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The best TED Talks make you think, leave you inspired and, very often, make you laugh as well. We’ve been watching Ted Talks evolve and grow over the last 15 years and have come to treasure the nuggets of wisdom they impart. 

But if you’re just discovering Ted Talks for the first time – or feel like you’ve missed a bunch throughout the years – we want to help you dive head-first into the heady lecture series with a round-up of our absolute favorites: What you’ll find below is a collection of personal picks from the TechRadar team that we feel best exemplify what a Ted Talk can be. 

Not seeing one of your favorite talks below? Drop me an email and I’ll try to add it to the list.

How to gain control of your free time by Laura Vanderkam 

There’s a certain irony in watching a YouTube video on how to save time, but Laura Vanderkam’s talk is worth the 10 minutes of your life. It’s all built on the basic idea that shaving 5 minutes here and there from your favorite activities isn’t really going to give you more control of your life – rather, you need to set priorities for yourself and then build a schedule around those priorities. 

The hilarious example Vanderkam offers is that, instead of skipping commercials to save eight minutes of every half hour of TV you watch, maybe you could just watch a little less TV and do something else with your time. The message is simple, effective and engaging, all the hallmarks of a good TED Talk.

What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness by Robert Waldinger 

“Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period.” That’s the results of a landmark study of happiness conducted by more than four generations of researchers over the last 75 years, tracking hundreds of participants and measuring every facet of their lives. 

This Ted Talk takes awhile to get to the juicy details but the story of this preternatural study on happiness illustrates the lengths the researchers have gone through to get this invaluable data that shows us what makes people happy at the end of their lives. The results sound simple – almost infuriatingly so – but the lesson here is that anyone can be happy with the right relationships in their lives. 

The game that can give you 10 extra years of life by Jane McGonigal 

Gamers, it turns out, are pretty awesome. They’re committed to saving virtual worlds and with the right skills and focus they might be able to save the physical world, too. McGonigal, a game developer and author, has spent years creating different apps and games that use in-game rewards to push players to solve real world problems. 

The talk, which is a bit long at 20 minutes, walks the audience through her previous experiences creating these games and the research data that she uses to get gamers engaged before diving into Superbetter, the app she developed to make everyone who plays it live better, fuller lives.  

 The art of asking by Amanda Palmer 

Former busker-turned-successful-musician Amanda Palmer has a key lesson for everyone: don’t be afraid to ask. Society puts an inherent shame on those who ask – whether that’s for financial help or security, emotional help or even basic requests like where to find something – when, in fact, asking for help is one of the best things we can do. Asking, Palmer says, is inherently human and powerful, it allows us to create connections and leverage those connections to do more. That was evident when she wanted to crowdfund her band’s next CD, asking for $100,000, and raising over a million dollars instead. 

The point here is that next time you look down on someone asking, instead view them with compassion and make a connection – because in the long run that’s more powerful, more effective and, well, more human.  

The first 20 hours — how to learn anything by Josh Kaufman 

Have you ever heard the old adage about needing to spend 10,000 hours to learn a skill? Good news, it’s wrong. As it turns out, the research that factoid is taken from was studying experts in their respective fields, and not, say, the average trombonist. 

In this talk, new father Josh Kaufman walks us through how long it actually takes to learn a skill – which, incidentally, is only around 20 hours. Now sure, 20 hours of practice isn’t going to make you the next Bobby Fischer, but it will be enough time to teach you the basics and, most importantly, how to auto-correct yourself when you’ve done something amiss. If you’ve ever felt like the ship has sailed on learning a new language, playing an instrument or learning a new skill, this talk is for you.

Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong by Johann Hari 

Journalist and author Johann Hari (Lost Connections, Chasing the Scream) offers a wide-ranging look at addiction in this 14-minute talk, whether that’s addiction to hard drugs, alcohol, or the endlessly-updating feeds on our smartphones.

We tend to think of addiction as a problem caused by the substance itself. We say that phones are addictive, or heroin is addictive – but Hari makes a case for a more nuanced understanding, one that sees how social circumstance affects our propensity for addiction, and the difference that strong bonds to those around us can make.

The power of vulnerability by Brené Brown 

With over 47 million views, Brené Brown’s Ted Talk on the power of vulnerability is one of the most watched Ted Talks of all time, and for good reason. 

In this 20-minute presentation, Brown shares what she’s learnt about the nature of shame, and how our fear of vulnerability prevents us from being able to fully embrace ourselves. As a researcher trained to “control and predict” phenomena, she shares her difficulty accepting the idea that to live fully is to stop attempting to “control and predict” at all.

