TED Talks

Scientists, researchers, technologists, business leaders, artists, designers and other world experts take the TED stage to present “Ideas Worth Spreading”: valuable new knowledge and innovative research in their fields. These TED talks are filmed at our flagship TED conferences, independent TEDx events, partner events and salons held in our NYC World Theater.

In June 2006, TED released six talks recorded at its conferences on the internet. Since then, every talk delivered at a TED event is reviewed by our research, editorial and curatorial teams for publication on TED.com. Thanks to these online videos, TED has attracted an international following that has grown into the millions. This enthusiastic reception prompted us to turn our website into the home of TED Talks, a lovingly curated, constantly growing educational archive. These talks are now viewed or listened to more than 3 billion times annually.

A lot goes into researching and creating a TED Talk.

• Most TED Talks are edited, lightly but carefully. We typically remove the first few sentences of warmup chatter, and excessive ums and uhs — but we won't distort the speaker's meaning with our edit.
• It takes one of our pro video editors about a full day to edit an 18-minute TED Talk.
• Almost every TED Talk hosted on TED.com has full subtitles and a snazzy clickable time-coded transcript.
• While some of your favorite TED Talks were shot with multiple cameras — up to nine — others are filmed very simply. Next time you watch, count the different shots.

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*Updated December 2019