TED Talks with English transcript

11:53

TEDxNewYork

Ben Wellington: How we found the worst place to park in New York City -- using big data

2014-11-011,055,247 views

Readability: 3.7

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City agencies have access to a wealth of data and statistics reflecting every part of urban life. But as data analyst Ben Wellington suggests in this entertaining talk, sometimes they just don't know what to do with it. He shows how a combination of unexpected questions and smart data crunching can produce strangely useful insights, and shares tips on how to release large sets of data so that anyone can use them.

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13:58

TEDxColumbus

James A. White Sr.: The little problem I had renting a house

2014-11-071,313,112 views

Readability: 3

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Fifty-three years ago, James A. White Sr. joined the US Air Force. But as an African American man, he had to go to shocking lengths to find a place for his young family to live nearby. He tells this powerful story about the lived experience of "everyday racism" -- and how it echoes today in the way he's had to teach his grandchildren to interact with police.

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07:09

TEDGlobal 2014

Angelo Vermeulen: How to go to space, without having to go to space

2014-10-061,154,941 views

Readability: 4.9

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"We will start inhabiting outer space," says Angelo Vermeulen, crew commander of a NASA-funded Mars simulation. "It might take 50 years or it might take 500 years, but it's going to happen." In this charming talk, the TED Senior Fellow describes some of his official work to make sure humans are prepared for life in deep space ... and shares a fascinating art project in which he challenged people worldwide to design homes we might live in there.

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05:10

TEDGlobal 2014

Laura Boushnak: For these women, reading is a daring act

2014-10-14919,431 views

Readability: 5.3

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In some parts of the world, half of the women lack basic reading and writing skills. The reasons vary, but in many cases, literacy isn't valued by fathers, husbands, even mothers. Photographer and TED Fellow Laura Boushnak traveled to countries including Yemen, Egypt and Tunisia to highlight brave women -- schoolgirls, political activists, 60-year-old moms -- who are fighting the statistics.

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16:03

TEDMED 2014

Nadine Burke Harris: How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime

2014-09-106,760,359 views

Readability: 5.1

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Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up. Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across a lifetime, to the point where those who’ve experienced high levels of trauma are at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. An impassioned plea for pediatric medicine to confront the prevention and treatment of trauma, head-on.

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17:29

TEDxLinnaeusUniversity

Guy Winch: Why we all need to practice emotional first aid

2014-11-0710,148,018 views

Readability: 3.6

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We'll go to the doctor when we feel flu-ish or a nagging pain. So why don’t we see a health professional when we feel emotional pain: guilt, loss, loneliness? Too many of us deal with common psychological-health issues on our own, says Guy Winch. But we don’t have to. He makes a compelling case to practice emotional hygiene — taking care of our emotions, our minds, with the same diligence we take care of our bodies.

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10:19

TEDxRiodelaPlata

Eduardo Sáenz de Cabezón: Math is forever

2014-10-011,878,468 views

Readability: 4.1

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With humor and charm, mathematician Eduardo Sáenz de Cabezón answers a question that's wracked the brains of bored students the world over: What is math for? He shows the beauty of math as the backbone of science — and shows that theorems, not diamonds, are forever. In Spanish, with English subtitles.

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14:46

TEDxRiodelaPlata

Romina Libster: The power of herd immunity

2014-11-20742,420 views

Readability: 4.7

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How do vaccines prevent disease -- even among people too young to get vaccinated? It's a concept called "herd immunity," and it relies on a critical mass of people getting their shots to break the chain of infection. Health researcher Romina Libster shows how herd immunity contained a deadly outbreak of H1N1 in her hometown. (In Spanish with English subtitles)

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05:51

TEDYouth 2014

Kenneth Shinozuka: My simple invention, designed to keep my grandfather safe

2014-11-151,759,326 views

Readability: 5.5

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60% of people with dementia wander off, an issue that can prove hugely stressful for both patients and caregivers. In this charming talk, hear how teen inventor Kenneth Shinozuka came up with a novel solution to help his night-wandering grandfather and the aunt who looks after him ... and how he hopes to help others with Alzheimer's.

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18:10

TED2014

Marc Kushner: Why the buildings of the future will be shaped by ... you

2014-03-103,735,933 views

Readability: 3.9

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"Architecture is not about math or zoning -- it's about visceral emotions," says Marc Kushner. In a sweeping — often funny — talk, he zooms through the past thirty years of architecture to show how the public, once disconnected, have become an essential part of the design process. With the help of social media, feedback reaches architects years before a building is even created. The result? Architecture that will do more for us than ever before.

