Reggie Watts creates unpredictably brilliant performances on the spot using his voice, looping pedals and his giant brain.

Why you should listen

The winner of TED's Full Spectrum auditions, Reggie Watts works on the edge of improv performance -- at a place where you can almost visibly see his brain moving, as he pulls spoken and musical snippets from the sonosphere and blends them into a stream-of-consciousness flow. On screen, Reggie has appeared on The Conan O’Brien Show, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, HBO’s The Yes Men Save the World, Comedy Central’s Michael and Michael Have Issues and PBS’ Electric Company. Last summer, he opened nightly on Conan O'Brien’s sold-out North American “Prohibited From Being Funny on Television” tour.

What others say

“Good comedians are great philosophers. You can either just have fun with the joke or you can have fun with the joke and think about the implication of it. It’s totally up to the listener.” — Reggie Watts

Reggie Watts’ TED talk

More news and ideas from Reggie Watts

In Brief

Reggie Watts’ virtual reality dance party and more TED news

January 31, 2019

The TED community is busy with new projects and news — below, some highlights. A virtual reality dance party at Sundance. Musician and comedian Reggie Watts and artist Kiira Benzing debuted their new project “Runnin’” at the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier exhibit. “Runnin’” is an “immersive, interactive music video” backed with a hypnotic techno […]

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In Brief

Titus Kaphar and Vijay Gupta named MacArthur Fellows, a musical tribute to #MeToo and other TED news

October 16, 2018

As usual, the TED community is busy with new projects and news — here are a few highlights. Meet two newly minted MacArthur “geniuses.” Visual artist Titus Kaphar and violinist Vijay Gupta have been named 2018 MacArthur Fellows! The fellowship, established in 1981, awards $625,000 over the course of five years to individuals of exemplary creative merit, to […]

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Music

A littleBit rock ‘n’ roll: Reggie Watts rocks the newly launched SynthKit, and electronic music goes mini-modular

November 22, 2013

Above: Reggie Watts demonstrates the littleBits SynthKit For the last week, the internet has been grooving to the video above of Reggie Watts making some funky noise with the newly launched SynthKit — the latest offering from TED Fellow Ayah Bdeir’s littleBits electronic building block company, and the product of a three-way partnership between littleBits, Watts and world-renowned […]

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