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 - 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.

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

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

#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 - 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.

#6 - 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.)

#7 - 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.

#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 - 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.

#10 - 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.

#11 - Julie Taymor: Spider-Man, The Lion King and life on the creative edge

Season 2013 - Episode 152 - Aired 7/31/2013

Showing spectacular clips from productions such as Frida, The Tempest and The Lion King, director Julie Taymor describes a life spent immersed in theater and the movies. Filmed right as controversy over her Broadway production of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark was at its peak, she candidly describes the tensions inherent within her creative process, as she strives both to capture the essence of a story—and produce images and experiences unlike anything else.

#12 - 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.

#13 - 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.)

#14 - 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.

#15 - 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.)

#16 - 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.)

#17 - 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.)

#18 - 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.

#19 - 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."

#20 - Jinsop Lee: Design for all 5 senses

Season 2013 - Episode 156 - Aired 8/6/2013

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.

#21 - Daniel H. Cohen: For argument’s sake

Season 2013 - Episode 155 - Aired 8/5/2013

Why do we argue? To out-reason our opponents, prove them wrong, and, most of all, to win! ... Right? Philosopher Daniel H. Cohen shows how our most common form of argument — a war in which one person must win and the other must lose — misses out on the real benefits of engaging in active disagreement. (Filmed at TEDxColbyCollege.)

#22 - 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.

#23 - Peter van Manen: How can Formula 1 racing help ... babies?

Season 2013 - Episode 153 - Aired 8/1/2013

During a Formula 1 race, a car sends hundreds of millions of data points to its garage for real-time analysis and feedback. So why not use this detailed and rigorous data system elsewhere, like ... at children’s hospitals? Peter van Manen tells us more. (Filmed at TEDxNijmegen.)

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

Season 2013 - Episode 181 - Aired 9/25/2013

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. (Filmed at TEDxHousesofParliament.)

#25 - 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.