10 Best TED Talks: How to Download & Convert Online

What are the best TED talks of all time? What are the most popular TED talks from its foundation? Ever since its foundation in 1984, TED (technology, entertainment and design) has become the leading platform aimed at providing inspiring keynote speeches and sharing ideas. To put it another way, TED is a non-profit institution that partners with individuals to assist in sharing ideas globally. A TED talk is a short presentation that focuses on technology, entertainment, and/or design. TED Talks has grown to include speeches on every subject imaginable.

Part 1: What is TED Talk?

TED is dedicated to researching and sharing knowledge that matters through short talks and presentations. Its goal is to inform and educate global audiences in an accessible way. Scientists, researchers, technologists, business leaders, artists, designers and other world experts take the TED stage to present "Ideas Worth Spreading". These TED talks are filmed at their flagship TED conferences, independent TEDx events, partner events and salons held in our NYC World Theater.

TED talks could be on any topic but are limited to a maximum length of 18 minutes. TED talks are made available on the TED website under a Creative Commons free license. They are also frequently featured via social media and multimedia sites like YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Most TED talks are edited, lightly but carefully, and almost every TED talk hosted on TED.com has full subtitles and a snazzy clickable time-coded transcript.

As an additional plus, each TED talk is available on their website or their YouTube channel for free. That means more ideas are shared with more people and more conversations about the world around us.

Part 2: 10 Best TED Talks of All Time

Here are the 10 most TED talks of all time for you to watch online. You could watch these most popular TED talks on TED.com and TED YouTube channel for free.

◎1. Do schools kill creativity?

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenged the way we educate our children, championing a radical rethink of how our school systems cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence. Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

◎2. How Great Leaders Inspire Action

Simon Sinek explores how leaders can inspire cooperation, trust, and change. He's the author of the classic "Start With Why." In this TED talk, Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership -- starting with a golden circle and the question: "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Wright brothers.

◎3. The power of vulnerability

Brené Brown studies human connection - our ability to empathize, belong, and love. In a poignant, funny talk, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity.

◎4. Inside the mind of a master procrastinator

Tim Urban knows that procrastination doesn't make sense, but he's never been able to shake his habit of waiting until the last minute to get things done. In this hilarious and insightful talk, Urban takes us on a journey through YouTube binges, Wikipedia rabbit holes, and bouts of staring out the window - and encourages us to think harder about what we're really procrastinating on before we run out of time.

◎5. The next outbreak? We're not ready

In 2014, the world avoided a global outbreak of Ebola, thanks to thousands of selfless health workers — plus, frankly, some very good luck. In hindsight, we know what we should have done better. So, now's the time, Bill Gates suggests, to put all our good ideas into practice, from scenario planning to vaccine research to health worker training. As he says, "There's no need to panic ... but we need to get going."

◎6. Depression, the secret we share

"The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me at that moment." In a talk equal parts eloquent and devastating, writer Andrew Solomon takes you to the darkest corners of his mind during the years he battled depression. That led him to an eye-opening journey across the world to interview others with depression -- only to discover that, to his surprise, the more he talked, the more people wanted to tell their own stories.

◎7. A 12-year-old app developer

Most 12-year-olds love playing video games, but Thomas Suarez taught himself how to create them. After developing iPhone apps like "Bustin Jeiber," a whack-a-mole game, he is now using his skills to help other kids become developers.

◎8. The power of introverts

In a culture where being social and outgoing are prized above all else, it can be difficult, even shameful, to be an introvert. But, as Susan Cain argues in this passionate talk, introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world and should be encouraged and celebrated.

◎9. How to stop screwing yourself over

How do you get on the road to being happier? Start by setting your alarm for 30 minutes earlier than usual and not hitting the snooze button. The effort required to leave that warm bed and enter the world is the same amount of effort needed to shake up your life and make that elusive change. In this humorous and provocative talk, Mel Robbins explains how turning off our brain's autopilot and demolishing our comfort zones is key to a rewarding life.

◎10. The puzzle of motivation

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories - and maybe, a way forward.

Part 3: How to Download Ted Talks Online?

Can you just download TED talks online for offline watching? Does TED.com offer a direct download option? Yes, TED enables you to download their TED talks presentations offline from TED.com directly. You only need to follow the below guides.

△ Section A: Download TED Talks from TED.com directly on Computer

Follow the below steps to download TED talks from TED.com website directly to your computer:

1. Visit a talk page and click the "Share" button. This will open a window with several options for sharing or downloading.
2. Click Download MP4 or Download audio (note: audio versions are not available for every talk).

