TED talks are “ideas worth spreading”.
They are talks from experts in all sorts of fields across the world that aim to inform, educate and entertain us on a world of topics. You can find a TED talk in pretty much any genre and on pretty much any subject that you would like.
They are an excellent way to keep learning and developing, through a very easy and accessible form. Anyone can access TED Talks for free and they are translated into lots of different languages.
As they are so popular and effective, this means that there is a lot of them available and a lot of them updated and uploaded on a regular basis. Meaning, it can be hard to know where to start if you are just finding out about TED Talks.
This is where we come to help!
In this blog, we outline two of our favourite TED Talks on the platform right now. There are tonnes out there but these are two that we have been inspired by recently and would love to share with you.
If you like them or have something to say about them, make sure to give us a comment down below and get involved in the conversation!
TED Talk 1: You deserve the right to fix your stuff, Gay Gordon-Byrne
Gay Gordon-Byrne is the executive director of the Digital Right to Repair Coalition, known as repair.org. This organisation repairs, reuses, recycles and resells items in order to combat the mass wasting of products and items that we currently have across the world. Her organisation and personal mission exist in direct response to the mass consumerism that is so rife across our planet.
Something that Gay focuses on particularly in this Ted Talk is the function of repairing. She states that repair is central to her and her company’s current sustainability goals and that it can be something that really helps our world figure out this issue of waste, landfills, and over-consumption. She argues that if we repair more things in the first place, there will be less need to reuse, recycle and resell because the original owner will get much more use out of the thing that they originally bought.
An issue she is talking about specifically in this talk is e-waste; waste that comes from people throwing out their household digital devices such as laptops, tablets, e-readers, phones, and so on.
Gay gives some pretty staggering statistics of how much e-waste is estimated to hit our landfill sites from households in the U.S. She puts it at about 3.5 billion pieces of e-waste that don’t belong in our landfills and yet are very likely to get there anyway.
She states that recycling, reusing, and reselling can only go so far with electronic devices as they have already caused so much environmental damage by the time they ever land in our hands. Repairing and holding onto devices for longer is really the only thing we can do to cut down on the impact these devices have on our world.
She draws attention to the fact that is it company’s and businesses’ intentional aims to stop us from repairing our stuff, in the name of making more sales and more profit. But that this has also harmed jobs and job opportunities within our local communities. If people don’t accept repairs, then there are no repair workers.
Gay talks about our “throwaway economy” and how much harm it can do. But she also takes about the positive moves her organisation have been making to fight against it. It isn’t a talk devoid of hope or optimism, rather it is the opposite.
If you want a TED talk that will help and inspire you, this is a great one to go for.
I promise.
TED Talk 2: I’m tired of people telling me to grind, Pardis Parker
This TED Talk comes from a professional comedian Pardis Parker who adds a humorous and uplifting tone to a serious and genuine issue we can all relate to.
He talks about his experience of working in Holywood and all the rejection that comes with that. He then goes on to talk about the “hustle culture” and “grind culture” that has penetrated our lives over the last couple of decades.
He quite frankly shares that he is tired. Tired of the culture around him of people “grinding” and working themselves to the bone for work and work opportunities. He uses his humour to draw attention to how ridiculous some of these ideas can be. Why do we want to put ourselves last first, get less sleep and acquire more stress just in the name of the “grind”?
Parker discusses how wealth is a big motivator of all of this grinding and excessive working. And yet, we know that excess wealth isn’t something that truly makes us happy and fulfilled. It is instead an empty and false ideal that keeps us stuck in the all-consuming “grind”.
This TED talk provides some real comedic relief to something we can all relate to, and, hopefully, it takes some of the sting out of watching those around us get stuck in the hustle and grind culture.
It, softly, gives us some good perspective on life and helps to remind us about caught up in these things we can tend to get if we don’t pay attention to what is really going on.
If you are like me, you see hustle and grind culture every day and sometimes it makes you feel like you are failing in your own life for not working 50-60 hours per week. You see other people having more, earning more, and getting more, and you think, “if only I could grind just a little more, then I would have that too.”
But this isn’t the case, and it isn’t what we should be worrying about every waking minute of our day.
Parker reminds us of this in a way that will make you laugh and smile.
And who couldn’t do with a little more of that in their life?