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 Health
Featuring: Jennifer Stellar, PhD + Jon Ellenthal
More from TEDMED: TEDMED.com

This is Part 2 of a two-part TEDMED Conversation with investigative journalist Katherine Eban. In this companion episode, host Jay Walker and Eban move from foundational questions about trust into the real-world consequences of its erosion.
Building on the themes introduced in Part 1, the conversation examines how breakdowns in oversight, transparency, and accountability manifest in practice—shaping everything from global clinical trials to the everyday safety of medicines. Eban draws on her reporting to reveal how systems intended to protect can fail under pressure, and what those failures mean for patients, practitioners, and the future of scientific credibility.
Together, they explore what it takes to restore trust once it has been compromised—and whether today’s institutions are equipped to meet that challenge.
Key Discussion Points & Timestamps
From theory to reality: how institutional breakdown shows up in practice (01:42)
The hidden complexity of global clinical trials and oversight (04:18)
Where accountability breaks down—and why it’s hard to fix (07:55)
The role of fear, pressure, and silence inside institutions (10:27)
What patients assume vs. what systems actually guarantee (14:03)
Can trust be rebuilt once it’s been compromised? (18:46)

Quotes of the Episode
“We like to believe there are safeguards at every step, but in reality those safeguards depend on people—and people can be under pressure, they can be constrained, or they can choose not to act.” — Katherine Eban

“The system isn’t designed to fail, but it also isn’t always designed to catch failure when it happens.” — Katherine Eban

“If trust is the foundation, what happens when that foundation begins to crack?” — Jay Walker

References + Resources
Below are links to references, books, articles, and resources mentioned during the conversation.
Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom — Katherine Eban
Katherine Eban’s reporting on the Guinea-Bissau hepatitis B study
NIH — Clinical Trials Basics
Tuskegee Syphilis Study (Encyclopaedia Britannica overview)
The Belmont Report — Ethical Principles and Guidelines for Research
Pew Research Center — Public Trust in Government

More from Katherine and Jay
KATHERINE EBAN
Katherine Eban is an investigative journalist known for her work on public health, pharmaceuticals, and institutional accountability. She is the author of Bottle of Lies, a widely acclaimed exposé on the global generic drug industry, and has written for publications including Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, and Fortune. Her reporting often examines the intersection of science, ethics, and systemic failure.

JAY WALKER
Jay Walker is the curator of TEDMED and a lifelong innovator focused on advancing ideas that improve health and medicine. Through TEDMED Conversations, he engages leading thinkers in deep, exploratory dialogue.

Connect with the Guests
KATHERINE
Website: https://www.katherineeban.com/
Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/KatherineEban
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/katherineeban.bsky.social
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherineeban
JAY
Website: https://www.tedmed.com/about/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jay-walker-5187453/

Join the Conversation
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