorance" -- just as much as what we know.

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17:37

TEDGlobal 2013

Elizabeth Loftus: How reliable is your memory?

2013-06-114,637,270 views

Readability: 4.7

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Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus studies memories. More precisely, she studies false memories, when people either remember things that didn't happen or remember them differently from the way they really were. It's more common than you might think, and Loftus shares some startling stories and statistics -- and raises some important ethical questions.

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18:06

TEDGlobal 2013

Benjamin Barber: Why mayors should rule the world

2013-06-21815,036 views

Readability: 4.6

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It often seems like federal-level politicians care more about creating gridlock than solving the world's problems. So who's actually getting bold things done? City mayors. So, political theorist Benjamin Barber suggests: Let's give them more control over global policy. Barber shows how these "urban homeboys" are solving pressing problems on their own turf -- and maybe in the world.

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09:03

TEDGlobal 2013

Andras Forgacs: Leather and meat without killing animals

2013-06-131,315,256 views

Readability: 4.3

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By 2050, it will take 100 billion land animals to provide the world's population with meat, dairy, eggs and leather goods. Maintaining this herd will take a huge, potentially unsustainable toll on the planet. What if there were a different way? In this eye-opening talk, tissue engineering advocate Andras Forgacs argues that biofabricating meat and leather is a civilized way to move past killing animals for hamburgers and handbags.

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07:56

TED2013

Eric Berlow and Sean Gourley: Mapping ideas worth spreading

2013-02-281,131,373 views

Readability: 4.3

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What do 24,000 ideas look like? Ecologist Eric Berlow and physicist Sean Gourley apply algorithms to the entire archive of TEDx Talks, taking us on a stimulating visual tour to show how ideas connect globally.

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15:58

TEDGlobal 2013

Marla Spivak: Why bees are disappearing

2013-06-122,880,033 views

Readability: 4.2

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Honeybees have thrived for 50 million years, each colony 40 to 50,000 individuals coordinated in amazing harmony. So why, seven years ago, did colonies start dying en masse? Marla Spivak reveals four reasons which are interacting with tragic consequences. This is not simply a problem because bees pollinate a third of the world's crops. Could this incredible species be holding up a mirror for us?

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08:48

TEDGlobal 2013

Apollo Robbins: The art of misdirection

2013-06-1226,016,015 views

Readability: 2.4

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Hailed as the greatest pickpocket in the world, Apollo Robbins studies the quirks of human behavior as he steals your watch. In a hilarious demonstration, Robbins samples the buffet of the TEDGlobal 2013 audience, showing how the flaws in our perception make it possible to swipe a wallet and leave it on its owner’s shoulder while they remain clueless.

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17:27

TED2013

James Lyne: Everyday cybercrime -- and what you can do about it

2013-02-281,657,306 views

Readability: 4.7

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How do you pick up a malicious online virus, the kind of malware that snoops on your data and taps your bank account? Often, it's through simple things you do each day without thinking twice. James Lyne reminds us that it's not only the NSA that's watching us, but ever-more-sophisticated cybercriminals, who exploit both weak code and trusting human nature.

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15:19

TEDGlobal 2013

Sonia Shah: 3 reasons we still haven’t gotten rid of malaria

2013-06-221,233,836 views

Readability: 4

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We’ve known how to cure malaria since the 1600s, so why does the disease still kill hundreds of thousands every year? It’s more than just a problem of medicine, says journalist Sonia Shah. A look into the history of malaria reveals three big-picture challenges to its eradication. Photos: Adam Nadel.

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15:45

TEDxSydney

Ron McCallum: How technology allowed me to read

2013-07-08719,205 views

Readability: 4

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Months after he was born, in 1948, Ron McCallum became blind. In this charming, moving talk, he shows how he reads -- and celebrates the progression of clever tools and adaptive computer technologies that make it possible. With their help, and the help of volunteers, he's become a lawyer, an academic, and, most of all, a voracious reader. Welcome to the blind reading revolution.

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15:40

TEDSalon NY2013

Jake Barton: The museum of you

2013-05-16815,299 views

Readability: 4.5

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A third of the world watched live as the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001; a third more heard about it within 24 hours. (Do you remember where you were?) So exhibits at the soon-to-open 9/11 Memorial Museum will reflect the diversity of the world's experiences of that day. In a moving talk, designer Jake Barton gives a peek at some of those installations, as well as several other projects that aim to make the observer an active participant in the exhibit.

