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TED-Transcripts

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How close are we to uploading our minds?

TED-Ed

Imagine a future where nobody dies— instead, our minds are uploaded to a digital world. They might live on in a realistic, simulated environment with avatar bodies, and could still call in and contribute to the biological world. Mind uploading has powerful appeal— but what would it actually take to scan a person’s brain and upload their mind? The main challenges are scanning a brain in enough detail to capture the mind and perfectly recreating that detail artificially. But first, we have to know what to scan. The human brain contains about 86 billion neurons, connected by at least a hundred trillion synapses. The pattern of connectivity among the brain’s neurons, that is, all of the neurons and all their connections to each other, is called the connectome. We haven’t yet mapped the connectome, and there’s also a lot more to neural signaling. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of different kinds of connections, or synapses. Each functions in a slightly different way. Some work faster, some slower. Some grow or shrink rapidly in the process of learning; some are more stable over time. And beyond the trillions of precise, 1-to-1 connections between neurons, some neurons also spray out neurotransmitters that affect many other neurons at once. All of these different kinds of interactions would need to be mapped in order to copy a person’s mind. There are also a lot of influences on neural signaling that are poorly understood or undiscovered. To name just one example, patterns of activity between neurons are likely influenced by a type of cell called glia. Glia surround neurons and, according to some scientists, may even outnumber them by as many as ten to one. Glia were once thought to be purely for structural support, and their functions are still poorly understood, but at least some of them can generate their own signals that influence information processing. Our understanding of the brain isn’t good enough to determine what we’d need to scan in order to replicate the mind, but assuming our knowledge does advance to that point, how would we scan it? Currently, we can accurately scan a living human brain with resolutions of about half a millimeter using our best non-invasive scanning method, MRI. To detect a synapse, we’ll need to scan at a resolution of about a micron— a thousandth of a millimeter. To distinguish the kind of synapse and precisely how strong each synapse is, we’ll need even better resolution. MRI depends on powerful magnetic fields. Scanning at the resolution required to determine the details of individual synapses would requires a field strength high enough to cook a person’s tissues. So this kind of leap in resolution would require fundamentally new scanning technology. It would be more feasible to scan a dead brain using an electron microscope, but even that technology is nowhere near good enough– and requires killing the subject first. Assuming we eventually understand the brain well enough to know what to scan and develop the technology to safely scan at that resolution, the next challenge would be to recreate that information digitally. The main obstacles to doing so are computing power and storage space, both of which are improving every year. We’re actually much closer to attaining this technological capacity than we are to understanding or scanning our own minds. Artificial neural networks already run our internet search engines, digital assistants, self-driving cars, Wall Street trading algorithms, and smart phones. Nobody has yet built an artificial network with 86 billion neurons, but as computing technology improves, it may be possible to keep track of such massive data sets. At every step in the scanning and uploading process, we’d have to be certain we were capturing all the necessary information accurately— or there’s no telling what ruined version of a mind might emerge. While mind uploading is theoretically possible, we’re likely hundreds of years away from the technology and scientific understanding that would make it a reality. And that reality would come with ethical and philosophical considerations: who would have access to mind uploading? What rights would be accorded to uploaded minds? How could this technology be abused? Even if we can eventually upload our minds, whether we should remains an open question.

The medical potential of AI and metabolites

{0: 'Leila Pirhaji uses artificial intelligence for drug discovery and the treatment of metabolic diseases.'}

TED2019

In 2003, when we sequenced the human genome, we thought we would have the answer to treat many diseases. But the reality is far from that, because in addition to our genes, our environment and lifestyle could have a significant role in developing many major diseases. One example is fatty liver disease, which is affecting over 20 percent of the population globally, and it has no treatment and leads to liver cancer or liver failure. So sequencing DNA alone doesn't give us enough information to find effective therapeutics. On the bright side, there are many other molecules in our body. In fact, there are over 100,000 metabolites. Metabolites are any molecule that is supersmall in their size. Known examples are glucose, fructose, fats, cholesterol — things we hear all the time. Metabolites are involved in our metabolism. They are also downstream of DNA, so they carry information from both our genes as well as lifestyle. Understanding metabolites is essential to find treatments for many diseases. I've always wanted to treat patients. Despite that, 15 years ago, I left medical school, as I missed mathematics. Soon after, I found the coolest thing: I can use mathematics to study medicine. Since then, I've been developing algorithms to analyze biological data. So, it sounded easy: let's collect data from all the metabolites in our body, develop mathematical models to describe how they are changed in a disease and intervene in those changes to treat them. Then I realized why no one has done this before: it's extremely difficult. (Laughter) There are many metabolites in our body. Each one is different from the other one. For some metabolites, we can measure their molecular mass using mass spectrometry instruments. But because there could be, like, 10 molecules with the exact same mass, we don't know exactly what they are, and if you want to clearly identify all of them, you have to do more experiments, which could take decades and billions of dollars. So we developed an artificial intelligence, or AI, platform, to do that. We leveraged the growth of biological data and built a database of any existing information about metabolites and their interactions with other molecules. We combined all this data as a meganetwork. Then, from tissues or blood of patients, we measure masses of metabolites and find the masses that are changed in a disease. But, as I mentioned earlier, we don't know exactly what they are. A molecular mass of 180 could be either the glucose, galactose or fructose. They all have the exact same mass but different functions in our body. Our AI algorithm considered all these ambiguities. It then mined that meganetwork to find how those metabolic masses are connected to each other that result in disease. And because of the way they are connected, then we are able to infer what each metabolite mass is, like that 180 could be glucose here, and, more importantly, to discover how changes in glucose and other metabolites lead to a disease. This novel understanding of disease mechanisms then enable us to discover effective therapeutics to target that. So we formed a start-up company to bring this technology to the market and impact people's lives. Now my team and I at ReviveMed are working to discover therapeutics for major diseases that metabolites are key drivers for, like fatty liver disease, because it is caused by accumulation of fats, which are types of metabolites in the liver. As I mentioned earlier, it's a huge epidemic with no treatment. And fatty liver disease is just one example. Moving forward, we are going to tackle hundreds of other diseases with no treatment. And by collecting more and more data about metabolites and understanding how changes in metabolites leads to developing diseases, our algorithms will get smarter and smarter to discover the right therapeutics for the right patients. And we will get closer to reach our vision of saving lives with every line of code. Thank you. (Applause)

The price of a "clean" internet

{0: 'Under the label Laokoon, Hans Block develops films, theatre productions, essays, lecture performances and radio plays that deal with the question of how our idea of humans and society change or can be transformed in the digital era.', 1: 'Under the label Laokoon, Moritz Riesewieck develops films, theatre productions, essays, lecture performances and radio plays that deal with the question of how our idea of humans and society change or can be transformed in the digital era.'}

TEDxCERN

[This talk contains mature content] Moritz Riesewieck: On March 23, 2013, users worldwide discovered in their news feed a video of a young girl being raped by an older man. Before this video was removed from Facebook, it was already shared 16,000 times, and it was even liked 4,000 times. This video went viral and infected the net. Hans Block: And that was the moment we asked ourselves how could something like this get on Facebook? And at the same time, why don't we see such content more often? After all, there's a lot of revolting material online, but why do we so rarely see such crap on Facebook, Twitter or Google? MR: While image-recognition software can identify the outlines of sexual organs, blood or naked skin in images and videos, it has immense difficulties to distinguish pornographic content from holiday pictures, Adonis statues or breast-cancer screening campaigns. It can't distinguish Romeo and Juliet dying onstage from a real knife attack. It can't distinguish satire from propaganda or irony from hatred, and so on and so forth. Therefore, humans are needed to decide which of the suspicious content should be deleted, and which should remain. Humans whom we know almost nothing about, because they work in secret. They sign nondisclosure agreements, which prohibit them from talking and sharing what they see on their screens and what this work does to them. They are forced to use code words in order to hide who they work for. They are monitored by private security firms in order to ensure that they don't talk to journalists. And they are threatened by fines in case they speak. All of this sounds like a weird crime story, but it's true. These people exist, and they are called content moderators. HB: We are the directors of the feature documentary film "The Cleaners," and we would like to take you to a world that many of you may not know yet. Here's a short clip of our film. (Music) (Video) Moderator: I need to be anonymous, because we have a contract signed. We are not allowed to declare whom we are working with. The reason why I speak to you is because the world should know that we are here. There is somebody who is checking the social media. We are doing our best to make this platform safe for all of them. Delete. Ignore. Delete. Ignore. Delete. Ignore. Ignore. Delete. HB: The so-called content moderators don't get their paychecks from Facebook, Twitter or Google themselves, but from outsourcing firms around the world in order to keep the wages low. Tens of thousands of young people looking at everything we are not supposed to see. And we are talking about decapitations, mutilations, executions, necrophilia, torture, child abuse. Thousands of images in one shift — ignore, delete, day and night. And much of this work is done in Manila, where the analog toxic waste from the Western world was transported for years by container ships, now the digital waste is dumped there via fiber-optic cable. And just as the so-called scavengers rummage through gigantic tips on the edge of the city, the content moderators click their way through an endless toxic ocean of images and videos and all manner of intellectual garbage, so that we don't have to look at it. MR: But unlike the wounds of the scavengers, those of the content moderators remain invisible. Full of shocking and disturbing content, these pictures and videos burrow into their memories where, at any time, they can have unpredictable effects: eating disorders, loss of libido, anxiety disorders, alcoholism, depression, which can even lead to suicide. The pictures and videos infect them, and often never let them go again. If they are unlucky, they develop post-traumatic stress disorders, like soldiers after war missions. In our film, we tell the story of a young man who had to monitor livestreams of self-mutilations and suicide attempts, again and again, and who eventually committed suicide himself. It's not an isolated case, as we've been told. This is the price all of us pay for our so-called clean and safe and "healthy" environments on social media. Never before in the history of mankind has it been easier to reach millions of people around the globe in a few seconds. What is posted on social media spreads so quickly, becomes viral and excites the minds of people all around the globe. Before it is deleted, it is often already too late. Millions of people have already been infected with hatred and anger, and they either become active online, by spreading or amplifying hatred, or they take to the streets and take up arms. HB: Therefore, an army of content moderators sit in front of a screen to avoid new collateral damage. And they are deciding, as soon as possible, whether the content stays on the platform — ignore; or disappears — delete. But not every decision is as clear as the decision about a child-abuse video. What about controversial content, ambivalent content, uploaded by civil rights activists or citizen journalists? The content moderators often decide on such cases at the same speed as the [clear] cases. MR: We will show you a video now, and we would like to ask you to decide: Would you delete it, or would you not delete it? (Video) (Air strike sounds) (Explosion) (People speaking in Arabic) MR: Yeah, we did some blurring for you. A child would potentially be dangerously disturbed and extremely frightened by such content. So, you rather delete it? But what if this video could help investigate the war crimes in Syria? What if nobody would have heard about this air strike, because Facebook, YouTube, Twitter would have decided to take it down? Airwars, a nongovernmental organization based in London, tries to find those videos as quickly as possible whenever they are uploaded to social media, in order to archive them. Because they know, sooner or later, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter would take such content down. People armed with their mobile phones can make visible what journalists often do not have access to. Civil rights groups often do not have any better option to quickly make their recordings accessible to a large audience than by uploading them to social media. Wasn't this the empowering potential the World Wide Web should have? Weren't these the dreams people in its early stages had about the World Wide Web? Can't pictures and videos like these persuade people who have become insensitive to facts to rethink? HB: But instead, everything that might be disturbing is deleted. And there's a general shift in society. Media, for example, more and more often use trigger warnings at the top of articles which some people may perceive as offensive or troubling. Or more and more students at universities in the United States demand the banishment of antique classics which depict sexual violence or assault from the curriculum. But how far should we go with that? Physical integrity is guaranteed as a human right in constitutions worldwide. In the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, this right expressly applies to mental integrity. But even if the potentially traumatic effect of images and videos is hard to predict, do we want to become so cautious that we risk losing social awareness of injustice? So what to do? Mark Zuckerberg recently stated that in the future, the users, we, or almost everybody, will decide individually what they would like to see on the platform, by personal filter settings. So everyone could easily claim to remain undisturbed by images of war or other violent conflicts, like ... MR: I'm the type of guy who doesn't mind seeing breasts and I'm very interested in global warming, but I don't like war so much. HB: Yeah, I'm more the opposite, I have zero interest in naked breasts or naked bodies at all. But why not guns? I like guns, yes. MR: Come on, if we don't share a similar social consciousness, how shall we discuss social problems? How shall we call people to action? Even more isolated bubbles would emerge. One of the central questions is: "How, in the future, freedom of expression will be weighed against the people's need for protection." It's a matter of principle. Do we want to design an either open or closed society for the digital space? At the heart of the matter is "freedom versus security." Facebook has always wanted to be a "healthy" platform. Above all, users should feel safe and secure. It's the same choice of words the content moderators in the Philippines used in a lot of our interviews. (Video) The world that we are living in right now, I believe, is not really healthy. (Music) In this world, there is really an evil who exists. (Music) We need to watch for it. (Music) We need to control it — good or bad. (Music) [Look up, Young man! —God] MR: For the young content moderators in the strictly Catholic Philippines, this is linked to a Christian mission. To counter the sins of the world which spread across the web. "Cleanliness is next to godliness," is a saying everybody in the Philippines knows. HB: And others motivate themselves by comparing themselves with their president, Rodrigo Duterte. He has been ruling the Philippines since 2016, and he won the election with the promise: "I will clean up." And what that means is eliminating all kinds of problems by literally killing people on the streets who are supposed to be criminals, whatever that means. And since he was elected, an estimated 20,000 people have been killed. And one moderator in our film says, "What Duterte does on the streets, I do for the internet." And here they are, our self-proclaimed superheroes, who enforce law and order in our digital world. They clean up, they polish everything clean, they free us from everything evil. Tasks formerly reserved to state authorities have been taken over by college graduates in their early 20s, equipped with three- to five-day training — this is the qualification — who work on nothing less than the world's rescue. MR: National sovereignties have been outsourced to private companies, and they pass on their responsibilities to third parties. It's an outsourcing of the outsourcing of the outsourcing, which takes place. With social networks, we are dealing with a completely new infrastructure, with its own mechanisms, its own logic of action and therefore, also, its own new dangers, which had not yet existed in the predigitalized public sphere. HB: When Mark Zuckerberg was at the US Congress or at the European Parliament, he was confronted with all kinds of critics. And his reaction was always the same: "We will fix that, and I will follow up on that with my team." But such a debate shouldn't be held in back rooms of Facebook, Twitter or Google — such a debate should be openly discussed in new, cosmopolitan parliaments, in new institutions that reflect the diversity of people contributing to a utopian project of a global network. And while it may seem impossible to consider the values of users worldwide, it's worth believing that there's more that connects us than separates us. MR: Yeah, at a time when populism is gaining strength, it becomes popular to justify the symptoms, to eradicate them, to make them invisible. This ideology is spreading worldwide, analog as well as digital, and it's our duty to stop it before it's too late. The question of freedom and democracy must not only have these two options. HB: Delete. MR: Or ignore. HB: Thank you very much. (Applause)

What productive conflict can offer a workplace

{0: 'TED Fellow Jess Kutch is the cofounder of Coworker.org, a nonprofit that helps people join together to improve their jobs and workplaces.'}

TED2019

I am a labor organizer, and in 2013, I cofounded an organization called coworker.org that uses technology to help people join with coworkers and organize for improvements in the workplace. Now, there are two kinds of reactions to what I do. Actually, no, there are three. The first is complete confusion about what organizing is. When my doctor asked what I do and I told him, he thought I meant organizing, like, Marie Kondo-style. (Laughter) He was like, "Oh, that's so great, I could use some of that around here. I would love to clean up our patient files." And I had to explain to him that no, no, it's not that kind of organizing, it's more like if you showed up to work tomorrow and all the nurses in the office had gotten together to ask for an across-the-board raise. (Laughter) "Oh," he replied, and he got really quiet. (Laughter) Yeah, and that's the second kind of reaction: the uncomfortable kind. People usually withdraw from the conversation and find someone else to talk to. Finally, there's the third reaction, the excited one, the, "Oh my God, yes! We need this!" And someone always proceeds to tell me a story. It's always a story about a job or a coworker or a friend who's enduring something awful at work. What I've noticed is that there is never a neutral response to what I do. You're either repelled by it, or you're struck with a lightning bolt of excitement. So why does my work stir up such strong reactions? My hunch is that it's about conflict. If you have power in your workplace, maybe as a CEO or a senior leader of some kind, you're going to feel uncomfortable with that power being challenged. But if you lack power, or you know someone who lacks it and needs it, you might grab me by the shoulders and shake me, you're so pumped. But really, we can all benefit from understanding what conflict can offer in our workplaces. The power imbalance in our workplace is real, and it's constantly changing. Power moves between us, depending on our roles and status. Now, sometimes this can feel like office politics, right? Which is never fun. But when we contest for power thoughtfully and together with our coworkers, it can be incredibly productive. And it's that kind of productive conflict that I want to talk to you all about today, the kind that can make some of us uncomfortable. Business leaders should embrace when their workers conflict with policies and decisions, both for what it teaches us and for what it says about our commitment to each other. So what do I mean by "productive conflict"? Well, let me tell you a story. In 2016, a store employee for an outdoor retailer — I'll call her "Alex" — Alex approached her boss and asked for a raise. Now, she was told her pay was fairly standard for her position and that her boss didn't even have the authority to give such a raise. And that was supposed to be the end of the conversation. Unhappy with that answer, Alex went home, and she decided to create a campaign on coworker.org, asking the corporate office to give raises to store employees. Within days, employees from around the country began joining Alex's effort and sharing their own stories about what they were earning — 11, 12 dollars an hour — and how that wage was impacting their lives. Some even shared that they had quit recently to work for competitors who paid more. But here's the thing: they also shared that they didn't want to quit, they liked their job, they believed in the company's mission, but for them, the pay issue was a growing problem in their work lives. Well, after weeks of this groundswell of employee activism, the company decided to raise wages by five to 15 percent in cities across the country. And that's what I mean by productive conflict: pushing up against the things that aren't working for us when there exists no other path forward. The other thing I learned in doing this work is that people engage in productive conflict when they care about their jobs and their coworkers. Now, that surprised me at first. I expected the worst jobs, the worst workplaces, to have the most employee activism on our site, but the opposite is often true. When we come together, we can accomplish great things. At one company, there are more than 50 campaigns by employees there on issues ranging from dress code changes to legitimate safety concerns. And get this: that same company has the lowest voluntary turnover rate of any major chain in its sector. And it also has one of the higher productivity rates as well. Business leaders: you shouldn't fear conflict, and you shouldn't try to tamp down on it the minute it bubbles up in your workforce. While it can introduce uncertainties that can be difficult to manage, those uncertainties are trying to tell you something about an underlying problem that needs your attention. And I think this is especially important right now, you know, as technology transforms nearly everyone's job and as the structures that contain our work are changing at a pace not seen since the Industrial Revolution. We all need to be shaping and participating in the future of work. We all need to be challenging and changing the parts of our work lives that are broken. So I hope the next time a coworker invites you maybe to join a sign-on letter to your boss, or a group of employees asks for a meeting to discuss their concerns about the new health care plan, I hope you'll consider it an opportunity to build a better workplace, a stronger business and an economy that works for all of us. Thank you. (Applause)

Why do Americans vote on Tuesdays?

TED-Ed

I want to tell you all about a piece of American history that is so secret, that nobody has done anything about it for 167 years, until right now. And the way that we're going to uncover this vestigial organ of America past is by asking this question: Why? As we all know — (Laughter) we are in the middle of another presidential election, hotly contested, as you can see. (Laughter) But what you may not know is that American voter turnout ranks near the bottom of all countries in the entire world, 138th of 172 nations. This is the world's most famous democracy. So ... Why do we vote on Tuesday? Does anybody know? And as a matter of fact, Michigan and Arizona are voting today. Here's the answer: Absolutely no good reason whatsoever. (Laughter) I'm not joking. You will not find the answer in the Declaration of Independence, nor will you find it in the Constitution. It is just a stupid law from 1845. (Laughter) In 1845, Americans traveled by horse and buggy. As did I, evidently. It took a day to get to the county seat to vote, a day to get back, and you couldn't travel on the Sabbath, so, Tuesday it was. I don't often travel by horse and buggy, I would imagine most of you don't, so when I found out about this, I was fascinated. I linked up with a group called, what else — "Why Tuesday?" to go and ask our nation's most prominent elected leaders if they knew the answer to the question, "Why do we vote on Tuesday?" (Video) Rick Santorum: Anybody knows? OK, I'm going to be stumped on this. Anybody knows why we vote on Tuesdays? Jacob Soboroff: Do you happen to know? Ron Paul: On Tuesdays? JS: The day after the first Monday in November. RP: I don't know how that originated. JS: Do you know why we do vote on Tuesday? Newt Gingrich: No. Dick Lugar: No, I don't. (Laughter) Dianne Feinstein: I don't. Darrell Issa: No. John Kerry: In truth, really, I'm not sure why. JS: OK, thanks very much. (Laughter) JS: These are people that live for election day, yet they don't know why we vote on that very day. (Laughter) Chris Rock said, "They don't want you to vote. If they did, we wouldn't vote on a Tuesday in November. Have you ever thrown a party on a Tuesday? (Laughter) No, of course not. Nobody would show up." (Laughter) Here's the cool part. Because we asked this question, "Why Tuesday?" there is now this bill, the Weekend Voting Act in the Congress of the United States of America. It would move election day from Tuesday to the weekend, so that — duh — more people can vote. (Applause) It has only taken 167 years, but finally, we are on the verge of changing American history. Thank you very much. (Applause) Thanks a lot. (Applause)

Lessons from fungi on markets and economics

{0: 'Toby Kiers investigates cooperation and punishment in nature.'}

TED@BCG Mumbai

So I stand before you as an evolutionary biologist, a professor of evolutionary biology, which sounds like a rather fancy title, if I may say so myself. And I'm going to talk about two topics that aren't normally talked about together, and that's market economies and fungi. Or is it fun-GUY, or, as we say in Europe now, fun-GEE? There's still no consensus on how to say this word. So I want you to imagine a market economy that's 400 million years old, one that's so ubiquitous that it operates in almost every ecosystem of the world, so huge that it can connect millions of traders simultaneously, and so persistent that it survived mass extinctions. It's here, right now, under our feet. You just can't see it. And unlike human economies that rely on cognition to make decisions, traders in this market, they beg, borrow, steal, cheat, all in the absence of thought. So hidden from our eyes, plant roots are colonized by a fungus called arbuscule mycorrhizae. Now the fungus forms these complex networks underground of fine filaments thinner than even threads of cotton. So follow one of these fungi, and it connects multiple plants simultaneously. You can think of it as an underground subway system, where each root is a station, where resources are loaded and unloaded. And it's also very dense, so roughly the length of many meters, even a kilometer, in a single gram of dirt. So that's the length of 10 football fields in just a thimbleful of soil. And it's everywhere. So if you passed over a tree, a shrub, a vine, even a tiny weed, you passed over a mycorrhizal network. Roughly 80 percent of all plant species are associated with these mycorrhizal fungi. So what does a root covered in fungi have to do with our global economy? And why as an evolutionary biologist have I spent the last 10 years of my life learning economic jargon? Well, the first thing you need to understand is that trade deals made by plant and fungal partners are surprisingly similar to those made by us, but perhaps even more strategic. You see, plant and fungal partners, they're not exchanging stocks and bonds, they're exchanging essential resources, and for the fungus, that's sugars and fats. It gets all of its carbon directly from the plant partner. So much carbon, so every year, roughly five billion tons of carbon from plants go into this network underground. For the root, what they need is phosphorus and nitrogen, so by exchanging their carbon they get access to all of the nutrients collected by that fungal network. So to make the trade, the fungus penetrates into the root cell of the host and forms a tiny structure called an arbuscule, which is Latin for "little tree." Now, you can think of this as the physical stock exchange of the trade market. So up until now, it seems very harmonious. Right? I scratch your back, you scratch mine, both partners get what they need. But here is where we need to pause and understand the power of evolution and natural selection. You see, there's no room for amateur traders on this market. Making the right trade strategy determines who lives and who dies. Now, I use the word strategy, but of course plant and fungi, they don't have brains. They're making these exchanges in the absence of anything that we would consider as thought. But, as scientists, we use behavioral terms such as strategy to describe behaviors to certain conditions, actions and reactions that are actually programmed into the DNA of the organism. So I started studying these trade strategies when I was 19 years old and I was living in the tropical rainforests of Panama. Now, everybody at the time was interested in this incredible diversity aboveground. And it was hyperdiversity. These are tropical rainforests. But I was interested in the complexity belowground. We knew that the networks existed, and we knew they were important, and I'm going to say it again, by important I mean important, so the basis of all plant nutrition for all the diversity that you do see aboveground. But at the time, we didn't know how these networks worked. We didn't know how they functioned. Why did only certain plants interact with certain fungi? So fast-forward to when I started my own group, and we really began to play with this trade market. You see, we would manipulate conditions. We would create a good trading partner by growing a plant in the sun and a poor trading partner by growing it in the shade. We would then connect these with a fungal network. And we found that the fungi were consistently good at discriminating among good and bad trading partners. They would allocate more resources to the host plant giving them more carbon. Now, we would run the reciprocal experiments where we would inoculate a host plant with good and bad fungi, and they were also good at discriminating between these trade partners. So what you have there is the perfect conditions for a market to emerge. It's a simple market, but it's a market nonetheless, where the better trading partner is consistently favored. But is it a fair market? Now this is where you need to understand that, like humans, plants and fungi are incredibly opportunistic. There's evidence that the fungus, once it penetrates into the plant cell, it can actually hijack the plant's own nutrient uptake system. It does this by suppressing the plant's own ability to take up nutrients from the soil. So this creates a dependency of the plant on the fungus. It's a false addiction, of sorts, whereby the plant has to feed the fungus just to get access to the resources right around its own root. There's also evidence that the fungi are good at inflating the price of nutrients. They do this by extracting the nutrients from the soil, but then rather than trading them with the host, they hoard them in their network, so this makes them unavailable to the plant and other competing fungi. So basic economics, as resource availability goes down, the value goes up. The plant is forced to pay more for the same amount of resources. But it's not all in favor of the fungus. Plants can be extremely cunning as well. There are some orchids — and I always think orchids somehow seem like the most devious of the plant species in the world — and there are some orchids that just tap directly into the network and steal all their carbon. So these orchids, they don't even make green leaves to photosynthesize. They're just white. So rather than photosynthesizing, tap into the network, steal the carbon and give nothing in return. Now I think it's fair to say that these types of parasites also flourish in our human markets. So as we began to decode these strategies, we learned some lessons. And the first one was that there's no altruism in this system. There's no trade favors. We don't see strong evidence of the fungus helping dying or struggling plants unless it directly benefits the fungus itself. Now I'm not saying if this is good or bad. Unlike humans, a fungus, of course, cannot judge its own morality. And as a biologist, I'm not advocating for these types of ruthless neoliberal market dynamics enacted by the fungi. But the trade system, it provides us with a benchmark to study what an economy looks like when it's been shaped by natural selection for hundreds of millions of years in the absence of morality, when strategies are just based on the gathering and processing of information, uncontaminated by cognition: no jealousy, no spite, but no hope, no joy. So we've made progress in decoding the most basic trade principles at this point, but as scientists we always want to take it one step further, and we're interested in more complex economic dilemmas. And specifically we're interested in the effects of inequality. So inequality has really become a defining feature of today's economic landscape. But the challenges of inequality are not unique to the human world. I think as humans we tend to think that everything's unique to us, but organisms in nature must face relentless variation in their access to resources. How does a fungus that can again be meters long change its trade strategy when it's exposed simultaneously to a rich patch and a poor patch? And, more generally, how do organisms in nature use trade to their advantage when they're faced with uncertainty in terms of their access to resources? Here's where I have to let you in on a secret: studying trade underground is incredibly difficult. You can't see where or when important trade deals take place. So our group helped pioneer a method, a technology, whereby we could tag nutrients with nanoparticles, fluorescing nanoparticles called quantum dots. What the quantum dots allow us to do is actually light up the nutrients so we can visually track their movements across the fungal network and into the host root. So this allows us finally to see the unseen, so we can study how fungi bargain at a small scale with their plant hosts. So to study inequality, we exposed a fungal network to these varying concentrations of fluorescing phosphorus, mimicking patches of abundance and scarcity across this artificial landscape. We then carefully quantified fungal trade. And we found two things. The first thing we found was that inequality encouraged the fungus to trade more. So I can use the word "encouraged" or "stimulated" or "forced," but the bottom line is that compared to control conditions, inequality was associated with higher levels of trade. This is important, because it suggests that evolving a trade partnership in nature can help organisms cope with the uncertainty of accessing resources. Second, we found that, exposed to inequality, the fungus would move resources from the rich patch of the network, actively transport them to the poor side of the network. Now, of course, we could see this because the patches were fluorescing in different colors. So at first, this result was incredibly puzzling. Was it to help the poor side of the network? No. We found that the fungus gained more by first moving the resources to where demand was higher. Simply by changing where across the network the fungus was trading, it could manipulate the value of those resources. Now this stimulated us to really dig deeper into how information is shared. It suggests a high level of sophistication, or at least a medium level of sophistication in an organism with no cognition. How is it that a fungus can sense market conditions across its network and then make calculations of where and when to trade? So we wanted to look about information and how it's shared across this network, how the fungus integrates cues. So to do that, what you need to do is dive deep in and get a higher resolution into the network itself. We began to study complex flows inside the hyphal network. So what you're looking at right now is a living fungal network with the cellular contents moving across it. This is happening in real time, so you can see the time stamp up there. So this is happening right now. This video isn't sped up. This is what is happening under our feet right now. And there's a couple of things that I want you to notice. It speeds up, it slows down, it switches directions. So we're working now with biophysicists to try to dissect this complexity. How is the fungus using these complex flow patterns to share and process information and make these trade decisions? Are fungi better at making trade calculations than us? Now here's where we can potentially borrow models from nature. We're increasingly reliant on computer algorithms to make us profitable trades in split-second time scales. But computer algorithms and fungi, they both operate in similar, uncognitive ways. The fungi just happens to be a living machine. What would happen if we compare and compete the trading strategies of these two? Who would win? The tiny capitalist that's been around since before and the fall of the dinosaurs? My money is on the fungus. Thank you. (Applause)

What vaccinating vampire bats can teach us about pandemics

{0: 'Daniel Streicker investigates how everyday killer pathogens can provide insight into future outbreaks of infectious disease.'}

