London, a city that has shaped culture, politics, and progress for centuries. From literature to technology, movements born here have echoed around the globe. And today it's home to our next group of TED hopefuls. — Hello speakers. Welcome y'all. You have been chosen because we believe that you have an idea that is truly worth sharing from the TEDex London stage. I'm Jammer. I'm a civil engineer from South London, born and bred. I'm really proud to be a civil engineer, but engineers are brilliant problem solvers. notoriously bad storytellers. The idea I'm sharing on the stage today is all about invisible infrastructure. It's the hidden structures and systems that kind of power and connect our communities that no one really knows about. Construction is a bit of a climate culprit. Very heavy kind of carbon usage in the industry, but we could be a climate solution. So, I'd just like to tell the stories that let people know what it is that we do and encourage innovation. You've each been chosen as part of a global idea search. All of you will take the stage here, but what you don't know is that one of you will be chosen to go on and take the stage at TED in Vancouver. This is where talks are seen by millions of people. Perspectives are shifted, movements are born, and lives are changed. — The moment when Kelly told us that one of us is going to Vancouver is, yeah, it still has not synced in to be honest. — I think it's a massive opportunity, man. I think that Vancouver, cool place to be, TED, cool thing to be a part of. — The opportunity to get to speak at TED and Vancouver would just be amazing. I think it's such a massive stage. So, you're going to have to really bring it tomorrow. You'll have to give the talk of your lives. No big deal. White Ted, you know, I've been dreaming about doing a TED talk for many, many years now. I'm Gabriella Dilacho. I am a classical singer, a soprano. I am originally from Brazil. My idea is to show the world how many women in music have been invisible through the history. I'm also the founder of the Don Foundation which is a foundation that amplifies women in music from past and present. Now with artificial intelligence if we do not fix this silence now machines will just perpetuate this for the future. I really hope I can help to amplify not only the women from the past but also the women of today who are still finding difficulties into finding their own space in the music industry. We the TED panel that's Kelly and Miam and myself will be listening carefully. We're going to be listening for things like the strength of your idea, the power of your storytelling, your stage presence, and observing your delivery. I'm Kelly Stetszel. I'm leading the TED panel. My role at TED for the past 20 years has been curation. So, I've worked with thousands of speakers on the TED stage to select them, to help them develop their talks, and get them ready to share them with the world. I'm so passionate about this initiative in particular because it brings up ideas that we could not have found any other way. things that I look for are really the strength of the idea, but you then have to make it land. The delivery is how well they connect with the people in the room. My name is Kelly Shu. I run Ted's YouTube channel. So, anything that gets distributed on Ted's YouTube goes through me first. I always believe that content is king. And so, if it's a great talk and it's great delivery, it will do well. But selfishly, I'm always looking for a really concise way to like present it to people. I plan to bring my knowledge of what I think our audience enjoys. You can honestly have an amazing talk in person, but sometimes on the screen, it's like not as intriguing as it was in real life. I'm a sucker for an inspiring TED talk that just makes me feel like there's hope again. — Joining them on the panel is London local and TEDex organizer Miam Pasha. TX London represents what makes London special, which is that it's diverse. It has people from all around the world that call it home and therefore it has ideas about everything for everyone. I'm going to be looking for two things in a winning talk today. First, is it addressing a conversation I think we really need to be having right now at this moment? And I'm also going to be thinking about how it's going to transform the speaker's life. like what impact is it going to have on them and their work and their ability to take that idea to the world. I've had the privilege of hearing your ideas over the past few weeks and I know how amazing they are and so I'm so excited for you to show the world what London has to offer. Let's do this. Stepping on to the TED Main Stage really is the opportunity of a lifetime. — It has hosted some of the world's most influential visionaries, leaders, and architects of the future. — We have a long way to go in front of us. — Sharing their ideas to a room of thousands, entrepreneurs, investors, and change makers, each waiting to be moved, provoked, and inspired. This is a moment when we have to rise to this occasion. — But the power of TED doesn't end when the lights go down because the talk joins a global library of ideas watched by billions. Doors opened, media attention, book deals, and funding and support for their projects. Standing on the TED main stage is more than delivering a talk. — All I want to do is show joy and hope. Your impact magnified far beyond the moment. — That's what life is about. About daring greatly about being in the arena. — It's a journey I've been on myself. So, I know how hopeful the speakers will be for that opportunity. With show day fast approaching, the panel worked closely with each speaker to refine structure, strengthen delivery, and help their ideas land with maximum impact.
