The BEST episodes of TED Talks season 2016
Every episode of TED Talks season 2016, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of TED Talks season 2016!
TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. TEDTalks began as a simple attempt to share what happens at TED with the world. Under the moniker "ideas worth spreading," talks were released online. They rapidly attracted a global audience in the millions. Indeed, the reaction was so enthusiastic that the entire TED website has been reengineered around TEDTalks, with the goal of giving everyone on-demand access to the world's most inspiring voices. [TED-Ed and TEDx are separate TVDB series and should NOT be listed here. Episode ordering and dates are sourced from YouTube.]
#1 - Olivier Scalabre: The next manufacturing revolution is here
Season 2016 - Episode 156 - Aired 8/22/2016
Economic growth has been slowing for the past 50 years, but relief might come from an unexpected place — a new form of manufacturing that is neither what you thought it was nor where you thought it was. Industrial systems thinker Olivier Scalabre details how a fourth manufacturing revolution will produce a macroeconomic shift and boost employment, productivity and growth.
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#2 - Christopher Bell: Bring on the female superheroes!
Season 2016 - Episode 162 - Aired 8/30/2016
Why is it so hard to find female superhero merchandise? In this passionate, sparkling talk, media studies scholar (and father of a Star Wars-obsessed daughter) Christopher Bell addresses the alarming lack of female superheroes in the toys and products marketed to kids — and what it means for how we teach them about the world.
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#3 - Franz Freudenthal: A new way to heal hearts without surgery
Season 2016 - Episode 169 - Aired 9/9/2016
At the intersection of medical invention and indigenous culture, pediatric cardiologist Franz Freudenthal mends holes in the hearts of children across the world, using a device born from traditional Bolivian loom weaving. "The most complex problems in our time," he says, "can be solved with simple techniques, if we are able to dream."
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#4 - 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.'
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#5 - 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.
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#6 - 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.
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#7 - Don Tapscott: How the blockchain is changing money and business
Season 2016 - Episode 159 - Aired 8/25/2016
What is the blockchain? If you don't know, you should; if you do, chances are you still need some clarification on how it actually works. Don Tapscott is here to help, demystifying this world-changing, trust-building technology which, he says, represents nothing less than the second generation of the internet and holds the potential to transform money, business, government and society.
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#8 - Oded Shoseyov: How we're harnessing nature's hidden superpowers
Season 2016 - Episode 182 - Aired 9/28/2016
What do you get when you combine the strongest materials from the plant world with the most elastic ones from the insect kingdom? Super-performing materials that might transform ... everything. Nanobiotechnologist Oded Shoseyov walks us through examples of amazing materials found throughout nature, in everything from cat fleas to sequoia trees, and shows the creative ways his team is harnessing them in everything from sports shoes to medical implants.
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#9 - Linus Torvalds: The Mind Behind Linux
Season 2016 - Episode 71 - Aired 4/8/2016
Linus Torvalds transformed technology twice - first with the Linux kernel, which helps power the Internet, and again with Git, the source code management system used by developers worldwide. In a rare interview with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Torvalds discusses with remarkable openness the personality traits that prompted his unique philosophy of work, engineering and life. 'I am not a visionary, I'm an engineer,' Torvalds says. 'I'm perfectly happy with all the people who are walking around and just staring at the clouds ... but I'm looking at the ground, and I want to fix the pothole that's right in front of me before I fall in.'
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#10 - Adam Grant: The Surprising Habits Of Original Thinkers
Season 2016 - Episode 65 - Aired 4/1/2016
How do creative people come up with great ideas? Organizational psychologist Adam Grant studies "originals": thinkers who dream up new ideas and take action to put them into the world. In this talk, learn three unexpected habits of originals — including embracing failure. "The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they're the ones who try the most," Grant says. "You need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones."
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#11 - Jia Jiang: What I learned from 100 days of rejection
Season 2016 - Episode 232 - Aired 12/7/2016
Jia Jiang adventures boldly into a territory so many of us fear: rejection. By seeking out rejection for 100 days -- from asking a stranger to borrow $100 to requesting a "burger refill" at a restaurant -- Jiang desensitized himself to the pain and shame that rejection often brings and, in the process, discovered that simply asking for what you want can open up possibilities where you expect to find dead ends.
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#12 - David Burkus: Why you should know how much your coworkers get paid
Season 2016 - Episode 176 - Aired 9/20/2016
How much do you get paid? How does it compare to the people you work with? You should know, and so should they, says management researcher David Burkus. In this talk, Burkus questions our cultural assumptions around keeping salaries secret and makes a compelling case for why sharing them could benefit employees, organizations and society.
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#13 - James Veitch: The agony of trying to unsubscribe
Season 2016 - Episode 165 - Aired 9/2/2016
It happens to all of us: you unsubscribe from an unwanted marketing email, and a few days later another message from the same company pops up in your inbox. Comedian James Veitch turned this frustration into whimsy when a local supermarket refused to take no for an answer. Hijinks ensued.
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#14 - Jonathan Tepperman: The risky politics of progress
Season 2016 - Episode 164 - Aired 9/1/2016
Global problems such as terrorism, inequality and political dysfunction aren't easy to solve, but that doesn't mean we should stop trying. In fact, suggests journalist Jonathan Tepperman, we might even want to think riskier. He traveled the world to ask global leaders how they're tackling hard problems — and unearthed surprisingly hopeful stories that he's distilled into three tools for problem-solving.