TEDMED 2018

The story that I'm going to tell you today, for me, began back in 2006. That was when I first heard about an outbreak of mysterious illness that was happening in the Amazon rainforest of Peru. The people that were getting sick from this illness, they had horrifying symptoms, nightmarish. They had unbelievable headaches, they couldn't eat or drink. Some of them were even hallucinating — confused and aggressive. The most tragic part of all was that many of the victims were children. And of all of those that got sick, none survived. It turned out that what was killing people was a virus, but it wasn't Ebola, it wasn't Zika, it wasn't even some new virus never before seen by science. These people were dying of an ancient killer, one that we've known about for centuries. They were dying of rabies. And what all of them had in common was that as they slept, they'd all been bitten by the only mammal that lives exclusively on a diet of blood: the vampire bat. These sorts of outbreaks that jump from bats into people, they've become more and more common in the last couple of decades. In 2003, it was SARS. It showed up in Chinese animal markets and spread globally. That virus, like the one from Peru, was eventually traced back to bats, which have probably harbored it, undetected, for centuries. Then, 10 years later, we see Ebola showing up in West Africa, and that surprised just about everybody because, according to the science at the time, Ebola wasn't really supposed to be in West Africa. That ended up causing the largest and most widespread Ebola outbreak in history. So there's a disturbing trend here, right? Deadly viruses are appearing in places where we can't really expect them, and as a global health community, we're caught on our heels. We're constantly chasing after the next viral emergency in this perpetual cycle, always trying to extinguish epidemics after they've already started. So with new diseases appearing every year, now is really the time that we need to start thinking about what we can do about it. If we just wait for the next Ebola to happen, we might not be so lucky next time. We might face a different virus, one that's more deadly, one that spreads better among people, or maybe one that just completely outwits our vaccines, leaving us defenseless. So can we anticipate pandemics? Can we stop them? Those are really hard questions to answer, and the reason is that the pandemics — the ones that spread globally, the ones that we really want to anticipate — they're actually really rare events. And for us as a species that is a good thing — that's why we're all here. But from a scientific standpoint, it's a little bit of a problem. That's because if something happens just once or twice, that's really not enough to find any patterns. Patterns that could tell us when or where the next pandemic might strike. So what do we do? Well, I think one of the solutions we may have is to study some viruses that routinely jump from wild animals into people, or into our pets, or our livestock, even if they're not the same viruses that we think are going to cause pandemics. If we can use those everyday killer viruses to work out some of the patterns of what drives that initial, crucial jump from one species to the next, and, potentially, how we might stop it, then we're going to end up better prepared for those viruses that jump between species more rarely but pose a greater threat of pandemics. Now, rabies, as terrible as it is, turns out to be a pretty nice virus in this case. You see, rabies is a scary, deadly virus. It has 100 percent fatality. That means if you get infected with rabies and you don't get treated early, there's nothing that can be done. There is no cure. You will die. And rabies is not just a problem of the past either. Even today, rabies still kills 50 to 60,000 people every year. Just put that number in some perspective. Imagine the whole West African Ebola outbreak — about two-and-a-half years; you condense all the people that died in that outbreak into just a single year. That's pretty bad. But then, you multiply it by four, and that's what happens with rabies every single year. So what sets rabies apart from a virus like Ebola is that when people get it, they tend not to spread it onward. That means that every single time a person gets rabies, it's because they were bitten by a rabid animal, and usually, that's a dog or a bat. But it also means that those jumps between species, which are so important to understand, but so rare for most viruses, for rabies, they're actually happening by the thousands. So in a way, rabies is almost like the fruit fly or the lab mouse of deadly viruses. This is a virus that we can use and study to find patterns and potentially test out new solutions. And so, when I first heard about that outbreak of rabies in the Peruvian Amazon, it struck me as something potentially powerful because this was a virus that was jumping from bats into other animals often enough that we might be able to anticipate it ... Maybe even stop it. So as a first-year graduate student with a vague memory of my high school Spanish class, I jumped onto a plane and flew off to Peru, looking for vampire bats. And the first couple of years of this project were really tough. I had no shortage of ambitious plans to rid Latin America of rabies, but at the same time, there seemed to be an equally endless supply of mudslides and flat tires, power outages, stomach bugs all stopping me. But that was kind of par for the course, working in South America, and to me, it was part of the adventure. But what kept me going was the knowledge that for the first time, the work that I was doing might actually have some real impact on people's lives in the short term. And that struck me the most when we actually went out to the Amazon and were trying to catch vampire bats. You see, all we had to do was show up at a village and ask around. "Who's been getting bitten by a bat lately?" And people raised their hands, because in these communities, getting bitten by a bat is an everyday occurrence, happens every day. And so all we had to do was go to the right house, open up a net and show up at night, and wait until the bats tried to fly in and feed on human blood. So to me, seeing a child with a bite wound on his head or blood stains on his sheets, that was more than enough motivation to get past whatever logistical or physical headache I happened to be feeling on that day. Since we were working all night long, though, I had plenty of time to think about how I might actually solve this problem, and it stood out to me that there were two burning questions. The first was that we know that people are bitten all the time, but rabies outbreaks aren't happening all the time — every couple of years, maybe even every decade, you get a rabies outbreak. So if we could somehow anticipate when and where the next outbreak would be, that would be a real opportunity, meaning we could vaccinate people ahead of time, before anybody starts dying. But the other side of that coin is that vaccination is really just a Band-Aid. It's kind of a strategy of damage control. Of course it's lifesaving and important and we have to do it, but at the end of the day, no matter how many cows, how many people we vaccinate, we're still going to have exactly the same amount of rabies up there in the bats. The actual risk of getting bitten hasn't changed at all. So my second question was this: Could we somehow cut the virus off at its source? If we could somehow reduce the amount of rabies in the bats themselves, then that would be a real game changer. We'd been talking about shifting from a strategy of damage control to one based on prevention. So, how do we begin to do that? Well, the first thing we needed to understand was how this virus actually works in its natural host — in the bats. And that is a tall order for any infectious disease, particularly one in a reclusive species like bats, but we had to start somewhere. So the way we started was looking at some historical data. When and where had these outbreaks happened in the past? And it became clear that rabies was a virus that just had to be on the move. It couldn't sit still. The virus might circulate in one area for a year, maybe two, but unless it found a new group of bats to infect somewhere else, it was pretty much bound to go extinct. So with that, we solved one key part of the rabies transmission challenge. We knew we were dealing with a virus on the move, but we still couldn't say where it was going. Essentially, what I wanted was more of a Google Maps-style prediction, which is, "What's the destination of the virus? What's the route it's going to take to get there? How fast will it move?" To do that, I turned to the genomes of rabies. You see, rabies, like many other viruses, has a tiny little genome, but one that evolves really, really quickly. So quickly that by the time the virus has moved from one point to the next, it's going to have picked up a couple of new mutations. And so all we have to do is kind of connect the dots across an evolutionary tree, and that's going to tell us where the virus has been in the past and how it spread across the landscape. So, I went out and I collected cow brains, because that's where you get rabies viruses. And from genome sequences that we got from the viruses in those cow brains, I was able to work out that this is a virus that spreads between 10 and 20 miles each year. OK, so that means we do now have the speed limit of the virus, but still missing that other key part of where is it going in the first place. For that, I needed to think a little bit more like a bat, because rabies is a virus — it doesn't move by itself, it has to be moved around by its bat host, so I needed to think about how far to fly and how often to fly. My imagination didn't get me all that far with this and neither did little digital trackers that we first tried putting on bats. We just couldn't get the information we needed. So instead, we turned to the mating patterns of bats. We could look at certain parts of the bat genome, and they were telling us that some groups of bats were mating with each other and others were more isolated. And the virus was basically following the trail laid out by the bat genomes. Yet one of those trails stood out as being a little bit surprising — hard to believe. That was one that seemed to cross straight over the Peruvian Andes, crossing from the Amazon to the Pacific coast, and that was kind of hard to believe, as I said, because the Andes are really tall — about 22,000 feet, and that's way too high for a vampire to fly. Yet — (Laughter) when we looked more closely, we saw, in the northern part of Peru, a network of valley systems that was not quite too tall for the bats on either side to be mating with each other. And we looked a little bit more closely — sure enough, there's rabies spreading through those valleys, just about 10 miles each year. Basically, exactly as our evolutionary models had predicated it would be. What I didn't tell you is that that's actually kind of an important thing because rabies had never been seen before on the western slopes of the Andes, or on the whole Pacific coast of South America, so we were actually witnessing, in real time, a historical first invasion into a pretty big part of South America, which raises the key question: "What are we going to do about that?" Well, the obvious short-term thing we can do is tell people: you need to vaccinate yourselves, vaccinate your animals; rabies is coming. But in the longer term, it would be even more powerful if we could use that new information to stop the virus from arriving altogether. Of course, we can't just tell bats, "Don't fly today," but maybe we could stop the virus from hitching a ride along with the bat. And that brings us to the key lesson that we have learned from rabies-management programs all around the world, whether it's dogs, foxes, skunks, raccoons, North America, Africa, Europe. It's that vaccinating the animal source is the only thing that stops rabies. So, can we vaccinate bats? You hear about vaccinating dogs and cats all the time, but you don't hear too much about vaccinating bats. It might sound like a crazy question, but the good news is that we actually already have edible rabies vaccines that are specially designed for bats. And what's even better is that these vaccines can actually spread from bat to bat. All you have to do is smear it on one and let the bats' habit of grooming each other take care of the rest of the work for you. So that means, at the very least, we don't have to be out there vaccinating millions of bats one by one with tiny little syringes. (Laughter) But just because we have that tool doesn't mean we know how to use it. Now we have a whole laundry list of questions. How many bats do we need to vaccinate? What time of the year do we need to be vaccinating? How many times a year do we need to be vaccinating? All of these are questions that are really fundamental to rolling out any sort of vaccination campaign, but they're questions that we can't answer in the laboratory. So instead, we're taking a slightly more colorful approach. We're using real wild bats, but fake vaccines. We use edible gels that make bat hair glow and UV powders that spread between bats when they bump into each other, and that's letting us study how well a real vaccine might spread in these wild colonies of bats. We're still in the earliest phases of this work, but our results so far are incredibly encouraging. They're suggesting that using the vaccines that we already have, we could potentially drastically reduce the size of rabies outbreaks. And that matters, because as you remember, rabies is a virus that always has to be on the move, and so every time we reduce the size of an outbreak, we're also reducing the chance that the virus makes it onto the next colony. We're breaking a link in the chain of transmission. And so every time we do that, we're bringing the virus one step closer to extinction. And so the thought, for me, of a world in the not-too-distant future where we're actually talking about getting rid of rabies altogether, that is incredibly encouraging and exciting. So let me return to the original question. Can we prevent pandemics? Well, there is no silver-bullet solution to this problem, but my experiences with rabies have left me pretty optimistic about it. I think we're not too far from a future where we're going to have genomics to forecast outbreaks and we're going to have clever new technologies, like edible, self-spreading vaccines, that can get rid of these viruses at their source before they have a chance to jump into people. So when it comes to fighting pandemics, the holy grail is just to get one step ahead. And if you ask me, I think one of the ways that we can do that is using some of the problems that we already have now, like rabies — sort of the way an astronaut might use a flight simulator, figuring out what works and what doesn't, and building up our tool set so that when the stakes are high, we're not flying blind. Thank you. (Applause)

Are the Illuminati real?

TED-Ed

The year was 1776. In Bavaria, new ideals of rationalism, religious freedom, and universal human rights competed with the Catholic church’s heavy influence over public affairs. Across the Atlantic, a new nation staked its claim for independence on the basis of these ideas. But back in Bavaria, law professor Adam Weishaupt’s attempts to teach secular philosophy continued to be frustrated. Weishaupt decided to spread his ideas through a secret society that would shine a light on the shortcomings of the Church’s ideology. He called his secret society the Illuminati. Weishaupt modelled aspects of his secret society off a group called the Freemasons. Originally an elite stoneworkers’ guild in the late Middle Ages, the Freemasons had gone from passing down the craft of masonry to more generally promoting ideals of knowledge and reason. Over time, they had grown into a semi-secret, exclusive order that included many wealthy and influential individuals, with elaborate, secret initiation rituals. Weishaupt created his parallel society while also joining the Freemasons and recruiting from their ranks. He adopted the code name Spartacus for himself, after the famed leader of the Roman slave revolt. Early members became the Illuminati’s ruling council, or Areopagus. One of these members, Baron Adolph Knigge, was also a freemason, and became an influential recruiter. With Knigge’s help, the Illuminati expanded their numbers, gained influence within several Masonic chapters, and incorporated Masonic rituals. By 1784, there were over 600 members, including influential scholars and politicians. As the Illuminati gained members, the American Revolution also gained momentum. Thomas Jefferson would later cite Weishaupt as an inspiration. European monarchs and clergy were fearful of similar revolts on their home soil. Meanwhile, the existence of the Illuminati had become an open secret. Both the Illuminati and the Freemasons drew exclusively from society’s wealthy elite, which meant they were constantly rubbing shoulders with members of the religious and political establishment. Many in the government and church believed that both groups were determined to undermine the people’s religious faith. But these groups didn’t necessarily oppose religion— they just believed it should be kept separate from governance. Still, the suspicious Bavarian government started keeping records of alleged members of the Illuminati. Just as Illuminati members begun to secure important positions in local governments and universities, a 1784 decree by Duke Karl Theodor of Bavaria banned all secret societies. While a public ban on something ostensibly secret might seem difficult to enforce, in this case it worked. Only nine years after its founding, the group dissolved, their records were seized, and Weishaupt forced into exile. The Illuminati would become more notorious in their afterlife than they had ever been in their brief existence. A decade later, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, conservative authors claimed the Illuminati had survived their banishment and orchestrated the overthrow of the monarchy. In the United States, preacher Jedidiah Morse promoted similar ideas of an Illuminati conspiracy against the government. But though the idea of a secret group orchestrating political upheaval is still alive and well today, there is no evidence that the Illuminati survived, reformed, or went underground. Their brief tenure is well-documented in Bavarian government records, the still-active Freemasons’s records, and particularly the overlap between these two sources, without a whisper since. In the spirit of rationalism the Illuminati embraced, one must conclude they no longer exist. But the ideas that spurred Weishaupt to found the illuminati still spread, becoming the basis for many Western governments today. These ideas didn’t start or end with the Illuminati— instead, it was one community that represented a wave of change that was already underway when it was founded and continued long after it ended.

How changing your story can change your life

{0: 'Lori Gottlieb asks: What if the stories we tell ourselves are wrong?'}

TED@DuPont

I'm going to start by telling you about an email that I saw in my inbox recently. Now, I have a pretty unusual inbox because I'm a therapist and I write an advice column called "Dear Therapist," so you can imagine what's in there. I mean, I've read thousands of very personal letters from strangers all over the world. And these letters range from heartbreak and loss, to spats with parents or siblings. I keep them in a folder on my laptop, and I've named it "The Problems of Living." So, I get this email, I get lots of emails just like this, and I want to bring you into my world for a second and read you one of these letters. And here's how it goes. "Dear Therapist, I've been married for 10 years and things were good until a couple of years ago. That's when my husband stopped wanting to have sex as much, and now we barely have sex at all." I'm sure you guys were not expecting this. (Laughter) "Well, last night I discovered that for the past few months, he's been secretly having long, late-night phone calls with a woman at his office. I googled her, and she's gorgeous. I can't believe this is happening. My father had an affair with a coworker when I was young and it broke our family apart. Needless to say, I'm devastated. If I stay in this marriage, I'll never be able to trust my husband again. But I don't want to put our kids through a divorce, stepmom situation, etc. What should I do?" Well, what do you think she should do? If you got this letter, you might be thinking about how painful infidelity is. Or maybe about how especially painful it is here because of her experience growing up with her father. And like me, you'd probably have some empathy for this woman, and you might even have some, how should I put this nicely, let's just call them "not-so-positive" feelings for her husband. Now, those are the kinds of things that go through my mind too, when I'm reading these letters in my inbox. But I have to be really careful when I respond to these letters because I know that every letter I get is actually just a story written by a specific author. And that another version of this story also exists. It always does. And I know this because if I've learned anything as a therapist, it's that we are all unreliable narrators of our own lives. I am. You are. And so is everyone you know. Which I probably shouldn't have told you because now you're not going to believe my TED Talk. Look, I don't mean that we purposely mislead. Most of what people tell me is absolutely true, just from their current points of view. Depending on what they emphasize or minimize, what they leave in, what they leave out, what they see and want me to see, they tell their stories in a particular way. The psychologist Jerome Bruner described this beautifully — he said, "To tell a story is, inescapably, to take a moral stance." All of us walk around with stories about our lives. Why choices were made, why things went wrong, why we treated someone a certain way — because obviously, they deserved it — why someone treated us a certain way — even though, obviously, we didn't. Stories are the way we make sense of our lives. But what happens when the stories we tell are misleading or incomplete or just wrong? Well, instead of providing clarity, these stories keep us stuck. We assume that our circumstances shape our stories. But what I found time and again in my work is that the exact opposite happens. The way we narrate our lives shapes what they become. That's the danger of our stories, because they can really mess us up, but it's also their power. Because what it means is that if we can change our stories, then we can change our lives. And today, I want to show you how. Now, I told you I'm a therapist, and I really am, I'm not being an unreliable narrator. But if I'm, let's say, on an airplane, and someone asks what I do, I usually say I'm an editor. And I say that partly because if I say I'm a therapist, I always get some awkward response, like, "Oh, a therapist. Are you going to psychoanalyze me?" And I'm thinking, "A : no, and B: why would I do that here? If I said I was a gynecologist, would you ask if I were about to give you a pelvic exam?" (Laughter) But the main reason I say I'm an editor is because it's true. Now, it's the job of all therapists to help people edit, but what's interesting about my specific role as Dear Therapist is that when I edit, I'm not just editing for one person. I'm trying to teach a whole group of readers how to edit, using one letter each week as the example. So I'm thinking about things like, "What material is extraneous?" "Is the protagonist moving forward or going in circles, are the supporting characters important or are they a distraction?" "Do the plot points reveal a theme?" And what I've noticed is that most people's stories tend to circle around two key themes. The first is freedom, and the second is change. And when I edit, those are the themes that I start with. So, let's take a look at freedom for a second. Our stories about freedom go like this: we believe, in general, that we have an enormous amount of freedom. Except when it comes to the problem at hand, in which case, suddenly, we feel like we have none. Many of our stories are about feeling trapped, right? We feel imprisoned by our families, our jobs, our relationships, our pasts. Sometimes, we even imprison ourselves with a narrative of self-flagellation — I know you guys all know these stories. The "everyone's life is better than mine" story, courtesy of social media. The "I'm an impostor" story, the "I'm unlovable" story, the "nothing will ever work out for me" story. The "when I say, 'Hey, Siri, ' and she doesn't answer, that means she hates me" story. I see you, see, I'm not the only one. The woman who wrote me that letter, she also feels trapped. If she stays with her husband, she'll never trust him again, but if she leaves, her children will suffer. Now, there's a cartoon that I think is a perfect example of what's really going on in these stories. The cartoon shows a prisoner shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out. But on the right and the left, it's open. No bars. The prisoner isn't in jail. That's most of us. We feel completely trapped, stuck in our emotional jail cells. But we don't walk around the bars to freedom because we know there's a catch. Freedom comes with responsibility. And if we take responsibility for our role in the story, we might just have to change. And that's the other common theme that I see in our stories: change. Those stories sound like this: a person says, "I want to change." But what they really mean is, "I want another character in the story to change." Therapists describe this dilemma as: "If the queen had balls, she'd be the king." I mean — (Laughter) It makes no sense, right? Why wouldn't we want the protagonist, who's the hero of the story, to change? Well, it might be because change, even really positive change, involves a surprising amount of loss. Loss of the familiar. Even if the familiar is unpleasant or utterly miserable, at least we know the characters and setting and plot, right down to the recurring dialogue in this story. "You never do the laundry!" "I did it last time!" "Oh, yeah? When?" There's something oddly comforting about knowing exactly how the story is going to go every single time. To write a new chapter is to venture into the unknown. It's to stare at a blank page. And as any writer will tell you, there's nothing more terrifying than a blank page. But here's the thing. Once we edit our story, the next chapter becomes much easier to write. We talk so much in our culture about getting to know ourselves. But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself. To let go of the one version of the story you've been telling yourself so that you can live your life, and not the story that you've been telling yourself about your life. And that's how we walk around those bars. So I want to go back to the letter from the woman, about the affair. She asked me what she should do. Now, I have this word taped up in my office: ultracrepidarianism. The habit of giving advice or opinions outside of one's knowledge or competence. It's a great word, right? You can use it in all different contexts, I'm sure you will be using it after this TED Talk. I use it because it reminds me that as a therapist, I can help people to sort out what they want to do, but I can't make their life choices for them. Only you can write your story, and all you need are some tools. So what I want to do is I want to edit this woman's letter together, right here, as a way to show how we can all revise our stories. And I want to start by asking you to think of a story that you're telling yourself right now that might not be serving you well. It might be about a circumstance you're experiencing, it might be about a person in your life, it might even be about yourself. And I want you to look at the supporting characters. Who are the people who are helping you to uphold the wrong version of this story? For instance, if the woman who wrote me that letter told her friends what happened, they would probably offer her what's called "idiot compassion." Now, in idiot compassion, we go along with the story, we say, "You're right, that's so unfair," when a friend tells us that he didn't get the promotion he wanted, even though we know this has happened several times before because he doesn't really put in the effort, and he probably also steals office supplies. (Laughter) We say, "Yeah, you're right, he's a jerk," when a friend tells us that her boyfriend broke up with her, even though we know that there are certain ways she tends to behave in relationships, like the incessant texting or the going through his drawers, that tend to lead to this outcome. We see the problem, it's like, if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to, it might be you. (Laughter) In order to be good editors, we need to offer wise compassion, not just to our friends, but to ourselves. This is what's called — I think the technical term might be — "delivering compassionate truth bombs." And these truth bombs are compassionate, because they help us to see what we've left out of the story. The truth is, we don't know if this woman's husband is having an affair, or why their sex life changed two years ago, or what those late-night phone calls are really about. And it might be that because of her history, she's writing a singular story of betrayal, but there's probably something else that she's not willing to let me, in her letter, or maybe even herself, to see. It's like that guy who's taking a Rorschach test. You all know what Rorschach tests are? A psychologist shows you some ink blots, they look like that, and asks, "What do you see?" So the guy looks at his ink blot and he says, "Well, I definitely don't see blood." And the examiner says, "Alright, tell me what else you definitely don't see." In writing, this is called point of view. What is the narrator not willing to see? So, I want to read you one more letter. And it goes like this. "Dear Therapist, I need help with my wife. Lately, everything I do irritates her, even small things, like the noise I make when I chew. At breakfast, I noticed that she even tries to secretly put extra milk in my granola so it won't be as crunchy." (Laughter) "I feel like she became critical of me after my father died two years ago. I was very close with him, and her father left when she was young, so she couldn't relate to what I was going through. There's a friend at work whose father died a few months ago, and who understands my grief. I wish I could talk to my wife like I talk to my friend, but I feel like she barely tolerates me now. How can I get my wife back?" OK. So, what you probably picked up on is that this is the same story I read you earlier, just told from another narrator's point of view. Her story was about a husband who's cheating, his story is about a wife who can't understand his grief. But what's remarkable, is that for all of their differences, what both of these stories are about is a longing for connection. And if we can get out of the first-person narration and write the story from another character's perspective, suddenly that other character becomes much more sympathetic, and the plot opens up. That's the hardest step in the editing process, but it's also where change begins. What would happen if you looked at your story and wrote it from another person's point of view? What would you see now from this wider perspective? That's why, when I see people who are depressed, I sometimes say, "You are not the best person to talk to you about you right now," because depression distorts our stories in a very particular way. It narrows our perspectives. The same is true when we feel lonely or hurt or rejected. We create all kinds of stories, distorted through a very narrow lens that we don't even know we're looking through. And then, we've effectively become our own fake-news broadcasters. I have a confession to make. I wrote the husband's version of the letter I read you. You have no idea how much time I spent debating between granola and pita chips, by the way. I wrote it based on all of the alternative narratives that I've seen over the years, not just in my therapy practice, but also in my column. When it's happened that two people involved in the same situation have written to me, unbeknownst to the other, and I have two versions of the same story sitting in my inbox. That really has happened. I don't know what the other version of this woman's letter is, but I do know this: she has to write it. Because with a courageous edit, she'll write a much more nuanced version of her letter that she wrote to me. Even if her husband is having an affair of any kind — and maybe he is — she doesn't need to know what the plot is yet. Because just by virtue of doing an edit, she'll have so many more possibilities for what the plot can become. Now, sometimes it happens that I see people who are really stuck, and they're really invested in their stuckness. We call them help-rejecting complainers. I'm sure you know people like this. They're the people who, when you try to offer them a suggestion, they reject it with, "Yeah, no, that will never work, because ..." "Yeah, no, that's impossible, because I can't do that." "Yeah, I really want more friends, but people are just so annoying." (Laughter) What they're really rejecting is an edit to their story of misery and stuckness. And so, with these people, I usually take a different approach. And what I do is I say something else. I say to them, "We're all going to die." I bet you're really glad I'm not your therapist right now. Because they look back at me the way you're looking back at me right now, with this look of utter confusion. But then I explain that there's a story that gets written about all of us, eventually. It's called an obituary. And I say that instead of being authors of our own unhappiness, we get to shape these stories while we're still alive. We get to be the hero and not the victim in our stories, we get to choose what goes on the page that lives in our minds and shapes our realities. I tell them that life is about deciding which stories to listen to and which ones need an edit. And that it's worth the effort to go through a revision because there's nothing more important to the quality of our lives than the stories we tell ourselves about them. I say that when it comes to the stories of our lives, we should be aiming for our own personal Pulitzer Prize. Now, most of us aren't help-rejecting complainers, or at least we don't believe we are. But it's a role that is so easy to slip into when we feel anxious or angry or vulnerable. So the next time you're struggling with something, remember, we're all going to die. (Laughter) And then pull out your editing tools and ask yourself: what do I want my story to be? And then, go write your masterpiece. Thank you. (Applause)

The next software revolution: programming biological cells

{0: 'Sara-Jane Dunn is a scientist working at the interface between biology and computation, using mathematics and computational analysis to make sense of how living systems process information.'}

TEDSummit 2019

The second half of the last century was completely defined by a technological revolution: the software revolution. The ability to program electrons on a material called silicon made possible technologies, companies and industries that were at one point unimaginable to many of us, but which have now fundamentally changed the way the world works. The first half of this century, though, is going to be transformed by a new software revolution: the living software revolution. And this will be powered by the ability to program biochemistry on a material called biology. And doing so will enable us to harness the properties of biology to generate new kinds of therapies, to repair damaged tissue, to reprogram faulty cells or even build programmable operating systems out of biochemistry. If we can realize this — and we do need to realize it — its impact will be so enormous that it will make the first software revolution pale in comparison. And that's because living software would transform the entirety of medicine, agriculture and energy, and these are sectors that dwarf those dominated by IT. Imagine programmable plants that fix nitrogen more effectively or resist emerging fungal pathogens, or even programming crops to be perennial rather than annual so you could double your crop yields each year. That would transform agriculture and how we'll keep our growing and global population fed. Or imagine programmable immunity, designing and harnessing molecular devices that guide your immune system to detect, eradicate or even prevent disease. This would transform medicine and how we'll keep our growing and aging population healthy. We already have many of the tools that will make living software a reality. We can precisely edit genes with CRISPR. We can rewrite the genetic code one base at a time. We can even build functioning synthetic circuits out of DNA. But figuring out how and when to wield these tools is still a process of trial and error. It needs deep expertise, years of specialization. And experimental protocols are difficult to discover and all too often, difficult to reproduce. And, you know, we have a tendency in biology to focus a lot on the parts, but we all know that something like flying wouldn't be understood by only studying feathers. So programming biology is not yet as simple as programming your computer. And then to make matters worse, living systems largely bear no resemblance to the engineered systems that you and I program every day. In contrast to engineered systems, living systems self-generate, they self-organize, they operate at molecular scales. And these molecular-level interactions lead generally to robust macro-scale output. They can even self-repair. Consider, for example, the humble household plant, like that one sat on your mantelpiece at home that you keep forgetting to water. Every day, despite your neglect, that plant has to wake up and figure out how to allocate its resources. Will it grow, photosynthesize, produce seeds, or flower? And that's a decision that has to be made at the level of the whole organism. But a plant doesn't have a brain to figure all of that out. It has to make do with the cells on its leaves. They have to respond to the environment and make the decisions that affect the whole plant. So somehow there must be a program running inside these cells, a program that responds to input signals and cues and shapes what that cell will do. And then those programs must operate in a distributed way across individual cells, so that they can coordinate and that plant can grow and flourish. If we could understand these biological programs, if we could understand biological computation, it would transform our ability to understand how and why cells do what they do. Because, if we understood these programs, we could debug them when things go wrong. Or we could learn from them how to design the kind of synthetic circuits that truly exploit the computational power of biochemistry. My passion about this idea led me to a career in research at the interface of maths, computer science and biology. And in my work, I focus on the concept of biology as computation. And that means asking what do cells compute, and how can we uncover these biological programs? And I started to ask these questions together with some brilliant collaborators at Microsoft Research and the University of Cambridge, where together we wanted to understand the biological program running inside a unique type of cell: an embryonic stem cell. These cells are unique because they're totally naïve. They can become anything they want: a brain cell, a heart cell, a bone cell, a lung cell, any adult cell type. This naïvety, it sets them apart, but it also ignited the imagination of the scientific community, who realized, if we could tap into that potential, we would have a powerful tool for medicine. If we could figure out how these cells make the decision to become one cell type or another, we might be able to harness them to generate cells that we need to repair diseased or damaged tissue. But realizing that vision is not without its challenges, not least because these particular cells, they emerge just six days after conception. And then within a day or so, they're gone. They have set off down the different paths that form all the structures and organs of your adult body. But it turns out that cell fates are a lot more plastic than we might have imagined. About 13 years ago, some scientists showed something truly revolutionary. By inserting just a handful of genes into an adult cell, like one of your skin cells, you can transform that cell back to the naïve state. And it's a process that's actually known as "reprogramming," and it allows us to imagine a kind of stem cell utopia, the ability to take a sample of a patient's own cells, transform them back to the naïve state and use those cells to make whatever that patient might need, whether it's brain cells or heart cells. But over the last decade or so, figuring out how to change cell fate, it's still a process of trial and error. Even in cases where we've uncovered successful experimental protocols, they're still inefficient, and we lack a fundamental understanding of how and why they work. If you figured out how to change a stem cell into a heart cell, that hasn't got any way of telling you how to change a stem cell into a brain cell. So we wanted to understand the biological program running inside an embryonic stem cell, and understanding the computation performed by a living system starts with asking a devastatingly simple question: What is it that system actually has to do? Now, computer science actually has a set of strategies for dealing with what it is the software and hardware are meant to do. When you write a program, you code a piece of software, you want that software to run correctly. You want performance, functionality. You want to prevent bugs. They can cost you a lot. So when a developer writes a program, they could write down a set of specifications. These are what your program should do. Maybe it should compare the size of two numbers or order numbers by increasing size. Technology exists that allows us automatically to check whether our specifications are satisfied, whether that program does what it should do. And so our idea was that in the same way, experimental observations, things we measure in the lab, they correspond to specifications of what the biological program should do. So we just needed to figure out a way to encode this new type of specification. So let's say you've been busy in the lab and you've been measuring your genes and you've found that if Gene A is active, then Gene B or Gene C seems to be active. We can write that observation down as a mathematical expression if we can use the language of logic: If A, then B or C. Now, this is a very simple example, OK. It's just to illustrate the point. We can encode truly rich expressions that actually capture the behavior of multiple genes or proteins over time across multiple different experiments. And so by translating our observations into mathematical expression in this way, it becomes possible to test whether or not those observations can emerge from a program of genetic interactions. And we developed a tool to do just this. We were able to use this tool to encode observations as mathematical expressions, and then that tool would allow us to uncover the genetic program that could explain them all. And we then apply this approach to uncover the genetic program running inside embryonic stem cells to see if we could understand how to induce that naïve state. And this tool was actually built on a solver that's deployed routinely around the world for conventional software verification. So we started with a set of nearly 50 different specifications that we generated from experimental observations of embryonic stem cells. And by encoding these observations in this tool, we were able to uncover the first molecular program that could explain all of them. Now, that's kind of a feat in and of itself, right? Being able to reconcile all of these different observations is not the kind of thing you can do on the back of an envelope, even if you have a really big envelope. Because we've got this kind of understanding, we could go one step further. We could use this program to predict what this cell might do in conditions we hadn't yet tested. We could probe the program in silico. And so we did just that: we generated predictions that we tested in the lab, and we found that this program was highly predictive. It told us how we could accelerate progress back to the naïve state quickly and efficiently. It told us which genes to target to do that, which genes might even hinder that process. We even found the program predicted the order in which genes would switch on. So this approach really allowed us to uncover the dynamics of what the cells are doing. What we've developed, it's not a method that's specific to stem cell biology. Rather, it allows us to make sense of the computation being carried out by the cell in the context of genetic interactions. So really, it's just one building block. The field urgently needs to develop new approaches to understand biological computation more broadly and at different levels, from DNA right through to the flow of information between cells. Only this kind of transformative understanding will enable us to harness biology in ways that are predictable and reliable. But to program biology, we will also need to develop the kinds of tools and languages that allow both experimentalists and computational scientists to design biological function and have those designs compile down to the machine code of the cell, its biochemistry, so that we could then build those structures. Now, that's something akin to a living software compiler, and I'm proud to be part of a team at Microsoft that's working to develop one. Though to say it's a grand challenge is kind of an understatement, but if it's realized, it would be the final bridge between software and wetware. More broadly, though, programming biology is only going to be possible if we can transform the field into being truly interdisciplinary. It needs us to bridge the physical and the life sciences, and scientists from each of these disciplines need to be able to work together with common languages and to have shared scientific questions. In the long term, it's worth remembering that many of the giant software companies and the technology that you and I work with every day could hardly have been imagined at the time we first started programming on silicon microchips. And if we start now to think about the potential for technology enabled by computational biology, we'll see some of the steps that we need to take along the way to make that a reality. Now, there is the sobering thought that this kind of technology could be open to misuse. If we're willing to talk about the potential for programming immune cells, we should also be thinking about the potential of bacteria engineered to evade them. There might be people willing to do that. Now, one reassuring thought in this is that — well, less so for the scientists — is that biology is a fragile thing to work with. So programming biology is not going to be something you'll be doing in your garden shed. But because we're at the outset of this, we can move forward with our eyes wide open. We can ask the difficult questions up front, we can put in place the necessary safeguards and, as part of that, we'll have to think about our ethics. We'll have to think about putting bounds on the implementation of biological function. So as part of this, research in bioethics will have to be a priority. It can't be relegated to second place in the excitement of scientific innovation. But the ultimate prize, the ultimate destination on this journey, would be breakthrough applications and breakthrough industries in areas from agriculture and medicine to energy and materials and even computing itself. Imagine, one day we could be powering the planet sustainably on the ultimate green energy if we could mimic something that plants figured out millennia ago: how to harness the sun's energy with an efficiency that is unparalleled by our current solar cells. If we understood that program of quantum interactions that allow plants to absorb sunlight so efficiently, we might be able to translate that into building synthetic DNA circuits that offer the material for better solar cells. There are teams and scientists working on the fundamentals of this right now, so perhaps if it got the right attention and the right investment, it could be realized in 10 or 15 years. So we are at the beginning of a technological revolution. Understanding this ancient type of biological computation is the critical first step. And if we can realize this, we would enter in the era of an operating system that runs living software. Thank you very much. (Applause)