An incredibly powerful talk that shows you – rather than just telling you – what it means to be vulnerable, and explores what a world that embraces vulnerability might look like.

Meeting the Enemy: A feminist comes to terms with the Men’s Rights movement by Cassie Jaye 

What filmmaker Cassie Jaye does here that’s so special is that she walks us through an immense period of growth in her life thought-by-thought. At one point a stringent feminist, Jaye began a documentary about the Men’s Rights movement that asks for the acknowledgement of certain, specific issues that men face – a movement she thought ran counter to the central points of feminism. 

What she learned in over a hundred hours of interviews with men’s rights activists is that these men didn’t want fewer rights for women, but some of the same care and devotion to some of the issues impacting men like veteran care, suicide, disproportionate parental control, length of prison sentences and others that do well and truly impact the life of men. The evolution of Jaye’s thoughts and the admission of her own preconceived notions is enthralling from beginning to end. 

How I climbed a 3,000-foot vertical cliff without ropes by Alex Honnold 

If you don’t have time for the excellent – but nearly two-hour – documentary Free Solo, check out this 10-minute Ted Talk by legendary rock-climber Alex Honnold who did something many thought to be impossible – or at least incredibly dangerous – when he climbed El Capitan, a sheer rock face in Yosemite National Park without ropes. 

Honnold’s Ted Talk gives a great overview of the climb, as well as his previous experiences leading up to it. Listening to Honnold describe certain parts of the trek are legitimately sweat-inducing and his experiences post-climb are both hilarious and heart-warming. It’s well-worth the watch. 

This is what happens when you reply to spam email by James Veitch 

Not all Ted Talks have to be heady ventures to the core of who we are. They can, in fact, just be funny and lighthearted, too. There’s no better example of these kinds of talks than the ones given by James Veitch (yes there’s more than one) wherein he takes annoying-but-easily-ignorable situations like unsubscribing from an email chain and turn them into absurdly funny matches of verbal wit between two utterly committed individuals. If you need a laugh after all this profound introspection, Veitch’s talks are the best bet. 

BONUS: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale 

OK, while this one technically isn’t a Ted Talk, it has the spirit of one and includes Bobby McFerrin, which really just sells itself. 

Just try not to sing along, it’s impossible not to.

• Looking for more things to watch? Check out our list of the best Netflix shows

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Crysis originally hit the market back on November 13, 2007, just about a year after the notorious Windows Vista plagued PCs around the world. The game still looks gorgeous after all these years, managing to look like it belongs in this console generation. But it still needs to be remastered. Badly. Luckily Crysis Remastered is on the way.

For anyone that doesn’t know, Crysis was essentially the spiritual successor to the original Far Cry, after Ubisoft bought the rights to the franchise. When Crysis came out, it was notorious for being extremely difficult to run. The game wasn’t just demanding for the sake of it, though. The game looks leagues better than anything that came out at the same time – Crysis released about two months after Halo 3 on Xbox 360. 

To this day, whenever I get a new graphics card for my personal use, I go through all three Crysis games just to see how much better the GPU is than my last – in addition to other graphical heavyweights like the Metro and Witcher series. 

However, over the last five or so years, or basically since Windows 10 hit the market, this has become a lot harder to do, as Crysis doesn’t play nice with a 64-bit operating system. 

Jumping OS hurdles 

When I first saw that Crysis Remastered was basically confirmed by a leaked website (before being officially announced just an hour later), I immediately jumped up and installed the original game on my PC.

I realized that, well, it doesn’t work right out of the gate. To begin with, the game installs the GameSpy client – a service that died off back in 2013 – which immediately crashes every time it tried to launch because… of course it does. The game requires the files to be there, though, so removing the dead client is a no go. 

Because I have a bad memory – I went through this whole process a few years ago – I thought my Ultrawide monitor desktop resolution was causing Crysis to crash every time I tried launching it – as that has caused issues with other titles. I’m lucky enough to have access to a ton of hardware, so I just moved to my test bench, which is attached to a 16:9 4K monitor to see if that would solve things. 

It didn’t. PC gaming!

I then tried to set launch options in Steam to get the game to run in DirectX 9 mode, rather than the default DirectX 10. That didn’t work either. Going to the forums next, I saw some people suggest trying compatibility mode for Windows XP and Vista, and neither of those worked.