— I'm just going to tell you how this is going to run. You'll get up here. You'll run your talk. There's a countdown clock right here. There is a what we call a confidence monitor behind that so you can see your slides. We're going to do it as much like we can on the day. For those of us watching who are not standing up here, let's just be the audience that we hope to see. Like really eyes on the speaker. Let's fully engage. Let's just really like practice being great audience members and great support for each other. All right, everybody. Let's give it up for Gemma. — Group rehearsals were a little bit intense. Um, I've never done anything like this before, so it was all new to me and it was really helpful to have those rehearsals in the group because everybody's been really supportive. Think about the first thing you did this morning. You turned on a tap, switched on a light, trusted that the world around you would just work. It's such an incredible lineup, the craft, the passion. — I'm so impressed by all that ideas. I really liked every one of these talks. I've been developing an image making technique called Naturopi. It's a very sensitive coating on paper and everything that touches the surface leaves a trace. It's so fine that it can reveal the footprints of ants. I'm Maxim Pria. I'm an artist and I'm coming from Germany. The idea that I want to share is a technique that I developed over the past 15 years. It's a very sensitive coating and with it, it's possible to show the tiniest traces from nature. These are the lines they leave behind. I don't know. The biggest fear was the language barrier. Everybody around me is a native speaker and I haven't felt that I could express myself in English like in German. And do we similar to them also create collective pathways through parks or through what we call culture. — This talk is beautiful. Your words are beautiful. You just did that not in your first language. I love it. I think Max's talk really just like intersected so many different topics. He had science in it, he had art in it, and like he also had like humanity in it. For the people who live in Koala Lumpur, Malaysia, heavy rainfall is common and potential flash floods are a serious threat. — Gemma who spoke first and talked about um the hidden systems in buildings and cities was just stunning. Hidden below the city, a motorway tunnel that not only diverts 30,000 cars a day to combat traffic congestion, but also transforms into a giant storm water channel. You make mistakes, people give you feedback, you learn from it. It's really helpful to be in that kind of environment. — The group around me was super encouraging. If you're anything like me, you've probably asked yourself the question, how did we get here? You see? Oh no. Straight away. Um, how did we get here? All of the data. Yeah. All of the data or it points in the same direction. You're like, yeah, all of the data. All of the data points towards the same thing. Now I'm lost. The ways we police, — we tell our men and boys to open up. Guys, the rehearsal session was really bad. I mean, great. It was bad. I bombed bad. My name is Ben Hurst. I am the director of facilitation at Beyond Equality, which is a gender equality charity. The idea I'm sharing today is about I guess it's a question which is are we misdiagnosing the manosphere? I would describe the manosphere as like a collection of forums, websites. A lot of it is like anger, bravado, um, and maybe in some ways unmet needs. And I feel like most people want to be good people. Most people when they're given the opportunity will arrive at good conclusions for themselves. I kind of just want to shift that dial a little bit and move us a bit more towards like caring because I think caring is the way to solve the problem. No, I'm gone. Sorry. I made it far, though. That was good. — Thanks, guys. Stop. Oh, it's good. It was easy. It's easy. No problem. Honestly, it's true. — Ben still had uh a lot of his talk to learn. I think we also have some wild cards and people who have homework and we're going to see what happens tomorrow. I feel like anything could happen. Women's voices and women's music were dismissed, unpublished, removed from textbooks and from cataloges. But if we do not repair this catalog now, tomorrow's music will repeat yesterday's mistake exponentially. AI is learning. Let's teach it to remember the sounds of all of us. Thank you. Gabriella at the end made me totally cry. She just gave