The BEST episodes of TED Talks

#1 - Andy Puddicombe: All it takes is 10 mindful minutes

Season 2013 - Episode 8 - Aired 1/12/2013

#2 - Nigel Marsh: How to make work-life balance work

Season 2011 - Episode 61 - Aired 2/7/2011

Work-life balance, says Nigel Marsh, is too important to be left in the hands of your employer. At TEDxSydney, Marsh lays out an ideal day balanced between family time, personal time and productivity -- and offers some stirring encouragement to make it happen.

#3 - Barry Schwartz: Using Our Practical Wisdom

Season 2010 - Episode 46 - Aired 11/1/2010

#4 - Barry Schwartz: Our loss of wisdom

Season 2009 - Episode 24 - Aired 2/16/2009

#5 - Hannah Fry: The mathematics of love

Season 2015 - Episode 26 - Aired 2/13/2015

Finding the right mate is no cakewalk — but is it even mathematically likely? In a charming talk, mathematician Hannah Fry shows patterns in how we look for love, and gives her top three tips (verified by math!) for finding that special someone.

#6 - Brené Brown: Listening to shame

Season 2012 - Episode 12 - Aired 3/16/2012

Shame is an unspoken epidemic, the secret behind many forms of broken behavior. Brené Brown, whose earlier talk on vulnerability became a viral hit, explores what can happen when people confront their shame head-on. Her own humor, humanity and vulnerability shine through every word.

#7 - Allan Savory: How to green the desert and reverse climate change

Season 2013 - Episode 43 - Aired 3/5/2013

#8 - Siddharthan Chandran: Can the damaged brain repair itself?

Season 2014 - Episode 36 - Aired 2/24/2014

After a traumatic brain injury, it sometimes happens that the brain can repair itself, building new brain cells to replace damaged ones. But the repair doesn't happen quickly enough to allow recovery from degenerative conditions like motor neuron disease (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease or ALS). Siddharthan Chandran walks through some new techniques using special stem cells that could allow the damaged brain to rebuild faster.

#9 - Apollo Robbins: The art of misdirection

Season 2013 - Episode 173 - Aired 9/13/2013

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.

#10 - Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice

Season 2012 - Episode 5 - Aired 3/5/2012

In an engaging and personal talk -- with cameo appearances from his grandmother and Rosa Parks -- human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson shares some hard truths about America's justice system, starting with a massive imbalance along racial lines: a third of the country's black male population has been incarcerated at some point in their lives. These issues, which are wrapped up in America's unexamined history, are rarely talked about with this level of candor, insight and persuasiveness.

#11 - Jeff Speck: The walkable city

Season 2013 - Episode 195 - Aired 10/14/2013

How do we solve the problem of the suburbs? Urbanist Jeff Speck shows how we can free ourselves from dependence on the car — which he calls "a gas-belching, time-wasting, life-threatening prosthetic device" — by making our cities more walkable and more pleasant for more people.

#12 - Daphne Bavelier: Your brain on video games

Season 2012 - Episode 118 - Aired 6/1/2012

How do fast-paced video games affect the brain? Step into the lab with cognitive researcher Daphne Bavelier to hear surprising news about how video games, even action-packed shooter games, can help us learn, focus and, fascinatingly, multitask.

#13 - Ronny Edry: Israel and Iran: A love story?

Season 2012 - Episode 142 - Aired 9/1/2012

When war between Israel and Iran seemed imminent, Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry shared a poster on Facebook of himself and his daughter with a bold message: "Iranians ... we [heart] you." Other Israelis quickly created their own posters with the same message — and Iranians responded in kind. The simple act of communication inspired surprising Facebook communities like "Israel loves Iran," "Iran loves Israel" and even "Palestine loves Israel."