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21:47

TEDGlobal 2014

Ricardo Semler: How to run a company with (almost) no rules

2014-10-163,246,933 views

Readability: 2.9

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What if your job didn't control your life? Brazilian CEO Ricardo Semler practices a radical form of corporate democracy, rethinking everything from board meetings to how workers report their vacation days (they don't have to). It's a vision that rewards the wisdom of workers, promotes work-life balance — and leads to some deep insight on what work, and life, is really all about. Bonus question: What if schools were like this too?

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06:21

TEDYouth 2014

Jaap de Roode: How butterflies self-medicate

2014-11-151,143,584 views

Readability: 4.2

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Just like us, the monarch butterfly sometimes gets sick thanks to a nasty parasite. But biologist Jaap de Roode noticed something interesting about the butterflies he was studying — infected female butterflies would choose to lay their eggs on a specific kind of plant that helped their offspring avoid getting sick. How do they know to choose this plant? Think of it as "the other butterfly effect" — which could teach us to find new medicines for the treatment of human disease.

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06:11

TEDYouth 2014

Brian Dettmer: Old books reborn as art

2014-11-041,270,401 views

Readability: 4

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What do you do with an outdated encyclopedia in the information age? With X-Acto knives and an eye for a good remix, artist Brian Dettmer makes beautiful, unexpected sculptures that breathe new life into old books.

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09:06

TEDGlobal 2013

Tom Wujec: Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast

2013-06-103,176,900 views

Readability: 4.4

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Making toast doesn’t sound very complicated -- until someone asks you to draw the process, step by step. Tom Wujec loves asking people and teams to draw how they make toast, because the process reveals unexpected truths about how we can solve our biggest, most complicated problems at work. Learn how to run this exercise yourself, and hear Wujec’s surprising insights from watching thousands of people draw toast.

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15:00

TEDxYouth@Manchester

Ben Ambridge: 9 myths about psychology, debunked

2014-11-053,054,590 views

Readability: 4.3

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How much of what you think about psychology is actually wrong? In this whistle-stop tour of disproved ideas, Ben Ambridge shares nine popular ideas about psychology that have been proven wrong -- and uncovers a few surprising truths about how our brains really work.

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19:15

TEDxPlaceDesNations

Bruce Aylward: Humanity vs. Ebola. How we could win a terrifying war

2014-12-11957,490 views

Readability: 4.2

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"Ebola threatens everything that makes us human," says Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organization. And when the Ebola epidemic exploded in 2014, it caused a worldwide panic. But humanity can beat Ebola -- and Aylward shows four strategies that show how we are succeeding. The fight against Ebola is not yet won, he says, but it can be.

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16:17

TEDGlobal 2014

Zeynep Tufekci: Online social change: easy to organize, hard to win

2014-10-131,277,993 views

Readability: 5.1

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Today, a single email can launch a worldwide movement. But as sociologist Zeynep Tufekci suggests, even though online activism is easy to grow, it often doesn't last. Why? She compares modern movements -- Gezi, Ukraine, Hong Kong -- to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and uncovers a surprising benefit of organizing protest movements the way it happened before Twitter.

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18:44

TEDxCanberra

Khadija Gbla: My mother’s strange definition of empowerment

2014-10-111,290,760 views

Readability: 3.1

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Khadija Gbla grew up caught between two definitions of what it means to be an “empowered woman.” While her Sierra Leonean mother thought that circumsizing her — and thus stifling her sexual urges — was the ultimate form of empowerment, her culture as a teenager in Australia told her that she deserved pleasure and that what happened to her was called “female genital mutilation.” In a candid and funny talk, she shares what it was like to make her way in a “clitoris-centric society,” and how she works to make sure other women don’t have to figure this out. (Warning: This talk contains hard-to-hear details.)

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16:06

TEDGlobal 2014

Severine Autesserre: To solve mass violence, look to locals

2014-10-16779,846 views

Readability: 6.3

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Severine Autesserre studies the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is in the middle of the deadliest conflict since World War II; it's been called "the largest ongoing humanitarian crisis in the world.” The conflict seems hopelessly, unsolvably large. But her insight from decades of listening and engaging: The conflicts are often locally based. And instead of focusing on solutions that scale to a national level, leaders and aid groups might be better served solving local crises before they ignite.

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12:12

TEDGlobal 2014

Joe Madiath: Better toilets, better life

2014-10-211,024,716 views

Readability: 4.1

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In rural India, the lack of toilets creates a big, stinking problem. It leads to poor quality water, one of the leading causes of disease in India, and has a disproportionately negative effect on women. Joe Madiath introduces a program to help villagers help themselves, by building clean, protected water and sanitation systems and requiring everyone in the village to collaborate -- with significant benefits that ripple across health, education and even government.