Subtitle options will automatically be added to your download. The save location of your download will vary depending on your browser and computer settings.

△ Section B: Download TED Talks from TED.com directly on cell phone

If you want to download TED talks on your mobile phone app, you could follow the below steps:

1. Visit a talk page and then tap the "down arrow" icon. The arrow will become a download progress circle around the X icon.
2. A blue banner at the bottom will show the download percentage. You could click the X icon to stop downloading anytime.
3. Once the download completes, the circle becomes a checkmark. You can tap the checkmark to delete the download.

You can find your download (and also track its progress or delete it) in the Downloads folder of the Profile tab.

△ Another Choice: Download TED Talks via the best Video Downloader

As we have mentioned that most TED talks are available on their YouTube channel for free. In such case, you could make use of CleverGet Video Downloader to download TED talks from YouTube in batch. As a module built in CleverGet, CleverGet Video Downloader is a professional online video downloader that is especially powerful in downloading YouTube videos, including single YouTube video, YouTube playlist, YouTube channel, and even YouTube search results in batch. It could download videos at up to 8K resolution. Over 1000+ video-sharing sites are supported like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, VEVO, Veoh, etc.

You could follow the below steps to learn how to download TED talks videos from YouTube with CleverGet in detail. Firstly, download and install CleverGet Video Downloader on your computer.

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• CleverGet Video Downloader

  - Support both Windows and Mac versions.
  - Enable users to download online videos, movies, TV shows, live streams, etc. from 1000+ websites.
  - Detect M3U8 links intelligently with an inherent browser to download videos.
  - Download 8K video and audio at 320 kbps without quality loss.
  - Support to download TV series episodes of all/certain seasons in batches.
  - Download online video to MP4/MKV/WEBM or other available popular formats.

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Step 1: Set output directory

Before you try to download videos online from above websites, you can decide output directory at will. Kick off CleverGet on your computer after the installation, click the three-dot icon on its top-right corner and then open the "Settings" option to pop up detailed settings panel. Under the "General" tab, you can set the output directory in the "Save Video To" box and change other settings. Finally, click the "Save" button.

Step 2: Play back the target TED talks video within CleverGet

Copy and paste the target TED talks video URL into CleverGet and play it back. CleverGet will automatically start parsing the video for you.

Step 3: Choose video for downloading

Once CleverGet successfully parses the target video, it will list all available download options to you in different resolutions, frame rates and sizes. Choose the right one you want to download before you click the blue “Download” button to let CleverGet start downloading videos from website.

Step 4: Check downloading and downloaded task

Once the downloading starts, you could see a popup sidebar on the right side, which shows you the detailed downloading process and downloaded results. Once the downloading completes, you could directly play back downloaded TED talks video with your default media player, burn to disc, play back with Leawo Bluray Player, etc.

Part 4: How to Convert Ted Talks Video/Audio Files?

Once you have downloaded TED talks videos and audios, you could then freely play back the downloaded TED talks videos/audios on your computer or portable devices. However, there are cases in which your player fails to read and play back downloaded TED talk videos/audios. In such cases, Leawo Video Converter helps. It could help you convert downloaded TED Talks videos/audios between 180+ formats like MP4, AVI, MOV, MKV, WMV, AAC, MP3, FLAC, etc.

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• Leawo Video Converter

  - Convert video/audio between 180+ formats.
  - Support iPhone, iPad and all portable devices video and audio convertsion.
  - Convert video/audio with 100% quality reserved in 6x higher speed.
  - Turn photos (folders) into photo slideshows video.
  - Convert 2D to 3D video via editting 3D depth range and 6 different 3D modes.

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It’s quite easy to convert downloaded TED talks videos/audios between various formats for various devices with Leawo Video Converter. You could follow the below guide to learn the details quickly:

1. Download and install Leawo Video Converter. It’s built in Leawo Prof. Media as a module.

2. Get downloaded TED talks files ready for converting and kick off Leawo Prof. Media.

3. Open the “Convert” tab and then click the “Add Video” button to browse and load downloaded TED Talks files.

4. After loading TED files, click the “Output Profile: MP4 Video” drop-down option and then choose “Change” option to enter the “Profile” panel, where you could select desired output format, like “Format > Common Video > MP4 Video” or “Device > Apple > iPhone 14 mini…”. Choose output format according to your needs.

5. After setting output format, click the green “Convert” button and then set output directory in the popup sidebar.

6. Finally, click the “Convert” button at the bottom of the popup sidebar to start converting TED Talks files.

You then only need to wait for the conversion to complete. The conversion is quick and high quality. You could convert other videos and audios in the same steps mentioned above. Then, enjoy the TED Talks at will.