TED Talks Daily - Origami, the ancient art form solving modern problems | Miles Wu

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

14-year-old student Miles Wu is obsessed with origami, transforming everyday scraps of paper into unexpected creations. In a joyful talk, he explores the ancient art form — from making Christmas ornaments and pigeons to folding patterns that can hold 10,000 times their weight — and shows all the possibilities hiding inside a single piece of paper. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. For 14-year-old Miles Wu, it all starts with a simple piece of paper. No matter what, I'm always folding. Give me any scrap of paper, and I'll challenge myself to turn it into something. It's this process of turning nothing into something that sparks my imagination and draws me to origami. Miles is an origami innovator who's been folding paper into intricate shapes and patterns since he was seven years old.

He's gotten into trouble in class for turning his worksheets into ninja stars and has raised more than $4,000 for his community, one folded pigeon at a time. But in this talk, he focuses on how that same playful curiosity led him somewhere he didn't expect into the intersection of origami and science. Orgami is fun, but playing with paper has also shown me that origami has a power to stretch my creativity, help others, and even lead to new discoveries. It's amazing that something can be so strong and yet so lightweight at the same time. And it's exciting to think about what potential applications a fold like this could have. This is what it looks like when curiosity doesn't wait for

permission. And stick around after the talk, we caught up with Ted's curator Chloe Shasha Brooks, who shared a few more thoughts on what it was like to work with Miles and takeaways on the ideas he offers. That's all coming up right after a short break. And now our TED Talk of the Day. I love origami. I love the way I can transform a simple piece of paper into almost anything, like a wheelbug, my grandparents, or even a neuron cell. I'm 14 years old. I live in New York City, and I'm in ninth grade. So I'm usually busy with homework or after-school activities. But in my free time, I really enjoy doing origami. Origami is fun, but playing with paper has also shown me

that origami has the power to stretch my creativity, help others, and even lead to new discoveries. And today I'd like to share one small discovery that I made and how I got there. So I started folding origami over seven years ago, making ornaments for my family's tiny Christmas tree, and getting in trouble in class for turning my worksheets into ninja stars and paper claws.

As you can imagine, my teachers were less than overjoyed, but I told them I was making academic weapons. Over time, I began folding more complex origami and even designing my own models. But no matter what, I'm always folding. Give me any scrap of paper, and I'll challenge myself to turn it into something. For example, if I'm waiting in Linanite Tray or Joe's,

I might turn a sample cup into a crane, or even a super-long CVS receipt into a centipede. or even the New York Times into a lizard. And it's this process of turning nothing into something that sparks my imagination and draws me to origami. I've also found that origami has the power to help others. During the pandemic, eight-year-old me wrote cards and mailed origami birds to seniors at my local nursing home

to cheer them up during quarantine. And more recently, I've been folding even more origami birds. Two years ago, I folded some origami pigeons. By some, I mean to 100 of them. If you couldn't tell, pigeons are my favorite birds. And then the following year, I folded sparrows, another bird that overlooked but that I personally loved. And I folded 100 of them and sold them alongside the pigeons

to raise over $4,000 to donate to my local soup kitchen, as well as a nonprofit that rehabilitates injured and orphaned birds in New York City. And so through this project, I was able to see the power of the most humble material, a simple piece of paper, to really help my community. More recently, I've been interested in the intersection of origami and science and engineering. I think it started in middle school

when I began going down rabbit holes to see how scientists and researchers and engineers were using origami folds, for example, in space, or even to help sick people. Elise here, jumping in real quick to describe the images Miles has just shared on screen. On the left, we see an origami creation that looks like a flower, and on the right, an image of a NASA star shade in space

that's clearly mimicking the origami shape. Then we see a picture of a cylinder origami creation called a water bomb tessellation, and on the right, a picture of a cardiac stent used in surgery that's clearly based on the geometric structure and patterns built with paper. But one fold interested me in particular, and this was the mirror ori fold. It was invented in the 1970s by Koryo Mira, a Japanese astrophysicist.

