TED Talks Daily

There are 600 million women in India -- yet they are rarely seen outdoors after sunset because of safety concerns like harassment and catcalls. On a mission to create safer public spaces, women's rights advocate Srishti Bakshi talks about how she embarked on a 2,300-mile walk across the length of India (a distance equivalent to traveling from New York City to Los Angeles), conducting driving workshops to empower women's mobility across the country. "The more women see other women in public spaces, the more safe, independent and empowered each of us will be," Bakshi says.

Whether we're rushing a child to the emergency room after a fall or making chicken soup for a feverish spouse, love inspires us to act when a family member gets sick. Global health activists Edith Elliott and Shahed Alam believe we can harness this power to create better health outcomes for everyone. Learn how their organization Noora Health works with doctors and nurses in India and Bangladesh to train the family members of hospital patients with essential skills to support their sick loved ones -- and how they plan to expand their reach to support 70 million caregivers who care for more than one billion people over the next six years. (This ambitious plan is a part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change.)

Digital public servant Amanda Renteria has seen that the millions of people who rely on government welfare services are often discouraged from seeking them out, frustrated by long lines and unnecessarily complicated processes. At Code for America, Renteria is helping develop human-centered technology that "respects you from the start, meets you where you are and provides an easy, positive experience." She details the four factors that hinder effective delivery of government benefits and explains Code for America's plan to bring user-centric, digital-first social services to more than 13 million Americans and unlock 30 billion dollars in benefits for low-income families. (This ambitious plan is a part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change.)

Election infrastructure in the United States is crumbling, says technologist Tiana Epps-Johnson, and, even worse, election officials are increasingly being attacked simply for doing their jobs. How can the country rebuild trust in its local and national elections? Epps-Johnson describes how the US Alliance for Election Excellence, a nonpartisan collaborative of election officials, technologists, designers and other experts, is working across all 50 states to improve the performance of systems serving 240 million voters, ensuring everyone has access to a fair, trustworthy and modern democratic process. (This ambitious plan is a part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change. If you want to hear even more about Epps-Johnson's work, stick around after the talk on the "TED Talks Daily" podcast, where she digs deeper into her ideas.)

In Latin American countries like El Salvador, homicide rates are alarmingly high thanks in large part to a vicious cycle of violence -- people don't have a chance to heal from recurrent individual and collective trauma. With her team at Glasswing International, de Sola is hoping to break this cycle by equipping government employees like teachers and police officers with the skills and knowledge they need to provide mental health care to those who need it most. Their goal: to transform more than 2,000 frontline institutions in 25 of the highest risk municipalities in Central America with community-based approaches to mental health support, reaching nearly 10 million people along the way. (This ambitious plan is a part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change.)

Indigenous communities have looked after their ancestral forests for millennia, cultivating immense amounts of knowledge on how to protect, nourish and heal these vital environments. Today, 470 million Indigenous people care for and manage 80 percent of the world's biodiversity -- yet their legal rights to these lands are inexplicit and subject to exploitation by illegal loggers, miners and companies. Human rights lawyer Nonette Royo describes how her team at the Tenure Facility, an organization that provides legal assistance to Indigenous people by taking their land rights battles to court, will help these communities secure and defend 50 million hectares of forests over the next five years. (This ambitious plan is a part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change.)

What happens when the data-driven capabilities of AI are combined with human creativity and ingenuity? Shining a light on the opportunities this futuristic collaboration could bring to the workplace, AI expert Shervin Khodabandeh shares how to redesign companies so that people and machines can learn from each other.

Tattoos can transform and empower people, with some seeking them out to reconnect with their bodies due to scarring, physical abnormalities or the aftermath of a procedure or illness. Paramedical tattooist Becky Barker shares the art and craft of medical tattooing, explaining how this expansive field helps improve the quality of life for breast cancer survivors -- and anyone looking to renew themselves in ways that are more than skin-deep.

The secret behind medicinethat uses messenger RNA (or mRNA) is that it "teaches" our bodies how to fight diseases on our own, leading to groundbreaking treatments for COVID-19 and, potentially one day, cancer, the flu and other ailments that have haunted humanity for millennia. RNA researcher Melissa J. Moore -- Moderna's chief scientific officer and one of the many people responsible for the rapid creation and deployment of their COVID-19 vaccine -- takes us down to the molecular level, unraveling how mRNA helps our bodies' proteins maintain health, prevent disease and correct errors in our genetic code. "We have entered an entirely new era of medicine," Moore says.

What's on Elon Musk's mind? In conversation with head of TED Chris Anderson, Musk details how the radical new innovations he's working on -- Tesla's intelligent humanoid robot Optimus, SpaceX's otherworldly Starship and Neuralink's brain-machine interfaces, among others -- could help maximize the lifespan of humanity and create a world where goods and services are abundant and accessible for all. It's a compelling vision of a future worth getting excited about. (Recorded at the Tesla Texas Gigafactory on April 6, 2022)