What open water swimming taught me about resilience

{0: 'Bhakti Sharma is a record-breaking Indian open water swimmer. '}

TED Talks India: Nayi Baat

Shah Rukh Khan: Courage, determination, and a single-minded vision. These are the qualities the biggest achievers have in common. These are those brave hearts for whom failure is not an option. What looks to us an unconquerable sea, to our next speaker is an irresistible stage she was born to perform on. So let's dive straight into the story of our fearless speaker, Bhakti Sharma, who's making waves in the world of long-distance swimming. Bhakti Sharma. (Applause) Bhakti Sharma: Imagine, in the scorching Rajasthan heat, on a hot summer afternoon, a two-and-a-half-year-old riding on a moped behind her mom, not knowing where they were headed. And 20 minutes later, that two-and-a-half-year-old finds herself completely submerged in water. Before I knew it, I would be kicking, splashing, screaming, gulping down water, holding onto my mom for my dear life. That's how I learned how to swim. I started pool-swimming when I was two and a half, and open water swimming when I was 14 years old. And so I have given over 25 years of my life to this sport, during which I have swum in all five oceans of the world, crossed the English Channel — which is also known as the Mount Everest of swimming — and set a world record in the freezing Antarctic ocean. (Applause) When you spend so much time with a sport, it ceases to be just that and becomes a mirror. And that shows who you really are. You see that your mettle as an athlete is not only tested on race day but every single day, when the sport demands that you get up at 4:30 in the morning, swim for two hours, go to school, come back, swim for three hours, go home, eat and sleep. When you win a medal or set a world record, this mirror shows the happiness that you and your loved ones feel, but also reflects the tears that you shed all by yourself, alone in the water. Open water swimming is a very lonely sport. I have spent hours looking into the infinite, seemingly bottomless ocean underneath me, with nothing to keep me company but my own thoughts. And so, I have not only been tested as a swimmer but also as a thinking, feeling, imaginative human being. Be it my first test as a marathon swimmer, when I decided to swim for 12 hours non-stop in a swimming pool or crossing the English Channel in 13 hours and 55 minutes. When you're swimming, you don't talk, you don't hear very well, and your vision is restricted to what's right in front of you or underneath you. This isolation has been my sport's biggest gift to me. Through open water swimming, I have come to know myself in ways that I could have never expected to. I remember, at the age of 14, when I jumped into an ocean for the first time for a swim, and throughout this swim, the waves were picking me up and throwing me down, I saw the child in me, who enjoys such adventures. While crossing the English Channel, after already having swam for 10 hours, when I got stuck in one place for one and a half hour because of the currents, I saw the strong and dedicated athlete in me, who did not want to disappoint her parents or her country. In an open water marathon held in Switzerland, when I won my first gold medal for India — (Applause) I witnessed a proud Indian in me. While crossing the English Channel again, this time in a relay with my mother, not knowing that we were creating history, I saw the protective daughter in me, who just wanted to see her mom fulfill her own dreams. And four years ago, when I jumped into the Antarctic Ocean, wearing nothing but a swimsuit, cap and goggles, with an unwavering spirit of just doing, I saw a fighter in me. When I jumped into that zero-to-one-degree-Celsius water, I realized that I had prepared my body and mind for the cold, but what I wasn't prepared for was the density of the water. Every stroke felt like pulling through oil. And in the first five minutes, I had that paralyzing thought of just giving up. How nice it would be to just forget about all this, get on the boat, stand underneath the hot shower or wrap myself in a warm blanket? But with that thought, also came a stronger, a more willful voice from deep within. "You know you have it in you to just take one more stroke." So I lifted my arm and took a stroke. "Now one more." So I took a second and a third stroke. By the fourth one, I saw a penguin swimming underneath my stomach. It came up to my left and started swimming with me. "See? A penguin is cheering you on," said that voice within. (Applause and cheers) I looked up to my people on the boat. They had the same smile on their faces that I had on mine. The same smile that we all have when we are stuck in a difficult situation and we see a ray of hope. We take it as a sign from destiny, and we just keep pushing forward. Just as I did, and 41 minutes later, set the world record for swimming the longest distance in the Antarctic Ocean. (Applause) Imagine, it doesn't even snow in Rajasthan. (Laughter) That voice, which has accompanied me through all my difficult situations throughout my swims, would have never shown itself if I had not spent so much time alone, had not paid attention to every single thought that crossed my mind. When you find yourself alone in an ocean, with your thoughts, the dangers that you face are not just external, like whales, sharks, jellyfish or even demotivating people. But the more dangerous demons you face are the fear and negativity inside you that tell you, "You're not good enough. You will never reach the other shore. You haven't trained enough. What if you fail? What will people think? I'm sure everybody is thinking right now how slow you are." We all have our own internal demons, don't we? In a day-to-day life, you can hide from them, behind your work or many other distractions. But like I said, in the middle of the ocean, there is nowhere to hide. I have to face my internal demons, just as much as I have to taste the salt in the sea, feel the chafing on my skin, and acknowledge the whales swimming beside me. I hate it, and I love it. I hate it because this sport shows me the side of myself that I don't want to believe exists. The side of me that is human and not perfect. Like the part of me that can't get out of bed in the morning and make it to practice. The side of me that gets so burned out, so tired, that just wants to quit swimming. But I also love it, because this sport has given me moments that I can look back on when I feel unmotivated. And they bring me to my knees, because I feel so grateful. Many of you may not spend hours swimming non-stop. But who do you spend the most amount of your time with? You may share your external space with many others, but there is one constant companion that you all have: you. And yet, most of us may never come to knowing who we really are. I'm a daughter, an Indian, a swimmer, a student. But I am so much more. If you are not investing in yourself, not setting a path that brings you closer to you, no amount of "success" in life can bring you lasting joy or satisfaction. Even today, when I can't find motivation or joy in what I'm doing, all I ask myself is, "Is this the best I can do right now?" And the meaning of my "best" changes. On some days, it means not giving up, continuing to swim in freezing water and setting a world record. But on many other days, it means getting over my depressing thoughts, stepping out of the house and being able to do the daily chores. What does not change is that voice within. That internal compass which guides me to a better self every day. And I believe that a truly successful life is the one which is spent in the pursuit of becoming the best possible version of yourself when you take that last breath. Thank you. (Applause) SRK: I think the only sport I can't do is swim — I sink like a rock. So standing next to the world's best swimmer makes me kind of feel — if you can excuse my pun — kind of at sea. But — BS: (Laughs) No pun intended, of course. SRK: But what is your next goal as a swimmer? BS: I have a major fear of competition, so what better goal to set than aiming for the Olympics? Because open water swimming is an Olympic sport now. (Applause) Even saying it out loud gives me shivers, because it's such a huge goal that I don't want to accept that I have set that goal, but that's the thrill of it, that's the part of it. And my idea is that if I make it to the Olympics or I don't make it, that doesn't matter, but in the process of training for it, I will have become a better swimmer and a better person. SRK: Inshallah, you will make it to the Olympics. And I want to tell you a lot of people who are watching this show at home, there's lots of people, all of whom are thinking only positively for you, so when you go for the Olympics, imagine all of us will be wearing our penguin suits and swimming with you, and saying, "Go on, go on, Bhakti, go on, go on." BS: Can you be my personal penguin? SRK: I am your penguin now. It would have been cooler if you said, like, a shark and all, but penguin — BS: Orcas are my spirit animal, but you can be my orca. (Applause) SRK: Ladies and gentleman, Bhakti. BS: Thank you. (Applause)

The business case for working with your toughest critics

{0: 'Bob Langert consults, writes and speaks about corporate sustainability, showing how companies can successfully navigate and manage today’s controversial societal issues, become better corporate citizens and make their businesses stronger, more relevant and more profitable.'}

TEDSummit 2019

Who remembers this infamous Styrofoam container? (Applause) Well, it sure changed me, it changed my company, and it started a revelatory journey about how adversaries can be your best allies. You know, back in the late '80s, this Big Mac clamshell was the symbol of a garbage crisis. People were really angry. For example, thousands of students, young students around the globe were sending letters, blaming McDonald's, because we were using millions of these at that time. Now, no one at McDonald's knew anything about environmentally friendly packaging, including me. The last 10 years, I was in charge of logistics and truck drivers. Then out of nowhere, my boss comes to me and says, "Hey, we want you to save this clamshell for the company and lead the effort to reduce waste within McDonald's." I looked at him and I asked him, "What is polystyrene?" But it all sounded intriguing to me because it brought me back to my roots. You see, I grew up in the late '60s, early '70s, in a time of huge social upheaval in the United States. And I was really in tune with the protests, the sit-ins, the anti-Vietnam sentiment, and I really felt there was a need to question authority. But as I went into university, I realized that I'm not going to make a living doing this. And that whole movement had subsided, and my activist spirit went dormant. And I needed to make a living, so I got involved in the business world. So, now these students against pollution, who were sending those protest letters to McDonald's, they reminded me of myself 20 years ago. They're questioning authority. But now, I'm the man. (Laughter) I'm the corporate suit. I'm the one representing authority. And this new thing was emerging called corporate social responsibility, later corporate sustainability, and now I had a chance to make a difference. So the beginning of this journey started when McDonald's agreed to a partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund. They were an NGO that was founded with the principle of "sue the bastards." So I'm thinking, what are they thinking about me and my team? When I first met Richard Denison, he's the senior scientist for EDF, I was very apprehensive. I thought he's a tree-hugger, and I'm thinking he thinks all I care about is the money. So we wanted the EDF team to give us real-world solutions. So we did the logical thing. We had them flip burgers in our restaurants. So you have to imagine Richard, who, by the way, is a PhD in physics, and there he is, he's trying to dress a quarter-pounder, and you're supposed to have two squirts of ketchup, one mustard, three pickles and an onion, go on to the next one, you've got to be so fast. And you know what? He couldn't get it right all day long. And he was frustrated. And I was so impressed, because he was trying to understand our business. Now, the EDF team, they thought reusables were the holy grail for our business. Me and my team thought, reusables? Too much space, they'd make a mess, they would slow us down. But we didn't reject the idea. We went to the restaurant they chose outside DC, we went to the back room. The dishwasher wasn't working properly, it's spitting out dirty dishes. The kitchen area is dirty and grimy. And compared to their experience at McDonald's that's clean and organized, they could see the stark difference. We also sat in a restaurant at McDonald's, all day long, and watched the customers eating in. Their behavior. Ends up that many customers left with the food, they left with the beverage. And EDF came to their own conclusion that reusables wouldn't work for us. But they did have a lot of ideas that did work. And we never would have thought of them by ourselves, without the EDF team. My favorite was switching from the white carry-out bag to the brown bag. We had been using the white bag. It's virgin material, it's made from chlorine bleaching chemicals, and they said, use an unbleached bag, no chemicals. It's made from recycled content, mostly recycled shipping corrugated boxes. Ends up that the bag is stronger, the fiber is stronger, it didn't cost us more money. It was win-win. Another idea they had was that we could reduce our napkin by one inch. And make it from recycled office paper. I'm thinking, one inch, no big deal. We did it, it reduced waste by three million pounds a year. Sixteen thousand trees saved. (Applause) What was really cool is we changed that bright white napkin, because the recycled content became gray and speckled. And we made that look, you know, in tune, in vogue with customers. So, I came to really enjoy the time working with the EDF team. We had many dinners, late-night discussions, we went to a ball game together. We became friends. And that's when I learned a life lesson. That these NGO crusaders, they're really no different than me. They care, they have passion, we're just not different. So, we had a six-month partnership that ended up producing a 42-point waste reduction action plan. To reduce, reuse, recycle. We measured it during the decade of the '90s, and over 10 years we reduced 300 million pounds of waste. Now, if you're wondering about that polystyrene clamshell, yeah, we ditched it. And luckily, I still had a job. And this partnership was so successful that we went on to recycle the idea to work with critics. Collaborate with them on solutions that could work for society and for business. But could this idea of collaborating work with the most contrarian folks? And on issues that are, you know, not within our direct control. Like animal rights. Now, animal rights, obviously they don't want animals used for meat. McDonald's, probably the biggest purchaser of meat in the food service industry. So there's a natural conflict there. But I thought it would be best to go visit and learn from the most vociferous and vigilant critics we had at that time, which were Henry Spira, head of Animal Rights International, and Peter Singer, who wrote the book "Animal Liberation," which is considered the modern treatise about animal rights. You know, I read Peter's book to prepare, I tried to get into his mindset, and I have to admit, it was tough, I'm not becoming a vegan, my company wasn't going that way. But I really thought we could learn a lot. And so I set up a breakfast meeting in New York City. And I remember sitting down, getting ready, and I decided I'm not going to order my favorite, which is you know, bacon and sausage and eggs. (Laughter) And I'm just going to stick to the pastries. But I have to admit, I was waiting for the adversarial discussion to happen. And it never did. Henry and Peter were just gracious, they were caring, they were smart, they asked good questions. I told them about how working on animal welfare is very tough for McDonald's because our direct suppliers, they only make meat patties. The animals are three or four steps removed from our influence. And they were very empathetic. And while we were so directly opposed in terms of the missions of our organizations, I felt that I had learned a lot. And best of all, they gave me a terrific recommendation. And that is, they said, "You should work with Dr. Temple Grandin." Now, I didn't know her at the time. But I tell you, she's the most renowned expert, then and now, on animal behavior. And she knows how animals move and how they should react in facilities. So I end up meeting her, and she's the very best type of critic, in a sense that she just loves the animals, wants to protect them, but she also understands the reality of the meat business. And I'll always remember, I had never been to a slaughterhouse in my life, and so I go with her for my first trip. I didn't know what to expect. And we find that the animal handlers have electric prods in their hands, and are basically zapping almost every animal in the facility. We're both appalled, she's jumping up and down, you'd have to know her, she's saying, "This can't be, this isn't right, we could use flags, we could use plastic bags, we could redesign the corrals for natural behavior." Well I set up Temple with our suppliers to set up standards and guidelines. And ways to measure her ideas of implementing animal welfare. We did this for the next two to five years. And it all got integrated, it all got enforced. By the way, two of McDonald's suppliers lost business because they didn't meet our standards. And best of all, all these standards ended up scaling to the entire industry. And no more zapping of those animals. Now, what about issues that we're blamed for elsewhere? Like deforestation. You know, on that issue, I always thought, policy makers and government, that's their role. Never thought it would end up in my lap. But I remember in early April 2006, I opened up my Blackberry, and I'm reading about Greenpeace campaigners showing up in the UK by the dozens, dressed as chickens, having breakfast at McDonald's and chaining themselves to the chairs and tables. So they got a lot of attention, including mine. And I was wondering if the report that they had just released, it was called "Eating Up the Amazon." And by the way, soy is a key ingredient for chicken feed, and that's the connection to McDonald's. So I called my trusted friends at the World Wildlife Fund, I called Conservation International, and I soon learned that the Greenpeace report was accurate. So I gathered internal support, and I'll always remember, next day, after that campaign, I called them up, and I said, "We agree with you." And I said, "How about working together?" So three days later, miraculously, four people from McDonald's, four people from Greenpeace, we're meeting in the London Heathrow airport. And I have to say, the first hour was shaky, it wasn't a whole lot of trust in the room. But it seemed like everything came together, because each of us wanted to save the Amazon. And during our discussions, you couldn't really tell, I don't think, who was from Greenpeace and who was from McDonald's. So one of the best things we did is we traveled with them for nine days on a trip through the Amazon, on the Greenpeace airplane, on the Greenpeace boat. And I'll always remember, imagine traveling hundreds of miles west of Manaus, the capital city of the Amazon. And it's so pristine beauty, there's no man-made structures, there's no roads, not one wire, not one house. You would travel east of Manaus and you would see the blatant rainforest destruction. So this very unlikely collaboration produced outstanding results. By working together, we recruited over a dozen other retailers and suppliers for the same cause. And by the way, within three months, a moratorium on these clear-cutting practices was announced by the industry. And Greenpeace themselves declared it as a spectacular drop in deforestation and it's been in effect ever since. Now, you think these types of collaborations that I've described would be commonplace today. But they're not. When organizations are battered, the common response is to deny and push back, put out some sort of lame statement and no progress is made at all. I say the alternative is really powerful. I mean, it's not going to fix every problem, and there's more to do for sure, but this idea of working with critics and trying to do more good for society that actually is good for business, believe me, it's possible. But it starts with the idea that you need to assume the best intentions of your critics. Just like you have the best intentions. And then secondly, you need to look past a lot of these tactics. I admit, I did not like a lot of the tactics used on my company. But instead, focus on what the truth is, what's the right thing to do, what's the science, what's the facts. And lastly, you know, I would say, give the critics the keys. Show them the back room. Bring them there, don't hide the details, because if you want allies and support, you need to be open and transparent. Now, whether you're a corporate suit, whether you're a tree-hugger, I say the next time you're criticized, reach out, listen, learn. You'll become better, your organization will become better, and you might make some good friends along the way. Thank you. (Applause)

The Taino myth of the cursed creator

TED-Ed

Before the world of humans began, there was the world of the gods, made of fields, plains and gardens. Four brothers wandered this celestial realm. They had no family other than each other— they didn’t even know who their parents were. One of the brothers, Deminan, looked different from the others. His skin was covered in painful scabs, and he wondered why he alone had been marked with this affliction. One day, while the supreme spirit Yaya was out in his gardens, Deminan and his brothers snuck into Yaya’s house. After feasting and exploring, they spotted a giant gourd hanging in the corner. But as they tried to look inside the gourd, they dropped it. The gourd broke apart, releasing a deluge that swept the brothers away, separating them from the celestial lands forever. The waters from the gourd formed a new world. This realm was covered in seas, which didn’t exist in the gods’ world. The waters were full of fish and other creatures, and dotted with islands and caves. This world of seas was also cut off completely from the celestial realm, and the brothers wandered aimlessly, even more lost than they had been before. One day, three of the brothers stumbled upon a house. In the house lived an elder named Bayamanacao, and he invited them in. When Deminan caught up slightly later, he followed them into the house. Bayamanacao told the brothers he was their grandfather and gave them a gift of special cassava bread. He revealed their family lineage to them: their mother had been the Earth Mother Goddess Itibi Cahubaba and had died when they were born. The brothers were grateful for his hospitality and insight into their past. But then Bayamanacao turned on Deminan, blowing tobacco spittle from his nose onto Deminan’s back. The spot where the spittle landed immediately began to swell and sting. Soon Deminan was delirious and his back was so swollen his brothers feared he would die. Not knowing what else to do, they cut open the welt. A turtle emerged from the wound and swam away, alternating easily between sea and land as she went. When Deminan recovered from his delirium, he finally understood what the curse of his disease meant: he was a caracaracol, able to communicate with the gods. He was the link between the celestial realm and the earthly realm. Deminan was the first in a long lineage of caracaracols. The world of seas he and his brothers had created when they dropped the gourd became the world of humans, where the caracaracols who followed Deminan maintained the delicate balance between people and gods. But their unique power came at a price: Deminan and all the caracaracols who followed him continued to suffer from the illness that had first marked Deminan as special. Represented in Taino carvings and figurines with a swollen back and emaciated arms, the caracaracol is both cursed and blessed to be a conduit between worlds.

The Amazon belongs to humanity -- let's protect it together

{0: 'Chief Tashka Yawanawá and Laura Yawanawá represent the critical perspective often missed in the discussions about the future of indigenous people in Brazil: that of the indigenous people themselves.'}

We the Future

Tashka Yawanawá (Sharp exhale) (Sharp exhale) (Sharp exhale) (Sharp exhale) (Singing) (Singing ends) (Sharp exhale) I'm Tashka Yawanawá. I'm here with my wife. I come from the Yawanawá community, which is located in the state of Acre in the Brazilian Amazon. Takes some days to arrive here. I just did the song to reconnect us to the spirit of the rainforest. From immemorial time, my people live in the Yawanawá territory. We see this holistic way of how nature is. Nature, to us, belongs to the whole of humanity. And we Yawanawá see the environment, the forest, as alive. But everything is always a challenge. Mostly now, because I think many of you know that the Amazon now is on fire. That affects all of us. Destroying the Amazon does not affect just the indigenous people, because we are all connected. Whatever we do in my community, if I burn everything, it's going to affect it here, when the snow comes here at Christmas. If you pollute here, it's going to affect it when the rain comes to my country. I used to say we all belong to the global village. I used to say, Amazon belongs to humanity, and also that humanity needs to take care as the indigenous do in the world. And for this reason, today is a time to wake, unite us. We Yawanawá are doing our part. We take care of Mother Earth. And now, I will give to my wife. Laura Yawanawá: We are here with our hearts crying. I am smiling here, but my heart is crying, because a lot of our forests are being destroyed. And I just want to give you a message. This crisis is giving humanity two options. One option is you help to end, to destroy and exterminate all our forests and all our cultures that go with it. Or, we transform this crisis into an opportunity to empower indigenous people, to support indigenous people and to save the rainforest and their cultures. And how can you do that? We have, the Yawanawá, we created a life plan, which is our strategic planning that tells us the steps of how we want to secure our territory. We take care of about 200,000 hectares of rainforest. But now it's under threat. So this life plan shows the steps for us to secure our land, our biodiversity, our culture, our education. I invite you all, I invite all companies, I invite all governments, all civil society, to listen to indigenous peoples, to go back to our roots. We have been here for many, many ... for centuries. And we have been trying to scream to the world that we need to protect our territory, our nature. And you never listen to us. Never. I guess this crisis is teaching humanity that now you need to listen to us and to support indigenous peoples directly, to support their initiatives directly. So that's the message that I would love to leave to you. That indigenous people have the answer, and if you want to save the Amazon, we have to take action now. TY: (Sharp exhale) (Applause)

Game theory challenge: Can you predict human behavior?

TED-Ed

A few months ago we posed a challenge to our community. We asked everyone: given a range of integers from 0 to 100, guess the whole number closest to 2/3 of the average of all numbers guessed. So if the average of all guesses is 60, the correct guess will be 40. What number do you think was the correct guess at 2/3 of the average? Let’s see if we can try and reason our way to the answer. This game is played under conditions known to game theorists as common knowledge. Not only does every player have the same information — they also know that everyone else does, and that everyone else knows that everyone else does, and so on, infinitely. Now, the highest possible average would occur if every person guessed 100. In that case, 2/3 of the average would be 66.66. Since everyone can figure this out, it wouldn’t make sense to guess anything higher than 67. If everyone playing comes to this same conclusion, no one will guess higher than 67. Now 67 is the new highest possible average, so no reasonable guess should be higher than ⅔ of that, which is 44. This logic can be extended further and further. With each step, the highest possible logical answer keeps getting smaller. So it would seem sensible to guess the lowest number possible. And indeed, if everyone chose zero, the game would reach what’s known as a Nash Equilibrium. This is a state where every player has chosen the best possible strategy for themselves given everyone else playing, and no individual player can benefit by choosing differently. But, that’s not what happens in the real world. People, as it turns out, either aren’t perfectly rational, or don’t expect each other to be perfectly rational. Or, perhaps, it’s some combination of the two. When this game is played in real-world settings, the average tends to be somewhere between 20 and 35. Danish newspaper Politiken ran the game with over 19,000 readers participating, resulting in an average of roughly 22, making the correct answer 14. For our audience, the average was 31.3. So if you guessed 21 as 2/3 of the average, well done. Economic game theorists have a way of modeling this interplay between rationality and practicality called k-level reasoning. K stands for the number of times a cycle of reasoning is repeated. A person playing at k-level 0 would approach our game naively, guessing a number at random without thinking about the other players. At k-level 1, a player would assume everyone else was playing at level 0, resulting in an average of 50, and thus guess 33. At k-level 2, they’d assume that everyone else was playing at level 1, leading them to guess 22. It would take 12 k-levels to reach 0. The evidence suggests that most people stop at 1 or 2 k-levels. And that’s useful to know, because k-level thinking comes into play in high-stakes situations. For example, stock traders evaluate stocks not only based on earnings reports, but also on the value that others place on those numbers. And during penalty kicks in soccer, both the shooter and the goalie decide whether to go right or left based on what they think the other person is thinking. Goalies often memorize the patterns of their opponents ahead of time, but penalty shooters know that and can plan accordingly. In each case, participants must weigh their own understanding of the best course of action against how well they think other participants understand the situation. But 1 or 2 k-levels is by no means a hard and fast rule— simply being conscious of this tendency can make people adjust their expectations. For instance, what would happen if people played the 2/3 game after understanding the difference between the most logical approach and the most common? Submit your own guess at what 2/3 of the new average will be by using the form below, and we’ll find out.

What happens to people in solitary confinement

{0: 'Laura Rovner lectures and writes about the rights of people incarcerated in prisons and jails, particularly about solitary confinement.'}

TEDxMileHigh

The drive through the world's most secure prison is beautiful. The federal government's only supermax prison, known as ADX, is 90 miles south of Denver. Standing outside the building, ADX looks like a newish suburban middle school. (Laughter) The lobby is clean and bright; there's big windows and clear views of the mountains; and a polite front-desk attendant with a kiosk selling travel mugs. (Laughter) On the wall is a large plaque that reads, "The best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." Just past it is a huge framed photo of Alcatraz. And down the stairs, at the end of a long hallway, are 400 men decaying in isolation cells. I work on cases involving the constitutional rights of prisoners. Now, people have differing views about prisoners' rights. But there's something more people can agree on: torture. The US government says it doesn't use torture, and we condemn other countries, like Iran and North Korea, for their use of torture. But some people think the so-called worst of the worst deserve it: terrorists, mass murderers, the really "bad" people. Now I personally believe that no one deserves to be tortured by the US government. But that's me. (Applause) No matter where you fall, there's a few things I need you to understand before I continue. First, we do torture people here in America, tens of thousands of them every day. It's called solitary confinement. It's done in our names, using our tax dollars, behind closed doors. And as a result, we're undermining the core values of our justice system. Built with state-of-the-art technology, ADX has nearly perfected solitary confinement. Each man spends 23 hours a day alone in a cell the size of a small bathroom. Virtually every aspect of his life occurs in that cell. But aside from sleeping and eating, which he does within an arm's reach of his toilet, there aren't many aspects of life. Correctional officers push food trays through slots in the doors and take the men to solitary exercise cages that are referred to by prisoners and staff alike, without irony, as dog runs. Other than that, these men are locked in cement closets, all day, every day. Two steps forward, two steps back. That's it. They can't see the nearby mountains or any trees — "nothing living, not so much as a blade of grass," is how one man in ADX described it. Some people report that after years of not looking at anything further than 10 feet away, their eyesight has deteriorated so much that they can't focus on faraway objects anymore. The isolation is so deep and profound that one of our clients would lie on the floor of his cell for hours, just hoping to catch a glimpse of someone's feet as they walked past the door of his cell. Another befriended a wasp that flew into his cell, feeding it and talking to it like a friend. Some try to communicate with fellow prisoners by yelling through the shower drains. Still though, many of these men lost their voices after talking with us for just an hour. Their vocal cords were out of practice speaking for that long. We know the impact of long-term isolation is devastating. This borders on common sense. It's why harsh prison systems and torture regimes routinely use solitary as a form of severe punishment. And why none of us would tolerate having a loved one, like a parent or a child, locked alone in a small bathroom for days, let alone years. Or decades. In the course of representing that first client at ADX, we learned about another man, Tommy Silverstein, who the Federal Bureau of Prisons put in solitary confinement under a "no human contact" order in 1983, after he killed a corrections officer. Tommy was 31 years old. Now he's 66. He's been in solitary confinement for 35 years. Struggling to find the words to capture his experience of ADX, Tommy, who has become an accomplished artist, drew it instead. Unless we start to change how we treat prisoners in this country, he'll probably be there for the rest of his life. Both John McCain and Nelson Mandela said that of all the horrors they suffered in prison, solitary confinement was the worst. That's because solitary puts people at risk of losing their grasp on who they are, of how and whether they're connected to a larger world. As psychologist Dr. Craig Haney explains, that's because human identity is socially created. We understand ourselves through our relationships with other people. Solitary confinement can make you change what you think about yourself. It can make you doubt whether you even have a self. Some people in solitary aren't even sure they exist, so they'll mouth off to a corrections officer and end up getting shackled or beaten. But at least then, they know they exist. Over time, some of the men in ADX break down in obvious ways, like banging their heads on the walls of their cells or smearing themselves with feces. Or attempting suicide, some of them successfully. Many people cut themselves just to feel the pain that keeps them tethered to the real world. Others adjust, showing no outward sign of mental illness. But there's grave harm in the adjustment itself. That's because the experience of long-term isolation can paradoxically lead to social withdrawal. At first, people are starved for human contact, but over time, it becomes disorienting, even frightening. They can't handle it anymore. All of this amounts to a prolonged social death. The men in ADX are stuck in suspended animation. Not really part of this world, they're not really part of any world that's fully and tangibly human. It's for all of these reasons that international human rights law prohibits the use of long-term solitary confinement. In fact, the UN has called on governments to ban the use of solitary for more than 15 days. As of today, Tommy Silverstein has been in solitary for 12,815 days. Now in judging other countries' human rights records, the US State Department has called the use of long-term solitary a human rights violation. In 2009, for example, State Department condemned Israel, Iran, Indonesia and Yemen for their use of solitary. But we allow it to happen on our own soil. When a prison is located in the US instead of China, when it's run by the federal government and not some rogue sheriff, when it has state-of-the-art technology and gleaming floors, not overcrowded cells and decrepit facilities, it's harder to believe that torture happens there. But it's important to entertain the idea that, sometimes, this too is what torture looks like. As a civil rights lawyer, I believe it's important to ensure that people, even those convicted of terrible crimes, aren't tortured by our government. And if this talk were a movie, I'd tell you next about how we fought and fought and eventually won. But this isn't a movie. So I'll tell you, instead, about how deeply this injustice is hidden. How difficult it is to expose it, and why it's important that we do. You'd think that lawyers, people who work in the justice system, would know what happens in our prisons. But I'm a lawyer, and I live less than two hours away from ADX. And until we went to see that first client, I didn't know anything about it. I don't think that's an accident. ADX walls itself off from public scrutiny. In the 25 years since it opened, it's allowed only a single visit by human rights organizations. Journalists are routinely denied entry. Mail is censored. And even when rare family visits occur, they're monitored by an unseen government official who can cut the visit off without notice if he thinks that the prisoner is talking in too much detail about the conditions in ADX. In China, in Russia, they keep out the human rights observers, keep out the media, keep out the UN. And so do we. ADX is, in the words of one journalist, "a black site on American soil." We know that secrecy is a hallmark of places that torture. But after years of shining a light, we now know more about the conditions in Guantanamo than we do at ADX. Five years ago, when there was a hunger strike and force-feeding at Guantanamo, the same thing was happening at ADX. But you probably didn't hear about it because the government gagged family members and lawyers from talking about it. But here's the thing: the American criminal justice system is supposed to be transparent. And before someone gets sent to prison, that's largely true. Legislators meet in public to debate and define the laws that prohibit criminal conduct. Citizens in our community serve as jurors on criminal trials. And if you want to watch a trial, the courtroom doors are wide open. After the trial, though, our commitment to transparency ends. With the prison door securely shut, what happens behind prison walls stays behind prison walls. And without the scrutiny of the public gaze, the darkness festers. Other than execution, incarceration is the most intrusive power of the state: the deprivation of citizens' liberty. But no government institution is more opaque and less accountable than prison. Even though prisons are supported by tax payers and return 95 percent of their residents to our communities. It's that secrecy that allows the ADX to disappear people. And so we have an obligation, said Justice Kennedy, as a democracy and as a people, "we should know what happens after the prisoner is taken away." The prison system is the concern and responsibility of every citizen. This is your justice system. These are your prisons. Torture happens in the dark. And so we need to embrace the admonition that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Not only because we need to know what happens inside ADX, but because the knowing itself can create change. There's an axiom in physics called the uncertainty principle. It teaches that the mere fact of observation can alter, will alter, the subatomic reaction being observed. In other words, watching something affects its course. In a democracy like the US, prisons are administered in our name and on our behalf. The conditions in ADX implicate our tax dollars, public safety and, most of all, our shared belief in the inherent dignity of every human being. We have an obligation to bear witness. Thank you. (Applause)

Our immigration conversation is broken -- here's how to have a better one

{0: "Paul A. Kramer's work focuses on the changing relationships between the United States and the wider world."}

TED Salon Border Stories

We often hear these days that the immigration system is broken. I want to make the case today that our immigration conversation is broken and to suggest some ways that, together, we might build a better one. In order to do that, I'm going to propose some new questions about immigration, the United States and the world, questions that might move the borders of the immigration debate. I'm not going to begin with the feverish argument that we're currently having, even as the lives and well-being of immigrants are being put at risk at the US border and far beyond it. Instead, I'm going to begin with me in graduate school in New Jersey in the mid-1990s, earnestly studying US history, which is what I currently teach as a professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. And when I wasn't studying, sometimes to avoid writing my dissertation, my friends and I would go into town to hand out neon-colored flyers, protesting legislation that was threatening to take away immigrants' rights. Our flyers were sincere, they were well-meaning, they were factually accurate ... But I realize now, they were also kind of a problem. Here's what they said: "Don't take away immigrant rights to public education, to medical services, to the social safety net. They work hard. They pay taxes. They're law-abiding. They use social services less than Americans do. They're eager to learn English, and their children serve in the US military all over the world." Now, these are, of course, arguments that we hear every day. Immigrants and their advocates use them as they confront those who would deny immigrants their rights or even exclude them from society. And up to a certain point, it makes perfect sense that these would be the kinds of claims that immigrants' defenders would turn to. But in the long term, and maybe even in the short term, I think these arguments can be counterproductive. Why? Because it's always an uphill battle to defend yourself on your opponent's terrain. And, unwittingly, the handouts my friends and I were handing out and the versions of these arguments that we hear today were actually playing the anti-immigrants game. We were playing that game in part by envisioning that immigrants were outsiders, rather than, as I'm hoping to suggest in a few minutes, people that are already, in important ways, on the inside. It's those who are hostile to immigrants, the nativists, who have succeeded in framing the immigration debate around three main questions. First, there's the question of whether immigrants can be useful tools. How can we use immigrants? Will they make us richer and stronger? The nativist answer to this question is no, immigrants have little or nothing to offer. The second question is whether immigrants are others. Can immigrants become more like us? Are they capable of becoming more like us? Are they capable of assimilating? Are they willing to assimilate? Here, again, the nativist answer is no, immigrants are permanently different from us and inferior to us. And the third question is whether immigrants are parasites. Are they dangerous to us? And will they drain our resources? Here, the nativist answer is yes and yes, immigrants pose a threat and they sap our wealth. I would suggest that these three questions and the nativist animus behind them have succeeded in framing the larger contours of the immigration debate. These questions are anti-immigrant and nativist at their core, built around a kind of hierarchical division of insiders and outsiders, us and them, in which only we matter, and they don't. And what gives these questions traction and power beyond the circle of committed nativists is the way they tap into an everyday, seemingly harmless sense of national belonging and activate it, heighten it and inflame it. Nativists commit themselves to making stark distinctions between insiders and outsiders. But the distinction itself is at the heart of the way nations define themselves. The fissures between inside and outside, which often run deepest along lines of race and religion, are always there to be deepened and exploited. And that potentially gives nativist approaches resonance far beyond those who consider themselves anti-immigrant, and remarkably, even among some who consider themselves pro-immigrant. So, for example, when Immigrants Act allies answer these questions the nativists are posing, they take them seriously. They legitimate those questions and, to some extent, the anti-immigrant assumptions that are behind them. When we take these questions seriously without even knowing it, we're reinforcing the closed, exclusionary borders of the immigration conversation. So how did we get here? How did these become the leading ways that we talk about immigration? Here, we need some backstory, which is where my history training comes in. During the first century of the US's status as an independent nation, it did very little to restrict immigration at the national level. In fact, many policymakers and employers worked hard to recruit immigrants to build up industry and to serve as settlers, to seize the continent. But after the Civil War, nativist voices rose in volume and in power. The Asian, Latin American, Caribbean and European immigrants who dug Americans' canals, cooked their dinners, fought their wars and put their children to bed at night were met with a new and intense xenophobia, which cast immigrants as permanent outsiders who should never be allowed to become insiders. By the mid-1920s, the nativists had won, erecting racist laws that closed out untold numbers of vulnerable immigrants and refugees. Immigrants and their allies did their best to fight back, but they found themselves on the defensive, caught in some ways in the nativists' frames. When nativists said that immigrants weren't useful, their allies said yes, they are. When nativists accused immigrants of being others, their allies promised that they would assimilate. When nativists charged that immigrants were dangerous parasites, their allies emphasized their loyalty, their obedience, their hard work and their thrift. Even as advocates welcomed immigrants, many still regarded immigrants as outsiders to be pitied, to be rescued, to be uplifted and to be tolerated, but never fully brought inside as equals in rights and respect. After World War II, and especially from the mid-1960s until really recently, immigrants and their allies turned the tide, overthrowing mid-20th century restriction and winning instead a new system that prioritized family reunification, the admission of refugees and the admission of those with special skills. But even then, they didn't succeed in fundamentally changing the terms of the debate, and so that framework endured, ready to be taken up again in our own convulsive moment. That conversation is broken. The old questions are harmful and divisive. So how do we get from that conversation to one that's more likely to get us closer to a world that is fairer, that is more just, that's more secure? I want to suggest that what we have to do is one of the hardest things that any society can do: to redraw the boundaries of who counts, of whose life, whose rights and whose thriving matters. We need to redraw the boundaries. We need to redraw the borders of us. In order to do that, we need to first take on a worldview that's widely held but also seriously flawed. According to that worldview, there's the inside of the national boundaries, inside the nation, which is where we live, work and mind our own business. And then there's the outside; there's everywhere else. According to this worldview, when immigrants cross into the nation, they're moving from the outside to the inside, but they remain outsiders. Any power or resources they receive are gifts from us rather than rights. Now, it's not hard to see why this is such a commonly held worldview. It's reinforced in everyday ways that we talk and act and behave, down to the bordered maps that we hang up in our schoolrooms. The problem with this worldview is that it just doesn't correspond to the way the world actually works, and the way it has worked in the past. Of course, American workers have built up wealth in society. But so have immigrants, particularly in parts of the American economy that are indispensable and where few Americans work, like agriculture. Since the nation's founding, Americans have been inside the American workforce. Of course, Americans have built up institutions in society that guarantee rights. But so have immigrants. They've been there during every major social movement, like civil rights and organized labor, that have fought to expand rights in society for everyone. So immigrants are already inside the struggle for rights, democracy and freedom. And finally, Americans and other citizens of the Global North haven't minded their own business, and they haven't stayed within their own borders. They haven't respected other nations' borders. They've gone out into the world with their armies, they've taken over territories and resources, and they've extracted enormous profits from many of the countries that immigrants are from. In this sense, many immigrants are actually already inside American power. With this different map of inside and outside in mind, the question isn't whether receiving countries are going to let immigrants in. They're already in. The question is whether the United States and other countries are going to give immigrants access to the rights and resources that their work, their activism and their home countries have already played a fundamental role in creating. With this new map in mind, we can turn to a set of tough, new, urgently needed questions, radically different from the ones we've asked before — questions that might change the borders of the immigration debate. Our three questions are about workers' rights, about responsibility and about equality. First, we need to be asking about workers' rights. How do existing policies make it harder for immigrants to defend themselves and easier for them to be exploited, driving down wages, rights and protections for everyone? When immigrants are threatened with roundups, detention and deportations, their employers know that they can be abused, that they can be told that if they fight back, they'll be turned over to ICE. When employers know that they can terrorize an immigrant with his lack of papers, it makes that worker hyper-exploitable, and that has impacts not only for immigrant workers but for all workers. Second, we need to ask questions about responsibility. What role have rich, powerful countries like the United States played in making it hard or impossible for immigrants to stay in their home countries? Picking up and moving from your country is difficult and dangerous, but many immigrants simply do not have the option of staying home if they want to survive. Wars, trade agreements and consumer habits rooted in the Global North play a major and devastating role here. What responsibilities do the United States, the European Union and China — the world's leading carbon emitters — have to the millions of people already uprooted by global warming? And third, we need to ask questions about equality. Global inequality is a wrenching, intensifying problem. Income and wealth gaps are widening around the world. Increasingly, what determines whether you're rich or poor, more than anything else, is what country you're born in, which might seem great if you're from a prosperous country. But it actually means a profoundly unjust distribution of the chances for a long, healthy, fulfilling life. When immigrants send money or goods home to their family, it plays a significant role in narrowing these gaps, if a very incomplete one. It does more than all of the foreign aid programs in the world combined. We began with the nativist questions, about immigrants as tools, as others and as parasites. Where might these new questions about worker rights, about responsibility and about equality take us? These questions reject pity, and they embrace justice. These questions reject the nativist and nationalist division of us versus them. They're going to help prepare us for problems that are coming and problems like global warming that are already upon us. It's not going to be easy to turn away from the questions that we've been asking towards this new set of questions. It's no small challenge to take on and broaden the borders of us. It will take wit, inventiveness and courage. The old questions have been with us for a long time, and they're not going to give way on their own, and they're not going to give way overnight. And even if we manage to change the questions, the answers are going to be complicated, and they're going to require sacrifices and tradeoffs. And in an unequal world, we're always going to have to pay attention to the question of who has the power to join the conversation and who doesn't. But the borders of the immigration debate can be moved. It's up to all of us to move them. Thank you. (Applause)

