Talk Deep-Read

A talk is a doorway to one idea: explain it fully, dig up the research beneath it, follow what became of it

51 talks · picked by consensus of three models · one a day

Published · newest first
Coming up · in reading order
2026-09-13Richard Feynman — "You are the easiest person to fool": the replication crisis diagnosed in 1974, by a talk that never checked its own examplesCaltech Commencement · 1974 2026-09-14Anil Seth — perception as the brain's controlled hallucination; the frame won, the rubber hand onstage did notTED · 2017 2026-09-15Daniel Kahneman — you have two selves and the bookkeeper signs everything; the peak-end rule held, the happiness policy he argued for he abandoned himselfTED · 2010 2026-09-16Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — What harms isn't the false story but the only one; seventeen years on, she became one herselfTED · 2009 2026-09-17Robert Sapolsky — explaining a behavior means rewinding from one second to a million years; the framework won, the bricks he used onstage worked looseTED · 2017 2026-09-18Geoffrey West — double a city, get 15% more per person; the regularity is real, but 15% is a range and interaction explains only halfTEDGlobal · 2011 2026-09-19Matthieu Ricard — happiness is a skill, not a pleasure; the skill claim held, the three exhibits on stage did notTED · 2004 2026-09-20Charlie Munger — A man who never took the course read Harvard 24 ways the mind fails: the method held, several exhibits collapsed, and he rewrote it from memoryHarvard · 1995 2026-09-21David Deutsch — What started science wasn't testability but explanations hard to vary; the criterion still isn't formalizedTEDGlobal · 2009 2026-09-22Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn — invited to praise the free world, he spent an hour in the rain indicting it: the prophecy collapsed, the diagnosis is quoted everywhereHarvard Commencement · 1978 2026-09-23David Foster Wallace — he spent eighteen minutes saying "don't take this as inspirational," and it was turned into a one-sentence-per-page gift bookKenyon Commencement · 2005 2026-09-24Jill Bolte Taylor — a brain scientist narrating her own left-hemisphere bleed: the case history held up; the left-brain/right-brain frame around it she dismantled herself thirteen years laterTED · 2008 2026-09-25Steve Jobs — three stories read to a crowd batting beach balls: the half about death held, "don't settle" became career instructionsStanford Commencement · 2005 2026-09-26Brené Brown — 71M views dropped the half of the paper that was about culture; that is the half that survived testingTEDxHouston · 2010 2026-09-27Stuart Russell — make the machine unsure of its own goal and it will let you switch it off; the diagnosis held, the theorem needs a perfectly rational humanTED · 2017 2026-09-28Richard Hamming — the question that got him thrown off the lunch table: a problem is important only if you have an attack, and scientometrics later granted him half of thatBellcore · 1986 2026-09-29Amy Cuddy — Two minutes as Wonder Woman: none of the three numbers on stage replicated, and the first author later disowned themTEDGlobal · 2012 2026-09-30Ken Robinson — Creativity deserves the status of literacy: TED's most-played talk, pitched far wider than his own 243-page reportTED · 2006 2026-10-01Nick Bostrom — the train doesn't stop at Humanville: instrumental convergence is now measurable in a lab, the explosion he drew is notTED · 2015 2026-10-02Donald Hoffman — We see icons, not circuits: the theorem is real, but its "Truth" was built to loseTED · 2015 2026-10-03Warren Buffett — he borrowed his opponent's orangutans to beat the efficient-market camp; forty years on, his own will buys an index fundColumbia Business School · 1984 2026-10-04Toni Morrison — Language is a bird in your hands; her line that oppressive language "is violence" got cut loose from an anti-censorship lecture and became a sloganNobel Lecture · 1993 2026-10-05Richard Dawkins — Brains evolved for "Middle World," so quantum physics feels wrong; but he drew the line in the wrong place, and a fellow speaker took apart the gloomy conclusionTEDGlobal · 2005 2026-10-06J. Krishnamurti — At 86, in a Swiss village: "you are not an individual, you are the rest of mankind"; psychology can measure that feeling, but no one can manufacture itSaanen Public Talk · 1981 2026-10-07Elizabeth Loftus — Memory is a Wikipedia page anyone can edit; the editing holds up, how easily whole events can be planted is still contestedTEDGlobal · 2013 2026-10-08Elinor Ostrom — prisoners are kept apart, herders can talk: "the commons need not be tragic" held up, but her eight principles became the panacea she warned againstNobel Lecture · 2009 2026-10-09Murray Gell-Mann — Beauty picks the right theory because each layer of nature resembles the last; his old cases hold, but the rule faltered at the LHCTED · 2007 2026-10-10Daniel Dennett — A jet engine vanishes and nobody sees it: "you are no authority on your own mind" stands, but the experimenters themselves retracted "the detail isn't there"TED · 2003 2026-10-11Steven Pinker — The mind is no blank slate, and fifty years of twin data agree; "the home leaves no permanent stamp" was narrowed by adoption and poverty studiesTED · 2003
—Neil Gaiman — Make Good ArtUArts Commencement · 2012
—Frans de Waal — Moral behavior in animalsTEDxPeachtree · 2011
—John Searle — Beer Cans & Meat Machines (Minds, Brains and Science, Lecture 2)BBC Reith Lectures · 1984
—Yuval Noah Harari — What explains the rise of humans?TEDGlobalLondon · 2015
—Martin Luther King Jr. — The Quest for Peace and JusticeNobel Lecture · 1964
—Sean Carroll — Distant time and the hint of a multiverseTEDxCaltech · 2011
—David Chalmers — How do you explain consciousness?TED · 2014
—Jonathan Haidt — The moral roots of liberals and conservativesTED · 2008
—Hans Rosling — The best stats you've ever seenTED · 2006
—Brian Greene — Is our universe the only universe?TED · 2012
—Daniel Wolpert — The real reason for brainsTEDGlobal · 2011
—Dan Gilbert — The surprising science of happinessTED · 2004
—Benjamin Zander — The transformative power of classical musicTED · 2008
—Isaiah Berlin — Two Concepts of LibertyOxford Inaugural Lecture · 1958
—Robert Waldinger — What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happinessTEDxBeaconStreet · 2015
—Kevin Kelly — How technology evolvesTED · 2005
—Bryan Stevenson — We need to talk about an injusticeTED · 2012
—Sam Harris — Science can answer moral questionsTED · 2010
—Cai Yuanpei — Inaugural Address as President of Peking UniversityPeking University · 1917
—Atul Gawande — How do we heal medicine?TED · 2012
—Shi Yigong — The Limits of Knowing in Life ScienceFuture Forum · 2016
—Lera Boroditsky — How language shapes the way we thinkTEDWomen · 2017