Day 4 of TED2026 included talks curated by curator, connector and creative producer Kelly Stoetzel, TED’s YouTube manager Kelli Hsu, psychologist and happiness expert Dan Gilbert, TED’s head of media and curation Helen Walters and TED’s digital curator Ikey Ajavon.
Watch TED2026 on TED Live, check out more photos from the event and learn more about attending a future TED conference.
Jessica Irwin speaks at TED2026: All of Us. April 16, 2026, Vancouver, BC. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)
Whose voices get heard — and whose get lost? Political scientist Joaquin Navajas has a surprising answer: in a world of polarization, everyone’s voices are heard. The very engine of democracy only works when there is a diversity of voices. But what about the voices that never make it into the room? Musician Gabriella Di Laccio says that nearly 90 percent of the music we hear was written by men. Not because women weren’t composing, but because no one was keeping track. Researcher and author Sukriti finds the same erasure in fashion: the cotton that cooled pharaohs, the bandana that symbolized the American West — all rooted in Indian textile tradition and yet stripped of their origins along the way. And some voices are missing from the conversation itself. Photographer Jessica Irwin was born with cerebral palsy, making her unable to speak. People talk over her, talk down to her and mistake silence for simplicity. She asks us to reconsider what intelligence looks like — and to remember that the inability to speak does not mean the inability to think. The question is whether we’re willing to listen. Journalist Joshua Johnson has a place to start: park your opinions, get closer and learn their story