Urban architecture inspired by mountains, clouds and volcanoes

{0: 'Believing that architects should envision and build the future, Ma Yansong develops advanced designs that interpret an Eastern affinity for nature within a contemporary fashion.'}

TEDSummit 2019

I am an architect. And this picture shows the city that I come from, Beijing, China. And old Beijing is like a very beautiful garden, you can see a lot of nature. When I was a kid, I learned to swim in this lake and I climbed mountains every day after school. But after getting older, we built more and more modern buildings. And they all look the same. They all look like matchboxes. Why are modern buildings and cities full of these boxy shapes? In this photo, you actually see two cities. The one on the left is New York, and the one on the right is Tianjin, a Chinese city that's being constructed. And they have very similar skylines. Maybe they also follow the same principle. You know, competing for density, competing for more space, competing for efficiency. Therefore, modern architecture becomes a symbol of capital and power. Chinese cities are building a lot, they're also, you know, not only competing for this space and height, they're also learning a lot from North American urban strategies [and] also repeat a lot from city to city. So here, we call it 1,000 cities with one face. So as an architect in China, I have to ask myself, what can I do about it? One day, I was walking on a street, I saw people selling fish. And they put the fish in this cubic fish tank. So I was asking the same question, why a cubic space for fish? Do they like cubic space? (Laughter) Obviously not. So maybe the cubic space, cubic architecture, is cheaper, is easier to make. So, I did this small research, I put a camera and I tried to observe how fish behave in this cubic space. And then I found they probably weren't happy. The cubic space wasn't the perfect home for them, so I decided to design a new fish tank for them. I think it should be more organic, it should be a more fluid space inside. More complex interiors. I think they should feel happier living in this space, but I wouldn't know because they don't talk to me. (Laughter) But one year after, we got this opportunity to design this real building for humans. This is actually a pair of towers that we built in Mississauga, a city outside Toronto. And people call this Marilyn Monroe Towers — (Laughter) because of its curvature. And the idea was to build a tower, high-rise, residential tower, but not a box. It's more inspired by nature, with the sunshine and wind dynamics. After we finished designing the first tower, they told us, you know, "You don't have to design the second one, you just repeat the same design, and we pay you twice." But I said, "You cannot have two Marilyn Monroes standing there." And nature never repeats itself, so now we have two buildings that can dance together. So I have this question for myself. You know, why, in the modern city, we often think architecture is a machine, is a box? So here, I want to see how people looked at nature in the past. By looking into this Chinese traditional painting, I found that they often mixed the nature and the artificial, man-made, in a very dramatic way, so they create this emotional scenery. So in the modern city, my question is: Is there a way that we don't separate buildings and nature, but combine them? So there's another project that we built in China. It's a quite large residential complex. And it's located in a very beautiful nature setting. To be honest, the first time when I visited the site, it was too beautiful. And I almost decided to reject the project because you feel as a criminal to do anything there. I don't want to become a criminal. But my second thought was, if I didn't do it, they would just put, you know, standard urban towers there, anyway. And that would be a pity. So I decided I had to give it a try. So the way we did that was we took the contour lines from the existing mountains, and we took those lines and then translated them into a building. So those towers are actually taking the shapes and geometries from the nature. So each building has a different shape, a different size, different height. And they become the extension of the nature [where] they're situated. And you know, people think we use computer sometimes to design this kind of architecture, but I actually use a lot of hand sketch, because I like the randomness in the hand sketch. And they can carry sort of emotions that cannot be made by computers. Architecture and humans and nature can coexist together and are having a good relationship in this photo. Actually this guy in the photo is one of the architects on our team. I think he's been enjoying the beautiful nature scenery, and feeling relieved that he is not part of the criminals — (Laughter) in the end. Back to the city, in Beijing, we were asked to design these urban towers. And I made this model. It's an architecture model, looks like a minimountain and minivalleys. I put this model on my table, and I watered it every day. And years later, we completed this building. And you can see how my hand sketch is being translated into the real building. And they look quite similar. It looks like a black mountain. And this is how this building is situated in the city. It's on the edge of this beautiful park. It's different, very different from the surrounding buildings, because other buildings are trying to build a wall around the nature. But what we're trying to do here is to make the building itself as a part of nature, so we can extend the nature from the park into the city. So that was the idea. A Chinese art critic drew this painting. He put our building in this painting. Can you see there's a black, tiny mountain? That looks very fit into this painting. However, in this reality, our design was being challenged that it looks so different from the surroundings. And they asked me to modify my design, either color or shape, to make the building fit the context better. So my question was, why it fits this traditional, you know, natural context, better than the reality? Maybe there's something wrong with the reality. Something wrong with the context. In the very northern part of China, we also built this opera house. It's an opera house next to the river, in the wetland park. So we decided to make this building part of the surrounding landscape and merge into the horizon. The building literally looks like a snow mountain. And people can walk on the building. During the day or when there's no opera, people come here, they can enjoy the views, and they can continue their journey from the park onto the building. When they reach the rooftop, there's an amphitheater that's framing the sky, where they can sing to the sky. Inside the opera, we have this lobby with a lot of natural light, and they can also enjoy this semi-indoor-outdoor space, and they can see the beautiful view around them. I've been building several mountains, and here I'm trying to show you one building that I think looks like a cloud. It's the Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts that's being constructed in the city of Los Angeles. It's a museum created by George Lucas, the creator of the "Star Wars" movies. Why a building that looks like a cloud? Because I think, I imagine, the cloud is mysterious. It's nature. It's surreal when this natural element landed in the city. And it makes you feel curious about it, and you want to explore it. So that's how the building landed on earth. By lifting this museum, making it float above the ground, we can free up a lot of landscape and space underneath the building. And then we can, at the same time, create this roof garden above the building where you can visit and enjoy the view. This museum will be completed in the year 2022, and you're all invited when it's completed. So after building all these mountains and clouds, now we're building these volcanoes back in China. This is actually a huge sports park with four stadiums in it, with one football stadium [with] 40,000 seats in there. So it's a very large project. And you see from this photo, you can hardly tell where there's building and where there's landscape. So the building becomes a landscape. Even becomes a land art, where people can walk around the building, they can climb this building as they're wandering in this volcano park. And this rendering shows one of the spaces in those volcanoes. This is actually a swimming pool with natural light coming from above. So, what we're trying to create actually is an environment that blurs the boundary in between architecture and nature. So architecture is no longer a functional machine for living. It also reflects the nature around us. It also reflects our soul and spirit. So, as an architect, I don't think in the future we should repeat those soulless matchboxes anymore. I think what I'm looking for is the opportunity to create a future with harmony in between humans and nature. Thank you very much. (Applause)

What obligation do social media platforms have to the greater good?

{0: 'As a cofounder of Upworthy, and the author of "The Filter Bubble," Eli Pariser leverages technology to help build better and more democratic societies.'}

TEDSummit 2019

I was talking to a guy at a party in California about tech platforms and the problems they're creating in society. And he said, "Man, if the CEOs just did more drugs and went to Burning Man, we wouldn't be in this mess." (Laughter) I said, "I'm not sure I agree with you." For one thing, most of the CEOs have already been to Burning Man. (Laughter) But also, I'm just not sure that watching a bunch of half-naked people run around and burn things is really the inspiration they need right now. (Laughter) But I do agree that things are a mess. And so, we're going to come back to this guy, but let's talk about the mess. Our climate's getting hotter and hotter. It's getting harder and harder to tell truth from fiction. And we've got this global migratory crisis. And just at the moment when we really need new tools and new ways of coming together as a society, it feels like social media is kind of tearing at our civic fabric and setting us against each other. We've got viral misinformation on WhatsApp, bullying on Instagram and Russian hackers on Facebook. And I think this conversation that we're having right now about the harms that these platforms are creating is so important. But I also worry that we could be letting a kind of good existential crisis in Silicon Valley go to waste if the bar for success is just that it's a little harder for Macedonian teenagers to publish false news. The big question, I think, is not just what do we want platforms to stop doing, but now that they've effectively taken control of our online public square, what do we need from them for the greater good? To me, this is one of the most important questions of our time. What obligations do tech platforms have to us in exchange for the power we let them hold over our discourse? I think this question is so important, because even if today’s platforms go away, we need to answer this question in order to be able to ensure that the new platforms that come back are any better. So for the last year, I've been working with Dr. Talia Stroud at the University of Texas, Austin. We've talked to sociologists and political scientists and philosophers to try to answer this question. And at first we asked, "If you were Twitter or Facebook and trying to rank content for democracy rather than for ad clicks or engagement, what might that look like?" But then we realized, this sort of suggests that this is an information problem or a content problem. And for us, the platform crisis is a people problem. It's a problem about the emergent weird things that happen when large groups of people get together. And so we turned to another, older idea. We asked, "What happens when we think about platforms as spaces?" We know from social psychology that spaces shape behavior. You put the same group of people in a room like this, and they're going to behave really differently than in a room like this. When researchers put softer furniture in classrooms, participation rates rose by 42 percent. And spaces even have political consequences. When researchers looked at neighborhoods with parks versus neighborhoods without, after adjusting for socioeconomic factors, they found that neighborhoods with parks had higher levels of social trust and were better able to advocate for themselves politically. So spaces shape behavior, partly by the way they're designed and partly by the way that they encode certain norms about how to behave. We all know that there are some behaviors that are OK in a bar that are not OK in a library, and maybe vice versa. And this gives us a little bit of a clue, because there are online spaces that encode these same kinds of behavioral norms. So, for example, behavior on LinkedIn seems pretty good. Why? Because it reads as a workplace. And so people follow workplace norms. You can even see it in the way they dress in their profile pictures. (Laughter) So if LinkedIn is a workplace, what is Twitter like? (Laughter) Well, it's like a vast, cavernous expanse, where there are people talking about sports, arguing about politics, yelling at each other, flirting, trying to get a job, all in the same place, with no walls, no divisions, and the owner gets paid more the louder the noise is. (Laughter) No wonder it's a mess. And this raises another thing that become obvious when we think about platforms in terms of physical space. Good physical spaces are almost always structured. They have rules. Silicon Valley is built on this idea that unstructured space is conducive for human behavior. And I actually think there's a reason for this myopia built into the location of Silicon Valley itself. So, Michele Gelfand is a sociologist who studies how norms vary across cultures. And she watches how cultures like Japan — which she calls "tight" — is very conformist, very rule-following, and cultures like Brazil are very loose. You can see this even in things like how closely synchronized the clocks are on a city street. So as you can see, the United States is one of the looser countries. And the loosest state in the United States is, you got it, California. And Silicon Valley culture came out of the 1970s Californian counterculture. So, just to recap: the spaces that the world is living in came out of the loosest culture in the loosest state in one of the loosest countries in the world. No wonder they undervalue structure. And I think this really matters, because people need structure. You may have heard this word "anomie." It literally means "a lack of norms" in French. It was coined by Émile Durkheim to describe the vast, overwhelming feeling that people have in spaces without norms. Anomie has political consequences. Because what Gelfand has found is that, when things are too loose, people crave order and structure. And that craving for order and structure correlates really strongly with support for people like these guys. (Laughter) I don't think it's crazy to ask if the structurelessness of online life is actually feeding anxiety that's increasing a responsiveness to authoritarianism. So how might platforms bring people together in a way that creates meaning and helps people understand each other? And this brings me back to our friend from Burning Man. Because listening to him, I realized: it's not just that Burning Man isn't the solution — it's actually a perfect metaphor for the problem. (Laughter) You know, it's a great place to visit for a week, this amazing art city, rising out of nowhere in the dust. But you wouldn't want to live there. (Laughter) There's no running water, there's no trash pickup. At some point, the hallucinogens run out, and you're stuck with a bunch of wealthy white guys in the dust in the desert. (Laughter) Which, to me, is sometimes how social media feels in 2019. (Laughter) A great, fun, hallucinatory place to visit has become our home. And so, if we look at platforms through the lens of spaces, we can then ask ourselves: Who knows how to structure spaces for the public good? And it turns out, this is a question people have been thinking about for a long time about cities. Cities were the original platforms. Two-sided marketplace? Check. Place to keep up with old friends and distant relatives? Check. Vector for viral sharing? Check. In fact, cities have encountered a lot of the same social and political challenges that platforms are now encountering. They've dealt with massive growth that overwhelmed existing communities and the rise of new business models. They've even had new, frictionless technologies that promised to connect everyone together and that instead deepened existing social and race divides. But because of this history of decay and renewal and segregation and integration, cities are the source of some of our best ideas about how to build functional, thriving communities. Faced with a top-down, car-driven vision of city life, pioneers like Jane Jacobs said, let’s instead put human relationships at the center of urban design. Jacobs and her fellow travelers like Holly Whyte, her editor, were these really great observers of what actually happened on the street. They watched: Where did people stop and talk? When did neighbors become friends? And they learned a lot. For example, they noticed that successful public places generally have three different ways that they structure behavior. There's the built environment, you know, that we're going to put a fountain here or a playground there. But then, there's programming, like, let's put a band at seven and get the kids out. And there's this idea of mayors, people who kind of take this informal ownership of a space to keep it welcoming and clean. All three of these things actually have analogues online. But platforms mostly focus on code, on what's physically possible in the space. And they focus much less on these other two softer, social areas. What are people doing there? Who's taking responsibility for it? So like Jane Jacobs did for cities, Talia and I think we need a new design movement for online space, one that considers not just "How do we build products that work for users or consumers?" "How do we make something user-friendly?" but "How do we make products that are public-friendly?" Because we need products that don't serve individuals at the expense of the social fabric on which we all depend. And we need it urgently, because political scientists tell us that healthy democracies need healthy public spaces. So, the public-friendly digital design movement that Talia and I imagine asks this question: What would this interaction be like if it was happening in physical space? And it asks the reverse question: What can we learn from good physical spaces about how to structure behavior in the online world? For example, I grew up in a small town in Maine, and I went to a lot of those town hall meetings that you hear about. And unlike the storybook version, they weren't always nice. Like, people had big conflicts, big feelings ... It was hard sometimes. But because of the way that that space was structured, we managed to land it OK. How? Well, here's one important piece. The downcast glance, the dirty look, the raised eyebrow, the cough ... When people went on too long or lost the crowd, they didn't get banned or blocked or hauled out by the police, they just got this soft, negative social feedback. And that was actually very powerful. I think Facebook and Twitter could build this, something like this. (Laughter) I think there are some other things that online spaces can learn from offline spaces. Holly Whyte observed that in healthy public spaces, there are often many different places that afford different ways of relating. So the picnic table where you have lunch with your family may not be suited for the romantic walk with a partner or the talk with some business colleagues. And it's worth noting that in real space, in none of these places are there big, visible public signs of engagement. So digital designers could think about what kind of conversations do we actually want to invite, and how do we build specifically for those kinds of conversations. Remember the park that we talked about that built social trust? That didn't happen because people were having these big political arguments. Most strangers don't actually even talk to each other the first three or four or five times they see each other. But when people, even very different people, see each other a lot, they develop familiarity, and that creates the bedrock for relationships. And I think, actually, you know, maybe that early idea of cyberspace as kind of this bodiless meeting place of pure minds and pure ideas sent us off in the wrong direction. Maybe what we need instead is to find a way to be in proximity, mostly talking amongst ourselves, but all sharing the same warm sun. And finally: healthy public spaces create a sense of ownership and equity. And this is where the city metaphor becomes challenging. Because, if Twitter is a city, it's a city that's owned by just a few people and optimized for financial return. I think we really need digital environments that we all actually have some real ownership of, environments that respect the diversity of human existence and that give us some say and some input into the process. And I think we need this urgently. Because Facebook right now — I sort of think of, like, 1970s New York. (Laughter) The public spaces are decaying, there's trash in the streets, people are kind of, like, mentally and emotionally warming themselves over burning garbage. (Laughter) And — (Applause) And the natural response to this is to hole up in your apartment or consider fleeing for the suburbs. It doesn't surprise me that people are giving up on the idea of online public spaces the way that they've given up on cities over their history. And sometimes — I'll be honest — it feels to me like this whole project of, like, wiring up a civilization and getting billions of people to come into contact with each other is just impossible. But modern cities tell us that it is possible for millions of people who are really different, sometimes living right on top of each other, not just to not kill each other, but to actually build things together, find new experiences, create beautiful, important infrastructure. And we cannot give up on that promise. If we want to solve the big, important problems in front of us, we need better online public spaces. We need digital urban planners, new Jane Jacobses, who are going to build the parks and park benches of the online world. And we need digital, public-friendly architects, who are going to build what Eric Klinenberg calls "palaces for the people" — libraries and museums and town halls. And we need a transnational movement, where these spaces can learn from each other, just like cities have, about everything from urban farming to public art to rapid transit. Humanity moves forward when we find new ways to rely on and understand and trust each other. And we need this now more than ever. If online digital spaces are going to be our new home, let's make them a comfortable, beautiful place to live, a place we all feel not just included but actually some ownership of. A place we get to know each other. A place you'd actually want not just to visit but to bring your kids. Thank you. (Applause)

Why haven't we cured arthritis?

TED-Ed

While regaling you with daring stories from her youth, it might be hard to believe your grandmother used to be a trapeze artist. However, the bad backs, elbow pain, and creaky knees so common in older people is more than just “old age." In fact, the source of this stiffness plagues many young people as well. The culprit is arthritis: a condition that causes inflammation and pain in the joints of over 90 million people in the U.S. alone. But are stiff, creaky joints really inevitable? What makes arthritis so pervasive, and why haven’t we found a cure for this widespread condition? The first hurdle is that arthritis is actually a spectrum of over 100 different arthritic conditions. All these conditions share symptoms of joint pain and inflammation, but the origin and severity of those symptoms vary widely. Even the most common type, osteoarthritis, is trickier to prevent than one might think. It’s a general misconception that arthritis is confined to old age. The origins of osteoarthritis can often be traced to a patient’s early life, from any seemingly ordinary joint injury. Following impact, immune cells rush in to help clean and repair the damaged site and begin pumping out enzymes, including matrix metalloproteinases and aggrecanases. These enzymes clear out the damaged tissue and contribute to inflammation. But while this rapid swelling helps protect the joint during recovery, inadequately healed tissue can cause these immune cells to overstay their welcome. The continuing flood of enzymes starts to degrade the cartilage, weakening the joint and leading to arthritis later on. Not all forms of arthritis can simply be traced to an old sports injury. Take rheumatoid arthritis, which affects 1.3 million U.S. adults. This condition is actually an autoimmune disease in which autoantibodies target natively produced proteins, some of which are secreted by cartilage cells. We still don’t know what causes this behavior, but the result is that the body treats joint tissue like a foreign invader. Immune cells infiltrate the joint despite there being no tissue damage to repair. This response leads to chronic inflammation, which destroys bone and cartilage. Yet another condition, spondyloarthritis, has similarities to both of the conditions we’ve covered. Patients experience continuous inflammation in the joints and at the sites where ligaments and tendons attach to bones, even without any initial injury. This leads to the flood of enzymes and degradation seen in osteoarthritis, but is driven by different inflammatory proteins called cytokines. As the enzymes eat away at cartilage, the body attempts to stabilize smaller joints by fusing them together. This process sometimes leads to outgrowths called bone spurs, which also cause intense stiffness and joint pain. With so many factors causing arthritis, our current treatments are tailored to tackle specific symptoms rather than underlying causes. These range from promising MACI techniques, which harvest cells from small pieces of cartilage to grow replacement tissue. To a technique called microfracture, where surgeons create small holes in the bone, allowing bone marrow stem cells to leak out and form new cartilage. As a last resort, people with withered cartilage can even undergo full joint replacements. But outside these drastic measures, the underlying drivers of autoimmune arthritis still present a unique treatment challenge. Scientists are making progress with therapies that block TNF-alpha, one of the primary proteins causing inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis. But even this approach only treats the symptoms of the condition, not the cause. In the meantime, some of our best defenses against arthritis are lifestyle choices: maintaining a healthy weight to take pressure off joints, low-impact exercises like yoga or cycling, and avoiding smoking. These arthritis-fighting behaviors can help us lead longer lives as we continue to research cures and treatments for the huge diversity of arthritic conditions.

A historical musical that examines black identity in the 1901 World's Fair

{0: 'Scholar and artist Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin transforms historical material about black identity into theatrical performances. '}

TED2019

The archive. One may envision rooms and shelves stocked with boxes and cartons of old stuff. And yet, for those who are patient enough to dig through it, the archive provides the precious opportunity to touch the past, to feel and learn from the experiences of once-living people who now seem dead and buried deeply in the archive. But what if there was a way to bring the archive to life? Jon Michael Reese: "The world is thinking wrong about race." Melissa Joyner: "This country insists upon judging the Negro." JMR: "Because it does not know." AYGTK: What if one could make it breathe? MJ: "By his lowest and most vicious representatives." AYGTK: Speak. JMR: "An honest, straightforward exhibit." AYGTK: And even sing to us, so that the archive becomes accessible to everyone. What would performing the archive look like? A performance that is not simply based on a true story but one that allows us to come face-to-face with things we thought were once dead and buried. (Piano music) This is what "At Buffalo," a new musical we're developing, is all about. Using collections from over 30 archival institutions, "At Buffalo" performs the massive archive of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, the first World's Fair of the 20th century, held in Buffalo, New York. Now, if you've heard of this fair, it might be because this is where then-US president, William McKinley, was assassinated. For nearly 17 years, I've stayed inside the gates and the archive of this fair, not only because of that story but because of a real life-and-death racial drama that played out on the fairgrounds. Here, in a place that was like Disney World, the Olympics, carnivals, museums, all in one, there were three conflicting displays of what it meant to be black in the United States. The archive says white showmen presented a savage black origin in the form of 98 West and Central Africans, living and performing war dances in a recreated village called Darkest Africa. And across the street, a happy slave life, in the form of 150 Southern black performers, picking cotton, singing and dancing minstrel shows in a recreated antebellum attraction called Old Plantation. As a response, the black Buffalo community championed the third display of blackness: the Negro Exhibit. Codesigned by African American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, it curated photographs, charts, books and more, to show black Americans as a high-achieving race, capable of education and progress. When I first encountered this story, I understood from my own life experience what was at stake to have members of the African diaspora see each other like this. For me, as the child of immigrant parents from Ghana, West Africa, born in the American South, raised in Manhattan, Kansas, (Laughter) and having attended the same elite school as Du Bois, I could see that the Buffalo fair effectively pitted the black Northerner against the Southerner, the educated against the uneducated, and the African American against the African. And I wanted to know: How did these three distinct groups of black folk navigate this experience? Unfortunately, the archive had answers to questions like this underneath racial caricature, conflicting information and worse — silence. (Piano music) Still, I could hear musical melodies and see dance numbers and the rhythms of the words coming off the pages of old newspaper articles. And learning that this World's Fair had music playing everywhere on its fairgrounds, I knew that live, immersive, spectacular musical theater, with the latest technologies of our time, is the closest experience that can bring the archival story of the 1901 fair out of boxes and into life. Stories, like Tannie and Henrietta, a husband and wife vaudeville duo in love who become at odds over performing these "coon" minstrel shows while striving for their five-dollar-a-week dream in the Old Plantation attraction. Like African businessman John Tevi, from present-day Togo, who must outwit the savage rules of the human zoo in which he has become trapped. And stories like Mary Talbert, a wealthy leader of the black Buffalo elite, who must come to terms with the racial realities of her home town. MJ: "The dominant race in this country insists upon judging the Negro by his lowest and most vicious representatives." AYGTK: Like Old Plantation and Darkest Africa. MJ: "... instead of by the more intelligent and worthy classes." AYGTK: When fair directors ignored Mary Talbert and the local black Buffalo community's request to participate in the fair, newspapers say that Mary Talbert and her club of educated African American women held a rousing protest meeting. But the details of that meeting, even down to the fiery speech she gave, were not fully captured in the archive. So, "At Buffalo" takes the essence of Mary's speech and turns it into song. (All singing) We must, we are unanimous. We must, we are unanimous. MJ: We've got something to show — we're going to teach a lesson in Buffalo. It would benefit the nation to see our growth since emancipation. Colored people should be represented in this Pan-American exposition, it would benefit the nation to see our growth since emancipation. (All singing) They made a great mistake not to appoint someone from the race. We must, we are unanimous. We must, we are unanimous. We must, we are unanimous. AYGTK: Mary Talbert successfully demands that the Negro Exhibit come to the fair. And to have the Negro Exhibit in Buffalo means that the musical must tell the story behind why Du Bois cocreated it ... and why Mary and the black elite felt it was urgently needed. JMR: "The world is thinking wrong about race. They killed Sam Hose for who they thought he was. And more men like him, every day, more Negro men, like him, taken apart. And after that — that red ray ... we can never be the same. (Singing) A red ray [A man hunt in Georgia] cut across my desk [Mob after Hose; he will be lynched if caught] the very day Sam's hands were laid to rest. Can words alone withstand the laws unjust? [Escape seems impossible] Can words alone withstand the violence? Oh, no, oh. [Burned alive] [Sam Hose is lynched] Oh, no, oh. [His body cut in many pieces] Oh, no, oh. [Burned at the Stake] [Ten Cents Slice Cooked Liver.] [Fight for souvenirs.] (Both singing) Who has read the books? Our numbers and statistics look small against the page. The crisis has multiplied. Our people are lynched and died. Oh, Lord. Something must change. AYGTK: Something must change. "At Buffalo" reveals how the United States today stands at similar crossroads as 1901 America. Just as the name of Sam Hose filled newspapers back then, today's media carries the names of: JMR: Oscar Grant. MJ: Jacqueline Culp. Pianist: Trayvon Martin. AYGTK: Sandra Bland. And too many others. The 1901 fair's legacies persist in more ways than we can imagine. MJ: Mary Talbert and the National Association of Colored Women started movements against lynching and the myth of black criminality just as black women today started Black Lives Matter. JMR: And some of the same people who fought for and created the Negro Exhibit, including Du Bois, came to Buffalo, four years after the fair, to start the Niagara Movement, which set the groundwork for the creation of the NAACP. AYGTK: It's not just black folks who had a peculiar experience at the 1901 fair. An official handbook informed fair-goers: MJ: "Please remember:" JMR: "... once you get inside the gate," AYGTK: "... you are a part of the show." Performing the archive in "At Buffalo" allows audiences to ask themselves, "Are we still inside the gates, and are we all still part of the show?" (Music ends) (Applause and cheers)

Why do humans have a third eyelid?

{0: 'Dorsa Amir is an evolutionary anthropologist and postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Psychology at Boston College.'}

TED-Ed

You know that little pink thing nestled in the corner of your eye? It’s actually the remnant of a third eyelid. Known as the “plica semilunaris,” it’s much more prominent in birds and a few mammals, and functions like a windshield wiper to keep dust and debris out of their eyes. But in humans, it doesn’t work. It’s vestigial, meaning it no longer serves its original purpose. There are several other vestigial structures like the plica semilunaris in the human body. Most of these became vestigial long before homo sapiens existed, quietly riding along from one of our ancestor species to the next. But why have they stuck around for so long? To answer this question, it helps to understand natural selection. Natural selection simply means that traits which help an organism survive and reproduce in a given environment are more likely to make it to the next generation. As the environment changes, traits that were once useful can become harmful. Those traits are often selected against, meaning they gradually disappear from the population. But if a trait isn’t actively harmful, it might not get selected against, and stick around even though it isn’t useful. Take the tailbone. Evolutionary biologists think that as the climate got drier and grasslands popped up, our tail-bearing ancestors left the trees and started walking on land. The tails that had helped them in the trees began to disrupt their ability to walk on land. So individuals with mutations that reduced the length of their tails became more successful at life on land, surviving long enough to pass their short tails on to the next generation. The change was likely gradual over millions of years until, about 20 million years ago, our ancestors’ external tails disappeared altogether. Today, we know human embryos have tails that dissolve as the embryo develops. But the stubby tailbone sticks around, probably because it doesn’t cause any harm— in fact, it serves a more minor function as the anchor point for certain other muscles. Up to 85% of people have a vestigial muscle called the “palmaris longus.” To see if you do, put your hand down on a flat surface and touch your pinkie to your thumb. If you see a little band pop up in the middle of your wrist, that’s the tendon that attaches to this now-defunct muscle. In this case, the fact that not everyone has it has helped us trace its function. Vestigial traits can persist when there’s no incentive to lose them— but since there’s also no incentive to keep them, random mutations will sometimes still eliminate them from part of the population. Looking at our primate relatives, we can see that the palmaris longus is sometimes absent in those that spend more time on the land, but always present in those that spend more time in trees. So we think it used to help us swing from branch to branch, and became unnecessary when we moved down to land. The appendix, meanwhile, may once have been part of the intestinal system our ancestors used for digesting plant materials. As their diets changed, those parts of the intestinal system began to shrink. Unlike other vestigial structures, though, the appendix isn’t always harmless— it can become dangerously inflamed. For most of human history, a burst appendix could be a death sentence. So why did it stick around? It’s possible that it was very slowly on its way out, or that mutations simply hadn’t arisen to make it smaller. Or maybe it has other benefits— for example, it might still be a reservoir of bacteria that helps us break down food. But the fact is, we’re not really sure why the appendix persists. Evolution is an imperfect process. Human beings are the result of millions of years of trial, error, and random chance— and we’re full of evolutionary relics to remind us of that.