a beautiful presentation that was just like super super special. Sorry. Mom, I'm sorry. I think this is so stunning. I almost like I accidentally got a little too wrapped up in it, but I was sort of struggling to look out for things. — I found the atmosphere um really inspiring and very warm. — Breathe. — Mhm. — Let yourself feel it. If you need to pause, pause. — They told me to slow down a little bit when I talk about myself. — You rush it cuz you don't want to talk about yourself. — I know. — I want to spend more time at the end. But you have it. — I really enjoyed the group rehearsals. All of the feedback I received was positive. Everyone was really encouraging. Told me it like my speech really touched them. My great grandmother fostered my love for crochet, embroidery, knitting. She taught me that crafts are more than just hobbies. They tell a story. I'm Nisha. I'm currently a third-year medical student at Cambridge, but I'm really into crafts and I always have been. So, my idea revolves around how crafts, particularly crochet, they tell a story and their important legacies and how throughout history they've often gone unseen and unheard. And I just want everybody to understand that there's so much more behind the scenes that is ready to be explored. I still remember as a child whenever I would visit, I would run up to her and ask her, "Nani, what will you teach me today when she passed away earlier this year? " It broke me a little, but the first thing I did was pick up my hook and yarn. We often hear about like art and community and hers was specifically about crafting and that was like a take that I've never heard before. — So, beautiful. — No, no content notes. — All of our talks are so different, but we're all in the same boat trying to prepare these really short TEDex talks. We've all been there to support each other, which has been really, really encouraging. — Amazing. Okay. Beautiful. Thank you. On stage, speakers experience the full TEDex setup for the first time. Lights, cameras, and the red dot where their ideas will soon come to life. Can I describe the feeling of stepping onto the dot for the first time? — Ah, the red dot. — Okay, it becomes real. — Terrifying. It's really different when you're miked up and the lights are down and the red dot is there. — It was amazing. It felt like everything was finally coming to life. — If I was selected, I think it would be a really cool moment. — I can just plant a seed and make people uh see things differently. I think there's a massive opportunity there to connect with other people and I'd love to just meet other people from around the world to do that. — I think those top spots are — quite close, quite tight. — Yeah, I'm ready to go. Let's do it. Morning breaks in London as today preparation turns to performance as the red dot awaits. Who gets nervous before they go on stage? Who feels their heart race? — Yeah. Oh, some are really gross. They love it on the stage. — My fears and anxieties are that my jokes don't land. I trip up over the red dot and fall flat on my face. Um the mic stops working. All those things. Very often our brains are buzzing and it's hard to concentrate. We've got a million thoughts in our head. My fears and anxieties are everything. I hope that it goes well. I hope that I can leave feeling proud of myself and what I've delivered and what I've achieved. What we're going to do is we're going to lift our shoulders up to our ears and breathe in. And then we're going to give a big exhale and let our shoulders down. Now we're going to wake up our bodies a little bit. We're going to tap our bodies. We're going to start by tapping down on our leg. Tap our skin. Wake up. Wake up our bodies. — My hope is that I can make all the women that I'm trying to bring with me proud. That helps me. It helps me also to cry a lot, which doesn't help. Um, my fear is exactly that, that I will get too emotional. — 1 2 3. — Ideas change everything. I think it's such an important message to be shared and I'm so grateful that I get to share it here today, but to be able to spread that globally, I think it would raise so much awareness. I'm hoping that it's going to lead to more and more. I want to just keep saying this over and over again. If I was selected to go, it would mean a huge amount. I would be honored to be the person to deliver that message, you know, and hopefully encourage other people to speak up and do the same. — I would say percentage chance of me winning. Yeah, it's tight. — The answer is a very similar process. — Just deviating what? — 48 hours. — Yeah, like a monthly. Lastminute adjustments are made and with the audience seated, TEDex London is ready to begin. — Let us start by introducing our very