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#15 - eL Seed: A project of peace, painted across 50 buildings
Season 2016 - Episode 142 - Aired 7/19/2016
eL Seed fuses Arabic calligraphy with graffiti to paint colorful, swirling messages of hope and peace on buildings from Tunisia to Paris. The artist and TED Fellow shares the story of his most ambitious project yet: a mural painted across 50 buildings in Manshiyat Naser, a district of Cairo, Egypt, that can only be fully seen from a nearby mountain.
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#16 - Astro Teller: The Unexpected Benefit Of Celebrating Failure
Season 2016 - Episode 75 - Aired 2/1/2016
"Great dreams aren't just visions," says Astro Teller, "They're visions coupled to strategies for making them real." The head of X (formerly Google X), Teller takes us inside the "moonshot factory," as it's called, where his team seeks to solve the world's biggest problems through experimental projects like balloon-powered Internet and wind turbines that sail through the air. Find out X's secret to creating an organization where people feel comfortable working on big, risky projects and exploring audacious ideas.
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#17 - Hugh Evans: What Does It Mean To Be A Citizen Of The World?
Season 2016 - Episode 72 - Aired 4/11/2016
Hugh Evans started a movement that mobilizes 'global citizens,' people who self-identify first and foremost not as members of a state, nation or tribe but as members of the human race. In this uplifting and personal talk, learn more about how this new understanding of our place in the world is galvanizing people to take action in the fights against extreme poverty, climate change, gender inequality and more. 'These are ultimately global issues,' Evans says, 'and they can only be solved by global citizens demanding global solutions from their leaders.'
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#18 - Latif Nasser: You Have No Idea Where Camels Really Come From
Season 2016 - Episode 58 - Aired 3/23/2016
Camels are so well adapted to the desert that it's hard to imagine them living anywhere else. But what if we have them pegged all wrong What if those big humps, feet and eyes were evolved for a different climate and a different time In this talk, join Radiolab's Latif Nasser as he tells the surprising story of how a very tiny, very strange fossil upended the way he sees camels, and the world. This talk comes from the upcoming PBS special TED Talks: Science & Wonder, which premieres March 30th at 10 p.m. ET.
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#19 - Vanessa Ruiz: The spellbinding art of human anatomy
Season 2016 - Episode 160 - Aired 8/26/2016
Vanessa Ruiz takes us on an illustrated journey of human anatomical art over the centuries, sharing captivating images that bring this visual science — and the contemporary artists inspired by it — to life. "Anatomical art has the power to reach far beyond the pages of a medical textbook," she says, "connecting our innermost selves with our bodies through art."
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#20 - Isaac Lidsky: What reality are you creating for yourself?
Season 2016 - Episode 188 - Aired 10/6/2016
Reality isn't something you perceive; it's something you create in your mind. Isaac Lidsky learned this profound lesson firsthand, when unexpected life circumstances yielded valuable insights. In this introspective, personal talk, he challenges us to let go of excuses, assumptions and fears, and accept the awesome responsibility of being the creators of our own reality.
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#21 - Carol Cohen: How To Get Back To Work After A Career Break
Season 2016 - Episode 57 - Aired 3/22/2016
If you've taken a career break and are now looking to return to the workforce, would you consider taking an internship Career reentry expert Carol Fishman Cohen thinks you should. In this talk, hear about Cohen's own experience returning to work after a career break, her work championing the success of 'relaunchers' and how employers are changing how they engage with return-to-work talent.
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#22 - Meron Gribetz: A Glimpse Of The Future Through An Augmented Reality Headset
Season 2016 - Episode 55 - Aired 3/18/2016
What if technology could connect us more deeply with our surroundings instead of distracting us from the real world With the Meta 2, an augmented reality headset that makes it possible for users to see, grab and move holograms just like physical objects, Meron Gribetz hopes to extend our senses through a more natural machine. Join Gribetz as he takes the TED stage to demonstrate the reality-shifting Meta 2 for the first time. (Featuring Q&A with TED Curator Chris Anderson)
#23 - John McWhorter: 4 reasons to learn a new language
Season 2016 - Episode 190 - Aired 10/7/2016
English is fast becoming the world's universal language, and instant translation technology is improving every year. So why bother learning a foreign language? Linguist and Columbia professor John McWhorter shares four alluring benefits of learning an unfamiliar tongue.
#24 - Laura Vanderkam: How to gain control of your free time
Season 2016 - Episode 239 - Aired 12/16/2016
There are 168 hours in each week. How do we find time for what matters most? Time management expert Laura Vanderkam studies how busy people spend their lives, and she's discovered that many of us drastically overestimate our commitments each week, while underestimating the time we have to ourselves. She offers a few practical strategies to help find more time for what matters to us, so we can "build the lives we want in the time we've got."
#25 - Kio Stark: Why you should talk to strangers
Season 2016 - Episode 163 - Aired 8/31/2016
"When you talk to strangers, you're making beautiful interruptions into the expected narrative of your daily life — and theirs," says Kio Stark. In this delightful talk, Stark explores the overlooked benefits of pushing past our default discomfort when it comes to strangers and embracing those fleeting but profoundly beautiful moments of genuine connection.