Hope and justice for women who've survived ISIS

{0: 'As an experienced police investigator, Rabiaa El Garani has been deployed to many regions around the globe to investigate sexual and gender-based violence.'}

TEDMED 2018

[This talk contains mature content] When I was 14, my parents intended to marry me off to a man of their choosing. I refused. That choice to defy my family shaped everything in my life and set me on the path to become who I am today. But it was very painful at times and continues to be so. My parents were raised in traditional, uneducated Moroccan families where a girl's main value is measured by her virginity. They emigrated to Belgium, and I was born, raised and educated there. I did not accept their view of the world. When I said no to them, I paid for it dearly in terms of physical and emotional abuse. But eventually, I escaped from their home and became a federal police detective who could help protect the rights of others. My specialty was investigating cases in counterterrorism, child abduction and homicide. I loved that work, and it was extremely fulfilling. With my Muslim background, Arabic language skills and an interest in working internationally, I decided to seek new challenges. After decades of being a police officer, I was recruited to become an investigator of sexual and gender-based violence as a member of the Justice Rapid Response and UN Women roster. Justice Rapid Response is an organization for criminal investigations of mass atrocities. They run on both public and private funding and provide evidence and reports to more than 100 participating countries. Many countries in conflict are often unable to provide a just process to those who have been victims of mass violence. To respond to that, Justice Rapid Response was created in partnership with UN Women. Together, Justice Rapid Response and UN Women recruited, trained and certified more than 250 professionals with a specific expertise in sexual and gender-based violence, like me. Our investigations are carried out under international law, and our findings eventually become evidence to prosecute war criminals. This mechanism provides hope to victims that justice and accountability may someday be found in the wake of war and conflict. Let me tell you about the most challenging work I have ever done. This was in Iraq. Since the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, this group has systematically attacked and tortured many religious minorities and ethnicities, such as the Christians, the Shia Turkmen, Shia Muslims, Shia Shabaks and the Yazidis. The persecution of the Yazidis has been especially horrific. On the 3rd and 15th of August 2014, ISIS attacked approximately 20 villages and towns in Sinjar, Iraq. They executed all the males over the age of 14, including the elderly and disabled. They divided up the women and girls, raped them and sold them into sexual and domestic slavery. One month later, a UN Human Rights Council resolution led to the fact-finding mission on Iraq to investigate and document alleged violations and abuses committed by ISIS and associated groups. I was sent to investigate the atrocities committed against the Yazidis, with a focus on sexual and gender-based crimes. The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking ethnoreligious community based in Northern Iraq. Their belief system incorporates aspects of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism. For hundreds of years, Muslims and Christians who do not understand their beliefs have condemned the Yazidis as devil worshippers. ISIS thought of them in this way and vowed to destroy them. OK, let's do an experimental thought here. I want you to think about your worst sexual experience and recall it in detail. Now turn to the person to your right and describe that experience. (Laughter) I know it's difficult, eh? (Laughter) But, of course, I don't expect you to do that. You would all be uncomfortable and embarrassed. And so imagine an 11-year-old girl in the Middle East who was not educated about sexuality, who was taken from her comfort zone, her family, who witnessed the execution of her father and brothers, having to describe in detail the rape that she faced in a culture where talking about sexuality is taboo. Her only way of recovering her honor is to hide the crime, believe she was married against her will, or deny the events out of shame and fear of being rejected. I interviewed a girl who I will call "Ayda." She was purchased by an ISIS leader, or emir, together with 13 other girls aged between 11 and 18 years old. Amongst the group were her three nieces and two cousins. The 14 girls were taken to a house full of ISIS fighters. An imam was present who made it clear that their religion was wrong, and the only good path was to accept Islam and marry a Muslim man. The emir wrote the names of the girls on 14 small pieces of paper. Two ISIS fighters would pick a piece of paper each. They would call out the name written on the paper, and those girls were forcibly taken into another room. While the emir and the imam heard the two girls screaming as they were being raped, they began laughing. Both were telling the other girls that the two girls should enjoy the experience instead of screaming. After a while, the girls were brought back into the room. They were in shock and were bleeding. They confirmed that they had been married and suffered a lot of pain. It is important to consider the fact that they had been raised to believe in sexual intercourse with one man in their lifetime: their husband. The only connection that they could make in their shocked state is to define their rape as marriage. Before the next two girls were taken to be raped, Ayda made a terrifying decision. As the oldest of the group, she convinced the emir to let them use the bathroom in order to wash themselves before marriage. Ayda had been told by one of the girls that she noticed rat poison in the bathroom. The 14 girls decided to end their suffering by drinking the poison. Before the poison took full effect, they were discovered by ISIS and taken to the hospital, where they survived. ISIS decided to separate the girls and sell them individually. Ayda was taken to another house and brutally raped after she attempted again to kill herself with her headscarf. She was beaten and raped every two days. After four months in captivity, Ayda found the courage to escape. She never saw the other 13 girls again. I interviewed Ayda multiple times. She was willing to speak to me because she had heard from other victims that there was a woman from the UN who understood her complicated culture. I looked into her eyes and listened deeply to the stories of her darkest hours. We established a personal connection that continues to this day. My upbringing made it easy for me to understand her extreme sense of shame and her fear of being rejected. These types of investigations are not only about gathering information and evidence, but they're also about victim support. The bonds I established with the victims strengthens their confidence and willingness to seek justice. As she considered her escape, Ayda, like all Yazidi survivors, faced a dilemma: Should she continue to suffer the abuse of her captors, or would it be better to return home, where she would face shame, rejection and possibly honor killing? I know all too well the pain of being rejected by my Moroccan community in Belgium, and I did not want this to happen to the Yazidi community. So a group of concerned entities, including the UN, NGOs, politicians and members of the Yazidi community approached a religious leader, Baba Sheikh. After many meetings, he realized that these girls had not disrespected their religion by being forcibly converted to Islam and married to ISIS fighters. Instead, they have been abducted, raped and sexually enslaved. I am happy to report that, after our meetings, Baba Sheikh announced publicly that the survivors should be treated as victims and embraced by the community. This message was heard throughout the community and eventually reached the survivors being held captive by ISIS. After his declaration of support, the survivors were motivated to escape from ISIS as Ayda has done, and many young Yazidi women took the bold step and returned home to their communities. Baba Sheikh's public pronouncement saved the lives of many young Yazidi women, both in captivity and after their escape. Sadly, not all religious leaders agreed to talk with us. Some victims had far worse outcomes than the Yazidis. For example, only 43 of the 500-600 victims from the Shia Turkmen community were able to return home after escaping ISIS. Some of them were advised by their family to stay with ISIS or commit suicide in order to save the honor of the family. Germany established a project to support survivors of ISIS by providing psychosocial support and housing for 1,100 women and children, including Ayda. I visited Ayda several times during my work. I am so proud of her and the other victims. The progress they have made is remarkable. It is really moving to see how many of them, despite their struggles, have benefited from this program. The program includes individual and group counseling, art therapy, music therapy, sport activities, language courses, school and other integration efforts. What I observed was that removing the victims from an area of conflict to a country at peace had a positive impact on all of them. This project caught the attention of other countries, and they were interested to help more Yazidis. The Yazidi women and girls still call and text me to tell me about their grades at school, fun trips they've taken, or to inform me about their future dreams, like writing a book about what they have faced with ISIS. Sometimes they are sad and feel the need to talk again about the events. I'm not a psychologist, and I have faced secondary PTSD from their horrific stories. But I keep encouraging them to talk, and I keep listening, because I do not want them to feel alone in their suffering. Through these anecdotes, I see a bigger picture emerging. These women and girls are healing. They are no longer afraid to seek justice. Without hope there can be no justice, and without justice there can be no hope. Every 3rd and 15th of August, it's my remembrance day, and I reach out to the Yazidis to let them know that I'm thinking about them. They're always happy when I do that. It's an emotional day for them. This past August, I spoke with Ayda. She was so happy to announce that one of her nieces who was abducted with her was finally released out of ISIS hands in Syria and returned to Iraq. Can you believe that? After four years? Today, her biggest wish is for her whole family, now located across three continents, to be reunited. And I hope they will. When I think about the survivors I work with, I remember the words of an Egyptian doctor, writer and human rights activist, Nawal El Saadawi. In her book, "Woman at Point Zero," she wrote, "Life is very hard, and the only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself." These victims have been through unimaginable pain. But with a little help, they show how resilient they are. Each has their own perspective on what kind of justice she seeks, and I believe deeply that a credible justice process is key to how she reclaims her dignity and finds closure with her trauma. Justice is not only about punishing the perpetrator. It's about victims feeling that crimes committed against them have been recorded and recognized by the rule of law. For me, it has been the experience of a lifetime to work with these survivors. Because I share their sorrow, their language and their culture, we connect on the deepest human level. This itself is an act of healing: to be heard, to be seen, to be given compassion instead of condemnation. When we get so close to people in pain, it creates pain for the investigators, too. My work is challenging, heartbreaking and trauma-inducing. But let me tell you why I do it. When I meet the survivors of these mass atrocities, when I hold their hands and look in their eyes, it does not erase my own pain, but it does make it almost worthwhile. And there's nothing I would rather be doing. When I see these brave survivors struggling to connect again to their own self-worth, to their families, to their place in a society that values them, it is an honor to bear witness; it is a privilege to seek justice. And that is healing, too — for all of us. Thank you. (Applause)

How India's local recyclers could solve plastic pollution

{0: 'Mani Vajipey has dedicated his life and career to the overhaul of waste management in India.'}

TED Talks India: Nayi Baat

Shah Rukh Khan: Say no to plastic. The one thing that all environmental warriors teach us. But we begin and end the day with products that have been made from this virtually indestructible material. The truth is that our consumption and disposal of plastic has reached such unsustainable proportions that we need to address this using every idea and resource at hand. Please welcome someone who's helping solve India's waste management issues, Mani Vajipey, recycler and cofounder/CEO of Banyan Nation. (Applause) Mani Vajipey: If recycling were an Olympic sport, India would win the gold medal. India has one of the highest rates of plastic recycling and recovery in the entire world. Higher than the likes of Singapore, countries in North America and even countries in Europe. India recovers and recycles over 60 percent of its plastic waste, whereas a developed country, like United States, manages just about 10 percent. This high rate of collection is largely possible thanks to the millions of informal recyclers, the kabadiwalas, the bhandiwallas and the raddiwalas that we find at every street corner across every city in India. And yet, in spite of such a ubiquitous, extensive and intricate network of recyclers, India's national scenery is dominated by filth and squalor. And the general perception is that we don't recycle our plastics. The other thing about plastics in India is that any product made from recycled plastic is considered to be substandard and we expect it to be cheaper as well. What we don't realize is there are several types of plastics in their virgin and pure form, if recycled scientifically, can be recycled several times over without any compromise in quality. If we can recover and reuse our discarded plastic, then we save a significant amount of virgin plastic that we would have otherwise produced and consumed. And this is very important, because virgin plastic is made from fossil fuels that are an exhaustible resource. The more virgin plastic we produce and consume, the more plastic waste we have to manage. Mismanagement of plastic waste leads to the leakage of such materials into our water bodies. It's now common knowledge that by the year 2050 we'll have more plastics in our oceans than fish. About seven years ago, my friend and cofounder Raj and I, we decided that we were going to focus on solving this massive problem. We went around the city of Hyderabad, talking to local recyclers. Very soon, we found out that there were many recyclers just in Hyderabad alone. We soon realized that the plastic recycling industry of today is not very different from the milk industry of the '60s and '70s. Milk in India is produced by marginal milk farmers, with two or three cows or buffalos, who produce five to ten liters of milk a day. Instead of blindly aping solutions from the West, India championed the milk cooperative model, where thousands of such small-scale recyclers were brought together into groups. With scale came innovations and investments. India was transformed from a milk-deficit nation to the world's leading exporter and producer of milk. It dawned upon us that India had in the past solved much larger problems, like milk deficiency. We only need to look back to our past to find inspiration in solving what is perhaps the most fundamental issue of our times, that is plastic pollution. But before we could do this, or before brands could use recycled plastic, we had to solve two things. Quality and scale. For us, to make a shampoo bottle from discarded plastics, we had to collect tens of thousands of tons of discarded plastics. For that, we needed data. Raj and I built a simple data intelligence platform that allowed us to map all the recyclers, giving us a bird's eye view of every recycler in Hyderabad. The results were astounding. There were 2,000 kabadiwalas just in Hyderabad alone. That means, for every square kilometer, there were four kabadiwalas or informal recyclers. No developed country or city in the entire world has the luxury of such a brilliant collection system. (Applause) Once we had the data, the rest was fairly straightforward. We started trading with the informal recyclers, we started training them to segregate the materials based on our quality specifications. In the past five years, we've developed several clusters across South India, comprising of thousands of such informal recyclers, who interact with us both directly and digitally. In parallel, we began working on the problem of quality and purity of material. So in the past five years, we developed a proprietary cleaning technology that allows us to eliminate all contaminants. Today, Banyan's recycled granules have undergone stringent quality testing and have been certified by top global FMCG and automotive companies. In the next few months, tens of thousands of discarded plastics collected through informal recycler networks will be converted into high-quality granules and sent away to brands and large companies to make bottles for engine-oil packaging, for shampoo bottles and for lotions. In the next three years, we expect that over 500 million such bottles will be made from our recycled plastics. (Applause) But this is just the beginning. In the next five years, we aspire to build an India where 100 percent of discarded plastics are recycled and repurposed scientifically — where plastic waste no longer threatens our water bodies, and the very survival of our terrestrial and marine life. So the next time you go to a store and pick up a shampoo bottle, see if that bottle uses safe and sustainable recycled plastic. That's not only just going to help the Earth but also reward the street corner recycler for his all-important work. Now that will compel brands to use more and more recycled plastic for their mainstream products and applications. Our tradition and our culture has a lot of ancient wisdom. Let's not destroy the only planet we have. The only home we have. Thank you. (Applause) SRK: Thank you, Mani. When I was young, I used to — (sings in Hindi). How little do we know sometimes that we are, as a nation, the biggest recycler of plastics and waste, if not just plastic, and we didn't know this about our own country. MV: May I say something really cool? Cities like New York and Paris today are looking to put out reverse vending machines so that people can go and put trash in that and then they can get some cash. For the past several decades, the entire country and the kabadiwalas, and the bhandiwallas, we have been doing that. I'm very positive that in three to five years, you'll wake up, you know that the plastic is being recycled, you're going to pick up a packaging, you know that the package actually has a mark that uses recycled plastics, so I'm super optimistic about this. Even as an entrepreneur. (Applause) SRK: When I see a youngster do what he has done and achieved, I want that part to also be a source of encouragement for people to take over. So tell me, are you making a lot of money? MV: What's so brilliant about plastic recycling now is it's an idea whose time has come. And we're very fortunate to have signed a really big, multimillion-dollar contract with some of the top FMCG companies. So we are at the inflection point in India. And — SRK: Tell us the money, money, money, Mani. MV: (Laughs) SRK: Give the figure, it will encourage people, it's not for greed, it's not for any of the reasons ... Say to them. They are making good money, yeah. (Applause) MV: For us, to build these systems in place, we need investors who will back us to develop — (Laughter) (Applause) SRK: You have to be like Mani that I'm asking, "How much you're making?" he's already making it off me. But I may look stupid, but I'm not. I totally and completely believe in the concept of recycling plastic, and I'm going to help Mani with my first investment that all the plastic bottles that we have at shootings, in every shooting of mine, I'm going to send it to his company to recycle, starting from these four. Thank you very much, Mani. (Applause) MV: Thank you so much. SRK: Big round of applause for Mani. (Applause)

The dangers of mixing drugs

TED-Ed

Which of these three people is doing something risky? Is it the one who takes their cholesterol medication with grapefruit juice? The one who takes Acetaminophen pain relievers for a sore ankle before going out for drinks? Or the one who’s on a blood-thinning medication and takes an aspirin for a headache? Actually, all of them are. Each has inadvertently created a drug interaction that could, in extreme cases, lead to kidney failure; liver damage; or internal bleeding. Drug interactions happen when the combination of a drug with another substance causes different effects than either would individually. Foods, herbal supplements, legal drugs, and illicit substances can all cause drug interactions. Most drug interactions fall into two categories. Some take place when two substances’ effects influence each other directly. In other cases, one substance effects how the body processes another, like how it is absorbed, metabolized, or transported around the body. Blood thinners and aspirin, for example, have similar effects that become dangerous when combined. Both prevent blood clots from forming— blood thinners by preventing the formation of the clotting factors that hold clots together, and aspirin by preventing blood cells from clumping into groups that become clots. Individually, these effects are usually safe, but taken together, they can prevent blood clotting to a dangerous extent, possibly causing internal bleeding. While blood thinners and aspirin are generally harmless when taken individually, interactions where one substance exacerbates the effects of another can also take place between drugs that are independently harmful. Cocaine and heroin are each dangerous, and those dangers compound when the two drugs are combined— even though their behavioral effects may feel like they cancel each other out. Cocaine is a stimulant, and many of its effects, like increased heart rate, cause the body to need more oxygen. But heroin, a depressant, slows breathing— reducing the body’s oxygen supply just when it needs more. This combination strains the organs and can cause respiratory failure and death. The interaction between grapefruit juice and certain medications in class of cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins, has to do with drug metabolism. The liver produces enzymes, molecules that facilitate the breakdown of substances that enter the body. Enzymes can both activate drugs, by breaking them down into their therapeutic ingredients from more complex molecules, and deactivate them, by breaking harmful compounds down into harmless metabolites. There are many, many different enzymes, each of which has a binding site that fits a specific molecule. Grapefruit binds to the same enzyme as statins, making less of that enzyme available to break down statins. So combining the two means that a greater concentration of the drug stays in the bloodstream for a longer period of time, potentially causing kidney failure. Alcohol can also alter the function of the enzyme that breaks down Acetaminophen, the active ingredient in pain relievers like Tylenol and paracetamol. When someone takes Acetaminophen, some of it is converted into a toxic substance. At the recommended dose, there isn’t usually enough of this toxic byproduct to cause harm. But heavy drinking can alter enzyme activity so more of that byproduct is produced, potentially causing liver damage even with what’s usually a safe dose of acetominophen. Meanwhile, the herbal remedy Saint John’s Wort increases the liver’s production of a particular enzyme. That means the drugs this enzyme is responsible for breaking down get metabolized faster— sometimes too fast, before they can have their therapeutic effects. In spite of the dizzying number of possible interactions, most of the dangerous interactions with commonly used drugs are well known. And new developments in science are helping us keep better track of drug interactions than ever. Some researchers are developing AI programs that can predict the side effects of drug interactions before they occur, using information about the landscape of protein interactions within your body. For the new drugs that are being developed all the time, supercomputers are being used to find potential interactions while those drugs are still in development.

Small rockets are the next space revolution

{0: 'As founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, Peter Beck oversees the manufacturing and launch of rockets designed to put small satellites into orbit.'}

TED2019

So what I'm going to talk about here is, this is a power station. So if you've ever wondered what a couple of million horsepower looked like, that's pretty much what it looks like. And for me, it's always been about the rocket. In fact so much so that when I was growing up, the school called in my parents to have a bit of a discussion, because they believed that my aspirations were unrealistic for what I wanted to do. (Laughter) And they suggested that I take up a job at the local aluminium smelter, because I was very good with my hands. But for me, aluminium, or as you Canadians say, "aluminum," was not part of my plan at all. So I started building rockets when I was at school. They got bigger and bigger. I actually hold an unofficial land speed record for a rocket bike and roller blades while wearing a rocket pack. (Laughter) But as the rockets got larger and larger, and more and more complex, I started to be able to think I could do something with this. Now today we hear about very large rockets taking humans to, or aspiring to take humans to, the Moon, and Mars and beyond. And that's really important, but there's a revolution going on in the space industry, and it's not a revolution of the big, it's a revolution of the small. So here we have an average-to-large-sized spacecraft in 1990. We can tell it's 1990 because of the powder blue smocks for all the trained in the clean rooms in 1990. But that was your average-to-large-sized spacecraft in 1990. Here's a spacecraft that's going to launch this year. This particular spacecraft has four high-resolution cameras, a whole lot of senors, a CoMP communication system. We're going to launch thousands of these into the solar system to look for extraterrestrial life. Quite different. You see that Moore's law really applied itself to spacecraft. However, the rockets that we've been building have been designed for carrying these very large, school-bus-sized spacecraft to orbit. But this kind of launch vehicle here is not very practical for launching something that will fit on the tip of my finger. And to give you a sense of scale here, this rocket is so large that I inserted a picture of myself in my underpants, in complete confidence, knowing that you will not be able to find me. That's how big this rocket actually is. (Laughter) Moving on. (Laughter) So this is our rocket — it's called the Electron. It's a small launch vehicle for lifting these small payloads into orbit. And the key here is not the size of the rocket — the key here is frequency. If you actually wanted to democratize space and enable access to space, launch frequency is the absolute most important thing out of all of this. Now in order to really democratize space, there's three things you have to do. And each one of these three things has kind of the equivalent amount of work. So the first is, obviously, you have to build a rocket. The second is regulatory, and the third is infrastructure. So let's talk a little bit about infrastructure. So this is our launch site — it's obviously not Cape Canaveral, but it's a little launch site — in fact, it's the only private orbiter launch site in the entire world, down in New Zealand. And you may think that's a bit of an odd place to build a rocket company and a launch site. But the thing is that every time you launch a rocket, you have to close down around about 2,000 kilometers of airspace, 2,000 kilometers of marine and shipping space, and ironically, it's one of the things in America that doesn't scale very well, because every time you close down all that airspace, you disrupt all these travelers trying to get to their destination. The airlines really hate rocket companies, because it costs them around $70,000 a minute, and so on. So what you really need, if you want to truly have rapid access to space, is a reliable and frequent access to space, is you need, basically, a small island nation in the middle of nowhere, with no neighbors and no air traffic. And that just happened to be New Zealand. (Laughter) So, that's kind of the infrastructure bit. Now the next bit of that is regulatory. So, believe it or not, New Zealand is not known for its space prowess, or at least it wasn't. And you can't just rock on up to a country with what is essentially considered an ICBM, because unfortunately, if you can put a satellite into orbit, you can use that rocket for doing significantly nasty things. So quickly, you run afoul of a whole lot of rules and regulations, and international treaties of the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and whatnot. So it becomes quite complex. So in order for us to launch down in New Zealand, we had to get the United States government and the New Zealand government to agree to sign a bilateral treaty. And then once that bilateral treaty was signed to safeguard the technology, the New Zealand government had a whole lot of obligations. And they had to create a lot of rules and regulations. In fact, they had to pass laws through a select committee and through Parliament, ultimately, and to complete laws. Once you have laws, you need somebody who administers them. So they had to create a space agency. And once they did, the Aussies felt left out, so they had to create a space agency. And on and on it goes. So you see, there's a massive portion of this, in fact, two thirds of it, that does not even involve the rocket. (Laughter) Now, let's talk about the rocket. You know, what I didn't say is that we're actually licensed to launch every 72 hours for the next 30 years. So we have more launch availability as a private company than America does as an entire country. And if you've got a launch every 72 hours, then that means you have to build a rocket every 72 hours. And unfortunately, there's no such thing as just a one-stop rocket shop. You can't go and buy bits to build a rocket. Every rocket is absolutely bespoke, every component is absolutely bespoke. And you're in a constant battle with physics every day. Every single day, I wake up and I battle physics. And I'll give you an example of this. So on the side of our rocket, there's a silver stripe. The reason is because there's avionic components behind there. We needed to lower the emissivity of the skin so we didn't cook the components from the sunlight. So we paint a silver stripe. Unfortunately, as you're sailing through the Earth's atmosphere, you generate a lot of static electricity. And if you don't have conductive paint, you'll basically send lightning bolts down to the Earth. So even the silver paint has to be triboelectrificated and certified and applied and everything, and the stickers, they're a whole nother story. But even the simplest thing is always, always a real struggle. Now, to the heart of any launch vehicle is the engine. This is our Rutherford rocket engine. And usually, you measure rocket engines in terms of time to manufacture, in terms of sort of months or even sometimes years, on really big engines. But if you're launching every 72 hours — there's 10 engines per rocket — then you need to produce an engine very quickly. We needed to come up with a whole new process and a whole new cycle for the rocket engine. We came up with a new cycle called the electric turbo pump, but we also managed to be able to 3D-print these rocket engines. So each one of these engines is 3D-printed out of Inconel superalloy, and right now, we can print round about one engine every 24 hours. Now, the electric turbo pump cycle is a totally different way to pump propellant into the rocket engine. So we carry about one megawatt where the battery is on board. And we have little electric turbo pumps, about the size of a Coke can, not much bigger than a Coke can. They spin at 42,000 RPM, and each one of those Coke-can-sized turbo pumps produces about the same amount of horsepower as your average family car, and we have 20 of them on the rocket. So you can see even the simplest thing, like pumping propellants, always pretty much drives you insane. This is Electron, it works. (Laughter) (Applause) Not only does it work once, it seems to work quite frequently, which is handy when you've got a lot of customers to put on orbit. So far, we've put 25 satellites in orbit. And the really cool thing is we're able to do it very, very accurately. In fact, we insert the satellites to within an accuracy of 1.4 kilometers. And I guess if you're riding in a cab, 1.4 kilometers is not very accurate. But in, kind of, space terms, that equates to around about 180 milliseconds. We travel 1.4 kilometers in about 180 milliseconds. So, it's actually quite hard to do. (Laughter) Now, what I want to talk about here is space junk. We've talked a lot during this talk about, you know, how we want to launch really frequently, every 72 hours, and all the rest of it. However, I don't want to go down in history as the guy that put the most amount of space junk in orbit. This is kind of the industry's dirty little secret here, what most people don't realize is that the majority of space junk by mass is not actually satellites, it's dead rockets. Because as you ascend to orbit, you have to shed bits of the rocket to get there, with the battle of physics. So I'm going to give a little Orbital Mechanics 101 here, and talk about how we go to orbit, and how we do it really, really differently from everybody else. So the second stage cruises along and then we separate off a thing at the top called the kick stage, but we leave the second stage in this highly elliptical orbit. And at the perigee of the orbit, or the lowest point, it dips into the Earth's atmosphere and basically burns back up. So now we're left with this little kick stage, that white thing on the corner of the screen. It's got its own propulsion system, and we use it to raise and trim the orbit and then deploy the spacecraft. And then because it's got its own engine, we put it into a retro orbit, put it back into a highly elliptical orbit, reenter it into the atmosphere and burn it back up, and leave absolutely nothing behind. Now everybody else in the industry is just downright filthy, they just leave their crap everywhere out there. (Laughter) (Applause) So I want to tell you a little bit of a story, and this is going to date me, but I went to a school at the very bottom of the South Island in New Zealand, tiny little school, and we had a computer not dissimilar to this one. And attached to that computer was a little black box called a modem, and every Friday, the class would gather around the computer and we would send an email to another school in America that was lucky enough to have the same kind of setup, and we would receive an email back. And we thought that was just incredible, absolutely incredible. Now I often wonder what would happen if I traveled back in time and I sat down with myself and I explained all of the things that were going to occur because of that little black box connected to the computer. You would largely think that it would be complete fantasy. But the reality is that is where we are right now with space. We're right on the verge of democratizing space, and we have essentially sent our first email to space. Now I'll give you some examples. So last year, we flew a small satellite for a bunch of high school students who had built it. And the high school students were studying the atmosphere of Venus. Those are high school students launching their own satellite. Another great example, there's a number of really big programs right now to place large constellations, of small satellites in orbit to deliver internet to every square millimeter on the planet. And for pretty much everybody in this room, that's just handy, because we can stream Netflix anywhere we want. But if you think about the developing countries of the world, you've just disseminated the entire knowledge of the world to every single person in the world. And that's going to have a pretty major effect. Thanks very much. (Applause)

Music is medicine, music is sanity

{0: "Violinist Robert Gupta joined the LA Philharmonic at the age of 19 -- and maintains a passionate parallel interest in neurobiology and mental health issues. He's a TED Senior Fellow."}

TED2010

One day, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez was walking along the streets of downtown Los Angeles when he heard beautiful music. And the source was a man, an African-American man, charming, rugged, homeless, playing a violin that only had two strings. And I'm telling a story that many of you know, because Steve's columns became the basis for a book, which was turned into a movie, with Robert Downey Jr. acting as Steve Lopez, and Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, the Juilliard-trained double bassist whose promising career was cut short by a tragic affliction with paranoid schizophrenia. Nathaniel dropped out of Juilliard, he suffered a complete breakdown, and 30 years later he was living homeless on the streets of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. I encourage all of you to read Steve's book or to watch the movie to understand not only the beautiful bond that formed between these two men, but how music helped shape that bond, and ultimately was instrumental — if you'll pardon the pun — in helping Nathaniel get off the streets. I met Mr. Ayers in 2008, two years ago, at Walt Disney Concert Hall. He had just heard a performance of Beethoven's First and Fourth symphonies, and came backstage and introduced himself. He was speaking in a very jovial and gregarious way about Yo-Yo Ma and Hillary Clinton and how the Dodgers were never going to make the World Series, all because of the treacherous first violin passage work in the last movement of Beethoven's Fourth Symphony. And we got talking about music, and I got an email from Steve a few days later saying that Nathaniel was interested in a violin lesson with me. Now, I should mention that Nathaniel refuses treatment because when he was treated it was with shock therapy and Thorazine and handcuffs, and that scar has stayed with him for his entire life. But as a result now, he is prone to these schizophrenic episodes, the worst of which can manifest themselves as him exploding and then disappearing for days, wandering the streets of Skid Row, exposed to its horrors, with the torment of his own mind unleashed upon him. And Nathaniel was in such a state of agitation when we started our first lesson at Walt Disney Concert Hall — he had a kind of manic glint in his eyes, he was lost. And he was talking about invisible demons and smoke, and how someone was poisoning him in his sleep. And I was afraid, not for myself, but I was afraid that I was going to lose him, that he was going to sink into one of his states, and that I would ruin his relationship with the violin if I started talking about scales and arpeggios and other exciting forms of didactic violin pedagogy. (Laughter) So, I just started playing. And I played the first movement of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. And as I played, I understood that there was a profound change occurring in Nathaniel's eyes. It was as if he was in the grip of some invisible pharmaceutical, a chemical reaction, for which my playing the music was its catalyst. And Nathaniel's manic rage was transformed into understanding, a quiet curiosity and grace. And in a miracle, he lifted his own violin and he started playing, by ear, certain snippets of violin concertos which he then asked me to complete — Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius. And we started talking about music, from Bach to Beethoven and Brahms, Bruckner, all the B's, from Bartók, all the way up to Esa-Pekka Salonen. And I understood that he not only had an encyclopedic knowledge of music, but he related to this music at a personal level. He spoke about it with the kind of passion and understanding that I share with my colleagues in the Los Angeles Philharmonic. And through playing music and talking about music, this man had transformed from the paranoid, disturbed man that had just come from walking the streets of downtown Los Angeles to the charming, erudite, brilliant, Juilliard-trained musician. Music is medicine. Music changes us. And for Nathaniel, music is sanity. Because music allows him to take his thoughts and delusions and shape them through his imagination and his creativity, into reality. And that is an escape from his tormented state. And I understood that this was the very essence of art. This was the very reason why we made music, that we take something that exists within all of us at our very fundamental core, our emotions, and through our artistic lens, through our creativity, we're able to shape those emotions into reality. And the reality of that expression reaches all of us and moves us, inspires and unites us. And for Nathaniel, music brought him back into a fold of friends. The redemptive power of music brought him back into a family of musicians that understood him, that recognized his talents and respected him. And I will always make music with Nathaniel, whether we're at Walt Disney Concert Hall or on Skid Row, because he reminds me why I became a musician. Thank you. (Applause) Bruno Giussani: Thank you. Thanks. Robert Gupta. (Applause) Robert Gupta: I'm going to play something that I shamelessly stole from cellists. So, please forgive me. (Laughter) (Music) (Applause)

In the war for information, will quantum computers defeat cryptographers?

