Origami, the ancient art form solving modern problems | Miles Wu

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. For 14-year-old Miles Wu, it all starts with a simple piece of paper.

0:16Miles Wu: 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.

0:58Miles Wu: 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. 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.

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4:21Miles Wu: 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 wheel bug, 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.

5:04Miles Wu: 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.

5:27Miles Wu: 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 line at Trader 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.

6:12Miles Wu: And more recently, I've been folding even more origami birds. Two years ago, I folded some origami pigeons. By some, I mean 200 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 love. 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.

6:48Miles Wu: 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.

7:31Then 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.

7:45Miles Wu: But one fold interested me in particular, and this was the Mira 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 Ori an efficient deployable structure that's even been used to fold a solar array 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.

8:20Miles Wu: And it made me wonder if Mirror Ori could be used to improve emergency deployable shelters by making them stronger and lighter. And so for my eighth grade science fair project, I decided to study Muir Ori 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 Muir Ori that I folded and tested. And for each of these mirror ori, I wanted to see not only how much weight they could hold, but also how many times their own weight they could hold.

8:59Miles Wu: And so for two months, I transformed my family's small New York City apartment into my testing lab with mirror ori 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 mirror ori. But I quickly realized I 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 Muir Ori with the smallest and least acutely angled panels, made out of the lightest paper, had the greatest strength to weight ratio.

9:36Miles Wu: 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.

10:12Miles Wu: 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.

10:38That was Miles Wu at Play at TED 2026. 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.

11:12I'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 and 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.

11:46One thing I keep thinking about is if Miura 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 in his parents' New York City apartment. What feels distinct about Miles's innovation in this story is that he actually really did just follow his own interests 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.

12:25So 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.

13:01Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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