first speaker for this evening. Please welcome Gemma Andrews. — Oh my gosh, I'm so excited for these talks. Hey. Hey, London. Let's do this. London town. First up, we've got Gemma. Yeah, she was really great during rehearsal. I'm hoping she can bring that same energy today. — Construction is sexy. Not influencer sexy. More like the quiet, calm, clever, dependable type you bring home to your mom. — She's feeling confident. She's I think this is it's a good start. It's a really good start. So I can tell you all about the unseen and unsung work that goes into powering, protecting and connecting our communities. But I can also tell you this, the construction industry is responsible for 34% of global carbon emissions. Is the solution to stop building? No. The challenge and the opportunity is to build smarter. her passion. I know she's a great speaker as well. Deep under Lake Ontario, icy water is being drawn up from 80 m below the surface. It's pumped through giant pipes, looping silently below the city, cooling offices, hospitals, even data centers before returning to the lake. It's called deep lake water cooling and it uses 80 to 90% less electricity than conventional mechanical air conditioning. Every year it saves about 90 million kwatt hours of energy. That's the same energy it takes to boil a kettle 500 million times. In the UK we call that Monday morning. — The way she simplifies that measurement into terms we can understand makes this so relatable. We need a big drive towards efficiency, cutting carbon, and reducing waste to ensure that construction isn't a climate culprit. It's a climate solution. Because the more we share these stories, the more we inspire the next generation to build even better. Thank you. Listen to the audience go crazy. Come on. People loved it. She's definitely one of the top people that are in my mind right now, but there's so many amazing people in this program. We're just going to have to see how she stands up. She came in right on time as well. And delivery-wise, that was absolutely perfect cuz I think it's such a beautiful talk and you don't kind of expect or I don't expect a beautiful talk about engineering. — Yeah. I feel relieved to be able to do that on a bigger global TED stage would be even more awesome. Even more fantastic. — Oh, now we get to hear from Max, our artist friend. — Yes. — Who developed this really beautiful technique for these special prints. He was one of my favorite from yesterday. So, I am hoping the best for him. I know he's extremely sick today. — Oh, Kelly. I just saw him backstage. He is like his head is down and I'm so worried. I hope that he's like gathering his strength right now because he is going to need it to really give the energy when he gets up there. It's so important. — When I was a child lying in the meadow, I saw a small frog right in front of me. We both stared at each other through the blades of grass. In that moment, I became completely absorbed by one simple question. What does the tiny fingers feel like? So, because I knew the tongue can magnify objects, I came up with this wonderful idea and put it in my mouth. I could feel his tiny hands gripping the sides of my tongue as if he was afraid I might swallow him. Suddenly, my mother came around the corner, froze, and gave me that face, the one reserved for moments like this. I looked back at her, sheepish, slowly opened my mouth, and the tongue ride of rock jumped out. With these stories, the descriptive words make all the difference. — I'm an artist and for over 15 years I have been developing an image making technique called Natan to pee. It's a very sensitive coating on paper and everything that touches the surface leaves a trace. It's so fine that it can't reveal the footprints of ants. the wing beat of a moss circling around the light bulb. Trails of snails. I built different machines, carried out hundreds, sometimes thousands of tests and experiments to make visible and to highlight the character and beauty of the creatures and phenomena revealed through this technique. These are the lines they leave behind. Chemical path full of information. And which kind of communication and connection emerges through this? Like here where two ants under an upside down bucket respond to each other's scent trails even in the upsense of the other. These are thousands of tiny footprints from ants. Out of a shapeless a trace begins to crystallize. Like an antrail appearing out of nothingness, like a lightning that connects the nest with the food source. The ants use a very similar process on a basic level to what happens in our brain. Through repetition of signals, they build structures that are on one hand highly intelligent on the other show how deeply rooted this pattern can become. They even — and we know he's not feeling great, but he is fighting through. — So much invisible life suddenly appeared. Okay, nobody really wants to know how many mites are living around them. But we're so used to seeing life everywhere that we forget what an incredible exception it is because without nature, without a single cell, a bacterium or perception, would the universe even exist? — He also is bringing our awareness to things we don't notice. And I feel like it might make me look at the world differently — once we realize that wonder that we are a part of it and understand what a true miracle life really is. Thank you. — That came in at 5 minutes. Audience loved it. I mean that was just really a stunning talk. I know. To me