Finally, I stumbled on a YouTube video that walked me through an incredibly convoluted process that involved downloading Crysis Warhead – the short spinoff title launched in 2008 – and moving folders between the two. That finally did it. Kind of. 

That got the game to launch, but after the ridiculous intro cutscene I was greeted with a black screen that wouldn’t go away. I had to hit the ‘~’ key to open up the control console and type in “con_restricted 0”, hit Enter, then type “map island” and hit Enter again. That finally made the game load and let me play. 

And, after a process that took me around an hour and a half to get through, I’m finally able to play Crysis. And even after all of that, running the game on modern hardware remains a buggy experience, with visual glitches in all the cutscenes and the game crashing every few checkpoints. 

I’m pretty happy that I get to play through this gem of a game again. But anyone who got caught up in the hype around the original Crysis and wanted to jump on it – especially if they weren’t playing a lot of PC games 15 years ago – probably won’t be willing to jump through all of these hoops. 

Crysis is still gorgeous and a blast to play

Once all the setup and bugs were sorted, I was reminded just how much I adore Crysis. Not only does it still stand up visually, which it absolutely does, but the gameplay somehow doesn’t feel dated 13 years after its initial launch date. 

The way you’re able to seamlessly swap between suit modes to adapt to different solutions, the way you’re able to customize your weapons on the fly – this arguably ancient game somehow feels more modern than Far Cry 5. 

Crysis is still such a blast to play through that I didn’t just give up after the 5th time it crashed at a checkpoint. I just kept relaunching the game and soaking up that nostalgia deep into the evening. 

That being said, there are some caveats. Don’t think that just because this game is 13 years old it’s suddenly easy to run. Because of the constant crashes I couldn’t get my benchmark software to play nicely, but I was observing around 60-70 fps at 4K with maxed settings – on an RTX 2080 Ti, and that’s with full GPU utilization. 

To put that into perspective, Doom Eternal gets 104 fps on the same graphics card with equivalent settings – and that game hit the streets just a month ago. 

I’m not sure how much harder Crysis Remastered is going to hit graphics cards. But with features like software-based ray tracing, state-of-the-art Depth of Field and other pretty-but-demanding graphics settings, don’t expect Crysis Remastered to get any less demanding. 

Why Crysis Remastered is so important

Crysis has never sold particularly well, which is probably a major reason why we haven’t heard from the franchise in almost seven years. However, Crysis, and games like it, serve a valuable purpose – pushing gaming technology further. 

We’ve seen a couple games recently that pushed tech just as hard over the last year or so – namely Metro Exodus and Control, both of which already look like next-generation games on PC. Crysis Remastered could see Crytek reclaim its title as the studio behind the most stunning games on the market. 

Beyond that – Crysis is an excellent game and better than either of the sequels. Not a lot of people were able to jump into the game when it originally came out because of the restrictive hardware requirements. Though, I do have to admit I laughed when I saw the Intel Core 2 Duo logo pop up on the intro screen – we’ve come a long way. 

Crysis Remastered coming out on PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch is going to open up this classic to thousands of people who were never able to play the game themselves. 

So, I for one am looking forward to this game hitting launching in a few months. If nothing else, at least I won’t have to spend an hour of my precious time trying to get the game to run on a modern operating system. Even without the shiny graphics bells and whistles being added onto the game, being able to get the new version running by just hitting the “play” button in Origin would be a huge improvement. 

Now I just have to wait. 

• Streets of Rage 4 gets a release date – and there’s a retro surprise for older fans

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The LG V60 is an impressive flagship smartphone that’s different from the pack for one reason: it’s got two screens. Technically the second one comes within the Dual Screen case, but considering the accessory comes free with every V60, it’s part of the experience – and transforms the handset into one of the best media-watching phones on the market.

Full disclosure: I am the kind of person to burn through entire seasons of shows watching on my phone while washing dishes, cooking dinner, or relaxing on my building’s roof. Recommending the LG V60 is for folks who similarly binge media while they wander, but I totally understand folks who can only watch on larger displays. Those folks might want to check our best tablet or best TV guides.

For the rest of us small-screen reprobates, watching media on phones is a scrappy experience: either you deal with leaning over while your handset is lying flat on a surface, or awkwardly prop it up to stand at an angle. Thanks to ever-thinner bodies and sleek glass backs, phones easily slip off their perched positions and could be in danger of falling, or worse. 