#14 - Sandra Aamodt: Why dieting doesn't usually work

Season 2014 - Episode 5 - Aired 1/8/2014

In the US, 80% of girls have been on a diet by the time they're 10 years old. In this honest, raw talk, neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt uses her personal story to frame an important lesson about how our brains manage our bodies, as she explores the science behind why dieting not only doesn't work, but is likely to do more harm than good. She suggests ideas for how to live a less diet-obsessed life, intuitively.

#15 - Andrew Solomon: How the worst moments in our lives make us who we are

Season 2014 - Episode 101 - Aired 5/21/2014

Writer Andrew Solomon has spent his career telling stories of the hardships of others. Now he turns inward, bringing us into a childhood of adversity, while also spinning tales of the courageous people he's met in the years since. In a moving, heartfelt and at times downright funny talk, Solomon gives a powerful call to action to forge meaning from our biggest struggles.

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

Season 2015 - Episode 21 - Aired 2/5/2015

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.

#17 - Harry Baker: A love poem for lonely prime numbers

Season 2015 - Episode 39 - Aired 3/4/2015

Performance poet (and math student) Harry Baker spins a love poem about his favorite kind of numbers — the lonely, love-lorn prime. Stay on for two more lively, inspiring poems from this charming performer.

#18 - Wendy Suzuki: The brain-changing benefits of exercise

Season 2018 - Episode 61 - Aired 2/28/2018

What's the most transformative thing that you can do for your brain today? Exercise! says neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki. Get inspired to go to the gym as Suzuki discusses the science of how working out boosts your mood and memory — and protects your brain against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.

#19 - Meg Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20

Season 2013 - Episode 97 - Aired 5/14/2013

Clinical psychologist Meg Jay has a bold message for twentysomethings: Contrary to popular belief, your 20s are not a throwaway decade. In this provocative talk, Jay says that just because marriage, work and kids are happening later in life, doesn’t mean you can’t start planning now. She gives 3 pieces of advice for how twentysomethings can re-claim adulthood in the defining decade of their lives.

#20 - Chris Hadfield: What I learned from going blind in space

Season 2014 - Episode 54 - Aired 3/19/2014

There's an astronaut saying: In space, “there is no problem so bad that you can’t make it worse.” So how do you deal with the complexity, the sheer pressure, of dealing with dangerous and scary situations? Retired colonel Chris Hadfield paints a vivid portrait of how to be prepared for the worst in space (and life) — and it starts with walking into a spider’s web. Watch for a special space-y performance.

#21 - Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we share

Season 2013 - Episode 240 - Aired 12/18/2013

"The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment." In a talk equal parts eloquent and devastating, writer Andrew Solomon takes you to the darkest corners of his mind during the years he battled depression. That led him to an eye-opening journey across the world to interview others with depression — only to discover that, to his surprise, the more he talked, the more people wanted to tell their own stories. (Filmed at TEDxMet.)

#22 - Amanda Palmer: The art of asking

Season 2013 - Episode 42 - Aired 3/2/2013

Don't make people pay for music, says Amanda Palmer: Let them. In a passionate talk that begins in her days as a street performer (drop a dollar in the hat for the Eight-Foot Bride!), she examines the new relationship between artist and fan.

#23 - Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are

Season 2012 - Episode 83 - Aired 6/28/2012

#24 - Randall Munroe: Comics that ask "what if?"

Season 2014 - Episode 92 - Aired 5/8/2014

Web cartoonist Randall Munroe answers simple what-if questions ("what if you hit a baseball moving at the speed of light?") using math, physics, logic and deadpan humor. In this charming talk, a reader’s question about Google's data warehouse leads Munroe down a circuitous path to a hilariously over-detailed answer — in which, shhh, you might actually learn something.

#25 - Steven Levitt: The freakonomics of McDonalds vs. drugs

Season 2007 - Episode 31 - Aired 1/16/2007

Freakonomics author Steven Levitt presents new data on the finances of drug dealing. Contrary to popular myth, he says, being a street-corner crack dealer isn't lucrative: It pays below minimum wage. And your boss can kill you.