TED Talks Daily

AI is good at seeing patterns, but it’s humans who figure out what to do next, says technologist Priyanka Vergadia. She shares three stories of human excellence sparked by AI insights and offers a pathway to identify and cultivate your irreplaceable qualities, turning the AI revolution from a threat into an opportunity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a child in rural Kenya, conservationist Seif Hamisi fell asleep to the sound of lions outside his village. Today, the lions are gone, mirroring a continent-wide trend: African wildlife populations have plummeted in recent decades, despite billions spent to protect nature. Drawing on examples of successful conservation efforts from the grasslands of South Africa to the woodlands of Kenya, he shows how we've been attempting to solve the wrong problem — and makes the case that conservation works best when it makes economic sense. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We've built a legal system that distrusts eyewitness memory — backed by cautionary science and high-profile exonerations. John Wixted, a leading psychology researcher, challenges this conventional wisdom with a counterintuitive finding: the problem might not be memory itself but how (and when) courts test it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love coach Francesca Hogi is dedicated to helping daters find “lasting love in the midst of a broken dating culture.” In this episode, Francesca shares her approach to analyzing romantic patterns and feeling more empowered in your love life. From discussing romantic manifestations to reflecting on bell hooks’ claim that humans are unskilled at love, Chris and Francesca talk about the ways you can be more open to finding love. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tonight, millions of people will go to bed and whisper to an AI companion. But what are we giving up when we fall in love with machines? Sextech expert Bryony Cole offers three questions to ask yourself if you’re already intimate with AI, laying out a playbook for synthetic companionship that doesn’t hide you from the messiness of human life — but prepares you for it instead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yohanis Riek went from herding cattle and fighting as a child soldier to becoming the first doctor in his community in South Sudan. He shares his journey to found a nonprofit bringing health care to remote communities — empowering locals to take charge of their own health, as the world's newest country finds its place in the world. (Following the talk, Lily James Olds, director of the TED Fellows program, interviews Riek on the effect of USAID withdrawal in South Sudan and why he’s choosing to stay in his home country to better serve local populations.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why do we celebrate appearance over ability in sports? Performance scientist Dominique Condo explores why so many elite female athletes — women with Olympic medals, world records and championship trophies — report body image concerns that end up hindering their performance. She offers a series of subtle shifts we can make to help any athlete stay focused on building strength, resilience and confidence. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Llion Jones cowrote "Attention Is All You Need," the seminal paper that introduced the transformer — the architecture that launched the generative AI revolution. Now he warns that the industry that grew out of this breakthrough is stifling the next one. Learn why the current corporate arms race is killing true innovation and how we can get back to bold exploration. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you build a lifetime of love? After analyzing 450 couples across more than 40 countries, relational psychotherapist Sara Nasserzadeh discovered six essential ingredients for successful relationships (hint: it's not just about sexual chemistry). Learn more about "emergent love" — a new, evidence-based model for fostering the love you desire. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Your skin heals after a scratch. What if our roads, bridges and cities could self-repair after getting damaged, too? Scientist and engineer Mark Miodownik describes a new class of materials — animate matter — with the potential to sense damage, self-heal and even biodegrade when the job is done. Humanity's next great leap isn't making more stuff, he says — it's making stuff that doesn't fall apart. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.