When “choice” isn’t really a choice
Unhealthy behavior is often framed as personal failure. Laura Schmidt reframes it as something bigger: the visible outcome of invisible systems shaping what people eat, buy, and crave.
This Week at TEDMED: What if it’s not actually your choice?
This week at TEDMED, we look at how systems quietly shape health behavior, and why responsibility is often placed in the wrong hands.
When systems leave no good options
Wanda Irving’s story shows what happens when health is shaped by barriers people did not choose. Her experience reveals how systems narrow possibility long before a decision is ever made.
What if behavior spreads like a system?
Violence can move through communities like contagion. Poverty reshapes how the mind works. These ideas challenge a simple question: if outcomes are shaped upstream, where does responsibility really live?
Editor’s Picks: Beyond the systems, back to being human
A set that steps outside structure and explanation, exploring emotion, creativity, and the many ways we make meaning of our lives.
Making sense of life, loss, and love through music
Zoë Keating was working as a successful cellist and composer when her husband, Jeff, got sick with stage IV non-smokers lung cancer. Her life was turned upside down—she…
The surprising science of alpha males
While popular culture uses the term “alpha male” to refer to people who are controlling or even bullying, in nature, an “alpha” is the highest ranking member of…
Beyond surviving
At TEDMED, Debra Jarvis offers a witty yet daring look at the way that survivors of disease and trauma can achieve new levels of emotional and psychological healing.
How music can rescue and restore our humanity
Much research has shown that there is a deep connection between music and the mind. It sparks memory, invokes empathy, and allows for emotional release. Musical Visionary Beatie…
Chernobyl: Flourishing lives in the dead zone
Filmmaker and global explorer Holly Morris investigates the healing power of home, even when the motherland is poisonous, providing profound implications for today’s refugee crisis and other political…
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TEDMED is where medical breakthroughs and the latest learnings are shared in interest and understandable ways. Learn about what is happening in health and medicine from the leaders that are shaping its future.
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