The BEST episodes of TED Talks season 2013

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

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

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

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

#3 - 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.

#4 - 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.

#5 - 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.

#6 - 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.

#7 - 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.)

#8 - Gian Giudice: Why our universe might exist on a knife-edge

Season 2013 - Episode 203 - Aired 10/24/2013

The biggest surprise of discovering the Higgs boson? That there were no surprises. Gian Giudice talks us through a problem in theoretical physics: what if the Higgs field exists in an ultra-dense state that could mean the collapse of all atomic matter? With wit and charm, Giudice outlines a grim fate — and why we shouldn't start worrying just yet.

#9 - Amy Webb: How I hacked online dating

Season 2013 - Episode 186 - Aired 10/2/2013

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.

#10 - Andrew Solomon: Love, no matter what

Season 2013 - Episode 111 - Aired 6/3/2013

What is it like to raise a child who's different from you in some fundamental way (like a prodigy, or a differently abled kid, or a criminal)? In this quietly moving talk, writer Andrew Solomon shares what he learned from talking to dozens of parents — asking them: What's the line between unconditional love and unconditional acceptance?

#11 - Sebastião Salgado: The silent drama of photography

Season 2013 - Episode 84 - Aired 5/2/2013

Economics PhD Sebastião Salgado only took up photography in his 30s, but the discipline became an obsession. His years-long projects beautifully capture the human side of a global story that all too often involves death, destruction or decay. Here, he tells a deeply personal story of the craft that nearly killed him, and shows breathtaking images from his latest work, Genesis, which documents the world's forgotten people and places.

#12 - Cameron Russell: Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model.

Season 2013 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/17/2013

Cameron Russell admits she won “a genetic lottery”: she's tall, pretty and an underwear model. But don't judge her by her looks. In this fearless talk, she takes a wry look at the industry that had her looking highly seductive at barely 16 years old.

#13 - Tom Thum: The orchestra in my mouth

Season 2013 - Episode 144 - Aired 7/19/2013

In a highly entertaining performance, beatboxer Tom Thum slings beats, comedy and a mouthful of instrumental impersonations into 11 minutes of creativity and fun that will make you smile. (Filmed at TEDxSydney.)

#14 - Chrystia Freeland: The rise of the new global super-rich

Season 2013 - Episode 167 - Aired 9/5/2013

Technology is advancing in leaps and bounds — and so is economic inequality, says writer Chrystia Freeland. In an impassioned talk, she charts the rise of a new class of plutocrats (those who are extremely powerful because they are extremely wealthy), and suggests that globalization and new technology are actually fueling, rather than closing, the global income gap. Freeland lays out three problems with plutocracy … and one glimmer of hope.

#15 - Beardyman: The polyphonic me

Season 2013 - Episode 154 - Aired 8/2/2013

Frustrated by not being able to sing two notes at the same time, musical inventor Beardyman built a machine to allow him to create loops and layers from just the sounds he makes with his voice. Given that he can effortlessly conjure the sound of everything from crying babies to buzzing flies, not to mention mimic pretty much any musical instrument imaginable, that's a lot of different sounds. Sit back and let the wall of sound of this dazzling performance wash over you.

#16 - Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend

Season 2013 - Episode 166 - Aired 9/4/2013

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.

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

Season 2013 - Episode 165 - Aired 9/3/2013

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.

#18 - May El-Khalil: Making peace is a marathon

Season 2013 - Episode 164 - Aired 8/16/2013

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.

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

Season 2013 - Episode 163 - Aired 8/15/2013

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 importantly — why they do this. (Filmed at TEDxBoston.)

#20 - Russell Foster: Why do we sleep?

Season 2013 - Episode 162 - Aired 8/14/2013

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.

#21 - Shigeru Ban: Emergency shelters made from paper

Season 2013 - Episode 161 - Aired 8/13/2013

Long before sustainability was a buzzword, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban had begun his experiments with ecologically sound building materials such as cardboard tubes. His remarkable structures are often intended as temporary housing for disaster-struck nations such as Haiti, Rwanda, Japan. Yet often the buildings remain a beloved part of the landscape long after they have served their intended purpose. (Filmed at TEDxTokyo.)

#22 - Margaret Heffernan: The dangers of

Season 2013 - Episode 160 - Aired 8/12/2013

Gayla Benefield was just doing her job — until she uncovered an awful secret about her hometown that meant its mortality rate was 80 times higher than anywhere else in the U.S. But when she tried to tell people about it, she learned an even more shocking truth: People didn’t want to know. In a talk that’s part history lesson, part call-to-action, Margaret Heffernan demonstrates the danger of "willful blindness" and praises ordinary people like Benefield who are willing to speak up. (Filmed at TEDxDanubia.)

#23 - Derek Paravicini and Adam Ockelford: In the key of genius

Season 2013 - Episode 159 - Aired 8/9/2013

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 an acclaimed 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" rule book. (Filmed at TEDxWarwick.)

#24 - Eleanor Longden: The voices in my head

Season 2013 - Episode 158 - Aired 8/8/2013

To all appearances, Eleanor Longden was just like every other student, heading to college full of promise and without a care in the world. That was until the voices in her head started talking. Initially innocuous, these internal narrators became increasingly antagonistic and dictatorial, turning her life into a living nightmare. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, hospitalized, drugged, Longden was discarded by a system that didn't know how to help her. Longden tells the moving tale of her years-long journey back to mental health, and makes the case that it was through learning to listen to her voices that she was able to survive.

#25 - Saki Mafundikwa: Ingenuity and elegance in ancient African alphabets

Season 2013 - Episode 157 - Aired 8/7/2013

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."