The BEST episodes of TED Talks season 2016

#1 - 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.'

#2 - 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.

#3 - 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.

#4 - 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.

#5 - Auke Ijspeert: A Robot That Runs And Swims Like A Salamander

Season 2016 - Episode 18 - Aired 1/28/2016

Roboticist Auke Ijspeert designs biorobots, machines modeled after real animals that are capable of handling complex terrain and would appear at home in the pages of a sci-fi novel. The process of creating these robots leads to better automata that can be used for fieldwork, service, and search and rescue. But these robots don't just mimic the natural world -- they help us understand our own biology better, unlocking previously unknown secrets of the spinal cord.

#6 - Raffaello D'Andrea: Meet the dazzling flying machines of the future

Season 2016 - Episode 34 - Aired 2/19/2016

When you hear the word "drone," you probably think of something either very useful or very scary. But could they have aesthetic value? Autonomous systems expert Raffaello D'Andrea develops flying machines, and his latest projects are pushing the boundaries of autonomous flight -- from a flying wing that can hover and recover from disturbance to an eight-propeller craft that's ambivalent to orientation ... to a swarm of tiny coordinated micro-quadcopters. Prepare to be dazzled by a dreamy, swirling array of flying machines as they dance like fireflies above the TED stage.

#7 - Caleb Harper: This computer will grow your food in the future

Season 2016 - Episode 46 - Aired 3/8/2016

What if we could grow delicious, nutrient-dense food, indoors anywhere in the world Caleb Harper, director of the Open Agriculture Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, wants to change the food system by connecting growers with technology. Get to know Harper's 'food computers' and catch a glimpse of what the future of farming might look like.

#8 - 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.

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

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

#10 - Zaria Forman: Drawings That Show The Beauty And Fragility Of Earth

Season 2016 - Episode 105 - Aired 5/25/2016

Zaria Forman's large-scale compositions of melting glaciers, icebergs floating in glassy water and waves cresting with foam explore moments of transition, turbulence and tranquility. Join her as she discusses the meditative process of artistic creation and the motivation behind her work. 'My drawings celebrate the beauty of what we all stand to lose,' she says. 'I hope they can serve as records of sublime landscapes in flux.'

#11 - Brian Little: Who Are You, Really? The Puzzle Of Personality

Season 2016 - Episode 125 - Aired 6/23/2016

What makes you, you Psychologists like to talk about our traits, or defined characteristics that make us who we are. But Brian Little is more interested in moments when we transcend those traits - sometimes because our culture demands it of us, and sometimes because we demand it of ourselves. Join Little as he dissects the surprising differences between introverts and extroverts and explains why your personality may be more malleable than you think.

#12 - Leila Hoteit: 3 Lessons On Success From An Arab Businesswoman

Season 2016 - Episode 136 - Aired 7/11/2016

Professional Arab women juggle more responsibilities than their male counterparts, and they face more cultural rigidity than Western women. What can their success teach us about tenacity, competition, priorities and progress Tracing her career as an engineer, advocate and mother in Abu Dhabi, Leila Hoteit shares three lessons for thriving in the modern world.

#13 - 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.

#14 - Judson Brewer: A simple way to break a bad habit

Season 2016 - Episode 22 - Aired 2/3/2016

Can we break bad habits by being more curious about them? Psychiatrist Judson Brewer studies the relationship between mindfulness and addiction -- from smoking to overeating to all those other things we do even though we know they're bad for us. Learn more about the mechanism of habit development and discover a simple but profound tactic that might help you beat your next urge to smoke, snack or check a text while driving.

#15 - Allan Adams: What the discovery of gravitational waves means

Season 2016 - Episode 33 - Aired 2/18/2016

More than a billion years ago, two black holes in a distant galaxy locked into a spiral, falling inexorably toward each other, and collided. 'All that energy was pumped into the fabric of time and space itself,' says theoretical physicist Allan Adams, 'making the universe explode in roiling waves of gravity.' About 25 years ago, a group of scientists built a giant laser detector called LIGO to search for these kinds of waves, which had been predicted but never observed. In this mind-bending talk, Adams breaks down what happened when, in September 2015, LIGO detected an unthinkably small anomaly, leading to one of the most exciting discoveries in the history of physics.

#16 - Stephen Wilkes: The Passing Of Time, Caught In A Single Photo

Season 2016 - Episode 111 - Aired 6/3/2016

Photographer Stephen Wilkes crafts stunning compositions of landscapes as they transition from day to night, exploring the space-time continuum within a two-dimensional still photograph. Journey with him to iconic locations like the Tournelle Bridge in Paris, El Capitan in Yosemite National Park and a life-giving watering hole in heart of the Serengeti in this tour of his art and process.

#17 - Shonda Rhimes: My Year Of Saying Yes To Everything

Season 2016 - Episode 32 - Aired 2/17/2016

Shonda Rhimes, the titan behind Grey's Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder, is responsible for some 70 hours of television per season, and she loves to work. "When I am hard at work, when I am deep in it, there is no other feeling," she says. She has a name for this feeling: The hum. The hum is a drug, the hum is music, the hum is God's whisper in her ear. But what happens when it stops? Is she anything besides the hum? In this moving talk, join Rhimes on a journey through her "year of yes" and find out how she got her hum back.

#18 - 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."

#19 - Trevor Timm: How Free Is Our Freedom Of The Press?

Season 2016 - Episode 102 - Aired 5/20/2016

In the US, the press has a right to publish secret information the public needs to know, protected by the First Amendment. Government surveillance has made it increasingly more dangerous for whistleblowers, the source of virtually every important story about national security since 9/11, to share information. In this concise, informative talk, Freedom of the Press Foundation co-founder and TED Fellow Trevor Timm traces the recent history of government action against individuals who expose crime and injustice and advocates for technology that can help them do it safely and anonymously.

#20 - 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.

#21 - Sayu Bhojwani: Immigrant voices make democracy stronger

Season 2016 - Episode 186 - Aired 10/4/2016

In politics, representation matters -- and that's why we should elect leaders who reflect their country's diversity and embrace its multicultural tapestry, says Sayu Bhojwani. Through her own story of becoming an American citizen, the immigration scholar reveals how her love and dedication to her country turned into a driving force for political change. "We have fought to be here," she says, calling immigrant voices to action. "It's our country, too."

#22 - 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.

#23 - 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.

#24 - 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.

#25 - Sal Khan: Let's teach for mastery — not test scores

Season 2016 - Episode 166 - Aired 9/6/2016

Would you choose to build a house on top of an unfinished foundation? Of course not. Why, then, do we rush students through education when they haven't always grasped the basics? Yes, it's complicated, but educator Sal Khan shares his plan to turn struggling students into scholars by helping them master concepts at their own pace.