{0: 'Craig Costello uses mathematics to secure the digital world, both against the threats that exist today and those that may exist in the future.'}

TEDxSydney

I'm in the business of safeguarding secrets, and this includes your secrets. Cryptographers are the first line of defense in an ongoing war that's been raging for centuries: a war between code makers and code breakers. And this is a war on information. The modern battlefield for information is digital. And it wages across your phones, your computers and the internet. Our job is to create systems that scramble your emails and credit card numbers, your phone calls and text messages — and that includes those saucy selfies — (Laughter) so that all of this information can only be descrambled by the recipient that it's intended for. Now, until very recently, we thought we'd won this war for good. Right now, each of your smartphones is using encryption that we thought was unbreakable and that was going to remain that way. We were wrong, because quantum computers are coming, and they're going to change the game completely. Throughout history, cryptography and code-breaking has always been this game of cat and mouse. Back in the 1500s, Queen Mary of the Scots thought she was sending encrypted letters that only her soldiers could decipher. But Queen Elizabeth of England, she had code breakers that were all over it. They decrypted Mary's letters, saw that she was attempting to assassinate Elizabeth and, subsequently, they chopped Mary's head off. A few centuries later, in World War II, the Nazis communicated using the Engima code, a much more complicated encryption scheme that they thought was unbreakable. But then good old Alan Turing, the same guy who invented what we now call the modern computer, he built a machine and used it to break Enigma. He deciphered the German messages and helped to bring Hitler and his Third Reich to a halt. And so the story has gone throughout the centuries. Cryptographers improve their encryption, and then code breakers fight back and they find a way to break it. This war's gone back and forth, and it's been pretty neck and neck. That was until the 1970s, when some cryptographers made a huge breakthrough. They discovered an extremely powerful way to do encryption called "public-key cryptography." Unlike all of the prior methods used throughout history, it doesn't require that the two parties that want to send each other confidential information have exchanged the secret key beforehand. The magic of public-key cryptography is that it allows us to connect securely with anyone in the world, whether we've exchanged data before or not, and to do it so fast that you and I don't even realize it's happening. Whether you're texting your mate to catch up for a beer, or you're a bank that's transferring billions of dollars to another bank, modern encryption enables us to send data that can be secured in a matter of milliseconds. The brilliant idea that makes this magic possible, it relies on hard mathematical problems. Cryptographers are deeply interested in things that calculators can't do. For example, calculators can multiply any two numbers you like, no matter how big the size. But going back the other way — starting with the product and then asking, "Which two numbers multiply to give this one?" — that's actually a really hard problem. If I asked you to find which two-digit numbers multiply to give 851, even with a calculator, most people in this room would have a hard time finding the answer by the time I'm finished with this talk. And if I make the numbers a little larger, then there's no calculator on earth that can do this. In fact, even the world's fastest supercomputer would take longer than the life age of the universe to find the two numbers that multiply to give this one. And this problem, called "integer factorization," is exactly what each of your smartphones and laptops is using right now to keep your data secure. This is the basis of modern encryption. And the fact that all the computing power on the planet combined can't solve it, that's the reason we cryptographers thought we'd found a way to stay ahead of the code breakers for good. Perhaps we got a little cocky because just when we thought the war was won, a bunch of 20th-century physicists came to the party, and they revealed that the laws of the universe, the same laws that modern cryptography was built upon, they aren't as we thought they were. We thought that one object couldn't be in two places at the same time. It's not the case. We thought nothing can possibly spin clockwise and anticlockwise simultaneously. But that's incorrect. And we thought that two objects on opposite sides of the universe, light years away from each other, they can't possibly influence one another instantaneously. We were wrong again. And isn't that always the way life seems to go? Just when you think you've got everything covered, your ducks in a row, a bunch of physicists come along and reveal that the fundamental laws of the universe are completely different to what you thought? (Laughter) And it screws everything up. See, in the teeny tiny subatomic realm, at the level of electrons and protons, the classical laws of physics, the ones that we all know and love, they go out the window. And it's here that the laws of quantum mechanics kick in. In quantum mechanics, an electron can be spinning clockwise and anticlockwise at the same time, and a proton can be in two places at once. It sounds like science fiction, but that's only because the crazy quantum nature of our universe, it hides itself from us. And it stayed hidden from us until the 20th century. But now that we've seen it, the whole world is in an arms race to try to build a quantum computer — a computer that can harness the power of this weird and wacky quantum behavior. These things are so revolutionary and so powerful that they'll make today's fastest supercomputer look useless in comparison. In fact, for certain problems that are of great interest to us, today's fastest supercomputer is closer to an abacus than to a quantum computer. That's right, I'm talking about those little wooden things with the beads. Quantum computers can simulate chemical and biological processes that are far beyond the reach of our classical computers. And as such, they promise to help us solve some of our planet's biggest problems. They're going to help us combat global hunger; to tackle climate change; to find cures for diseases and pandemics for which we've so far been unsuccessful; to create superhuman artificial intelligence; and perhaps even more important than all of those things, they're going to help us understand the very nature of our universe. But with this incredible potential comes an incredible risk. Remember those big numbers I talked about earlier? I'm not talking about 851. In fact, if anyone in here has been distracted trying to find those factors, I'm going to put you out of your misery and tell you that it's 23 times 37. (Laughter) I'm talking about the much bigger number that followed it. While today's fastest supercomputer couldn't find those factors in the life age of the universe, a quantum computer could easily factorize numbers way, way bigger than that one. Quantum computers will break all of the encryption currently used to protect you and I from hackers. And they'll do it easily. Let me put it this way: if quantum computing was a spear, then modern encryption, the same unbreakable system that's protected us for decades, it would be like a shield made of tissue paper. Anyone with access to a quantum computer will have the master key to unlock anything they like in our digital world. They could steal money from banks and control economies. They could power off hospitals or launch nukes. Or they could just sit back and watch all of us on our webcams without any of us knowing that this is happening. Now, the fundamental unit of information on all of the computers we're used to, like this one, it's called a "bit." A single bit can be one of two states: it can be a zero or it can be a one. When I FaceTime my mum from the other side of the world — and she's going to kill me for having this slide — (Laughter) we're actually just sending each other long sequences of zeroes and ones that bounce from computer to computer, from satellite to satellite, transmitting our data at a rapid pace. Bits are certainly very useful. In fact, anything we currently do with technology is indebted to the usefulness of bits. But we're starting to realize that bits are really poor at simulating complex molecules and particles. And this is because, in some sense, subatomic processes can be doing two or more opposing things at the same time as they follow these bizarre rules of quantum mechanics. So, late last century, some really brainy physicists had this ingenious idea: to instead build computers that are founded on the principles of quantum mechanics. Now, the fundamental unit of information of a quantum computer, it's called a "qubit." It stands for "quantum bit." Instead of having just two states, like zero or one, a qubit can be an infinite number of states. And this corresponds to it being some combination of both zero and one at the same time, a phenomenon that we call "superposition." And when we have two qubits in superposition, we're actually working across all four combinations of zero-zero, zero-one, one-zero and one-one. With three qubits, we're working in superposition across eight combinations, and so on. Each time we add a single qubit, we double the number of combinations that we can work with in superposition at the same time. And so when we scale up to work with many qubits, we can work with an exponential number of combinations at the same time. And this just hints at where the power of quantum computing is coming from. Now, in modern encryption, our secret keys, like the two factors of that larger number, they're just long sequences of zeroes and ones. To find them, a classical computer must go through every single combination, one after the other, until it finds the one that works and breaks our encryption. But on a quantum computer, with enough qubits in superposition, information can be extracted from all combinations at the same time. In very few steps, a quantum computer can brush aside all of the incorrect combinations, home in on the correct one and then unlock our treasured secrets. Now, at the crazy quantum level, something truly incredible is happening here. The conventional wisdom held by many leading physicists — and you've got to stay with me on this one — is that each combination is actually examined by its very own quantum computer inside its very own parallel universe. Each of these combinations, they add up like waves in a pool of water. The combinations that are wrong, they cancel each other out. And the combinations that are right, they reinforce and amplify each other. So at the end of the quantum computing program, all that's left is the correct answer, that we can then observe here in this universe. Now, if that doesn't make complete sense to you, don't stress. (Laughter) You're in good company. Niels Bohr, one of the pioneers of this field, he once said that anyone who could contemplate quantum mechanics without being profoundly shocked, they haven't understood it. (Laughter) But you get an idea of what we're up against, and why it's now up to us cryptographers to really step it up. And we have to do it fast, because quantum computers, they already exist in labs all over the world. Fortunately, at this minute, they only exist at a relatively small scale, still too small to break our much larger cryptographic keys. But we might not be safe for long. Some folks believe that secret government agencies have already built a big enough one, and they just haven't told anyone yet. Some pundits say they're more like 10 years off. Some people say it's more like 30. You might think that if quantum computers are 10 years away, surely that's enough time for us cryptographers to figure it out and to secure the internet in time. But unfortunately, it's not that easy. Even if we ignore the many years that it takes to standardize and deploy and then roll out new encryption technology, in some ways we may already be too late. Smart digital criminals and government agencies may already be storing our most sensitive encrypted data in anticipation for the quantum future ahead. The messages of foreign leaders, of war generals or of individuals who question power, they're encrypted for now. But as soon as the day comes that someone gets their hands on a quantum computer, they can retroactively break anything from the past. In certain government and financial sectors or in military organizations, sensitive data has got to remain classified for 25 years. So if a quantum computer really will exist in 10 years, then these guys are already 15 years too late to quantum-proof their encryption. So while many scientists around the world are racing to try to build a quantum computer, us cryptographers are urgently looking to reinvent encryption to protect us long before that day comes. We're looking for new, hard mathematical problems. We're looking for problems that, just like factorization, can be used on our smartphones and on our laptops today. But unlike factorization, we need these problems to be so hard that they're even unbreakable with a quantum computer. In recent years, we've been digging around a much wider realm of mathematics to look for such problems. We've been looking at numbers and objects that are far more exotic and far more abstract than the ones that you and I are used to, like the ones on our calculators. And we believe we've found some geometric problems that just might do the trick. Now, unlike those two- and three-dimensional geometric problems that we used to have to try to solve with pen and graph paper in high school, most of these problems are defined in well over 500 dimensions. So not only are they a little hard to depict and solve on graph paper, but we believe they're even out of the reach of a quantum computer. So though it's early days, it's here that we are putting our hope as we try to secure our digital world moving into its quantum future. Just like all of the other scientists, we cryptographers are tremendously excited at the potential of living in a world alongside quantum computers. They could be such a force for good. But no matter what technological future we live in, our secrets will always be a part of our humanity. And that is worth protecting. Thanks. (Applause)

What it's like to live on the International Space Station

{0: 'Cady Coleman draws from her time at NASA and her missions on the International Space Station to share insights about team building, leadership and innovation.'}

TED2019

I'm an astronaut. I flew on the space shuttle twice, and I lived on the International Space Station for almost six months. People often ask me the same question, which is, "What's it like in space?" as if it was a secret. Space belongs to all of us, and I'd like to help you understand why it's a place that is magic for all of us. The day after my 50th birthday, I climbed aboard a Russian capsule, in Russia, and launched into space. Launching is the most dangerous thing that we do, and it's also the most thrilling. Three, two, one ... liftoff! I felt every single bit of the controlled fury of those rocket engines as they blasted us off the Earth. We went faster and faster and faster, until, after eight and a half minutes, on purpose, those engines stop — kabunk! — and we are weightless. And the mission and the magic begin. Dmitry and Paolo and I are circling the Earth in our tiny spacecraft, approaching the space station carefully. It's an intricate dance at 17,500 miles an hour between our capsule, the size of a Smart Car, and the space station, the size of a football field. We arrive when those two craft dock with a gentle thunk. We open the hatches, have sloppy zero-G hugs with each other, and now we're six. We're a space family, an instant family. My favorite part about living up there was the flying. I loved it. It was like being Peter Pan. It's not about floating. Just the touch of a finger can actually push you across the entire space station, and then you sort of tuck in with your toes. One of my favorite things was drifting silently through the space station, which was humming along at night. I wondered sometimes if it knew I was there, just silent. But sharing the wonder of that with the crew was also part of what was important to me. A typical day in space starts with the perfect commute. I wake up, cruise down the lab and say hello to the best morning view ever. It's a really fast commute, only 30 seconds, and we never get tired of looking out that window. I think it reminds us that we're actually still very close to Earth. Our crew was the second ever to use the Canadian robotic arm to capture a supply ship the size of a school bus containing about a dozen different experiments and the only chocolate that we would see for the next four months. Now, chocolate aside, every single one of those experiments enables yet one more scientific question answered that we can't do down here on Earth. And so, it's like a different lens, allowing us to see the answers to questions like, "What about combustion?" "What about fluid dynamics?" Now, sleeping is delightful. My favorite — I mean, you could be upside down, right side up — my favorite: curled up in a little ball and floating freely. Laundry? Nope. We load our dirty clothes into an empty supply ship and send it off into space. The bathroom. Everyone wants to know. It's hard to understand, so I made a little video, because I wanted kids to understand that the principle of vacuum saves the day and that just a gentle breeze helps everything go where it is supposed to. Well, in real life it does. (Laughter) Recycling? Of course. So we take our urine, we store it, we filter it and then we drink it. And it's actually delicious. (Laughter) Sitting around the table, eating food that looks bad but actually tastes pretty good. But it's the gathering around the table that's important, I think both in space and on Earth, because that's what cements a crew together. For me, music was a way to stay connected to the rest of the world. I played a duet between Earth and space with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull on the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight. Connecting to family was so important. I talked with my family almost every day the whole time I was up there, and I would actually read books to my son as a way for us just to be together. So important. Now, when the space station would go over Massachusetts, my family would run outside, and they would watch the brightest star sailing across the sky. And when I looked down, I couldn't see my house, but it meant a lot to me to know that the people I loved the most were looking up while I was looking down. So the space station, for me, is the place where mission and magic come together. The mission, the work are vital steps in our quest to go further than our planet and imperative for understanding sustainability here on Earth. I loved being a part of that, and if I could have taken my family with me, I never would have come home. And so my view from the station showed me that we are all from the same place. We all have our roles to play. Because, the Earth is our ship. Space is our home. And we are the crew of Spaceship Earth. Thank you. (Applause)

How can we support the emotional well-being of teachers?

{0: 'Sydney Jensen wants to shine a light on the emotional and mental impact of teaching students who have experienced trauma.'}

TED Masterclass

Like many teachers, every year on the first day of school, I lead a sort of icebreaker activity with my students. I teach at Lincoln High School in Lincoln, Nebraska, and we are one of the oldest and most diverse high schools in our state. Also, to our knowledge, we're the only high school in the world whose mascot is the Links. Like, a chain. (Laughter) And with that being our mascot, we have a statue out front of our building of four links connected like a chain. And each link means something. Our links stand for tradition, excellence, unity and diversity. So on the first day of school, I teach my new ninth-graders about the meaning behind those links, and I give them each a slip of paper. On that paper, I ask them to write something about themselves. It can be something that they love, something that they hope for — anything that describes their identity. And then I go around the room with a stapler, and I staple each of those slips together to make a chain. And we hang that chain up in our classroom as a decoration, sure, but also as a reminder that we are all connected. We are all links. So what happens when one of those links feels weak? And what happens when that weakness is in the person holding the stapler? The person who's supposed to make those connections. The teacher. As teachers, we work every day to provide support socially, emotionally and academically to our students who come to us with diverse and tough circumstances. Like most teachers, I have students who go home every day, and they sit around the kitchen table while one or both parents makes a healthy, well-rounded meal for them. They spend suppertime summarizing the story they read in ninth-grade English that day, or explaining how Newton's laws of motion work. But I also have students who go to the homeless shelter or to the group home. They go to the car that their family is sleeping in right now. They come to school with trauma, and when I go home every day, that goes home with me. And see, that's the hard part about teaching. It's not the grading, the lesson-planning, the meetings, though sure, those things do occupy a great deal of teachers' time and energy. The tough part about teaching is all the things you can't control for your kids, all the things you can't change for them once they walk out your door. And so I wonder if it's always been this way. I think back to my undergraduate training at the University of Georgia, where we were taught in our methods classes that the concept of good teaching has changed. We're not developing learners who are going to go out into a workforce where they'll stand on a line in a factory. Rather, we're sending our kids out into a workforce where they need to be able to communicate, collaborate and problem-solve. And that has caused teacher-student relationships to morph into something stronger than the giver of content and the receiver of knowledge. Lectures and sitting in silent rows just doesn't cut it anymore. We have to be able to build relationships with and among our students to help them feel connected in a world that depends on it. I think back to my second year teaching. I had a student who I'll call "David." And I remember feeling like I'd done a pretty good job at teaching that year: "Hey, I ain't no first-year teacher. I know what I'm doing." And it was on the last day of school, I told David to have a great summer. And I watched him walk down the hall, and I thought to myself, I don't even know what his voice sounds like. And that's when I realized I wasn't doing it right. So I changed almost everything about my teaching. I built in plenty of opportunities for my students to talk to me and to talk to each other, to share their writing and to verbalize their learning. And it was through those conversations I began not only to know their voice but to know their pain. I had David in class again that next year, and I learned that his father was undocumented and had been deported. He started acting out in school because all he wanted was for his family to be together again. In so many ways, I felt his pain. And I needed someone to listen, somebody to provide support for me so that I could support him in this thing that I could not even comprehend. And we recognize that need for police officers who've witnessed a gruesome crime scene and nurses who have lost a patient. But when it comes to teaching professionals, that urgency is lagging. I believe it's paramount that students and teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals and all other support staff have convenient and affordable access to mental wellness supports. When we are constantly serving others, often between 25 and 125 students each day, our emotional piggy banks are constantly being drawn upon. After a while, it can become so depleted, that we just can't bear it anymore. They call it "secondary trauma" and "compassion fatigue," the concept that we absorb the traumas our students share with us each day. And after a while, our souls become weighed down by the heaviness of it all. The Buffett Institute at the University of Nebraska recently found that most teachers — 86 percent across early childhood settings — experienced some depressive symptoms during the prior week. They found that approximately one in 10 reported clinically significant depressive symptoms. My interactions with colleagues and my own experiences make me feel like this is a universal struggle across all grade levels. So what are we missing? What are we allowing to break the chain and how do we repair it? In my career, I've experienced the death by suicide of two students and one amazing teacher who loved his kids; countless students experiencing homelessness; and kids entering and exiting the justice system. When these events happen, protocol is to say, "If you need someone to talk to, then ..." And I say that's not enough. I am so lucky. I work in an amazing school with great leadership. I serve a large district with so many healthy partnerships with community agencies. They have provided steadily increasing numbers of school counselors and therapists and support staff to help our students. They even provide staff members with access to free counseling as part of our employment plan. But many small districts and even some large ones simply cannot foot the bill without aid. (Exhales) Not only does every school need social and emotional support staff, trained professionals who can navigate the needs of the building — not just the students, not just the teachers, but both — we also need these trained professionals to intentionally seek out those closest to the trauma and check in with them. Many schools are doing what they can to fill in the gaps, starting with acknowledging that the work that we do is downright hard. Another school in Lincoln, Schoo Middle School, has what they call "Wellness Wednesdays." They invite in community yoga teachers, they sponsor walks around the neighborhood during lunch and organize social events that are all meant to bring people together. Zachary Elementary School in Zachary, Louisiana, has something they call a "Midweek Meetup," where they invite teachers to share lunch and to talk about the things that are going well and the things that are weighing heavy on their hearts. These schools are making space for conversations that matter. Finally, my friend and colleague Jen Highstreet takes five minutes out of each day to write an encouraging note to a colleague, letting them know that she sees their hard work and the heart that they share with others. She knows that those five minutes can have an invaluable and powerful ripple effect across our school. The chain that hangs in my classroom is more than just a decoration. Those links hang over our heads for the entire four years that our students walk our halls. And every year, I have seniors come back to my classroom, room 340, and they can still point out where their link hangs. They remember what they wrote on it. They feel connected and supported. And they have hope. Isn't that what we all need? Somebody to reach out and make sure that we're OK. To check in with us and remind us that we are a link. Every now and then, we all just need a little help holding the stapler. Thank you. (Applause)

The myth of Loki and the master builder

TED-Ed

Asgard, a realm of wonders, was where the Norse Gods made their home. There Odin’s great hall of Valhalla towered above the mountains and Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, anchored itself. But though their domain was magnificent, it stood undefended from the giants and trolls of Jotunheim, who despised the gods and sought to destroy them. One day when Thor, strongest of the gods, was off fighting these foes, a stranger appeared, riding a powerful gray horse. The visitor made the gods an astonishing offer. He would build them the greatest wall they’d ever seen, higher than any giant could climb and stronger than any troll could break. All he asked in return was the beautiful goddess Freya’s hand in marriage— along with the sun and moon from the sky. The gods balked at this request and were ready to send him away. But the trickster Loki concocted a devious plan. He told the gods they should accept the stranger’s offer, but set such strict conditions that he would fail to complete the wall in time. That way, they would lose nothing, while getting most of the wall built for free. Freya didn’t like this idea at all, but Odin and the other gods were convinced and came to an agreement with the builder. He would only have one winter to complete the wall. If any part was unfinished by the first day of summer, he would receive no payment. And he could have no help from any other people. The gods sealed the deal with solemn oaths and swore the mason would come to no harm in Asgard. In the morning, the stranger began to dig the foundations at an astonishing speed, and at nightfall he set off towards the mountains to obtain the building stones. But it was only the next morning, when they saw him returning, that the gods began to worry. As agreed, no other people were helping the mason. But his horse Svadilfari was hauling a load of stones so massive it left trenches in the ground behind them. Winter came and went. The stranger kept building, Svadilfari kept hauling, and neither snow nor rain could slow their progress. With only three days left until summer, the wall stood high and impenetrable, with only the gate left to be built. Horrified, the gods realized that not only would they lose their fertility goddess forever, but without the sun and moon the world would be plunged into eternal darkness. They wondered why they’d made such a foolish wager— and then remembered Loki and his terrible advice. Suddenly, Loki didn’t feel so clever. All of his fellow gods threatened him with an unimaginably painful death if he didn’t find some way to prevent the builder from getting his payment. So Loki promised to take care of the situation, and dashed away. Outside, night had fallen, and the builder prepared to set off to retrieve the final load of stones. But just as he called Svadilfari to him, a mare appeared in the field. She was so beautiful that Svadilfari ignored his master and broke free of his reins. The mason tried to catch him, but the mare ran deep into the woods and Svadilfari followed. The stranger was furious. He knew that the gods were behind this and confronted them: no longer as a mild-mannered mason, but in his true form as a terrifying mountain giant. This was a big mistake. Thor had just returned to Asgard, and now that the gods knew a giant was in their midst, they disregarded their oaths. The only payment the builder would receive— and the last thing he would ever see— was the swing of Thor’s mighty hammer Mjolnir. As they set the final stones into the wall, the gods celebrated their victory. Loki was not among them, however. Several months would pass before he finally returned, followed by a beautiful gray foal with eight legs. The foal would grow into a magnificent steed named Sleipnir and become Odin’s mount, a horse that could outrun the wind itself. But exactly where he had come from was something Loki preferred not to discuss.

What's really happening at the US-Mexico border -- and how we can do better

{0: 'Erika Pinheiro fights to protect migrant rights and reunify families. She leads non-profits whose projects have helped thousands of immigrants on both sides of the US-Mexico border.'}

TED Salon Border Stories

Twice a week, I drive from my home near Tijuana, Mexico, over the US border, to my office in San Diego. The stark contrast between the poverty and desperation on one side of the border and the conspicuous wealth on the other always feels jarring. But what makes this contrast feel even starker is when I pass by the building that those of us who work on the border unaffectionately refer to as the black hole. The black hole is the Customs and Border Protection, or CBP facility, at the San Ysidro port of entry, right next to a luxury outlet mall. It's also where, at any one time, there's likely 800 immigrants locked in freezing, filthy, concrete cells below the building. Up top: shopping bags and frappuccinos. Downstairs: the reality of the US immigration system. And it's where, one day in September of 2018, I found myself trying to reach Anna, a woman who CBP had recently separated from her seven-year-old son. I'm an immigration attorney and the policy and litigation director of Al Otro Lado, a binational nonprofit helping immigrants on both sides of the US-Mexico border. We'd met Anna several weeks earlier at our Tijuana office, where she explained that she feared she and her son would be killed in Mexico. So we prepared her for the process of turning herself over to CBP to ask for asylum. A few days after she'd gone to the port of entry to ask for help, we received a frantic phone call from her family members in the United States, telling us that CBP officials had taken Anna's son from her. Now, not that this should matter, but I knew that Anna's son had special needs. And once again, this news filled me with the sense of panic and foreboding that has unfortunately become a hallmark of my daily work. I had a signed authorization to act as Anna's attorney, so I rushed over to the port of entry to see if I could speak with my client. Not only would CBP officials not let me speak to Anna, but they wouldn't even tell me if she was there. I went from supervisor to supervisor, begging to submit evidence of Anna's son's special needs, but no one would even talk to me about the case. It felt surreal to watch the shoppers strolling idly by what felt like a life-and-death situation. After several hours of being stonewalled by CBP, I left. Several days later, I found Anna's son in the foster-care system. But I didn't know what happened to Anna until over a week later, when she turned up at a detention camp a few miles east. Now, Anna didn't have a criminal record, and she followed the law when asking for asylum. Still, immigration officials held her for three more months, until we could win her release and help her reunify with her son. Anna's story is not the only story I could tell you. There's Mateo, an 18-month-old boy, who was ripped from his father's arms and sent to a government shelter thousands of miles away, where they failed to properly bathe him for months. There's Amadou, an unaccompanied African child, who was held with adults for 28 days in CBP's horrific facilities. Most disturbingly, there's Maria, a pregnant refugee who begged for medical attention for eight hours before she miscarried in CBP custody. CBP officials held her for three more weeks before they sent her back to Mexico, where she is being forced to wait months for an asylum hearing in the United States. Seeing these horrors day in and day out has changed me. I used to be fun at parties, but now, I inevitably find myself telling people about how our government tortures refugees at the border and in the detention camps. Now, people try to change the subject and congratulate me for the great work I'm doing in helping people like Anna. But I don't know how to make them understand that unless they start fighting, harder than they ever thought possible, we don't know which of us will be the next to suffer Anna's fate. Trump's mass separations of refugee families at the southern border shocked the conscience of the world and woke many to the cruelties of the US immigration system. It seems like today, more people than ever are involved in the fight for immigrant rights. But unfortunately, the situation is just not getting better. Thousands protested to end family separations, but the government is still separating families. More than 900 children have been taken from their parents since June of 2018. Thousands more refugee children have been taken from their grandparents, siblings and other family members at the border. Since 2017, at least two dozen people have died in immigration custody. And more will die, including children. Now, we lawyers can and will keep filing lawsuits to stop the government from brutalizing our clients, but we can't keep tinkering around the edges of the law if we want migrants to be treated humanely. This administration would have you believe that we have to separate families and we have to detain children, because it will stop more refugees from coming to our borders. But we know that this isn't true. In fact, in 2019, the number of apprehensions at our southern border has actually gone up. And we tell people every day at the border, "If you seek asylum in the United States, you risk family separation, and you risk being detained indefinitely." But for many of them, the alternative is even worse. People seek refuge in the United States for a lot of different reasons. In Tijuana, we've met refugees from over 50 countries, speaking 14 different languages. We meet LGBT migrants from all over the world who have never been in a country in which they feel safe. We meet women from all over the world whose own governments refuse to protect them from brutal domestic violence or repressive social norms. Of course, we meet Central American families who are fleeing gang violence. But we also meet Russian dissidents, Venezuelan activists, Christians from China, Muslims from China, and thousands and thousands of other refugees fleeing all types of persecution and torture. Now, a lot of these people would qualify as refugees under the international legal definition. The Refugee Convention was created after World War II to give protection to people fleeing persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. But even those who would be refugees under the international definition are not going to win asylum in the United States. And that's because since 2017, the US Attorneys General have made sweeping changes to asylum law, to make sure that less people qualify for protection in the United States. Now these laws are mostly aimed at Central Americans and keeping them out of the country, but they affect other types of refugees as well. The result is that the US frequently deports refugees to their persecution and death. The US is also using detention to try to deter refugees and make it harder for them to win their cases. Today, there are over 55,000 immigrants detained in the United States, many in remote detention facilities, far from any type of legal help. And this is very important. Because it's civil and not criminal detention, there is no public defender system, so most detained immigrants are not going to have an attorney to help them with their cases. An immigrant who has an attorney is up to 10 times more likely to win their case than one who doesn't. And as you've seen, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the situation is even worse for refugee families today than it was during family separation. Since January of 2019, the US has implemented a policy that's forced over 40,000 refugees to wait in Mexico for asylum hearings in the United States. These refugees, many of whom are families, are trapped in some of the most dangerous cities in the world, where they're being raped, kidnapped and extorted by criminal groups. And if they survive for long enough to make it to their asylum hearing, less than one percent of them are able to find an attorney to help them with their cases. The US government will point to the lowest asylum approval rates to argue that these people are not really refugees, when in fact, US asylum law is an obstacle course designed to make them fail. Now not every migrant at the border is a refugee. I meet plenty of economic migrants. For example, people who want to go to the United States to work, to pay medical bills for a parent or school fees for a child back home. Increasingly, I'm also meeting climate refugees. In particular, I'm meeting a lot of indigenous Central Americans who can no longer sustain themselves by farming, due to catastrophic drought in the region. We know that today, people are migrating because of climate change, and that more will do so in the future, but we simply don't have a legal system to deal with this type of migration. So, it would make sense, as a start, to expand the refugee definition to include climate refugees, for example. But those of us in a position to advocate for those changes are too busy suing our government to keep the meager legal protections that refugees enjoy under the current law. And we are exhausted, and it's almost too late to help. And we know now that this isn't America's problem alone. From Australia's brutal offshore detention camps to Italy's criminalization of aid to migrants drowning in the Mediterranean, first-world countries have gone to deadly lengths to keep refugees from reaching our shores. But they've done more than restrict the refugee definition. They've created parallel, fascist-style legal systems in which migrants have none of the rights that form the basis of a democracy, the alleged foundation of the countries in which they're seeking refuge. History shows us that the first group to be vilified and stripped of their rights is rarely the last, and many Americans and Europeans seem to accept an opaque and unjust legal system for noncitizens, because they think they are immune. But eventually, these authoritarian ideals bleed over and affect citizens as well. I learned this firsthand when the US government placed me on an illegal watch list for my work helping immigrants at the border. One day, in January of 2019, I was leaving my office in San Diego and crossing the border to go back to my home in Mexico. Mexican officials, although they had given me a valid visa, stopped me and told me that I couldn't enter the country because a foreign government had placed a travel alert on my passport, designating me as a national security risk. I was detained and interrogated in a filthy room for hours. I begged the Mexican officials to let me go back to Mexico and pick up my son, who was only 10 months old at the time. But they refused, and instead, they turned me over to CBP officials, where I was forced back into the United States. It took me weeks to get another visa so that I could go back to Mexico, and I went to the border, visa in hand. But again, I was detained and interrogated because there was still a travel alert on my passport. Shortly after, leaked internal CBP documents confirmed that my own government had been complicit in issuing this travel alert against me. And since then, I haven't traveled to any other countries, because I'm afraid I'll be detained and deported from those countries as well. These travel restrictions, detentions and separation from my infant son are things I never thought I would experience as a US citizen, but I'm far from the only person being criminalized for helping immigrants. The US and other countries have made it a crime to save lives, and those of us who are simply trying to do our jobs are being forced to choose between our humanity and our freedom. And the thing that makes me so desperate is that all of you are facing the same choice, but you don't understand it yet. And I know there are good people out there. I saw thousands of you in the streets, protesting family separation. And that largely helped bring about an end to the official policy. But we know that the government is still separating children. And things are actually getting worse. Today, the US government is fighting for the right to detain refugee children indefinitely in prison camps. This isn't over. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb or look away. Those of us who are citizens of countries whose policies cause detention, separation and death, need to very quickly decide which side we're on. We need to demand that our laws respect the inherent dignity of all human beings, especially refugees seeking help at our borders, but including economic migrants and climate refugees. We need to demand that refugees get a fair shot at seeking protection in our countries by ensuring that they have access to council and by creating independent courts that are not subject to the political whims of the president. I know it's overwhelming, and I know this sounds cliché, but ... we need to call our elected representatives and demand these changes. I know you've heard this before, but have you made the call? We know these calls make a difference. The dystopian immigration systems being built up in first-world countries are a test of citizens to see how far you're willing to let the government go in taking away other people's rights when you think it won't happen to you. But when you let the government take people's children without due process and detain people indefinitely without access to council, you are failing the test. What's happening to immigrants now is a preview of where we're all headed if we fail to act. Thank you. (Applause)

Why gender-based marketing is bad for business

{0: "BCG's Gaby Barrios has dedicated her career to understanding consumers across the world in a wide range of industries."}

TED@BCG Mumbai

Like a lot of people around the world, earlier this summer my friends and I were obsessed with the Women's World Cup held in France. Here we are, watching these incredible athletes, the goals were amazing, the games were clean and engaging, and at the same time, outside the field, these women are talking about equal pay, and in the case of some countries, any pay at all for their sport. So because we were mildly obsessed, we wanted to watch the games live, and we decided that one of the Spanish-speaking networks in the US was the best place for us to start. And it wasn't until a few games into the tournament that a friend of mine talks to me and says, "Why does it feel like everything I'm seeing is commercials for makeup and household cleaning products and diets?" It did feel a little bit too obvious, and I don't know if we were sensitive about it or the fact that we were watching with men and boys in our lives, but it did feel a little bit too obvious that we're being targeted for being women. And to be honest there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. Someone sat down and looked at the tournament and said, "Well, this thing is likely to be seen by more women, these women are Hispanic because they're watching in Spanish, and this is women content. Therefore, this is a great place for me to place all these commercials that are female-centric and maybe not other things." If I think about it as a marketer, I know that I absolutely should not be annoyed about it, because this is what marketers are tasked with doing. Marketers are tasked with building brands with very limited budget, so there's a little bit of an incentive to categorize people in buckets so they can reach their target faster. So if you think about this, it's kind of like a shortcut. They're using gender as a shortcut to get to their target consumer. The issue is that as logical as that argument seems, gender as a shortcut is actually not great. In this day and age, if you still blindly use a gender view for your marketing activities, actually it's just plain bad business. I'm not talking even about the backlash on stereotypes in advertising, which is a very real thing that has to be addressed. I'm saying it's bad business because you're leaving money on the table for your brands and your products. Because gender is such an easy thing to find in the market and to target and to talk about, it actually distracts you from the fun things that could be driving growth from your brands and, at the same time, it continues to create separation around genders and perpetuate stereotypes. So at the same time this activity is bad for your business and bad for society, so double whammy. And gender is one of those things like other demographics that have historically been good marketing shortcuts. At some point, however, we forgot that at the core we were targeting needs around cooking and cleaning and personal care and driving and sports and we just made it all a bucket and we said, "Men and women are different." We got used to it and we never challenged it again, and it's fascinating to me, and by fascinating I mean a little bit insane, that we still talk about this as a segment when it's most likely carryover bias. In fact, I don't come to this conclusion lightly. We have enough data to suggest that gender is not the best place to start for you to design and target your brands. And I would even go one step further: unless you are working in a very gender-specific product category, probably anything else you're hypothesizing about your consumer right now is going to be more useful than gender. We did not set up to draw this conclusion specifically. We found it. As consultants, our job is to go with our clients and understand their business and try to help them find spaces for their brands to grow. And it is our belief that if you want to find disruptive growth in the market, you have to go to the consumer and take a very agnostic view of the consumer. You have to go and look at them from scratch, remove yourself from biases and segments that you thought were important, just take a look to see where the growth is. And we built ourselves an algorithm precisely for that. So imagine that we have a person and we know a person is making a choice about a product or service, and from this person, I can know their gender, of course, other demographics, where they live, their income, other things. I know the context where this person is making a decision, where they are, who they're with, the energy, anything, and I can also put other things in the mix. I can know their attitudes, how they feel about the category, their behaviors. So if you imagine this kind of blob of big data about a person — I'm going to oversimplify the science here but we basically built an algorithm for statistical tournaments. So a statistical tournament is like asking this big thing of data, "So, data, from everything you know about consumers at this point, what is the most useful thing I need to know that tells me more about what consumers need?" So the tournament is going to have winners and losers. The winners are those variables, those dimensions, that actually teach you a lot about your consumer, that if you know that, you know what they need. And there's losing variables that are just not that practical, and this matters because in a world of limited resources, you don't want to waste it on people that actually have the same needs. So why treat them differently? So at this point, I know, suspense is not killing you, because I told you what the output is, but what we found over time is after 200 projects around the world — this is covering 20 countries or more — in essence we ran about a hundred thousand of these tournaments, and, no surprise, gender was very rarely the most predictive thing to understand consumer needs. From a hundred thousand tournaments, gender only came out as the winning variable in about five percent of them. This is true around the world, by the way. We did this in places where traditional gender roles are a little more pronounced, and the conclusions were exactly the same. It was a little bit more important, gender, than five percent, but not material. So let's let that sink in for a second. No matter how you're looking at a consumer, most likely anything else is going to be more interesting to you than gender. There's probably something very important you need to know about them, and you're getting distracted because you're doing everything based on gender. And that's why I say you're leaving money on the table. Gender is easy. It's easy to design advertising based on gender, it's easy to target people online and on TV based on gender. But at the end, that's not where the exciting growth will come from. If you're a food company, for example, it's actually much more interesting to you to know where people are eating, who they are eating with, are they very nutritionally oriented. All of those things are actually significantly more powerful and useful than knowing if a person is a man or a woman. And that matters, of course, because then if you're putting your limited budget into action, then you're better off creating solutions for different occasions than trying to target women versus young men. Another example is alcoholic beverages. Thirty-five percent to 40 percent of consumption in alcoholic beverages around the world actually happens with women, but, you know, "women don't drink beer." Those are the things that we typically hear. But actually, when a man and a woman are, for the most part, in the same location, the emotional and functional needs they have at that moment are very similar. There's only one exception, by the way, and the exceptions exist, where if you have a man and a woman on a date, the man is trying to impress the woman and the woman is trying to connect with the man, so there's going to be a little bit of tension, but that's important to know. We'll take a few dates. Financial institutions: that's something where we've heard a lot about the difference between men and women, but actually talking about men and women as different is distracting you from the thing that is underneath. We made it so simple as "women don't like to invest," "women hate managing their money," "men are great and aggressive and risk-takers," but at the end it's not about men and women. It is actually a different narrative. It is about, there are people that are excited and energized and educated to manage their finances versus people that are not. So if you change the conversation from men and women to actually what's underneath then probably you'll stop being so condescending to women and you may start serving some men that are actually shy about managing their finances. I'll leave one more example. If I go back to the women that were playing sport at the beginning, one of the fascinating things we found over different countries, exploring sportswear, that if a person is a competitive person and they are in the moment of action, the needs are not different between a man and a woman. An athlete is an athlete. It doesn't matter for men and women, it doesn't matter for old and young, you are an athlete, and in the moment of action and extreme competition, you need this gear to work for you. So these soccer-playing women have a lot in common with their counterparts. Out of the field, it doesn't matter. Out of the field, they may be into fashion, into other things, but on the field, the needs are not different. So these are just a few examples on categories where we found that gender was not the best place to go, and actually the argument is that at this point it's not even a feminist push, it's just we got used to it. We got used to using gender, and it's important for us to start finding ways to measure other things about consumers so that we don't revert back to gender. I am not naïve, and I know there's still going to be appetite and certain ease around using gender, but at least this warrants a conversation. In your business, you have to inquire, is this really the best lens for me to grow. So, if you are, like me, a person that is in business, that I am constantly worried about what is my role in the broader societal discussions, if you're listening to your business and you hear things like, "Oh, my target are women, my target are men, this goes to young girls, young boys," when it's that gender conversation, unless you are working, again, in a very specific, gender-specific product category, take this as a warning sign, because if you keep having these conversations, you will keep perpetuating stereotypes of people and making people think that men and women are different. But because this is business, and we're running a business, and we want to grow it, at least kind of challenge your own instinct to use gender, because statistics say that you're probably not choosing the best variable to target your product or service. Growth is not easy at all. What makes you think that growth is going to come from going into market with such an outdated lens like gender? So let's stop doing what's easy and go for what's right. At this point, it's not just for your business, it's for society. Thank you. (Applause)

