TEDMED Conversations

Medicine is very good at measuring what happens to the body. But how do you measure what illness feels like?Artist and patient advocate Ted Meyer has spent decades using art to make the parts of the patient experience that tests and charts can miss impossible to overlook.In conversation with TEDMED Executive Director Lindsey Lynch, Meyer explores patient-created works depicting invisible pain, isolation, altered perception, scars, and survival. He also considers why medical schools are increasingly making space for patient narratives while many healthcare institutions remain more comfortable with art that soothes than art that confronts.What might change if clinicians learned to see a patient’s story as another vital source of information?This TEDMED Conversation explores art not simply as expression, but as a way to bring the whole person back into medicine.Full show notes on TEDMED.com.

What does it take to turn a powerful psychedelic experience into responsible clinical care?In this TEDMED Conversation, Heidi Allen joins Jay Walker to examine the rapidly changing future of psychedelic-assisted therapy: what patients may need, what clinicians must be trained to provide, and what could get lost as the field moves toward approval, reimbursement, and scale.Heidi looks beyond the excitement around new treatments to ask harder questions about safety, access, ethics, and implementation. How should therapists be trained for this work? What role should preparation and follow-up play? And if regulators and companies simplify care models to fit existing approval pathways, will patients receive the kind of support these treatments actually require?The conversation explores a field at a turning point, where scientific promise, commercial pressure, clinical responsibility, and patient need are all colliding.For full show notes and more from TEDMED, visit TEDMED.com.

Artificial intelligence is often described as a faster way to process information. But in healthcare, its deeper impact may come from how it changes the interactions between patients, clinicians, caregivers, systems, and synthetic agents.In this TEDMED Conversation, computer scientist Deborah Estrin joins Jay Walker to explore AI’s promise and risk as it becomes more embedded in care. Together, they examine personalization, mobile data, mental health, synthetic conversation, and the need to pair speed with judgment.Visit TEDMED.com for the full video episode and show notes.

What if awe is more than a feeling?Psychologist Jennifer Stellar joins Jon Ellenthal to explore how awe, compassion, and wonder may shape the body, influence stress and inflammation, and expand what we consider essential to health. Together, they examine whether awe can be intentionally cultivated, and why wonder may be one of health’s most overlooked ingredients.Episode: The Biology of Awe: Why Wonder Might Be Essential to HealthFeaturing: Jennifer Stellar, PhD + Jon EllenthalMore from TEDMED: TEDMED.com