that's almost like a perfect talk. Like he's going to be hard to beat. — It's crazy. Super crazy. It's like between laughing and crying. I don't know. Never experienced something like this. I think the people liked it. I hope so. Yeah. — Okay. Now, we're going to hear from Ben who um has a talk about the manosphere and navigating it. — I mean, he struggled a lot in rehearsal yesterday. His topic is great, but it was hard to fully encapsulate what his talk was going to be about. Hopefully he has done a bunch of work since we saw the talk yesterday because he did have a long way to go. So I'm I'm excited to see what he's got for us. Now, — if you have spent any time around young men or boys, you've probably heard of the manosphere. People know it as a dark corner of the internet where influencers preach strength without empathy or dominance without compassion. And if you're anything like me, you've probably asked yourself two questions. Number one, what is wrong with these guys? And number two, how did we get here? Over the last decade, I've had conversations with men and boys from the classroom to the boardroom about masculinities. And I want to suggest something that might feel a little bit uncomfortable, but bear with me. — He really worked hard and he is having fun up there. and the audience is having fun right along with him. I am so happy to see how far he has come. — What if this Manosphere stuff isn't just about a fringe group of bad apples somewhere at the far reaches of the internet? What if this is about a generation of men and boys who feel unanchored, unseen, and unheard? Now, over the last decade, I've been using something called the Alec model. It's a simple conversational framework which has four main points. Number one, asking. Number two, listening. Number three, encouraging action. And number four, checking in. Now, when we begin to do these things, we see things begin to shift. Young men and boys begin to re-imagine what masculinity can look like for themselves. strength and gentleness, ambition and empathy. So maybe the manosphere isn't the disease that we all think it is. Maybe it's just another symptom, a cry for connection in an age of disconnection. And maybe we need to stop asking what's wrong with our men and our boys. And we need to start asking what do our men and our boys need from us. Thank you. — Good job, Ben. You crushed that. He totally pulled that out of the bag. There was like not a single mistake or anything. It was just like perfect and so like gave everyone the feelings. The audience loved him. And this topic is so important. I think it's on a lot of people's minds. I think that's true. He will not be the first person to talk about this. Is his perspective on it fresh enough? — Bro, I feel relieved. I'm so happy that it's over. done. Yesterday I was freaking out cuz I was like, "This is really bad. " But that was cool. Yeah. — Now we have Nisha with her talk about the importance of crafts. I remember this being very sweet and endearing yesterday. It's a nice personal story, but also mixed with the importance of craft in history. Yeah, for a topic that might not seem super emotional on the surface, she was really able to hone it in yesterday. She had almost everyone there in tears. So, I'm really curious to see if the audience gives that same reaction. Stories can live in unexpected places, and a handmade object can hold memory just as powerfully as a book or a monument. Across cultures, crafts have shaped history and preserved identity. There are stories of African-American communities using quilts to secretly guide people along the Underground Railroad or in Japan where Sashiko stitching was used as a medium for storytelling. — She's got the personal she's got the the depth example. — You cannot dismiss craft. Like it's it matters. This is not a lightweight talk. — Mhm. These works use craft to challenge the boundaries and expand the horizons of what storytelling can be. Tradition itself is a form of resistance. Every time a grandmother teaches her granddaughter how to crochet, she quietly defies a world which once said, "These skills don't matter. " So, I want to leave you with this. Look back at your own family's traditions as vessels of meaning and heritage. Maybe your grandfather painted or maybe your mom collects stamps. Whatever it may be, these are your family's autobiographies. And if we start to see these small traditions differently, how may that change how we see the world? When I wrap myself in this blanket, it is no longer about just keeping warm. It's about the memories and the stories it holds. All of us in this room are weavers. Weavers of love, memory, and meaning. The question is, what stories are you weaving? Thank you. Her talk is like great to me. It's beautiful. And she really did deliver it so well. She knew exactly what she wanted to say and how it and she said it with such deep authenticity and care. For me, the question is going to be from a number of strong contenders. How does this talk stack up against the others in terms of, you know, the impact that it can make — and the strength of the