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15:11

TEDGlobal 2013

George Monbiot: For more wonder, rewild the world

2013-07-081,093,408 views

Readability: 4.6

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Wolves were once native to the US' Yellowstone National Park -- until hunting wiped them out. But when, in 1995, the wolves began to come back (thanks to an aggressive management program), something interesting happened: the rest of the park began to find a new, more healthful balance. In a bold thought experiment, George Monbiot imagines a wilder world in which humans work to restore the complex, lost natural food chains that once surrounded us.

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14:29

TEDGlobal 2013

Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend

2013-06-1122,520,850 views

Readability: 4.4

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Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others.

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07:05

TEDGlobal 2013

Alexa Meade: Your body is my canvas

2013-06-132,815,934 views

Readability: 3.1

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Alexa Meade takes an innovative approach to art. Not for her a life of sketching and stretching canvases. Instead, she selects a topic and then paints it--literally. She covers everything in a scene--people, chairs, food, you name it--in a mask of paint that mimics what's below it. In this eye-opening talk Meade shows off photographs of some of the more outlandish results, and shares a new project involving people, paint and milk.

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15:26

TEDxBoston

Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu: A mouse. A laser beam. A manipulated memory.

2013-06-251,127,889 views

Readability: 4.1

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Can we edit the content of our memories? It's a sci-fi-tinged question that Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu are asking in their lab at MIT. Essentially, the pair shoot a laser beam into the brain of a living mouse to activate and manipulate its memory. In this unexpectedly amusing talk they share not only how, but -- more important -- why they do this.

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10:17

TEDGlobal 2013

May El-Khalil: Making peace is a marathon

2013-06-225,268,496 views

Readability: 4.2

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In Lebanon there is one gunshot a year that isn’t part of a scene of routine violence: The opening sound of the Beirut International Marathon. In a moving talk, marathon founder May El-Khalil explains why she believed a 26.2-mile running event could bring together a country divided for decades by politics and religion, even if for one day a year.

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17:18

TED2013

Adam Spencer: Why I fell in love with monster prime numbers

2013-02-272,209,386 views

Readability: 3.8

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They're millions of digits long, and it takes an army of mathematicians and machines to hunt them down -- what's not to love about monster primes? Adam Spencer, comedian and lifelong math geek, shares his passion for these odd numbers, and for the mysterious magic of math.

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21:47

TEDGlobal 2013

Russell Foster: Why do we sleep?

2013-06-138,011,042 views

Readability: 4

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Russell Foster is a circadian neuroscientist: He studies the sleep cycles of the brain. And he asks: What do we know about sleep? Not a lot, it turns out, for something we do with one-third of our lives. In this talk, Foster shares three popular theories about why we sleep, busts some myths about how much sleep we need at different ages -- and hints at some bold new uses of sleep as a predictor of mental health.

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11:43

TEDxTokyo

Shigeru Ban: Emergency shelters made from paper

2013-05-011,731,260 views

Readability: 4.3

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Long before sustainability was a buzzword, architect Shigeru Ban was using ecologically sound building materials such as cardboard tubes. He uses them to build remarkable temporary structures for disaster-struck nations such as Haiti, Rwanda and Japan. Yet often, these buildings remain a beloved part of the landscape long after they have served their intended purpose.

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19:39

TEDxWarwick

Derek Paravicini and Adam Ockelford: In the key of genius

2013-03-011,591,401 views

Readability: 3.5

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Born three and a half months prematurely, Derek Paravicini is blind and has severe autism. But with perfect pitch, innate talent and a lot of practice, he became a concert pianist by the age of 10. Here, his longtime piano teacher, Adam Ockelford, explains his student's unique relationship to music, while Paravicini shows how he has ripped up the "Chopsticks" rulebook.

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08:11

TED2013

Saki Mafundikwa: Ingenuity and elegance in ancient African alphabets

2013-02-28775,241 views

Readability: 5.6

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From simple alphabets to secret symbolic languages, graphic designer Saki Mafundikwa celebrates the many forms of written communication across the continent of Africa. He highlights the history and legacy that are embodied in written words and symbols, and urges African designers to draw on these graphic forms for fresh inspiration. It's summed up in his favorite Ghanaian glyph, Sankofa, which means "return and get it" -- or "learn from the past."

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09:04

TED2013

Jinsop Lee: Design for all 5 senses

2013-02-271,663,871 views

Readability: 3.4

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Good design looks great, yes -- but why shouldn't it also feel great, smell great and sound great? Designer Jinsop Lee (a TED Talent Search winner) shares his theory of 5-sense design, with a handy graph and a few examples. His hope: to inspire you to notice great multisensory experiences.

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