TED Talks Daily

Art can move us in deep, meaningful ways. A beautiful song, a good book, or a great film can change our perspectives and attitudes toward ideas, and sometimes people. Where does that magic come from–and how can we channel it when we're creating? JR is an artist famed for his enormous black and white portraits that tell stories and adorn surfaces from the Louvre to the favelas of Brazil. His ambitious projects, like a recent massive mural outside a supermax prison in California or the boy who peers curiously over the wall at the Mexico–United States border, put a deeply human face to things we might have only read in the news while also highlighting and celebrating the connections between us humans. In this episode, JR talks about the importance of joy in his art-making process, speaks to the value of community and curiosity, and shares how his unique working style developed over the years. This is an episode from the TED Audio Collective podcast, How to Be a Better Human. For more episodes on how to be a little less terrible, follow How to Be a Better Human wherever you're listening to this.

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Famed for enormous black-and-white portraits that are pasted on surfaces ranging from the Louvre to the US-Mexico border wall, multimedia artist JR continues to tackle ambitious projects. In this powerfully moving talk, he shares how he made a giant mural on the courtyard floor of a maximum-security prison -- with the help of guards and prisoners alike -- and ended up with much more than a compelling image.

In a peek into their sprawling metaverse, Particle Ink dazzles with an interdimensional performance combining augmented reality, dance and video projected onto the TED stage.

Our lives depend on curbing climate change, but so many priorities seem to be in competition. What’s the most urgent thing humanity can do right now? Social entrepreneur James Irungu Mwangi tells us why Africa could be the ideal home for scaling the latest and most ambitious climate technologies -- including in places like Kenya’s Hell’s Gate National Park, which could become part of what he calls the “Great Carbon Valley.”

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SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle has the potential to explore the solar system in a bold, new -- and super-sized -- way. Planetary scientist Jennifer Heldmann talks about how reusable, large-scale spacecraft like Starship could help humanity achieve its next galactic leaps and usher in a new era of space exploration, from investigating the solar system's many ocean worlds to launching bigger telescopes that can see deeper into the universe.

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Our lives depend on curbing climate change, but so many priorities seem to be in competition. What's the most urgent thing humanity can do right now? Social entrepreneur James Irungu Mwangi tells us why Africa could be the ideal home for scaling the latest and most ambitious climate technologies -- including in places like Kenya's Hell's Gate National Park, which could become part of what he calls the "Great Carbon Valley."

Today, there are many ways to conceive a child, thanks to assisted reproductive technologies like IVF and egg-freezing. But the law lags behind these advancements, says attorney Ellen Trachman, troubling parents-to-be with stranger-than-fiction mix-ups and baffling lawsuits. Trachman makes the case for legality to reflect the realities of reproductive innovation -- and prompts you to reconsider what could happen to your own genetic material.

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We can all play a role in the climate movement by tapping into our skills, resources and networks in ways that bring us satisfaction, says climate leader Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. She suggests drawing a Venn diagram to map these questions: What are you good at? What is the work that needs doing? And what brings you joy? Where your answers intersect is where you should put your climate action effort. “Averting climate catastrophe: this is the work of our lifetimes,” Johnson says.

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Nobody really knows how much it would cost to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Yet historian Yuval Noah Harari’s analysis, based on the work of scientists and economists, indicates that humanity might avert catastrophe by investing the equivalent of just two percent of global GDP into climate solutions. He makes the case that preventing ecological cataclysm will not require the major global disruptions many fear and explains that we already have the resources we need -- it’s just a matter of shifting our priorities.

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Black history in the US is rich, profound -- and at risk of being lost forever, if not for the monumental efforts of Julieanna L. Richardson. As the founder of The HistoryMakers -- the largest national archive of African American video-oral history -- Richardson shares some of the unknown and incredible legacies of Black America, highlighting the importance of documenting and preserving the past for future generations.