Sure, you could buy a phone case with a kickstand or a tripod, but not everyone will go to such lengths. If you don’t want to spend a dime, large power blocks for high-wattage phones or laptop chargers are usually dense enough to prop your phone against. 

But for the rest of us who just want a no-frills smartphone media-watching experience, the LG V60 is the right phone for the job. And yes, it’s more than just for the Dual Screen.

Screen real estate, battery, and multitasking

The LG V60 is a flagship smartphone, so specs-wise, it’s a capable phone that can pretty much handle what you ask of it. Basic tasks, from gaming to prolonged media binges, are no problem, and you can get plenty of episodes in with the phone’s 5,000mAh battery.

The LG V60’s FHD+ (2460 x 1080) display isn’t quite as sharp as the WQHD+ screens on the Samsung Galaxy S20 line, but that doesn’t really matter – the vast majority of content you’ll be streaming on Netflix or elsewhere don’t exceed this resolution. At 6.8 inches, the V60’s screen is more or less as big as you’ll get outside of an unfurled foldable phone or a tablet. 

In any case, you’ll probably be watching on the Dual Screen anyway, which has a display identical to the V60 – but, of course, you can pivot it up and down to your desired angle. Heck, you can even ‘tent’ the phone by rotating the Dual Screen around in a similar way to a 2-in-1 laptop. It’s not difficult to plant the phone and tilt the screen to your desired angle.

It’s not perfect – the Dual Screen has no gyroscope, so it’ll take some work to rotate the picture to its proper orientation – but the gesture controls are responsive enough to swap screens as needed. Same with the multi-screen controls, which let you dim the main screen to save battery while watching on the second display.

But another great perk of watching media on the V60: two displays means you can binge on one and browse on the other. Whether you’re swapping text messages, browsing Twitter, or playing a game, multitasking works well. 

Audio and speakers

The LG V60’s audio kit is a step above most phones. The 3.5mm jack returns – and so does the 32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC, giving audiophiles more options than other flagships. There’s a pass-through port in the Dual Screen case, which should be shallow enough to accommodate most thinner cords, but you might need a 3.5mm extender for plugs that get chunky above the sleeve.

If you’re forgoing headphones, the LG V60 packs a set of stereo speakers for respectable sound. In a very unscientific test using the Apple Watch 5’s noise meter, the speakers belted 75 decibels right near the phone (which a Yale EHS chart compares to the volume of chamber music in a small auditorium) down to 55 decibels at a five-foot range. 

While the LG V60’s speaker sound doesn’t have quite the rich range as that coming from my current phone-speaker favorite, the Google Pixel 4, it’s satisfying so long as you don’t need nuanced bass notes.

Final word

We don’t imagine there’s a huge demand for the dual displays on the LG V60, but we think it’s a shame to overlook their best application – especially in our current stay-at-home environment. Binge watchers, I’m here to tell you this phone might be the best one to pick if you don’t have other priorities.

Admittedly, those might involve photography (the V60’s camera doesn’t have much zoom capability) or on-device storage (it caps at 256GB). But for everything else, including 5G connectivity, the V60 is a decent deal at $899 (around £761 / AU$1,417) to start.

• LG V60 ThinQ: everything else we thought about LG’s newest flagship phone

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Apple’s all-new budget iPhone, the iPhone SE, is available to pre-order now, and Walmart is offering a fantastic deal that brings the price down to just $199. For a limited time, you can save $200 on the iPhone SE when you activate the phone with an installment plan from AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint.

The 2020 iPhone SE packs a 4.7-inch Retina display and features Apple’s A13 Bionic chip, an impressive camera system, and a 12-hour battery life. The affordable iPhone is available in three color options: black, white, and Product Red, as well as three storage configurations: 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB. 

This is one of the best deals we’ve seen for the iPhone SE and an incredible price for an all-new iPhone. This pre-order deal is only available online and will be in select stores starting on April 24.

See more of the best iPhone SE pre-order deals: the best prices and plans available right now

Learn more about Apple’s budget phone with all you need to know on the iPhone SE 2020 release date, price, specs and more.

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The OnePlus 8 series was unveiled recently in an online affair, where the global pricing and availability was also announced. However, the prices for India were not mentioned.

The OnePlus 8 will start at Rs 41,999 for a region-exclusive 6GB + 128GB variant, Rs 44,999 for the 8GB + 128GB variant, and Rs 49,999 for the 12GB + 256GB variant. The same RAM and storage configurations are available for the OnePlus 8 Pro, which will be priced at Rs 54,999 and Rs 59,999 respectively. The Bullets Wireless Z are priced at Rs 1,999. No date for the deliveries was mentioned. We expect that information to be available in early May, once eCommerce platforms start functioning fully. Amazon.in will be the online partner.

