I’ve Watched Over 2,000 TED Talks. These Are My Favorites
I worked at TED for five years, from 2013 to 2018, and in that time, I watched over 2,000 TED Talks. In fact, I saw many of them multiple times — first in rehearsal, then onstage, then on video, and often again in a shorter cut of the video. I’ve seen talks on absolutely every subject, including a truly unreasonable number of talks about baby coral.
When people hear that I worked at TED, they often ask me to recommend my favorite talk. I never have a good answer for them; it’s an impossible task.
TED Talks might sometimes feel formulaic or trite, but at their best, they are an extraordinary performance of human creativity, ingenuity, and connection, and the best of them have profoundly changed and shaped me. Choosing a favorite means choosing just one of the many ways that watching so many TED Talks has affected who I am and how I see the world, so I’ve never been keen to do it.
But since we all have more time on our hands now, here’s not just one favorite, but an exhaustive list of the talks I have loved and remembered.
I’m sure I’m missing many wonderful talks that I’d remember I loved if I saw them again, and there are many more that I loved in fragments, but these are the ones that stayed with me in full. I hope you enjoy.
The talks that changed how I saw the world
The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
We Need to Talk About an Injustice by Bryan Stevenson
A Prosecutor’s Vision for a Better Justice System by Adam Foss
Machine Intelligence Makes Human Morals More Important by Zeynep Tufecki
The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen by Hans Rosling
What If We Ended the Injustice of Bail? by Robin Steinberg
The talks that expanded how I saw the human experience
Rethinking Infidelity by Esther Perel
The Price of Shame by Monica Lewinsky
I’m Not Your Inspiration by Stella Young
How Judges Can Show Respect by Victoria Pratt
How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime by Nadine Burke Harris
What Really Matters at the End of Life by BJ Miller
The Enchanting Music of Sign Language by Christine Sun Kim
Depression, the Secret We Share by Andrew Solomon
The talks that shaped how I saw myself
Do Schools Kill Creativity? by Sir Ken Robinson
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Power of Vulnerability by Brené Brown
A Queer Vision of Love and Marriage by Tiq and Kim Milan
How Our Microbes Make Us Who We Are by Rob Knight
The talks that made me marvel at what humans are capable of
The New Bionics That Let Us Run, Climb, and Dance by Hugh Herr
This Gel Can Make You Stop Bleeding Instantly by Joe Landolina
Can We Create New Senses for Humans? by David Eagleman
My Daughter, Malala by Ziauddin Yousafzai
Hackers: The Internet’s Immune System by Keren Elazari
The talks that helped me process 2016
Facebook’s Role in Brexit — and the Threat to Democracy by Carole Cadwalladr
How (and Why) Russia Hacked the US Election by Laura Galante
A Black Man Goes Undercover In the Alt-Right by Theo E.J. Wilson
Empathy Is Not Endorsement by Dylan Marron
The talks that taught me something delightful
Why City Flags May Be the Worst-Designed Thing You’ve Never Noticed by Roman Mars
Zombie Roaches and Other Parasite Tales by Ed Yong
The Boiling River of the Amazon by Andrés Ruzo
You Have No Idea Where Camels Really Come From by Latif Nasser
How Sampling Transformed Music by Mark Ronson
The Magic of Fibonacci Numbers by Arthur Benjamin
What Makes Something Go Viral? by Dao Nguyen
The Art of Misdirection by Apollo Robbins
The Magic Ingredient That Brings Pixar Movies to Life by Danielle Feinberg
If you watch TED Talks, what are your favorites? Share them with me in the comments 👇