idea. — So relieved. I'm so glad that it's finally done. But I'm really happy the audience had a really positive reaction. So all was good. I was really scared about not messing it up, but when I was there, everything just came really naturally to me. I mean, obviously, this is a fairly small venue. Doing that in front of however many more people would be an amazing opportunity. Now, we're going to hear from Gabriella, who is talking to us about kind of the history of music and where were the women. I spent most of my life studying and performing music, but it took me decades to realize that I was only hearing half of it. This is me growing up in the south of Brazil, probably starting to dream of becoming a classical singer. A dream a bit far away from my reality at the time, but I have a very inspirational mom and she used to tell me, "Of course, you must follow your dreams. You know, think of all the musicians who achieved great things in spite of all difficulties. Think of Beethoven. He was deaf, right? Look how far he got. And I tell you, I held into that dead white European male role model like there was nobody else. And that dream brought me all the way to London to study at the Royal College of Music. And it continues to take me around the world to share music with audiences. Eight years ago, I was walking in a secondhand bookmark. You know, the one in South Bank under the bridge, and I found an encyclopedia that listed 6,000 women composers in the history of music. I was shocked. Did I miss a lesson or something? Because that was only I could think. So, I decided to look into statistics. And then I found out that over 90% of the music we hear in concert halls today is written by men. And I know you must be thinking, "Oh, it's just classical music. " But when you look at other music genres, you can see that nearly 90% of the music we hear is also written by men. I like that she brought in the current environment of music, the current problems within music, because people would think that this is just like a problem back then. — Did you know that? — No. So surprising to me. — Oh, for centuries, you know, women's voices and women's music have been dismissed, unpublished, removed from textbooks and from cataloges. And now AI is learning from that same silence. AI tools are already generating new music based on our current musical catalog. But these systems don't choose music by quality. They learn from the available data. And our musical data is biased. Is missing half of humanity's creativity. If we, you know, everybody's racing to protect our copyrights. Please continue. But if we do not fix this catalog now, the music of the future will repeat yesterday's mistakes exponentially. Some good news. You know, there's still time and ways to recover some of this silence. A lot of this music still survives in archives, in manuscripts, in libraries. And those are all voices who can teach both people and machines. You know, I continue to discover so much beautiful music, incredible stories, and some amazing women. — That must be amazing for her to be on this journey of discovery, like just really unearthing these voices. — Ilber was a poet, a singer, a mother who was imprisoned in the ghetto of the resinat during the second world war. As she was there, she wrote songs to entertain the elderly and the children. She sadly died in Avitz, but a few of her songs survived. This one is a lullabi and it's called Vigala. Val seem great and So powerful. Artificial intelligence is learning. Let's teach it to remember the sounds of all of us. Thank you. There's so much conversation around AI, you know, right now. Um, but this is, you know, this is something like it's so human. Bringing the truth about history into AI and she's doing this work, too. — Her talk makes you think about what other things haven't been recorded and then how AI will exacerbate that. — Oh my god, I'm really, really happy. Um, I think I did my best. Nothing wrong happened. Uh, I almost didn't cry, but just at the very ending, I got very emotional. From bold new thinking to deeply personal stories. Each talk adds to a powerful evening of ideas watched by a highly engaged and curious London audience. — It was outstanding. I really enjoyed it. I'm walking away feeling inspired. deep, meaningful, and powerful. — Personally, the one that stood out for me the most was Ben Hurst. I just loved how he talked about instead of thinking about what's wrong with men and boys, let's think about what they need. — Gabriella like completely took my breath away. I had that moment at the end where she wasn't singing and I just went my favorite speaker who was the first um person, she was a civil engineer, Gemma. And I just thought it was incredible how, you know, she could connect so deeply to our day-to-day lives while telling us something completely new. I loved the artist with the special paper, Maximillion. Um, something I'd never imagined before. That's the joy of a TEDex talk. It's always like, "Oh, I never thought about that. " — But now the hardest decision of all is left to the TED panel. Which idea has
