The WORST episodes of TED Talks

Every episode of TED Talks ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of TED Talks!

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.]

Last Updated: 1/24/2024Network: YouTubeStatus: Ended
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Giorgia Lupi: How we can find ourselves in data
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#1 - Giorgia Lupi: How we can find ourselves in data

Season 2017 - Episode 73 - Aired 4/7/2017

Giorgia Lupi uses data to tell human stories, adding nuance to numbers. In this charming talk, she shares how we can bring personality to data, visualizing even the mundane details of our daily lives and transforming the abstract and uncountable into something that can be seen, felt and directly reconnected to our lives.

Ashton Cofer: A young inventor's plan to recycle Styrofoam
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#2 - Ashton Cofer: A young inventor's plan to recycle Styrofoam

Season 2017 - Episode 62 - Aired 3/27/2017

From packing peanuts to disposable coffee cups, each year the US alone produces some two billion pounds of Styrofoam -- none of which can be recycled. Frustrated by this waste of resources and landfill space, Ashton Cofer and his science fair teammates developed a heating treatment to break down used Styrofoam into something useful. Check out their original design, which won both the FIRST LEGO League Global Innovation Award and the Scientific American Innovator Award from Google Science Fair.

Katie Hinde: What we don't know about mother's milk
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#3 - Katie Hinde: What we don't know about mother's milk

Season 2017 - Episode 63 - Aired 3/28/2017

Breast milk grows babies' bodies, fuels neurodevelopment, provides essential immunofactors and safeguards against famine and disease -- why, then, does science know more about tomatoes than mother's milk? Katie Hinde shares insights into this complex, life-giving substance and discusses the major gaps scientific research still needs to fill so we can better understand it.

Michael Botticelli: Addiction is a disease. We should treat it like one
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#4 - Michael Botticelli: Addiction is a disease. We should treat it like one

Season 2017 - Episode 64 - Aired 3/29/2017

Only one in nine people in the United States gets the care and treatment they need for addiction and substance abuse. A former Director of National Drug Control Policy, Michael Botticelli is working to end this epidemic and treat people with addictions with kindness, compassion and fairness. In a personal, thoughtful talk, he encourages the millions of Americans in recovery today to make their voices heard and confront the stigma associated with substance use disorders.

Moshe Szyf: How early life experience is written into DNA
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#5 - Moshe Szyf: How early life experience is written into DNA

Season 2017 - Episode 65 - Aired 3/30/2017

Moshe Szyf is a pioneer in the field of epigenetics, the study of how living things reprogram their genome in response to social factors like stress and lack of food. His research suggests that biochemical signals passed from mothers to offspring tell the child what kind of world they're going to live in, changing the expression of genes. "DNA isn't just a sequence of letters; it's not just a script." Szyf says. "DNA is a dynamic movie in which our experiences are being written."

Emtithal Mahmoud: A young poet tells the story of Darfur
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#6 - Emtithal Mahmoud: A young poet tells the story of Darfur

Season 2017 - Episode 67 - Aired 3/31/2017

Emtithal "Emi" Mahmoud writes poetry of resilience, confronting her experience of escaping the genocide in Darfur in verse. She shares two stirring original poems about refugees, family, joy and sorrow, asking, "Will you witness me?"

Gretchen Carlson, David Brooks: Political common ground in a polarized United States
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#7 - Gretchen Carlson, David Brooks: Political common ground in a polarized United States

Season 2017 - Episode 69 - Aired 4/3/2017

How can we bridge the gap between left and right to have a wiser, more connected political conversation? Journalist Gretchen Carlson and op-ed columnist David Brooks share insights on the tensions at the heart of American politics today -- and where we can find common ground. Followed by a rousing performance of "America the Beautiful" by Vy Higginsen's Gospel Choir of Harlem.

Katie Bouman: How to take a picture of a black hole
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#8 - Katie Bouman: How to take a picture of a black hole

Season 2017 - Episode 70 - Aired 4/4/2017

At the heart of the Milky Way, there's a supermassive black hole that feeds off a spinning disk of hot gas, sucking up anything that ventures too close -- even light. We can't see it, but its event horizon casts a shadow, and an image of that shadow could help answer some important questions about the universe. Scientists used to think that making such an image would require a telescope the size of Earth -- until Katie Bouman and a team of astronomers came up with a clever alternative. Bouman explains how we can take a picture of the ultimate dark using the Event Horizon Telescope.

