Favorite TED Talks
Compiled by jwoolson@gmail.com
URL: https://bit.ly/fav-ted-talks
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/jwoolson
John Francis walks the Earth
One day in 1983, John Francis stepped out on a walk. For the next 22 years, he trekked and sailed around North and South America, carrying a message of respect for the Earth -- for 17 of those years, without speaking. During his monumental, silent trek, John earned an MA in environmental studies and a PhD in land resources. Today his Planetwalk foundation consults on sustainable development and works with educational groups to teach kids about the environment.
"Part of the mystery of walking is that the destination is inside us and we really don't know when we arrive until we arrive."
-- John Francis, UN Environmental Program, Goodwill ambassador
Sister True Dedication: Three questions to build resilience
Every moment of movement is a chance to become more aware of yourself and the world around you, says Zen Buddhist nun Sister True Dedication. Guiding us through the art of "mindful walking," she shares three essential questions to ask yourself to awaken your strength, build resilience and discover your inner peace.
1. Who am I?
2. Where am I?
3. What do I want?
Sister True Dedication is a Zen Buddhist nun ordained by Thich Nhat Hanh, the editor of several of his books and a leading voice in a new generation of young monastics.
Joanna Macy: Climate Crisis as a Spiritual Path
This 20 minute interview with Joanna Macy will help answer an essential question:
How are we going to live our lives fully, with inner peace and courage (and even joy) as we confront a world that is destroying itself?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQAYVKqTkKo
Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight
Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions -- motion, speech, self-awareness -- shut down one by one. An astonishing story. Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor studied her own stroke as it happened -- and has become a powerful voice for brain recovery.
http://go.ted.com/GpJ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQAYVKqTkKo
David Logan on tribal leadership
David Logan talks about the five kinds of tribes that humans naturally form -- in schools, workplaces, even the driver's license bureau. By understanding our shared tribal tendencies, we can help lead each other to become better individuals.
Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action
Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model, the Golden Circle for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers.
Geoffrey West: The surprising math of cities and corporations
Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities -- that wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects of a city can be deduced from a single number: the city's population. In this mind-bending talk from TEDGlobal he shows how it works and how similar laws hold for organisms and corporations.
http://go.ted.com/Gb6
Scott McCloud on comics
Scott McCloud bends the presentation format into a cartoon-like experience, where colorful diversions whiz through childhood fascinations and imagined futures that our eyes can hear and touch.
https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_mccloud_on_comics
James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change
Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
http://go.ted.com/GpA
Clifford Stoll on ...everything
Clifford Stoll captivates his audience with a wildly energetic sprinkling of anecdotes, observations, asides -- and even a science experiment. After all, by his own definition, he's a scientist: "Once I do something, I want to do something else."
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/clifford_stoll_on_everything.html
Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies
We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.
http://go.ted.com/GbL
Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation
Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think.
http://go.ted.com/GpP
RSA Animate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Clay Shirky on institutions vs. collaboration
Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning.
https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration
Caitria and Morgan O’Neill: How to step up in the face of disaster
After a natural disaster strikes, there’s only a tiny window of opportunity to rally effective recovery efforts before the world turns their attention elsewhere. Who should be in charge? When a freak tornado hit their hometown, sisters Caitria and Morgan O’Neill -- 20 and 24 at the time -- took the reins and are now teaching others how to do the same. (Filmed at TEDxBoston.)
http://go.ted.com/Gbr
Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from
People often credit their ideas to individual "Eureka!" moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the "liquid networks" of London's coffee houses to Charles Darwin's long, slow hunch to today's high-velocity web.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from.html
RSA Animate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU
Dan Buettner on how to live to be 100+
Dan Buettner and team study the world's "Blue Zones," communities whose elders live with vim and vigor to record-setting age. At TEDxTC, he shares the 9 common diet and lifestyle habits that keep them spry past age 100. National Geographic writer and explorer Dan Buettner studies the world's longest-lived peoples, distilling their secrets into a single plan for health and long life.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100.html
Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity
Larry Lessig, the Net’s most celebrated lawyer, cites John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights and the "ASCAP cartel" in his argument for reviving our creative culture.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html
Gesundheit Institute: Patch Adams at TEDx Utrecht University
Patch is both a medical doctor and a clown, but he is also a social activist who has devoted 30 years to changing America's healthcare system, a system that he describes as expensive and elitist. He believes that laughter, joy and creativity are an integral part of the healing process and therefore, true health care must incorporate those aspects of life. Doctors and patients in his model relate to each other on the basis of mutual trust and patients receive plenty of time from their doctors. Allopathic doctors and practitioners of alternative medicine will work side by side in Patch's model. If you think that all sounds like a utopian impossibility, it isn't. Patch and his colleagues practiced medicine at the Gesundheit Institute together in West Virginia that way for 12 years in what Patch refers to as their "pilot project." In that time they saw 15,000 patients. From that experience onward Patch Adams has devoted his life to the study of what makes people happy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Maw4Xg-6RAw
The wonderful and terrifying implications of computers that can learn
What happens when we teach a computer how to learn? Technologist Jeremy Howard shares some surprising new developments in the fast-moving field of deep learning, a technique that can give computers the ability to learn Chinese, or to recognize objects in photos, or to help think through a medical diagnosis. (One deep learning tool, after watching hours of YouTube, taught itself the concept of “cats.”) Get caught up on a field that will change the way the computers around you behave … sooner than you probably think.
