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 - Enric Sala: Let's turn the high seas into the world's largest nature reserve

Season 2018 - Episode 173 - Aired 6/6/2018

What if we could save the fishing industry and protect the ocean at the same time? Marine ecologist Enric Sala shares his bold plan to safeguard the high seas — some of the last wild places on earth, which fall outside the jurisdiction of any single country — by creating a giant marine reserve that covers two-thirds of the world's ocean. By protecting the high seas, Sala believes we will restore the ecological, economic and social benefits of the ocean. "When we can align economic needs with conservation, miracles can happen," Sala says.

#4 - Hugh Herr: How we'll become cyborgs and extend human potential

Season 2018 - Episode 164 - Aired 5/30/2018

Humans will soon have new bodies that forever blur the line between the natural and synthetic worlds, says bionics designer Hugh Herr. In an unforgettable talk, he details "NeuroEmbodied Design," a methodology for creating cyborg function that he's developing at the MIT Media Lab, and shows us a future where we've augmented our bodies in a way that will redefine human potential — and, maybe, turn us into superheroes. "During the twilight years of this century, I believe humans will be unrecognizable in morphology and dynamics from what we are today," Herr says. "Humanity will take flight and soar."

#5 - Barry Schwartz: Using Our Practical Wisdom

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

#6 - Barry Schwartz: Our loss of wisdom

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

#7 - Danielle Feinberg: The Magic Ingredient That Brings Pixar Movies To Life

Season 2016 - Episode 68 - Aired 4/6/2016

Danielle Feinberg, Pixar's director of photography, creates stories with soul and wonder using math, science and code. Go behind the scenes of Finding Nemo, Toy Story, Brave, WALL-E and more, and discover how Pixar interweaves art and science to create fantastic worlds where the things you imagine can become real. This talk comes from the PBS special 'TED Talks: Science & Wonder.'

#8 - Tshering Tobgay: This Country Isn't Just Carbon Neutral - It's Carbon Negative

Season 2016 - Episode 49 - Aired 3/11/2016

Deep in the Himalayas, on the border between China and India, lies the Kingdom of Bhutan, which has pledged to remain carbon neutral for all time. In this illuminating talk, Bhutan's Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay shares his country's mission to put happiness before economic growth and set a world standard for environmental preservation.

#9 - Thomas Peschak: Dive into an ocean photographer's world

Season 2016 - Episode 40 - Aired 2/29/2016

Somersaulting manta rays, dashing dolphins, swarming schools of fish and munching sharks inhabit a world beneath the ocean's surface that few get a chance to see. Conservation photographer Thomas Peschak visits incredible seascapes around the world, and his photos reveal these hidden ecosystems. 'You can't love something and become a champion for it if you don't know it exists,' he says. Join Peschak in a new, immersive TED Talk format as he shares his stunning work and his dream for a future of respectful coexistence with the ocean.

#10 - Travis Kalanick: Uber's Plan To Get More People Into Fewer Cars

Season 2016 - Episode 44 - Aired 3/4/2016

Uber didn't start out with grand ambitions to cut congestion and pollution. But as the company took off, co-founder Travis Kalanick wondered if there was a way to get people using Uber along the same routes to share rides, reducing costs and carbon footprint along the way. The result: uberPOOL, the company's carpooling service, which in its first eight months took 7.9 million miles off the roads and 1,400 metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the air in Los Angeles. Now, Kalanick says carpooling could work for commuters in the suburbs, too. 'With the technology in our pockets today, and a little smart regulation,' he says, 'we can turn every car into a shared car, and we can reclaim our cities starting today.'

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

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

#12 - 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.

#13 - 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.

#14 - 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.

#15 - Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin: A hilarious celebration of lifelong female friendship

Season 2015 - Episode 216 - Aired 12/17/2015

Legendary duo Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin have been friends for decades. In a raw, tender and wide-ranging conversation hosted by Pat Mitchell, the three discuss longevity, feminism, the differences between male and female friendship, what it means to live well and women's role in future of our planet. "I don't even know what I would do without my women friends," Fonda says. "I exist because I have my women friends."

#16 - 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.

#17 - Tim Urban: Inside The Mind Of A Master Procrastinator

Season 2016 - Episode 52 - Aired 3/15/2016

Tim Urban knows that procrastination doesn't make sense, but he's never been able to shake his habit of waiting until the last minute to get things done. In this hilarious and insightful talk, Urban takes us on a journey through YouTube binges, Wikipedia rabbit holes and bouts of staring out the window - and encourages us to think harder about what we're really procrastinating on, before we run out of time.

#18 - 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.

#19 - Ingrid Fetell Lee: Where joy hides and how to find it

Season 2018 - Episode 155 - Aired 5/21/2018

Cherry blossoms and rainbows, bubbles and googly eyes: Why do some things seem to create such universal joy? In this captivating talk, Ingrid Fetell Lee reveals the surprisingly tangible roots of joy and shows how we all can find — and create — more of it in the world around us.

#20 - Helen Pearson: Lessons from the longest study on human development

Season 2017 - Episode 205 - Aired 10/2/2017

For the past 70 years, scientists in Britain have been studying thousands of children through their lives to find out why some end up happy and healthy while others struggle. It's the longest-running study of human development in the world, and it's produced some of the best-studied people on the planet while changing the way we live, learn and parent. Reviewing this remarkable research, science journalist Helen Pearson shares some important findings and simple truths about life and good parenting.

#21 - Manu Prakash: Lifesaving scientific tools made of paper

Season 2017 - Episode 131 - Aired 7/10/2017

Inventor Manu Prakash turns everyday materials into powerful scientific devices, from paper microscopes to a clever new mosquito tracker. From the TED Fellows stage, he demos Paperfuge, a hand-powered centrifuge inspired by a spinning toy that costs 20 cents to make and can do the work of a $1,000 machine, no electricity required.

#22 - Richard Browning: How I built a jet suit

Season 2017 - Episode 121 - Aired 6/13/2017

We've all dreamed of flying -- but for Richard Browning, flight is an obsession. He's built an Iron Man-like suit that leans on an elegant collaboration of mind, body and technology, bringing science fiction dreams a little closer to reality. Learn more about the trial and error process behind his invention and take flight with Browning in an unforgettable demo.

#23 - Suzanne Simard: How trees talk to each other

Season 2016 - Episode 145 - Aired 7/22/2016

#24 - Sangeeta Bhatia: This Tiny Particle Could Roam Your Body To Find Tumors

Season 2016 - Episode 96 - Aired 5/12/2016

What if we could find cancerous tumors years before they can harm us - without expensive screening facilities or even steady electricity Physician, bioengineer and entrepreneur Sangeeta Bhatia leads a multidisciplinary lab that searches for novel ways to understand, diagnose and treat human disease. Her target: the two-thirds of deaths due to cancer that she says are fully preventable. With remarkable clarity, she breaks down complex nanoparticle science and shares her dream for a radical new cancer test that could save millions of lives.

#25 - Joe Gebbia: How Airbnb Designs For Trust

Season 2016 - Episode 51 - Aired 3/14/2016

Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb, bet his whole company on the belief that people can trust each other enough to stay in one another's homes. How did he overcome the stranger-danger bias Through good design. Now, 123 million hosted nights (and counting) later, Gebbia sets out his dream for a culture of sharing in which design helps foster community and connection instead of isolation and separation.