Sebastián Bortnik: The conversation we're not having about digital child abuse
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#9 - Sebastián Bortnik: The conversation we're not having about digital child abuse

Season 2017 - Episode 71 - Aired 4/5/2017

At the heart of the Milky Way, there's a supermassive black hole that feeds off a spinning disk of hot gas, sucking up anything that ventures too close -- even light. We can't see it, but its event horizon casts a shadow, and an image of that shadow could help answer some important questions about the universe. Scientists used to think that making such an image would require a telescope the size of Earth -- until Katie Bouman and a team of astronomers came up with a clever alternative. Bouman explains how we can take a picture of the ultimate dark using the Event Horizon Telescope.

David R. Williams: How racism makes us sick
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#10 - David R. Williams: How racism makes us sick

Season 2017 - Episode 72 - Aired 4/6/2017

Why does race matter so profoundly for health? David R. Williams developed a scale to measure the impact of discrimination on well-being, going beyond traditional measures like income and education to reveal how factors like implicit bias, residential segregation and negative stereotypes create and sustain inequality. In this eye-opening talk, Williams presents evidence for how racism is producing a rigged system -- and offers hopeful examples of programs across the US that are working to dismantle discrimination.

Simon Anholt: Who would the rest of the world vote for in your country's election?
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#11 - Simon Anholt: Who would the rest of the world vote for in your country's election?

Season 2017 - Episode 60 - Aired 3/23/2017

To make the world work, we need leaders who consider the needs of every man, woman, child and animal on the planet -- not just their own voters. With the Global Vote, an online platform that lets anybody, anywhere in the world vote in the election of any country on earth, policy advisor Simon Anholt hopes to fill the gap between the few people who elect the world's most powerful leaders ... and the rest of us.

Ari Wallach: 3 ways to plan for the (very) long term
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#12 - Ari Wallach: 3 ways to plan for the (very) long term

Season 2017 - Episode 74 - Aired 4/10/2017

We increasingly make decisions based on short-term goals and gains -- an approach that makes the future more uncertain and less safe. How can we learn to think about and plan for a better future in the long term ... like, grandchildren-scale long term? Ari Wallach shares three tactics for thinking beyond the immediate.

Jonathan Marks: In praise of conflict
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#13 - Jonathan Marks: In praise of conflict

Season 2017 - Episode 75 - Aired 4/11/2017

Conflict is bad; compromise, consensus and collaboration are good -- or so we're told. Lawyer and bioethicist Jonathan Marks challenges this conventional wisdom, showing how governments can jeopardize public health, human rights and the environment when they partner with industry. An important, timely reminder that common good and common ground are not the same thing.

Zubaida Bai: A simple birth kit for mothers in the developing world
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#14 - Zubaida Bai: A simple birth kit for mothers in the developing world

Season 2017 - Episode 77 - Aired 4/13/2017

TED Fellow Zubaida Bai works with medical professionals, midwives and mothers to bring dignity and low-cost interventions to women's health care. In this quick, inspiring talk, she presents her clean birth kit in a purse, which contains everything a new mother needs for a hygienic birth and a healthy delivery -- no matter where in the world (or how far from a medical clinic) she might be.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: We should all be feminists
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#15 - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: We should all be feminists

Season 2017 - Episode 78 - Aired 4/14/2017

We teach girls that they can have ambition, but not too much ... to be successful, but not too successful, or they'll threaten men, says author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In this classic talk that started a worldwide conversation about feminism, Adichie asks that we begin to dream about and plan for a different, fairer world -- of happier men and women who are truer to themselves.

Michael Moschen: Juggling as Art...and Science
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#16 - Michael Moschen: Juggling as Art...and Science

Season 2002 - Episode 8 - Aired 3/1/2002

Michael Moschen puts on a quietly mesmerizing show of juggling. Don't think juggling is an art? You might just change your mind after watching Moschen in motion.

Siamak Hariri: How do you build a sacred space?
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#17 - Siamak Hariri: How do you build a sacred space?