It's a tessellation, which means it's a repeating pattern of parallelograms. And the way these parallelograms are arranged, they're able to fold down to an extremely compact size in one smooth motion. And this makes mirror-orient an efficient deployable structure that's even been used to fold a solar ray that was sent into space. And last year, I was also reading the news about natural disasters like Hurricane Helene. and I saw so many people displaced. And it made me wonder if Mirori could be used to improve emergency deployable shelters by making them stronger and lighter.

And so for my 8th grade science fair project, I decided to study Mirory and how I could optimize its strength-to-weight ratio. I started out by designing 18 different folding patterns. These had different heights, widths, and angles of the parallelograms in the pattern. I tested each of these patterns across three different paper weights, and each of those variations twice

for a total of 108 Mira Ori that I folded and tested. And for each of these mirrorori, I wanted to see not only how much weight they could hold, but also how many times their own weight they could hold. And so for two months, I transformed my family's small New York City apartment

into my testing lab with Mirori all over the place. When I was first starting out, I grabbed basically every heavy book and item, and I stacked them on top of the mirrorori. But I quickly realized I didn't. didn't actually have enough weights to accurately test the models. And so I asked my parents to buy some really heavy exercise weights.

250 hours later, and after a lot of heavy lifting, I found that the mere ori with the smallest and least acutely angled panels made out of the lightest paper had the greatest strength to weight ratio. The strongest pattern held almost 200 pounds, and another lighter version held more than 10,000 times its own weight. I found that the stronger patterns were more compact, and they also created trust-like structures that were able to distribute pressure evenly.

It's amazing that something can be so strong and yet so lightweight at the same time, and it's exciting to think about what potential applications a fold like this could have, maybe even helping to imagine a better emergency shelter one day. And so this work that I did by myself at home, it led to me receiving the top prize at a national STEM competition last year.

I was really shocked to receive such a big prize for simply playing with paper. And so in the future, I definitely want to keep exploring and learning, but most of all, to keep playing with origami. So I can continue to discover all the possibilities a single piece of paper can hold. Thank you. That was Miles Wu at Play at Ted, 26. We've been experimenting with something different on the show called Curator's Corner. Throughout the year, you'll hear from Ted's curators, the people who actually find and work with the speakers you hear on the show.

They will share more about the idea you just heard and the behind the scenes of how the talk came to life. And now here's Ted curator Chloe Shasha Brooks, who shares a few more thoughts about Miles and what it was like working with one of the youngest speakers to ever take the TED stage. Hi, everyone. Thanks for listening to Miles Wu's talk. I'm Chloe Shasha Brooks speaking to you from New York City. Before you go, I'm jumping in here to share some behind the scenes from this talk. More about who Miles is and why we share this talk with you today. It is rare to meet a kid as humble, studious, attentive, and kind as Miles. At only 14 years old, he has the disposition of a focused and curious adult. One of the reasons I felt most excited about Miles is that he truly played his way into an innovation

that is both beautiful to look at and potentially highly useful for a variety of needs down the line, including, as he mentioned, emergency shelters. One thing I keep thinking about is, if Mura Ori Folds have existed for this long, how has nobody else ever tried to do this experiment? How unbelievably cool that it was a 14-year-old who decided to try it at home, with stacks of books and all kinds of random objects

that weighed as much as possible and his parents' New York City apartment. What feels distinct about Miles' innovation in this story is that he actually really did just follow his own interest in folding paper. And that's something that is unique to kids. Kids just do things because it's fun and cool and interesting to do. The more we allow kids to play, the more likely kids are to discover things. So I hope this opens up a world where more people are willing to let kids play.

I hope you are as inspired by Miles as I am, and that more kids like Miles grow up to be curious and problem solvers like he is. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED research team and produced and edited by our team.

Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Tobner, and Tonzika Sung-Marnivon. Additional support from Daniela Ballereseo, Christopher Faisi Bogan, Valentina Bohani Bhanini, Ban Ban Chang, Brian Green, and Laney Lott. Learn more at podcasts.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet.

Thanks for listening.