The Furnace Bots

{0: 'Alex Rosenthal takes everyday experiences and turns them into mind-bending puzzles.'}

TED-Ed

Ethic and her robot Hedge agree to help the resistance leader, Adila, sabotage the art-incinerating furnace-bots. In exchange, Adila promises to lead them to the first object of Ethic’s quest, an artifact called the Node of Power. Years ago, there was just one furnace-bot. It had a 0 inside its furnace and an unknown, randomly generated serial number. Over time, the original self-replicated to produce more identical furnace-bots. Each child inherited the original’s unknown serial number within its furnace, and had a random, unique serial number of its own inscribed on its shell. The second generation of furnace- bots also self-replicated in the same way, always passing their own serial numbers to their offspring’s furnaces. This continued on for many generations. Today, each furnace-bot receives its orders from its parent. So if Ethic can find the original 0 bot and somehow change its instructions, she could take over the entire army, all at once. Adila has the perfect solution: a data crystal that she’s been carrying for years, waiting for the right moment to activate it. It contains a program designed to gain control of a bot and give it new instructions. But if it’s uploaded to any furnace- bot other than the original, the 0 bot will override the instructions and destroy the data crystal in the process. The feeding is just a few minutes away, and there’s only one chance to get this right. Fortunately, Hedge’s ability to store data can help. In programming, a piece of information gets stored in something called a variable. Variables are basically containers that hold onto numbers, words, or other values. How does Ethic program Hedge to find the original 0 bot as quickly as possible? Pause now to figure it out for yourself. Here’s a hint. Programs can be written to have as many variables as you need, but you can solve this problem with just one. Hedge can use it to store a serial number and replace it with a new one as often as he needs. Pause now to figure it out for yourself. A key insight here is that Hedge doesn’t need to map out the entire set of relationships to find the original furnace-bot. If, for example, he gets lucky and picks the original one right away, he’ll be done. But if he starts with any other bot, he can still find a path that leads straight back to the 0-bot by following a simple set of instructions. To help craft them, let’s first simplify the problem. Let’s say there were only three furnace-bots; a parent and two children, but you don’t know which is which. You could have Hedge pick one at random and look inside its furnace. Now, you know the family tree looks like this. If the number inside the furnace is a 0, you’ve found the parent. If not, then no matter which child you chose, it must have the parent’s serial number in its furnace. So in this scenario, you’re guaranteed to find the parent in one or two moves. In actuality, there are many furnace-bots, and you don’t know how many generations there are nor what the family tree looks like. But you don’t need to, because Hedge can just keep repeating the same sequence of actions until he gets to the original. How? With a loop. Hedge can pick any bot at random, look inside its furnace, and store that serial number as a variable. Then he’ll begin the following loop that will repeat until the stored variable equals 0, the furnace number of the original bot: 1. Find the bot whose shell serial number matches the stored number. 2. Look inside its furnace. 3. Store that new number, overwriting the old one. Once the loop ends, we’ll know that Hedge has found the 0 bot, so he should upload the control program. So here’s what happens: Hedge only takes 5 repetitions to find the original: robot 733 has the 0 in its furnace. In a blink of a mechanical eye, the program spreads through the entire army, and Adila takes control. She has the furnace-bots give off theatrical bouts of flame to hide the fact that they’re now secretly safe-guarding all of that artistic output. Now that Ethic’s delivered the furnace-bots, Adila honors her end of the deal. She leads Ethic and Hedge to the location of the first artifact, the Node of Power. There, one thing is immediately clear: they’ll have to steal it.

Como hablar con otros que piensan distinto

{0: '¿A qué se dedica una bióloga? A investigar y a enseñar, claro. Pero también a comunicar la ciencia y a pensar en la educación, la posverdad y las políticas públicas desde la mirada científica. Ah, y a escribir el libro "Pensar con otros. Una guía de supervivencia en tiempos de posverdad” (2018). Todo eso si es Guadalupe, claro.'}

TEDxRiodelaPlata

I have quite an issue with truth and conversations. I'm a scientist but I ended up taking some weird paths. Science is a way of asking questions to the world and of listening to the answers. We will never know everything. But that doesn't mean we know nothing. There's a lot that we already know. However, the evidence is sometimes set aside when making decisions or forming an idea of the world. For example, we already know that climate change is real, but some still deny it. We already know that vaccines work and are safe. But some still doubt about it. That was my first disappointment. Evidence is necessary but not sufficient. This opened up a new path for me. I thought the problem was education. So I left the lab and I turned to teaching. I love teaching. The classroom is one of my favorite places. But there I found the same problem. I was teaching on vaccines and one student said she didn't get vaccinated because vaccines seemed dangerous. My hunch was, "She says this because she doesn't know, if I explain, she will change her mind." I explained to her, but it didn't work. The evidence is not enough. Education is not enough. Second disappointment. This that happened with my student was my first personal experience with post-truth. It's what happens when, although the information is there, it's set aside and emotions or beliefs ensue. With this, another new path opened up. Maybe, it's a communication problem? Given that science is a tool, I used it to study post-truth. I started having conversations with people who don't trust vaccines, while meeting doctors and journalists in an attempt to improve communication on this subject. And there I realized that I had never learned to talk with those who think differently. For example, how do we dialogue when the problem is not the evidence but an ideological disagreement? Experiments show that when people talk only with those who think alike their opinions become more extreme and homogeneous. But in order to have a healthy democracy, don't we need that those who think differently engage in broad, honest and deep conversations? This is far from happening. Every discussion, every disagreement, every conversation looks like a battle between good and evil. Our opinions, instead of being temporary, bridges to communicate with others, are immovable, a ditch that we dig and tells apart those on our side from the others. Dialogue disappears, agreements are impossible, and the world shatters in an explosive combination of aggression and distrust. Can we do something about this? Not all opinions are born equal. Some are weak, or short-lived. Others are intense, or long-lasting. And others become part of our identity. When that happens, any doubt on what we think becomes a doubt on who we are. And that is unbearable. In addition, the need to protect our integrity makes us team up with those in our same situation. This is tribalism. That's why sometimes neither evidence nor education works. We don't think something, we are that something. (Applause) Let me ask you a question. Did it ever happen to you of going to a meet up with people you don't know and thinking something like, "Mm, I don't know what these people think, I better not talk about this or that"? Did it ever happen to you? Let's see, raise your hand those who lived something like that. Look at you. The harm of tribalism is not only that it creates a climate of permanent conflict but that it also creates silence. Some of us withdraw from the debate, not because we don't have opinions or we don't care about what happens. We are not halfhearted. It's the atmosphere of aggression, it's things not moving forward, it's fear, exhaustion, and the social punishment of dissent. It's for one or more of these reasons that we leave conversations in silence. A loud silence. And so, the inability to dialogue causes the number of voices to go down. Until there is only one left, sometimes. Silence is confused with agreement. And the illusion of consensus is created. Because one opinion is heard, there seem to be only one. And then any other opinion is not only different, but dissonant, alien, and must be eliminated. In general, we think of censorship as a power which bans from above. But there is another, more subtle way. Censorship from below. Through tools of social discipline, such as raising the tone of the fight, it makes us withdraw. This is a threat to free expression. And it makes me think that it's also a problem for democracy. Both in our small environment and on a large scale. It would seem then that we only have two options. Whether we share our ideas despising those who don't think alike, or we shut up. And by doing that, we give up control to those who speak up. But this is a false dilemma. There is another option, but we need to make it evident, because it is hidden in this sea of tribalism. We can have defined positions, even very intense ones, without riding on the dynamics of intolerant speech. It's one of the things I learned when talking to people who doubt vaccines. To break tribalism, to find more voices, to break this "friends or foes" dynamics, I propose to distinguish between what we believe in and how we believe it. And if we make this "how" non-tribal, we can raise our opinions without allowing what we think to become who we are. The nuances reappear and conversations become possible. And from that point we can build consensus which are the product of agreements, despite our differences. However, when I talk about these ideas I usually get some criticism. It seems that in order to avoid conflict I suggest that we let consensus happen anytime. No, that is not what I mean. If we don't express ourselves because we feel alienated or expelled we are not taking part in decision making. But we all live with the consequences of those decisions. So, since we do care, we need to talk. But if we don't want to talk in this hostile atmosphere because it's exhausting and we see that it leads nowhere, let's try to move past tribal mode. Beyond what we think. We may have more in common with those who think differently yet want to talk, than with those who share with us same opinions but are intolerant. (Applause) They also usually tell me that there isn't much we can do on the individual level to move past tribal mode. But I think there are some very concrete things to do. And I have three suggestions that could help. First, look for pluralism. Promote it actively. So dissent becomes visible and this is important because only if we include dissent we can achieve a true consensus. For this to happen we need to be able to talk without feeling that we are socially punished. But it also requires listening to voices we don't like. The moment to defend freedom of expression is now. Taking care of it is easier than recovering it. Learn to have better conversations. To find better ways of disagreeing. A conversation is not waiting for our turn to talk, trying to impose our ideas by force or insistence. It's about listening to understand others. Without listening there's no conversation. Third, separate ideas from people. Under tribalism, attacking an idea makes the person feel threatened because they feel attacked as a person. But how are we going to improve ideas with that attitude? We need to discuss them, so that the best survive. People deserve respect. Ideas have to earn it. Humans are inventors. At some point, somewhere, we invented the idea of sitting by the fire to talk. And at some point, both conversations and fire look alike. Both are always in between two dangers. The danger of dying or growing out of control. It took us time but we learned to handle fire. We learned to keep it alive so it doesn't go out. And to handle it so it doesn't destroy us. Maybe, it's time to learn to do the same with conversations. Thank you. (Applause)

5 steps for clean air in India

{0: 'Arunabha Ghosh is a public policy professional, adviser, author, columnist and institution builder.'}

TED Talks India: Nayi Baat

Shah Rukh Khan: Something goes wrong with the air that we take for granted. The ill effects are suffered by all, rich and poor, city people and village folks, those inland and those on the coast. Nobody is exempt. So how do we give our children the chance to grow up in a world where the air is clean? Our next speaker addresses this vital question. So join me in giving a wholehearted welcome to the public policy expert and author, the multifaceted Dr. Arunabha Ghosh. (Music) Arunabha Ghosh: Let me tell you a story from China. In 2014, China declared war on pollution. In November that year, there was an international summit there. Presidents and prime ministers from many countries arrived. So industries around Beijing were shut down, half the cars were taken off the road. That week, I took a photograph of the unusually blue sky in Beijing. A few days later, when the summit had ended, the factories were humming again, the sky had again turned light grey. So newspapers started urging the government to make the blue skies permanent. Then in early 2015, a private citizen produced a documentary on air pollution called "Under the Dome." Just within four days, it was viewed 300 million times, and millions more continued discussing it on social media. Eventually, the government acted, and by 2018, the bulk of the Chinese population had witnessed a decline in air pollution by 32 percent on average. When will we demand clean air in India? I have a six-year-old daughter. Every morning, when I drop her to the school bus stop, I have to remind her not to take off her mask. That's the kind of world we live in. One day she pointed me to an advertisement for a face wash, which claimed that the polluting particles lodged deeply in our skin could be miraculously washed off. But what of the particles lodged in our lungs? When it's difficult to make out the difference between the lung of a smoker and the lung of a nonsmoker, we have a real problem, because I can run an air purifier at home, but can I lock up my daughter at home? Air pollution is the great leveler. It affects us all, rich and poor, city dweller or village folk, those living inland or those living on the coast, and it's affecting our health, our economic growth, our quality of life. In 2017, more than 1.2 million deaths in India were attributable to air pollution. That's more than those deaths caused by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria or diarrhea. At the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, my colleagues find that today, one in two Indians is breathing air that does not meet our air quality standards. And the economic impact of this public health crisis is more than 80 billion dollars every year. At CEEW, my colleagues find that 80 percent of Indians can breathe clean air if we adopted stringent pollution controls. So here is my vision for India. In 2027, when we are celebrating our 80th year of independence, can we ensure that, by then, 80 cities in India have reduced air pollution by 80 percent? Let's called this Mission 80-80-80, and this is possible, but the role of citizens is going to be critical. To combat air pollution, we have to create a democratic demand for clean air. We can make this happen. First, we have to educate ourselves. Low-cost sensors give us real-time information about the air quality, but we still need information about how to interpret it and how to act. So we need to target information to schools and children, to resident welfare associations, to the elderly, who are more at risk. You know, when the temperature outside is 30 degrees versus 40 degrees, we know how to dress, we know what to do, what not to do. We need, similarly, information on what precautions to take when the air quality outside is poor, very poor, severe or hazardous. Second, we need to become active monitors. Today, most Indian cities and much of rural India have no air quality monitoring at all. So we need to demand that air quality sensors are installed in every constituency. Today, in Parliament, who is going to stand up for us as the air quality warrior? When enforcement agencies land up at polluting sites or dust-spewing construction sites, their whack-a-mole approach doesn't always work, because as soon as their attention turns somewhere else, the offenders go back to business as usual. We citizens have to become the fire alarms. We have to demand emergency call-in numbers and specialized task forces that can respond in real time to pollution sites. So we need not just the authority but the enforcement strength to crack down. Third, we have to be prepared to pay a price, whether it's for cars using BS6 fuel or for more expensive electricity from cleaner power plants. Last year, just before Diwali, I took a surprise inspection of polluting industries in an unauthorized industrial area just outside of Delhi, and I found polluting firecrackers were being sold. The Supreme Court had mandated only green firecrackers could be sold, but those were nowhere to be found. But the polluting ones were available. Why? Because we were ready to buy. As citizens, we have to reduce the demand for these polluting products or be prepared to pay more for cleaner products. Fourth step: let's build some empathy for our fellow citizens. How much does it take to keep a night guard warm rather than force them to burn rubbish to stay warm in winter? Or, let's take farmers. You know, it's very easy to blame them for burning the stubble of the rice paddy crop every winter, which causes air pollution. It's much harder to understand that it's the combination of our agricultural policy and our groundwater crisis that often leaves the farmer with no option but to burn the stubble. So we need to draw in the urban poor laborer or the rural poor farmer into our collective call for clean air. Farmers come and tell us that they want to adopt sustainable agriculture, but they need some help. And fifth, we have to change our lifestyles. Yes, public transport is often not available, but the choice to buy a cleaner, less polluting private vehicle is ours. The choice to segregate and recycle household waste is ours. You know, in Surat after the 1994 plague, citizens there take pride in keeping their city one of the cleanest in the country. Down south in Mysore, public-private partnerships and citizen-led eco clubs are coming together to reduce, segregate and recycle waste in a manner that landfills can be eliminated altogether. Now I'm not saying that officials have no responsibility here, but it is our collective apathy that takes the pressure off of our parliamentarians, the bureaucrats or the enforcement agencies. Mission 80-80-80 will only begin when we demand it. We have to create a democratic demand for clean air, because citizens, you and me, can decide what kind of air we breathe. Thank you. (Applause) SRK: Thank you so much. Tell me something: India, our country, do we have any advantages? Have we become aware of it earlier because of all the inputs from people like you? AG: Our biggest strength: our people and our ability to make change without always necessarily relying only on the government. And that strength of civil society and civil demand for a civilized living condition is, I think, our biggest asset. Then, all of those and more will happen. (Applause) SRK: Thank you, Dr. Ghosh. Bless you for coming here. And it's very enlightening. Thank you very much, and all the best with 80-80-80. Dr. Ghosh, everyone. AG: Thank you. (Applause)

How to change your behavior for the better

{0: 'The dismal science of economics is not as firmly grounded in actual behavior as was once supposed. In "Predictably Irrational," Dan Ariely told us why.'}

TED Salon Brightline Initiative

Hi. You might have noticed that I have half a beard. It's not because I lost a bet. Many years ago, I was badly burned. Most of my body is covered with scars, including the right side of my face. I just don't have hair. That's just how it happened. It looks symmetrical, but almost. Anyway, now that we discussed facial hair, let's move to social science. And in particular, I want us to think about where is the potential for humanity and where we are now. And if you think about it, there's a big gap between where we think we could be and where we are, and it's in all kinds of areas. So let me ask you: How many of you in the last month have eaten more than you think you should? Just kind of general. OK. How many of you in the last month have exercised less than you think you should? OK, and for how many of you has raising your hands twice been the most exercise you got today? (Laughter) How many of you have ever texted while driving? OK, we're getting honest. Let's test your honesty. How many people here in the last month have not always washed your hands when you left the bathroom? (Laughter) A little less honest. By the way, it's interesting how we're willing to admit texting and driving but not washing our hands, that's difficult. (Laughter) We can go on and on. The problem, the topic is that there's lots of things when we know what we could do — we could be very, very different, but we're acting in a very different way. And when we think how do we bridge that gap, the usual answer is, "Just tell people." For example, just tell people that texting and driving is dangerous. Did you know it's dangerous? You should stop doing it. You tell people something is dangerous, and they will stop. Texting and driving is one example. Another very sad example is that in the US, we spend between seven and eight hundred million dollars a year on what's called "financial literacy." And what do we get as a consequence of that? There was recently a study that looked at all the research ever to be conducted on financial literacy — what's called a meta-analysis. And what they found is that when you tell people, you teach them financial literacy, they learn and they remember. But do people execute? Not so much. The improvement is about three or four percent immediately after the course, and then it goes down. And at the end of the day, the improvement is about 0.1 percent — not zero, but as humanly close to zero as possible. (Laughter) So that's the sad news. The sad news is, giving information to people is just not a good recipe to change behavior. What is? Well, social science has made lots of strides, and the basic insight is that if we want to change behavior, we have to change the environment. The right way is not to change people, it's to change the environment. And I want to present a very simpleminded model of how to think about it: it's to think about behavioral change in the same way that we think about sending a rocket to space. When we think about sending a rocket to space, we want to do two main things. The first one is to reduce friction. We want to take the rocket and have as little friction as possible so it's the most aerodynamic possible. And the second thing is we want to load as much fuel as possible, to give it the most amount of motivation, energy to do its task. And behavior change is the same thing. So let's first talk about friction. In this particular case study I'll tell you about, there's a pharmacy, an online pharmacy. Imagine you go to your doctor. You have a long-term illness, your doctor prescribes to you a medication, you sign up for this online pharmacy and you get your medication in the mail every 90 days. Every 90 days, medication, medication, medication. And this online pharmacy wants to switch people from branded medication to generic medication. So they send people letters, and they say, "Please, please, please, switch to generics. You will save money, we will save money, your employer will save money." And what do people do? Nothing. So they try all kinds of things and nothing happens. So for one year, they give people an amazing offer. They send people a letter, and they say, "If you switch to generics now, it will be free for a whole year." Free for a whole year. Amazing! What percentage of people do you think switched? Less than 10 percent. At this point, they show up to my office. And they come to complain. Why did they pick me? I wrote a couple of papers on the "allure of free." In those papers, we showed that if you reduce the price of something for, let's say, 10 cents to one cent, nothing much happens. You reduce it from one cent to zero, now people get excited. (Laughter) And they said, "Look, we read these papers on 'free,' we gave 'free.' Not working as we expected. What's going on?" I said, "You know, maybe it's a question of friction." They said, "What do you mean?" I said, "People are starting with branded. They can do nothing and end with branded. To move to generic, they have to choose generic over branded, but they also have to do something. They have to return the letter." So this is what we call a "confounded design." Two things are happening at the same time. It's branded versus generic, but it's doing nothing versus doing something. So I said, "Why don't we switch it? Why don't we send people a letter and say, 'We're switching you to generics. You don't need to do anything. If you want to stay with branded, please return the letter.'" (Laughter) Right? What do you think happened? Lawyers, lawyers happened. (Laughter) It turns out, this is illegal. (Laughter) By the way, for brainstorming and creativity, doing things that are illegal and immoral, it's fine, as long as it's just in the brainstorming phase. (Laughter) But this was the purity of the idea, because the initial design was the branded had the no-action benefit. In my illegal, immoral design, generic had the no-action benefit. But they agreed to give people a T-intersection: send people a letter and say, "If you don't return this letter, we will be forced to stop your medications. But when you return the letter, you could choose branded at this price, generic at this price." Now people had to take an action. They were on even footing. Right? It wasn't that one had the no-action benefit. What percentage do you think switched? The vast majority switched. So what does it tell us? Do people like generics, or do we like branded? We hate returning letters. (Laughter) This is the story of friction: small things really matter. And friction is about taking the desired behavior and saying: Where do we have too much friction so it's slowing people down from acting on it? And every time you see that the desired behavior and the easy behavior are not aligned, it means we want to try and realign them. That's the first part. We talked about friction. Now let's talk about motivation. In this particular study, we were trying to get very poor people in a slum called Kibera in Kenya to save a little bit of money for a rainy day. You know, if you're very, very poor, you have no extra money, you live hand to mouth, and from time to time, bad things happen. And when something bad happens, you have nothing to draw on, you borrow. The Kibera people can borrow at sometimes up to 10 percent interest a week. And then, of course, it's really hard to get out of it. You live hand to mouth, something bad happens, you borrow, things get worse and worse and worse. So we wanted people to keep a little bit of money for a rainy day. And we thought about what is the motivation, what is the fuel that we need to add? And we tried all kinds of things. Some people, we texted them once a week and said, "Please try to save 100 shillings" — about a dollar — "this week." Some people, we sent a text message as if it came from their kids. So it said, "Hi Mom, hi Dad, this is little Joey" — whatever the name of the kid was — "Try and save 100 shillings this week for the future of our family." Right? I'm Jewish, a little bit of guilt always works. (Laughter) Some people got 10 percent. "Save up to a hundred shillings, we'll give you 10 percent." Some people got 20 percent. Some people got also 10 percent and 20 percent, but they got it with loss aversion. What is loss aversion? Loss aversion is the idea that we hate losing more than we enjoy gaining. Now, think about somebody who is in a 10-percent condition and they put 40 shillings in. They put 40 shillings, we give them four more, they say thank you very much. That person gave up six. They could have gotten six more if they gave a hundred, but they don't see it. So we created what we call pre-match. We put the 10 shillings in at the beginning of the week. We said, "It's waiting for you!" And then if somebody puts 40 in, we say, "Oh, you put 40 in, we're leaving four, and we're taking six back." So in both cases, pre-match or post-match, people get 10 percent. But in the pre-match, they see the money they did not match leaving their account. So we have text, text from kids, 10 percent, 20 percent, pre-match, post-match. And we had one more condition. It was a coin about this size, with 24 numbers written on it. And we asked them to put the coin somewhere in their hut, and every week, take a knife and scratch the number for that week — week one, two, three, four — scratch it like a minus if they didn't save and scratch it up and down if they saved. Now, think to yourself: Which one of those methods do you think worked the best? Text, text from the kids, 10 percent, 20 percent, beginning of the week, end of the week, and the coin? I'll tell you what the average people think. We've done these studies of prediction, both in the US and in Kenya. People think that 20 percent will get a lot of action, 10 percent less, the rest of it will do nothing — kids, coin, doesn't matter. People think loss aversion will have a small effect. What actually happened? Sending a text reminder once a week helps a lot. Good news! This program lasted six months. People forget. Reminding people is great. Ten percent at the end of the week helped some more. Financial incentives work. Twenty percent at the end of the week — just like 10 percent, no difference. Ten percent in the beginning of the week helps some more. Loss aversion works. Twenty percent in the beginning of the week, just like 10 percent in the beginning of the week, no difference. And the text message from the kids was just as effective as 20 percent plus loss aversion — which is amazing, right? It's amazing how motivating messages from kids were. And one conclusion is we don't use kids enough. (Laughter) And, of course, I don't mean in a child labor sense. But if you think about parents and their kids, we are the best that we can for our kids, and we think about the future, and I think we should think about how to use that amazing source of motivation to get parents to behave in a better way. But the big surprise of this study was the coin. The coin basically doubled savings compared to everything else. And now the question is: Why? What was it about the coin? So I'll tell you how I started thinking about the coin, and then we'll come back to it. So you know, when I do research on, let's say, buying coffee, I don't need to go anywhere. I can sit in my office. I've bought enough coffee. I know how it works. The details, I'm familiar with. When you do research in some of the poorest places in the world, you have to go and visit and see what's going on and get some insight about how the system works. And on that particular day, I'm in a place called Soweto in South Africa, and I'm sitting in a place that sells funeral insurance. You know, in the US people spend crazy amounts of money on weddings? In South Africa, it's funerals. People spend up to a year or two years of income on funerals. And I sit in this place — by the way, before you judge the South Africans as being irrational with this, I just want to remind you that spending a lot of money on funerals compared to weddings, at least you know for sure you only have one. (Laughter) OK, so I sit in this place that sells funeral insurance. And this guy comes in with his son — his son is about 12 — and he buys funeral insurance for a week. It will cover 90 percent of his funeral expense only if he dies in the next seven days. Right? These are very poor people, they buy small amounts of insurance and small amount of soap and such. And he gets that certificate, and in a very ceremonious way, he gives it to his son. And as he gives it to his son, I think to myself, why the ceremony? What is this father doing? Now, think about the breadwinner that decides on that particular day to direct some money into insurance or savings. What is the family going to see tonight? They're going to see less. Right? At that level of poverty, there'll be less food, less kerosene, less water — something less tonight. And what his father was doing and what our coin was trying to do is to say, yes, there's less food on the table, but there's another activity. You see, what happened is, there are many good, important economic activities, like savings and insurance, that are invisible. And now the question is: How do we make them visible? So let's go back to our rocket model. We have to, first of all, look at the system and see where there's little things we can fix, with friction, where is there that we can remove friction? And then the next thing we want to do is to think broadly about the system, and say: What other motivations can we bring in? And that's a much more difficult exercise, and we don't always know what would work best. Is it going to be money? Is it going to be loss aversion? Is it going to be something that is visible? We don't know, and we have to try different things. We also have to realize that our intuition sometimes misleads us. We don't always necessarily know what would work the best. So if we think about this gap between where we could be and where we are, it's a really sad thing to see this gap and to think about it. But the good news is, there's lots we can do. Some of the changes are easy, some of the changes are more complex. But if we'll attack each problem directly, not by just providing more information to people but trying to change the friction, add motivation, I think we can ... Can we close the gap? No. But can we get much better? Absolutely, yes. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Why it's so hard to make healthy decisions

{0: 'David Asch advances individual and population health by improving the way physicians and patients make decisions in health care and in everyday life.'}

TEDMED 2018

It's April of 2007, and Jon Corzine, the Governor of New Jersey, is in this horrific car accident. He's in the right front passenger seat of this SUV when it crashes on the Garden State Parkway. He's transported to a New Jersey trauma center with multiple broken bones and multiple lacerations. He needs immediate surgery, seven units of blood, a mechanical ventilator to help him breathe and several more operations along the way. It's amazing he survived. But perhaps even more amazing, he was not wearing a seat belt. And, in fact, he never wore a seat belt, and the New Jersey state troopers who used to drive Governor Corzine around used to beg him to wear a seat belt, but he didn't do it. Now, before Corzine was Governor of New Jersey, he was the US Senator from New Jersey, and before that, he was the CEO of Goldman Sachs, responsible for taking Goldman Sachs public, making hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, no matter what you think of Jon Corzine politically or how he made his money, nobody would say that he was stupid. But there he was, an unrestrained passenger in a car accident, at a time when every American knows that seat belts save lives. This single story reflects a fundamental weakness in our approach to improving health behavior. Nearly everything we tell doctors and everything we tell patients is based on the idea that we behave rationally. If you give me information, I will process that information in my head, and my behavior will change as a result. Do you think Jon Corzine didn't know that seat belts save lives? Do you think he, like, just didn't get the memo? (Laughter) Jon Corzine did not have a knowledge deficit, he had a behavior deficit. It's not that he didn't know better. He knew better. It's that he didn't do better. Instead, I think the mind is a high-resistance pathway. Changing someone's mind with information is hard enough. Changing their behavior with information is harder still. The only way we're going to make substantial improvements in health and health care is to make substantial improvements in the behavior of health and health care. If you hit my patellar tendon with a reflex hammer, my leg is going to jerk forward, and it's going to jerk forward a lot faster and a lot more predictably than if I had to think about it myself. It's a reflex. We need to look for the equivalent behavioral reflexes and hitch our health care wagon to those. Turns out, though, that most conventional approaches to human motivation are based on the idea of education. We assume that if people don't behave as they should, it's because they didn't know any better. "If only people knew that smoking was dangerous, they wouldn't smoke." Or, we think about economics. The assumption there is that we're all constantly calculating the costs and benefits of every one of our actions and optimizing that to make the perfectly right, rational decision. If that were true, then all we need to do is to find the perfect payment system for doctors or the perfect co-payments and deductibles for patients, and everything would work out. A better approach lies in behavioral economics. Behavioral economists recognize that we are irrational. Our decisions are based on emotion, or they're sensitive to framing or to social context. We don't always do what's in our own long-term best interests. But the key contribution to behavioral economics is not in recognizing that we are irrational; it's recognizing that we are irrational in highly predictable ways. In fact, it's the predictability of our psychological foibles that allows us to design strategies to overcome them. Forewarned is forearmed. In fact, behavioral economists often use precisely the same behavioral reflexes that get us into trouble and turn them around to help us, rather than to hurt us. We see irrationality play out in something called "present bias," where the outcomes in front of us are much more motivating than even more important outcomes far in the future. If I'm on a diet — and I'm always on a diet — (Laughter) and someone offers me a luscious-looking piece of chocolate cake, I know I should not eat that chocolate cake. That chocolate cake will land on that part of my body — permanently — where that kind of food naturally settles. But the chocolate cake looks so good and delicious, and it's right in front of me, and the diet can wait 'til tomorrow. I used to love the comedian Steven Wright. He would have these Zen-like quips. My favorite one was this: "Hard work pays off in the future, but laziness pays off right now." (Laughter) And patients also have present bias. If you have high blood pressure, even if you would desperately like to avoid a stroke, and you know that taking your antihypertensive medications is one of the best ways to reduce that risk, the stroke you avoid is far in the future and taking medications is right now. Almost half of the patients who are prescribed high blood pressure pills stop taking them within a year. Think of how many lives we could save if we could solve just that one problem. We also tend to overestimate the value of small probabilities. This actually explains why state lotteries are so popular, even though they return pennies on the dollar. Now, some of you may buy lottery tickets — it's fun, there's the chance you might strike it rich ... But let's face it: this would be a horrible way to invest your retirement savings. I once saw a bumper sticker — I am not making this up — that said, "State lotteries are a special tax on people who can't do math." (Laughter) It's not that we can't do the math, it's that we can't feel the math. And we also pay much too much attention to regret. We all hate the feeling of missing out. So, actually, there was this recent lottery, a mega-jackpot lottery, that had a huge payoff, something like over a billion dollars. And everyone in my office is pooling money to buy lottery tickets, and I'm not having any of this. There I am, like, swaggering around the office, "Lotteries are a special tax on people who can't do math." (Laughter) And then it hits me: uh oh. What if they win? (Laughter) I'm the only one who shows up at work the next day. (Laughter) Now, it's not that I didn't want my colleagues to win. I just didn't want them to win without me. Now, it would have been easier if I had just taken my 20-dollar bill and put it into the office shredder, and the results would have been the same. Even though I knew I shouldn't participate, I handed over my $20 bill, and I never saw it again. (Laughter) We've done a bunch of experiments with patients in which we give them these electronic pill bottles so we can tell whether they're taking their medication or not. And we reward them with a lottery. They get prizes. But they only get prizes if they had taken their medication the day before. If not, they get a message that says something like, "You would have won a hundred dollars, but you didn't take your medicine yesterday, so you don't get it." Well, it turns out, patients hate that. They hate the sense of missing out, and because they can anticipate that feeling of regret and they'd like to avoid it, they're much more likely to take their medications. Harnessing that sense of hating regret works. And it leads to the more general point, which is: once you recognize how people are irrational, you're in a much better position to help them. Now, this kind of irrationality works out even in men's restrooms. So, for those of you who don't frequent urinals, let me break this down for you. (Laughter) There is pee all over the floor. (Laughter) And it turns out that you can solve this problem by etching the image of a fly in the back of the urinal. (Laughter) (Applause) And it makes perfect sense. (Laughter) If I see a fly, I'm gonna get that fly. (Laughter) That fly is going down. (Laughter) Now, this naturally begs the question that if men can aim, why were they peeing on the floor in the first place? In fact, if they were going to pee on the floor, why pee in front of the urinal? You could pee anywhere. (Laughter) And the same thing works in health care. We had a problem in our hospital in which the physicians were prescribing brand-name drugs when a generic drug was available. Each one of the lines on this graph represents a different drug. And they're listed according to how often they're prescribed as generic medications. Those are the top are prescribed as generics 100 percent of the time. Those down at the bottom are prescribed as generics less than 20 percent of the time. And we'd have meetings with clinicians and all sorts of education sessions, and nothing worked — all the lines are pretty much horizontal. Until, someone installed a little piece of software in the electronic health record that defaulted the prescriptions to generic medications instead of the brand-name drugs. Now, it doesn't take a statistician to see that this problem was solved overnight, and it has stayed solved ever since. In fact, in the two and a half years since this program started, our hospital has saved 32 million dollars. Let me say that again: 32 million dollars. And all we did was make it easier for the doctors to do what they fundamentally wanted to do all along. It also works to play into people's notions of loss. We did this with a contest to help people walk more. We wanted everyone to walk at least 7,000 steps, and we measured their step count with the accelerometer on their cell phone. Group A, the control group, just got told whether they had walked 7,000 steps or not. Group B got a financial incentive. We gave them $1.40 for every day they walked 7,000 steps. Group C got the same financial incentive, but it was framed as a loss rather than a gain: $1.40 a day is 42 dollars a month, so we gave these participants 42 dollars at the beginning of each month in a virtual account that they could see, and we took away $1.40 for every day they didn't walk 7,000 steps. Now, an economist would say that those two financial incentives are the same. For every day you walk 7,000 steps, you're $1.40 richer. But a behavioral economist would say that they're different, because we're much more motivated to avoid a $1.40 loss than we are motivated to achieve a $1.40 gain. And that's exactly what happened. Those in the group that received $1.40 for every day they walked 7,000 steps were no more likely to meet their goal than the control group. The financial incentive didn't work. But those who had a loss-framed incentive met their goal 50 percent more of the time. It doesn't make economic sense, but it makes psychological sense, because losses loom larger than gains. And now we're using loss-framed incentives to help patients walk more, lose weight and take their medications. Money can be a motivator. We all know that. But it's far more influential when it's paired with psychology. And money, of course, has its own disadvantages. My favorite example of this involves a daycare program. The greatest sin you can commit in daycare is picking up your kids late. No one is happy. Your kids are crying because you don't love them. (Laughter) The teachers are unhappy because they leave work late. And you feel terribly guilty. This daycare program in Israel decided they wanted to stop this problem, and they did something that many daycare programs in the US do, which is they installed a fine for late pickups. And the fine they chose was 10 shekels, which is about three bucks. And guess what happened? Late pickups increased. And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. What a deal! For 10 shekels — (Laughter) you can keep my kids all night! (Laughter) They took a perfectly strong intrinsic motivation not to be late, and they cheapened it. What's worse, when they realized their mistake and they took away the financial incentive, the late pickups still stayed at the high level. They had already poisoned the social contract. Health care is full of strong intrinsic motivations. We have doctors and patients who already want to do the right thing. Financial incentives can help, but we shouldn't expect money in health care to do all of the heavy lifting. Instead, perhaps the most powerful influencers of health behavior are our social interactions. Social engagement works in health care, and it works in two directions. First, we fundamentally care what others think of us. And so one of the most powerful ways to change our behavior is to make our activities witnessable to others. We behave differently when we're being observed than when we're not. I've been to some restaurants that don't have sinks in the bathrooms. Instead, when you step out, the sink is outside in the main part of the restaurant, where everyone can see whether you wash your hands or not. Now, I don't know for sure, but I am convinced that handwashing is much greater in those particular settings. We are always on our best behavior when we're being observed. In fact, there was this amazing study that was done in an intensive care unit in a Florida hospital. The handwashing rates were very low, which is dangerous, of course, because it can spread infection. And so some researchers pasted a picture of someone's eyes over the sink. It wasn't a real person, it was just a photograph. In fact, it wasn't even their whole face, it was just their eyes looking at you. (Laughter) Handwashing rates more than doubled. It seems we care so much what other people think of us that our behavior improves even if we merely imagine that we're being observed. And not only do we care what others think of us, we fundamentally model our behaviors on what we see other people do. And it all comes back to seat belts. When I was a kid, I used to love the "Batman" TV series with Adam West. Everything that Batman and Robin did was so cool, and, of course, the Batmobile was the coolest thing of all. Now, that show aired from 1966 to 1968, and at that time, seat belts were optional accessories in cars. But the producers of that show did something really important. When Batman and Robin got in the Batmobile, the camera would focus on their laps, and you would see Batman and Robin put on their seat belts. Now, if Batman and Robin put on their seat belts, you can bet that I was going to wear my seat belt, too. I bet that show saved thousands of lives. And again, it works in health care, too. Doctors use antibiotics more appropriately when they see how other doctors use them. So many activities in health care are hidden, they're unwitnessed, but doctors are social animals, and they perform better when they see what other doctors do. So social influence works in health care. So does tying it to notions of regret or to loss aversion. We would never think of using these tools if we thought that everyone was rational all the time. Now, just to be clear: I am not condemning rationality. I mean, that really would be irrational. But we all know that it's the nonrational parts of our minds where we get courage, creativity, inspiration and everything else that sparks passion. And we know something else, too. We know that we can be much more effective at improving health behavior if we work with the irrational parts of our nature instead of ignoring them or fighting against them. When it comes to health care, understanding our irrationality is just another tool in our toolbox. And harnessing that irrationality — that may be the most rational move of all. Thank you. (Applause)