Season 2017 - Episode 79 - Aired 4/17/2017

To design the Bahá'í Temple of South America, architect Siamak Hariri focused on illumination -- from the temple's form, which captures the movement of the sun throughout the day, to the iridescent, luminous stone and glass used to construct it. Join Hariri for a journey through the creative process, as he explores what makes for a sacred experience in a secular world.

Natasha Hurley-Walker: How radio telescopes show us unseen galaxies
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#18 - Natasha Hurley-Walker: How radio telescopes show us unseen galaxies

Season 2017 - Episode 80 - Aired 4/18/2017

Our universe is strange, wonderful and vast, says astronomer Natasha Hurley-Walker. A spaceship can't carry you into its depths (yet) -- but a radio telescope can. In this mesmerizing talk, Hurley-Walker shows how she probes the mysteries of the universe using special technology that reveals light spectrums we can't see.

Amy Green: A video game to cope with grief
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#19 - Amy Green: A video game to cope with grief

Season 2017 - Episode 81 - Aired 4/19/2017

When Amy Green's young son was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor, she made up a bedtime story for his siblings to teach them about cancer. What resulted was a video game, "That Dragon, Cancer," which takes players on a journey they can't win. In this beautiful talk about coping with loss, Green brings joy and play to tragedy. "We made a game that's hard to play," she says, "because the hardest moments of our lives change us more than any goal we could ever accomplish."

Joy Buolamwini: How I'm fighting bias in algorithms
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#20 - Joy Buolamwini: How I'm fighting bias in algorithms

Season 2017 - Episode 49 - Aired 3/9/2017

MIT grad student Joy Buolamwini was working with facial analysis software when she noticed a problem: the software didn't detect her face -- because the people who coded the algorithm hadn't taught it to identify a broad range of skin tones and facial structures. Now she's on a mission to fight bias in machine learning, a phenomenon she calls the "coded gaze." It's an eye-opening talk about the need for accountability in coding ... as algorithms take over more and more aspects of our lives.

Ani Liu: Smelfies, and other experiments in synthetic biology
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#21 - Ani Liu: Smelfies, and other experiments in synthetic biology

Season 2017 - Episode 40 - Aired 2/27/2017

What if you could take a smell selfie, a smelfie? What if you had a lipstick that caused plants to grow where you kiss? Ani Liu explores the intersection of technology and sensory perception, and her work is wedged somewhere between science, design and art. In this swift, smart talk, she shares dreams, wonderings and experiments, asking: What happens when science fiction becomes science fact?

Jeff Kirschner: This app makes it fun to pick up litter
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#22 - Jeff Kirschner: This app makes it fun to pick up litter

Season 2017 - Episode 41 - Aired 2/28/2017

The earth is a big place to keep clean. With Litterati -- an app for users to identify, collect and geotag the world's litter -- TED Resident Jeff Kirschner has created a community that's crowdsource-cleaning the planet. After tracking trash in more than 100 countries, Kirschner hopes to use the data he's collected to work with brands and organizations to stop litter before it reaches the ground.

Lux Narayan: What I learned from 2,000 obituaries
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#23 - Lux Narayan: What I learned from 2,000 obituaries

Season 2017 - Episode 42 - Aired 3/1/2017

Lux Narayan starts his day with scrambled eggs and the question: "Who died today?" Why? By analyzing 2,000 New York Times obituaries over a 20-month period, Narayan gleaned, in just a few words, what achievement looks like over a lifetime. Here he shares what those immortalized in print can teach us about a life well lived.

Kathy Hull: Stories from a home for terminally ill children
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#24 - Kathy Hull: Stories from a home for terminally ill children

Season 2017 - Episode 43 - Aired 3/2/2017

To honor and celebrate young lives cut short, Kathy Hull founded the first freestanding pediatric palliative care facility in the United States, the George Mark Children's House. Its mission: to give terminally ill children and their families a peaceful place to say goodbye. She shares stories brimming with wisdom, joy, imagination and heartbreaking loss.

Sara Ramirez: Rollercoaster
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#25 - Sara Ramirez: Rollercoaster

Season 2017 - Episode 44 - Aired 3/3/2017

Singer, songwriter and actress Sara Ramirez is a woman of many talents. Joined by Michael Pemberton on guitar, Ramirez sings of opportunity, wisdom and the highs and lows of life in this live performance of her song, "Rollercoaster."