I Read My Own TEDx Talks. Here Are the 38 Lines That Held Up.

I have now given six TEDx talks. This week I did something I had never done before: I sat down with the transcripts of the five that are public and read them the way a stranger would. About 12,100 words. One talk, TEDxPurdueU, had no captions on YouTube, so I transcribed the audio myself. I wanted to know which lines actually held up, which ones I keep repeating, and which numbers I would still stand behind today.

The result is a free 10 page guide, Pearls from the TEDx stage (PDF). It holds 38 lines, each linked to the exact second I said it, with a note on when you might use it in your own meeting, lecture or board room.

Five lines I would keep if I could keep only five

• "Human plus AI will beat the best human or the best AI." TEDxWarrenton, 11:51
• "Do no harm is 2,400 years old. It is time to update it to prevent harm." TEDxBabsonCollege, 9:46
• "What happens when AI listens to your symptoms before your symptoms speak?" TEDxAWC, 8:28
• "I see AI like fire. It can keep me warm and light the way, or it can burn me." TEDxPurdueU, 14:00
• "If the AI is biased, I am not scaling my care. I am scaling the bias." TEDxSouthlake, 9:02

What reading my own talks taught me

All five talks make one argument. AI should give clinicians time back and catch harm earlier. What changes is the emphasis. Warrenton leans on partnership and communication. Babson and AWC lean on prevention. Purdue is about giving medicine new senses. Southlake spreads across access, privacy and fairness. The guide shows this as a small set of charts, so an event planner can see in seconds which talk fits their room.

The same frameworks also kept coming back. SAFE (strategic, accountable, fair, ethical and early) for boards. CARE (compassion, access, respect privacy, execute well) for clinicians introducing a tool to patients. I put all of them on one page you can draw on a whiteboard.

The part I am proudest of: showing my sources

A talk is built to move people. A reference has to be right. So I went back to every statistic I used on stage and traced it to its source: the World Health Organization, the American Diabetes Association, BMJ Quality and Safety and others. Each one is listed in the guide with where it comes from. Any number I could not trace to a study is not in the guide. As a physician, I would rather drop a number than repeat one I cannot source.

What comes next

This is a living guide. My sixth talk, TEDxFactoria, joins after TEDx publishes the video. My next stage is TEDxQueensU in Kingston, Ontario, on January 23, 2027. If there is a question you want that talk to answer, send it to me.

Download the Pearls guide (PDF) · Watch all the talks · Open the full TEDx field guide