India is OnePlus’ biggest market, where it also enjoys a majority in the premium segment. This made the omission of Indian details even more noteworthy. But considering the fact that the country is in a state of precautionary lockdown for the foreseeable future, with no availability of logistical partners, this step is understandable.

Ending our wait, OnePlus took to the Red Cable Club to finally reveal pricing details for India. Unsurprisingly, the prices are closer to their Chinese counterparts than the prices of the western markets.

OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro specifications

Both the OnePlus 8 and the OnePlus 8 Pro are powered by the latest 7nm octa-core Snapdragon 865 chipset clocking at 2.84GHz coupled with Adreno 650 GPU. They also ship with X55 modem to support 5G connectivity. They come with up to 12GB RAM and 256 GB UFS 3.0 internal storage. Both run on OxygenOS based on Android 10 out of the box.

The OnePlus 8 Pro flaunts a 6.78-inch Quad HD+ Fluid AMOLED 19.8:9 display with 3,168 x 1,440  resolution. The refresh rate on the OnePlus 8 Pro is bumped up to 120Hz. The display comes with MEMC(Motion Estimation/ Motion Compensation) technology that helps to keep the motion blur in check. On the other hand, the OnePlus 8 comes with a 6.55-inch Full HD+ Fluid AMOLED 20:9 panel with 2,400 x 1,080p resolution. The refresh rate here is 90Hz. Both the handsets are protected by 3D Corning Gorilla Glass and supports HRD10+ contents.

The OnePlus 8 Pro features a quad rear camera set-up with a 48 MP Sony IMX689 primary lens with  f/1.78, OIS, and EIS along with another 48 MP Sony IMX 586 120-degree ultra-wide lens with f/2.2, followed by an 8 MP telephoto lens with f/2.44, 3x optical zoom, 30x digital zoom, and a 5 MP colour filter sensor. 

The OnePlus 8 feature features a triple rear camera set-up. A 48 MP f/1.8 Sony IMX586 primary sensor with OIS and EIS followed by a 16 MP f/2.2, 119-degree ultra-wide lens and a 2 MP f/2.4, macro camera.

Both the devices house a 16 MP punch-hole selfie shooter which is a Sony IMX471 sensor with f/2.45 aperture. 

Moving to the battery, the OnePlus 8 and the 8 Pro packs in a 4510 mAh and 4300 mAh battery respectively. While both the phones support 30W Warp Charge 30T wired fast charging, the OnePlus 8 Pro supports 30W Wireless Charging and 5W reverse wireless charging. 

Also, for the first time, the OnePlus 8 Pro comes with an IP68 rating for protection against dust and water submersion up to a meter for 30 minutes. Other features of the smartphones include an In-display fingerprint scanner, face unlock, and NFC. 

• OnePlus 8 Pro review
• OnePlus 8 review
• OnePlus 8 Pro camera: Here’s why Sony IMX689 sensor matters

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Google already tries to link you to as many useful online coronavirus resources as possible when you run a search related to Covid-19, but now there’s a new tab on the results page – one for finding testing locations.

As The Verge points out, this is only available in the US for the time being, though it may eventually get rolled out to other regions. It partly depends on the source data that Google will be able to get access to in other countries.

If you’re in the US, run a search for “Covid-19” or something related to it, and you’ll see the special results page leap into action – on the left you’ll see links for symptoms, preventions, treatments, and now testing too.

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Follow the Testing link and you get a map of showing more than 2,000 testing locations across 43 states in the country. Note however that you may need to call ahead rather than just turn up (something which Google will remind you about).

Testing, testing

Google is also adding information from local health authorities and the CDC about testing, including details of when you need to get yourself tested and when you don’t.

According to Google, only testing locations that have been cleared as okay to publish by local authorities are being shown at the moment. The number should increase over time as more centers get up and running.

As you would expect, the situation varies by location. “Covid-19 testing information comes from government agencies, public health departments, or directly from healthcare institutions,” says Google in a support document.

Many other tech companies are playing their part in tackling the coronavirus outbreak. Apple has launched a Covid-19 screening tool for example, while both Apple and Google are working on track and trace technology that works on smartphones.

• Google’s Covid-19 tracker will be delivered to your Android phone via Google Play

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