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19:02

TEDGlobal 2014

Miguel Nicolelis: Brain-to-brain communication has arrived. How we did it

2014-10-151,398,266 views

Readability: 4.3

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You may remember neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis — he built the brain-controlled exoskeleton that allowed a paralyzed man to kick the first ball of the 2014 World Cup. What’s he working on now? Building ways for two minds (rats and monkeys, for now) to send messages brain to brain. Watch to the end for an experiment that, as he says, will go to "the limit of your imagination."

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10:27

TED@State Street London

Morgana Bailey: The danger of hiding who you are

2014-11-203,050,914 views

Readability: 4.3

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Morgana Bailey has been hiding her true self for 16 years. In a brave talk, she utters four words that might not seem like a big deal to some, but to her have been paralyzing. Why speak up? Because she's realized that her silence has personal, professional and societal consequences. In front of an audience of her co-workers, she reflects on what it means to fear the judgment of others, and how it makes us judge ourselves.

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06:11

TEDYouth 2014

Sarah Bergbreiter: Why I make robots the size of a grain of rice

2014-11-151,663,866 views

Readability: 4.1

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By studying the movement and bodies of insects such as ants, Sarah Bergbreiter and her team build incredibly robust, super teeny, mechanical versions of creepy crawlies … and then they add rockets. See their jaw-dropping developments in micro-robotics, and hear about three ways we might use these little helpers in the future.

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04:43

TEDGlobal 2014

Bassam Tariq: The beauty and diversity of Muslim life

2014-10-061,436,069 views

Readability: 5.1

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Bassam Tariq is a blogger, a filmmaker, and a halal butcher -- but one thread unites his work: His joy in the diversity, the humanness of our individual experiences. In this charming talk, he shares clips from his film "These Birds Walk" and images from his tour of 30 mosques in 30 days -- and reminds us to consider the beautiful complexity within us all.

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16:12

TEDGlobal 2014

Matthieu Ricard: How to let altruism be your guide

2014-10-172,200,601 views

Readability: 4

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What is altruism? Put simply, it's the wish that other people may be happy. And, says Matthieu Ricard, a happiness researcher and a Buddhist monk, altruism is also a great lens for making decisions, both for the short and long term, in work and in life.

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16:30

TEDGlobal 2014

Navi Radjou: Creative problem-solving in the face of extreme limits

2014-10-091,832,994 views

Readability: 5.5

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Navi Radjou has spent years studying "jugaad," also known as frugal innovation. Pioneered by entrepreneurs in emerging markets who figured out how to get spectacular value from limited resources, the practice has now caught on globally. Peppering his talk with a wealth of examples of human ingenuity at work, Radjou also shares three principles for how we can all do more with less.

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15:21

TEDGlobal 2014

Tasso Azevedo: Hopeful lessons from the battle to save rainforests

2014-10-16947,095 views

Readability: 4

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"Save the rainforest" is an environmental slogan as old as time — but Tasso Azevedo catches us up on how the fight is actually going these days. Spurred by the jaw-dropping losses of the 1990s, new laws (and transparent data) are helping slow the rate of deforestation in Brazil. Is it enough? Not yet. He has five ideas about what we should do next. And he asks if the lessons learned in Brazil could be applied to an even bigger problem: global climate change.

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16:07

TEDGlobal 2014

Robert Swan: Let's save the last pristine continent

2014-10-101,037,570 views

Readability: 3.6

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2041 will be a pivotal year for our planet. That year will mark the end of a 50-year agreement to keep Antarctica, the Earth's last pristine continent, free of exploitation. Explorer Robert Swan — the first person to walk both the North and South Poles — is on a mission to ensure that we extend that treaty. With passion and vigor, he pleads with us to choose the preservation of the Antarctic for our own survival.

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08:45

TEDYouth 2014

Fredy Peccerelli: A forensic anthropologist who brings closure for the "disappeared"

2014-11-15797,463 views

Readability: 3.4

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In Guatemala's 36-year conflict, 200,000 civilians were killed — and more than 40,000 were never identified. At the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala, Fredy Peccerelli and his team use DNA, archeology and storytelling to help families find the bodies of their loved ones. It's a sobering task, but it can bring peace of mind — and sometimes, justice. (Contains medical imagery.)

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12:42

TEDxRiodelaPlata

Cristina Domenech: Poetry that frees the soul

2014-10-01777,733 views

Readability: 3.1

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"It's said that to be a poet, you have to go to hell and back." Cristina Domenech teaches writing at an Argentinian prison, and she tells the moving story of helping incarcerated people express themselves, understand themselves — and glory in the freedom of language. Watch for a powerful reading from one of her students, an inmate, in front of an audience of 10,000. (In Spanish with English subtitles)

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