http://go.ted.com/Gpd
Majora Carter: Greening the ghetto
MacArthur-winning activist Majora Carter details her fight for environmental justice in the South Bronx -- and shows how minority neighborhoods suffer most from flawed urban policy. Ms. Carter says: “Help me make ‘green’ the new ‘black’. http://go.ted.com/GpN
Bahia Shehab: A thousand times No (لا)
Art historian Bahia Shehab has long been fascinated with the Arabic script for ‘no’ (لا). When revolution swept through Egypt in 2011, she began spraying the image in the streets saying no to dictators, no to military rule and no to violence.
Steven Pinker on the myth of violence
Steven Pinker charts the decline of violence from Biblical times to the present, and argues that, though it may seem illogical and even obscene, given Iraq and Darfur, we are living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence:
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html
Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity
Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
RSA Animate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!
In this poignant, funny follow-up to his fabled 2006 talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning -- creating conditions where kids' natural talents can flourish.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html
Garrett Lisi: An 8-dimensional model of the universe
Physicist and surfer Garrett Lisi presents a controversial new model of the universe that -- just maybe -- answers all the big questions. If nothing else, it's the most beautiful 8-dimensional model of elementary particles and forces you've ever seen. Garrett Lisi has proposed a new "theory of everything" -- a grand unified theory that explains all the elementary particles, as well as gravity.
http://www.ted.com/talks/garrett_lisi_on_his_theory_of_everything.html
Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset
Talking at the US State Department this summer, Hans Rosling uses his fascinating data-bubble software to burst myths about the developing world. Look for new analysis on China and the post-bailout world, mixed with classic data shows.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_at_state.html
Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web
Kevin Kelly (former editor of Wired magazine and Whole Earth Catalog) shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next 5,000 days?
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html
Kevin Kelly on how technology evolves
Kevin Kelly asks "What does technology want?" and discovers that its movement toward ubiquity and complexity is much like the evolution of life.
http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_on_how_technology_evolves.html
Clint Smith: The danger of silence
"We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't," says slam poet and teacher Clint Smith. A short, powerful piece from the heart, about finding the courage to speak up against ignorance and injustice.
“Every day, all around us, we see the consequences of silence manifest themselves in the form of discrimination, violence, genocide and war. In the classroom, I challenge my students to explore the silences in their own lives through poetry. We work together to fill those spaces, to recognize them, to name them, to understand that they don't have to be sources of shame. In an effort to create a culture within my classroom where students feel safe sharing the intimacies of their own silences, I have four core principles posted on the board that sits in the front of my class, which every student signs at the beginning of the year: read critically, write consciously, speak clearly, tell your truth."
http://go.ted.com/Gp5
Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA
Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA -- in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where "the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys." Ron Finley grows a nourishing food culture in South Central L.A.’s food desert by planting the seeds and tools for healthy eating.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ron_finley_a_guerilla_gardener_in_south_central_la.html
Chris Anderson: How web video powers global innovation
TED's Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation -- a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print.
http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_anderson_how_web_video_powers_global_innovation.html
Jonathan Zittrain: The Web as random acts of kindness
Feeling like the world is becoming less friendly? Social theorist Jonathan Zittrain begs to differ. The Internet, he suggests, is made up of millions of disinterested acts of kindness, curiosity and trust.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_zittrain_the_web_is_a_random_act_of_kindness.html
Yochai Benkler on the new open-source economics
Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization.
http://www.ted.com/talks/yochai_benkler_on_the_new_open_source_economics.html
Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty
TED collaborates with animator Andrew Park to illustrate Denis Dutton's provocative theory on beauty -- that art, music and other beautiful things, far from being simply "in the eye of the beholder," are a core part of human nature with deep evolutionary origins.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/denis_dutton_a_darwinian_theory_of_beauty.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PktUzdnBqWI
How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine
Chris Milk uses cutting edge technology to produce astonishing films that delight and enchant. But for Milk, the human story is the driving force behind everything he does. In this short, charming talk, he shows some of his collaborations with musicians including Kanye West and Arcade Fire, and describes his latest, mind-bending experiments with virtual reality.
http://go.ted.com/bLWH
Tom Wujec: Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast
Making toast doesn’t sound very complicated — until someone asks you to draw the process, step by step. Tom Wujec loves asking people and teams to draw how they make toast, because the process reveals unexpected truths about how we can solve our biggest, most complicated problems at work. Learn how to run this exercise yourself, and hear Wujec’s surprising insights from watching thousands of people draw toast.
http://go.ted.com/wfo
Animated TED lectures by RSA:
Steven Johnson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU
Daniel Pink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Ken Robinson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
Denis Dutton: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PktUzdnBqWI
About this TED Talk list:
I’ve found these TED talks to be both provocative and valuable in my areas of professional and personal interests, such as social justice, education, and technology.
-- Jonathan Woolson, jonathan@10x.design