3 questions we should ask about nuclear weapons

{0: 'Emma Belcher develops and implements strategy for reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons.'}

TEDxMidAtlantic

So you know when you're doubled over in pain and you're wondering, is it your appendix or maybe you ate something funny? Well, when that happens to me, I call my friend Sasha — Sasha is a doctor — and I say, "Should I rush to the nearest emergency room in a panic? Or am I OK to relax and just wait it out?" Yes, I am that annoying friend. But in September 2017, friends of mine were suddenly calling me for my professional opinion. And no, I'm not a doctor, but they were asking me questions of life and death. So what was going on in September of 2017? Well, North Korea was suddenly and scarily all over the news. Kim Jong-un had tested missiles potentially capable of hitting major US cities, and President Trump had responded with tweets of "fire and fury." And there was real concern that tensions would escalate to a potential war or even nuclear weapons use. So what my friends were calling and asking was: Should they panic or were the OK to relax? But really, they were asking me a fundamental question: "Am I safe?" While I was reassuring them that, no, they didn't need to worry just yet, the irony of their question dawned on me. What they hadn't really thought about is that we've all been living under a much larger cloud for decades — potentially a mushroom cloud — without giving it much thought. Now it's not surprising that friends of mine and many others like them don't know much about nuclear weapons and don't think about them. After all, the end of the Cold War, the United States and Russia, tension abated, we started dismantling nuclear weapons, and they started to become a relic of the past. Generations didn't have to grow up with the specter of nuclear war hanging over their heads. And there other reasons people don't like to think about nuclear weapons. It's scary, overwhelming. I get it. Sometimes I wish I could have chosen a cheerier field to study. (Laughter) Perhaps tax law would have been more uplifting. (Laughter) But in addition to that, people have so many other things to think about in their busy lives, and they'd much prefer to think about something over which they feel they have some semblance of control, and they assume that other people, smarter than they on this topic, are working away to keep us all safe. And then, there are other reasons people don't talk about this, and one is because we, as nuclear experts, use a whole lot of convoluted jargon and terminology to talk about these issues: CVID, ICBM, JCPOA. It's really inaccessible for a lot of people. And, in reality, it actually sometimes I think makes us numb to what we're really talking about here. And what we are really talking about here is the fact that, while we've made dramatic reductions in the number of nuclear weapons since the Cold War, right now, there are almost 15,000 in the world today. 15,000. The United States and Russia have over 90 percent of these nuclear weapons. If you're wondering, these are the countries that have the rest. But they have far fewer, ranging in the sort of 300-ish range and below. Adding to this situation is the fact that we have new technologies that potentially bring us new challenges. Could you imagine, one day, countries like ours and others potentially ceding decisions about a nuclear strike to a robot, based on algorithms? And what data do they use to inform those algorithms? This is pretty terrifying. So adding to this are terrorism potential, cyberattacks, miscalculation, misunderstanding. The list of nuclear nightmares tends to grow longer by the day. And there are a number of former officials, as well as experts, who worry that right now, we're in greater danger than we were in various points in the Cold War. So this is scary. What can we do? Well, thankfully, ["Duck and Cover"] we don't have to rely on the advice from the 1950s. (Laughter) We can take some control, and the way we do that is by starting to ask some fundamental questions about the status quo and whether we are happy with the way it is. We need to begin asking questions of ourselves and of our elected officials, and I'd like to share three with you today. The first one is, "How much nuclear risk are you willing to take or tolerate?" Right now, nuclear policy depends on deterrence theory. Developed in the 1950s, the idea is that one country's nuclear weapons prevents another country from using theirs. So you nuke me, I nuke you, and we both lose. So in a way, there's a stalemate. No one uses their weapons, and we're all safe. But this theory has real questions. There are experts who challenge this theory and wonder: Does it really work this way in practice? It certainly doesn't allow for mistakes or miscalculations. Now, I don't know about you, but I feel pretty uncomfortable gambling my future survival, yours, and our future generations', on a theory that is questionable and doesn't allow any room for a mistake. It makes me even more uncomfortable to be threatening the evaporation of millions of people on the other side of the Earth. Surely we can do better for ourselves, drawing on our ingenuity to solve complex problems, as we have in the past. After all, this is a man-made, human-made — I shouldn't say "man," because women were involved — a human-made problem. We have human solutions that should be possible. So, next question: "Who do you think should make nuclear decisions?" Right now, in this democracy, in the United States, one person gets to decide whether or not to launch a nuclear strike. They don't have to consult anybody. So that's the president. He or she can decide — within a very limited amount of time, under great pressure, potentially, depending on the scenario, maybe based on a miscalculation or a misunderstanding — they can decide the fate of millions of lives: yours, mine, our community's. And they can do this and launch a nuclear strike, potentially setting in motion the annihilation of the human race. Wow. This doesn't have to be our reality, though, and in fact, in a number of other countries that have nuclear weapons, it's not, including countries that are not democracies. We created this system. We can change it. And there's actually a movement underway to do so. So this leads me to my third question: "What do your elected officials know about nuclear weapons, and what types of decisions are they likely to take on your behalf?" Well, Congress has a very important role to play in oversight of and interrogating US nuclear weapons policy. They can decide what to fund, what not to fund, and they represent you. Now unfortunately, since the end of the Cold War, we've seen a real decline in the level of understanding, on Capitol Hill, about these issues. While we are starting to see some terrific new champions emerge, the reality is that the general lack of awareness is highly concerning, given that these people need to make critically important decisions. To make matters worse, the political partisanship that currently grips Washington also affects this issue. This wasn't always the case, though. At the end of the Cold War, members from both sides of the aisle had a really good understanding about the nuclear challenges we were facing and worked together on cooperative programs. They recognized that nuclear risk reduction was far too important to allow it to succumb to political partisanship. They created programs such as the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which sought to lock down and eliminate vulnerable nuclear material in the former Soviet Union. So we need to return to this era of bipartisanship, mutual problem-solving that's based on understanding and awareness about the challenges we face and the real nuclear dangers. And that's where you come in. Public pressure is important. Leaders need a constituent base to act. So create that constituent base, by asking them some simple questions. Ask them, "What do you know about nuclear weapons?" "Do you have a nuclear expert on your staff? Or, if not, do you know somebody you could refer to if you need to make an important decision?" Start to find out what they believe and whether it aligns with your own views and values. Ask them, "How would you choose to spend US national treasure? On a new nuclear arms race or another national security priority, such as cybersecurity or climate change?" Ask them, "Are you willing to put aside partisanship to address this existential threat that affects my survival and your constituents' survival?" Now, people will tell you nuclear policy is far too difficult to understand and complexed and nuanced for the general public to understand, let alone debate. After all, this is "national security." There needs to be secrets. Don't let that put you off. We debate all sorts of issues that are critically important to our lives — why should nuclear weapons be any different? We debate health care, education, the environment. Surely congressional oversight, civic participation that are such hallmarks of US democracy, surely they apply here. After all, these are cases of life and death that we're talking about. And we won't all agree, but whether or not you believe nuclear weapons keep us safe or that nuclear weapons are a liability, I urge you to put aside partisan, ideological issues and listen to each other. So I'll tell you now what I didn't have the guts to tell my friends at the time. No, you're not safe — not just because of North Korea. But there is something you can do about it. Demand that your elected representatives can give you answers to your questions, and answers that you can live with and that billions of others can live with too. And if they can't, stay on them until they can. And if that doesn't work, find others, who are able to represent your views. Because by doing so, we can begin to change the answer to the question "Am I safe?" (Applause)

How does laser eye surgery work?

TED-Ed

In 1948, Spanish ophthalmologist Jose Ignacio Barraquer Moner was fed up with glasses. He wanted a solution for blurry vision that fixed the eye itself, without relying on external aids. But the surgery he eventually devised was not for the faint of heart. Barraquer began by slicing off the front of a patient’s cornea and dunking it in liquid nitrogen. Using a miniature lathe, he ground the frozen cornea into the precise shape necessary to focus the patient’s vision. Then he thawed the disc, and sewed it back on. Barraquer called this procedure keratomileusis, from the Greek words for “carving” and “cornea.” And though it might sound grisly, his technique produced reliable results. So how did Barraquer’s surgery work? Keratomileusis corrects what are called refractive errors: imperfections in the way the eye focuses incoming light. Ideally, the cornea and lens work together to focus light on the surface of the retina, but several kinds of refractive errors can impair this delicate system. In people with myopia, or short-sightedness, a steep cornea focuses light just short of the retina. Those with hyperopia, or far-sightedness, have the opposite problem: light is focused too far beyond the retina. And in people with astigmatism, the cornea has two different curvatures which focus light at two distances and produce blurry vision. Even those with perfect vision will eventually suffer from presbyopia, or “aging eyes.” As the proteins in the lens age, they slowly increase its size. By an adult’s mid-40’s, the lens is too large to easily change shape and shift focus. Glasses and contact lenses bend light to compensate for these refractive errors. But, as Barraquer’s procedure shows, we can also alter the shape of the cornea itself; moving the focal point backwards, forwards, or pulling a divided image together. And thankfully, modern eye surgeons can sculpt the cornea with far less invasive tools. In corrective laser eye surgery, surgeons rely on excimer lasers. These tools are accurate enough to etch words into a human hair. To safely accomplish these ultra-fine incisions, they use a technique called photoablation. This allows the laser to essentially evaporate organic tissue without overheating surrounding eye tissue. So how does laser eye surgery actually work? The first step is to separate a thin layer from the front of the cornea. This can be done with either a flat, wide blade, or a femto-second laser that produces millions of tiny plasma bubbles to create a plane beneath the corneal surface. Surgeons then lift the flap to expose the inside of the cornea. Guided by the refractive error and the shape of the cornea, the excimer laser robotically sculpts the exposed corneal bed into the correct shape. This process usually takes less than 30 seconds for each eye. Finally, the flap is closed, and its edges reseal themselves in just a few hours. Because the lasering is done on the eyeball itself, it’s described as “in situ,” or “on site.” Its complete name is “laser in-situ keratomileusis” – but you probably know it as LASIK. Essentially, this technique carves a patient’s contact lens prescription onto their cornea. Like any surgical procedure, LASIK comes with certain risks. Some patients experience slightly blurred vision that can’t be corrected by glasses. But the technique is currently about as likely to damage your eyes as wearing daily disposable contact lenses for one year. Today, a technique called SMILE enables surgeons to sculpt the cornea through even smaller incisions – further reducing recovery time. And lasers aren’t just correcting the three types of refractive errors – this technology can also restore aging eyes. In a technique called Laser Blended Vision, surgeons adjust one eye to be slightly better at distance vision and the other to be better at close range vision. The difference between the two eyes is small enough that most patients can merge their vision, allowing both eyes to work together at all distances. Advances in laser technology continue to make vision correction surgery more effective and accessible. One day soon, Barraquer’s vision of a world without glasses may finally come true.

A creative solution for the water crisis in Flint, Michigan

{0: 'LaToya Ruby Frazier focuses her camera lens on working class families, exploring themes of family, inequality, health care and environmental racism.'}

We the Future

So, in 2016, I was commissioned to produce a photo essay about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. And that's been going on since 2014. And I accepted the commission with the idea that I would photograph three generations of women dealing with the crisis on a daily basis. I was fortunate to meet two best friends, artists, activists and poets Amber Hasan and Shea Cobb, who took me around Flint. As a school bus driver, Shea Cobb became the central figure of the photo essay, along with her mother, Ms. Renée, and her eight-year-old daughter, Zion. I obsessively followed Shea's school bus routes. And when Shea wasn't driving the bus, she would be watching over Zion, making sure she was studying. I embedded myself in every intimate facet of Shea's life. When Shea took me to Zion's school, and I saw the water fountains covered with signs that said, "Contaminated. Do not drink," I couldn't pick up my camera to photograph it. It rocked me to the core to see that in America, we can go from fountains that say "Whites" or "Blacks only," to today seeing fountains that say, "Contaminated water. Do not drink." And somehow, that's acceptable? The residents in Flint have been forced to drink with, cook with and bathe with bottled water, while paying the highest water bills in the country for water that is infected with deadly legionella bacteria. It was natural for me to go to Flint, because industrial pollution, bacteria-contaminated water were all too familiar for me growing up in my hometown, Braddock, Pennsylvania, where my mother and I battled cancer and autoimmune disorders like lupus. Our 14-year collaboration, "The Notion of Family," was created out of our struggle to survive environmental racism, healthcare inequity and chemical emissions that were being deregulated and released from the United States Steel Corporation, making Braddock the town with the highest asthma and infant mortality rates in the country. From the Monongahela River to the Flint River, in the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, "The town, the whole valley, has turned its back upon the river. It has used it as a sewer, as a drain, as a place for throwing their waste." General Motors has been cited for dumping chemicals in the Flint River for decades. When my photo essay "Flint is Family" came out in August of 2016, it was released to remind America that although Flint was no longer headline news, the water crisis was far from over. And, of course, I knew it was going to take more than a series of photographs on my part to bring relief to the people in Vehicle City. Shea and I bonded over our mothers and grandmothers. Amber and I bonded over our battles with lupus. Together, we decided to remain in each other's life and continue our creative efforts. In 2017, Shea and Amber cofounded artist collective The Sister Tour, whose mission is to provide a safe space for Flint artists. One year later, I mounted my solo exhibition, "Flint is Family," here in New York City at Gavin Brown's Enterprise on West 127th Street. As the audience approaches the facade of the building, they see a 30-foot billboard. The 30-foot billboard is made of three large color negatives with the message "Water Is Life," spelled out in Nestle water bottles by The Sister Tour. Nestle, the largest water-bottling company in the world, pumps 400 gallons of water per minute out of aquifers in Lake Michigan, nearly free of charge. The company also extracts millions of liters of water from First Nation reservations, while they have no access to clean water at all. This is a fundraiser print that I used to raise money to send The Sister Tour to different venues to educate people on the ongoing crisis. I also continued to keep it in the public eye by producing countdown flags that were raised on institutions across the country. This past June, Amber emailed me with the news that Michigan's attorney general dropped all criminal charges in the Flint Water Crisis investigation, where eight state and city employees were facing charges as serious as manslaughter. I could no longer idly stand by and wait for the government to do its job. Justice has been delayed, and justice has been denied. It's been five years, and we're still waiting on justice for the men, women and children in Flint. I asked Amber, "What can I do?" She told me about a man named Moses West that she met in Puerto Rico, who invented a 26,000-pound atmospheric water generator. Amber took Moses to elected officials in the city of Flint. None of them seemed interested in bringing the machine for relief to Flint at all. Amber needed to get the machine from a military base in Texas all the way to Flint. Nobody in Flint had that kind of money lying around. And it was at that point that I decided to take the proceeds from my solo exhibition "Flint is Family," along with the generous match grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and sent it to Moses West. This past July, Moses West and his atmospheric water generator arrived to Flint, Michigan, on North Saginaw between Marengo and Pulaski, and is actually still there right now, operating. This community that sits three miles from downtown has been stripped of its schools, access to healthy grocery stores and clean water. Socially, it's viewed as a violent, poor community. But I see something completely different. Moses, an officer, Ranger, veteran, was very clear about his water rescue mission: Bring relief of free, clean water to the people in Flint. Teach them how to use the machine, teach them how to take care of it, and most importantly, take ownership of the machine. Tell everybody across the city to bring all their containers and come and take as much water as they can stock up on, especially before the winter season hits; the machine doesn't extract moisture in freezing temperatures. This technology pulls air through a high-volume air filter. It mechanically creates condensation, which produces 2,000 gallons of water per day. Residents are free to walk up to the machine anywhere between 9am and 8pm daily and take as much as they want, alleviating them from standing in long lines for bottled water. I've been at the machine, interviewing people, asking them, "What does it mean to see Moses and his machine in [your] community?" And, "What has it been like living without access to clean water?" Alita told me, "It's a miracle that God gave Moses the knowledge and technology to provide us with pure drinking water." She also told me that prior to the machine coming, she had severe headaches, and the water made her so sick to her stomach, she couldn't eat. Tina told me that the lead-contaminated water made her hair fall out. Usually, she's weak and very light-headed. Since using the machine, she's had energy and strength. David, he was overwhelmed with joy that someone from Texas cared. When he tasted the water, he thought to himself, "Now, this is the way God intended water to be." He brings three seven-gallon containers to refill to use at his barbecue stand. Through creativity and solidarity, Amber Hasan, Shea Cobb, Tuklor Senegal, The Sister Tour, myself, the people of Flint, Dexter Moon, Moses West and his atmospheric water generator have been able to provide 120,000 gallons of free, clean water. (Applause) The people in Flint deserve access to clean water. Water is life. It is the spirit that binds us from sickness, death and destruction. Imagine how many millions of lives we could save if Moses's machine were in places like Newark, New Jersey, South Africa and India, with compassion instead of profit motives. I loaded my camera, I locked my focus, and I placed my finger over the shutter release, as Shea and Zion went to take their first sip of clean water. When the shutter released, I was overcome with a deep sense of joy and righteousness. When I sent Shea some of the photographs, she wrote, "Thank you again for the light that you bring to my city." I immediately replied, "The light was already there within you." It's been four years since I've been photographing in Flint, and finally, I've been able to render a poetic justice. No matter how dark a situation may be, a camera can extract the light and turn a negative into a positive. Thank you. (Applause)

How to save a language from extinction

{0: 'Daniel Bögre Udell is the cofounder and director of Wikitongues, working with a global network of grassroots linguists to build a seed bank of every language in the world.'}

TED Residency

Languages don't just die naturally. People abandon mother tongues, because they're forced to. Often, the pressure is political. In 1892, the US Army general Richard Henry Pratt argued that killing indigenous cultures was the only alternative to killing indigenous people. "Kill the Indian," he said, "but save the man." And until 1978, the government did just that, removing indigenous children from their families and forcing them into boarding schools where they were given English names and punished for speaking their languages. Assimilation was a compliment to genocide. Seven thousand languages are alive today, but few are recognized by their own governments or supported online. So for people from the vast majority of cultures, globalization remains profoundly alienating. It means giving up your language for someone else's. And if nothing changes, as many as 3,000 languages could disappear in 80 years. But things are changing. Around the world, people are reviving ancestral languages and rebuilding their cultures. As far as we know, language reclamation began in the 1800s when, at a time of rising antisemitism, Jewish communities looked to their ancestral language, Hebrew, as a means of cultural revival. And though it had been dormant for over 1,000 years, it was well preserved in books of Jewish religion and philosophy. So Jewish activists studied and taught it to their children, raising the first native speakers in nearly 100 generations. Today, it's the mother tongue of five million Jews. And at least for me, an assimilated English-speaking member of the Jewish diaspora, a pillar of cultural sovereignty. Two thousand years later, we're still here. Now, until recently, Hebrew's reawakening was an anomaly. Few languages are as well preserved as ours was, and the creation of Israel, the first Jewish state in over 1,000 years, provided a space for Hebrew's daily use. In other words, most cultures just weren't given a chance. (Video) Good evening, I'm Elizabeth and I live in Cornwall. That was Cornish, the ancestral language of Cornwall, which today is technically a county in southern England. In the 1900s, Cornish activists fought for their culture. The language had been dormant for over 100 years, but they used old books and plays to teach it to their children. However, this new generation of Cornish speakers was scattered across Cornwall and unable to use the language freely. By the 1990s, Cornish had reawakened, but it wasn't thriving. Then, in the early 2000s, Cornish speakers found one another online and leveraged digital spaces to speak on a daily basis. From there, they organized weekly or monthly events where they could gather and speak in public. Today, some schools teach Cornish. There are Cornish language signs, ice-cream commercials, Wikipedia, and even memes. (Laughter) (Laughter) And with their language once again intact, the people of Cornwall have secured recognition as a Celtic nation alongside Ireland, Scotland and Wales. They stared down centuries of forced assimilation and said, "We're not a county in England. We're a people in our own right. And we're still here." And they're not the only ones. The Tunica-Biloxi tribe of Louisiana is reviving their ancestral language. (Video) My name is Teyanna. My friends, they call me "Quiet Storm." It started in the 1980s, when Donna Pierite and her family started taking trips to Baton Rouge and New Orleans to photocopy old dictionaries stored away in university archives. The goal was to study Tunica and teach it to the children and share it with the community. Today, they're leading a Tunica renaissance. Since 2014, there are nearly 100 speakers in language immersion classes, and according to a 2017 census, 32 new fluent speakers, some of whom, like Donna's daughter Elisabeth, are teaching Tunica to their children. These new speakers are creating content, Facebook videos and also memes. (Laughter) (Laughter) (Laughter) And the more they publish, the more they inspire other Tunica people to get involved. Recently, a tribal member living in Texas wrote Elisabeth on Facebook, asking how to say "bless these lands." It was for a yard sign, so she could show her neighbors that her culture is alive and thriving today. Now, Hebrew, Cornish and Tunica are just three examples from a groundswell of language activism on every continent. And whether they're Jèrriais speakers from the Channel Isles, or Kenyan sign language speakers from Nairobi, all communities working to preserve or reclaim a language have one thing in common: media, so their language can be shared and taught. And as the internet grows, expanding media access and creation, preserving and reclaiming ancestral languages is now more possible than ever. So what are your ancestral languages? Mine are Hebrew, Yiddish, Hungarian and Scottish Gaelic, even though I was raised in English. And luckily for me, each of these languages is available online. Hebrew in particular — it came installed on my iPhone, it's supported by Google Translate, it even has autocorrect. And while your language may not be as widely supported, I encourage you to investigate, because chances are, someone, somewhere, has started getting it online. Reclaiming your language and embracing your culture is a powerful way to be yourself in the age of globalization, because as I recently learned to say in Hebrew, "'nḥnw 'dyyn k'n" — we're still here. Thank you. (Applause)

History's "worst" nun

TED-Ed

Juana Ramírez de Asbaje sat before a panel of prestigious theologians, jurists, and mathematicians. The viceroy of New Spain had invited them to test the young woman’s knowledge by posing the most difficult questions they could muster. But Juana successfully answered every challenge, from complicated equations to philosophical queries. Observers would later liken the scene to “a royal galleon fending off a few canoes.” The woman who faced this interrogation was born in the mid-17th century. At that time, Mexico had been a Spanish colony for over a century, leading to a complex and stratified class system. Juana’s maternal grandparents were born in Spain, making them members of Mexico’s most esteemed class. But Juana was born out of wedlock, and her father – a Spanish military captain – left her mother, Doña Isabel, to raise Juana and her sisters alone. Fortunately, her grandfather’s moderate means ensured the family a comfortable existence. And Doña Isabel set a strong example for her daughters, successfully managing one of her father’s two estates, despite her illiteracy and the misogyny of the time. It was perhaps this precedent that inspired Juana’s lifelong confidence. At age three, she secretly followed her older sister to school. When she later learned that higher education was open only to men, she begged her mother to let her attend in disguise. Her request denied, Juana found solace in her grandfather’s private library. By early adolescence, she’d mastered philosophical debate, Latin, and the Aztec language Nahuatl. Juana’s precocious intellect attracted attention from the royal court in Mexico City, and when she was sixteen, the viceroy and his wife took her in as their lady-in-waiting. Here, her plays and poems alternately dazzled and outraged the court. Her provocative poem Foolish Men infamously criticized sexist double standards, decrying how men corrupt women while blaming them for immorality. Despite its controversy, her work still inspired adoration, and numerous proposals. But Juana was more interested in knowledge than marriage. And in the patriarchal society of the time, there was only one place she could find it. The Church, while still under the zealous influence of the Spanish Inquisition, would allow Juana to retain her independence and respectability while remaining unmarried. At age 20, she entered the Hieronymite Convent of Santa Paula and took on her new name: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. For years, Sor Juana was considered a prized treasure of the church. She wrote dramas, comedies, and treatises on philosophy and mathematics, in addition to religious music and poetry. She accrued a massive library, and was visited by many prominent scholars. While serving as the convent’s treasurer and archivist, she also protected the livelihoods of her niece and sisters from men who tried to exploit them. But her outspokenness ultimately brought her into conflict with her benefactors. In 1690, a bishop published Sor Juana’s private critique of a respected sermon. In the publication, he admonished Sor Juana to devote herself to prayer rather than debate. She replied that God would not have given women intellect if he did not want them to use it. The exchange caught the attention of the conservative Archbishop of Mexico. Slowly, Sor Juana was stripped of her prestige, forced to sell her books and give up writing. Furious at this censorship, but unwilling to leave the church, she bitterly renewed her vows. In her last act of defiance, she signed them “I, the worst of all,” in her own blood. Deprived of scholarship, Sor Juana threw herself into charity work, and in 1695, she died of an illness she contracted while nursing her sisters. Today, Sor Juana has been recognized as the first feminist in the Americas. She’s the subject of countless documentaries, novels, and operas, and appears on Mexico’s 200-peso banknote. In the words of Nobel laureate Octavio Paz: “It is not enough to say that Sor Juana’s work is a product of history; we must add that history is also a product of her work.”

The search for our solar system's ninth planet

{0: 'Mike Brown scans the skies searching for and intensely studying distant bodies in our solar system in the hope of gaining insight into how our planet and the planets around it came to be. '}

TED@NAS

I'm going to tell you a story from 200 years ago. In 1820, French astronomer Alexis Bouvard almost became the second person in human history to discover a planet. He'd been tracking the position of Uranus across the night sky using old star catalogs, and it didn't quite go around the Sun the way that his predictions said it should. Sometimes it was a little too fast, sometimes a little too slow. Bouvard knew that his predictions were perfect. So it had to be that those old star catalogs were bad. He told astronomers of the day, "Do better measurements." So they did. Astronomers spent the next two decades meticulously tracking the position of Uranus across the sky, but it still didn't fit Bouvard's predictions. By 1840, it had become obvious. The problem was not with those old star catalogs, the problem was with the predictions. And astronomers knew why. They realized that there must be a distant, giant planet just beyond the orbit of Uranus that was tugging along at that orbit, sometimes pulling it along a bit too fast, sometimes holding it back. Must have been frustrating back in 1840 to see these gravitational effects of this distant, giant planet but not yet know how to actually find it. Trust me, it's really frustrating. (Laughter) But in 1846, another French astronomer, Urbain Le Verrier, worked through the math and figured out how to predict the location of the planet. He sent his prediction to the Berlin observatory, they opened up their telescope and in the very first night they found this faint point of light slowly moving across the sky and discovered Neptune. It was this close on the sky to Le Verrier's predicted location. The story of prediction and discrepancy and new theory and triumphant discoveries is so classic and Le Verrier became so famous from it, that people tried to get in on the act right away. In the last 163 years, dozens of astronomers have used some sort of alleged orbital discrepancy to predict the existence of some new planet in the solar system. They have always been wrong. The most famous of these erroneous predictions came from Percival Lowell, who was convinced that there must be a planet just beyond Uranus and Neptune, messing with those orbits. And so when Pluto was discovered in 1930 at the Lowell Observatory, everybody assumed that it must be the planet that Lowell had predicted. They were wrong. It turns out, Uranus and Neptune are exactly where they're supposed to be. It took 100 years, but Bouvard was eventually right. Astronomers needed to do better measurements. And when they did, those better measurements had turned out that there is no planet just beyond the orbit of Uranus and Neptune and Pluto is thousands of times too small to have any effect on those orbits at all. So even though Pluto turned out not to be the planet it was originally thought to be, it was the first discovery of what is now known to be thousands of tiny, icy objects in orbit beyond the planets. Here you can see the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and in that little circle in the very center is the Earth and the Sun and almost everything that you know and love. And those yellow circles at the edge are these icy bodies out beyond the planets. These icy bodies are pushed and pulled by the gravitational fields of the planets in entirely predictable ways. Everything goes around the Sun exactly the way it is supposed to. Almost. So in 2003, I discovered what was at the time the most distant known object in the entire solar system. It's hard not to look at that lonely body out there and say, oh yeah, sure, so Lowell was wrong, there was no planet just beyond Neptune, but this, this could be a new planet. The real question we had was, what kind of orbit does it have around the Sun? Does it go in a circle around the Sun like a planet should? Or is it just a typical member of this icy belt of bodies that got a little bit tossed outward and it's now on its way back in? This is precisely the question the astronomers were trying to answer about Uranus 200 years ago. They did it by using overlooked observations of Uranus from 91 years before its discovery to figure out its entire orbit. We couldn't go quite that far back, but we did find observations of our object from 13 years earlier that allowed us to figure out how it went around the Sun. So the question is, is it in a circular orbit around the Sun, like a planet, or is it on its way back in, like one of these typical icy bodies? And the answer is no. It has a massively elongated orbit that takes 10,000 years to go around the Sun. We named this object Sedna after the Inuit goddess of the sea, in honor of the cold, icy places where it spends all of its time. We now know that Sedna, it's about a third the size of Pluto and it's a relatively typical member of those icy bodies out beyond Neptune. Relatively typical, except for this bizarre orbit. You might look at this orbit and say, "Yeah, that's bizarre, 10,000 years to go around the Sun," but that's not really the bizarre part. The bizarre part is that in those 10,000 years, Sedna never comes close to anything else in the solar system. Even at its closest approach to the Sun, Sedna is further from Neptune than Neptune is from the Earth. If Sedna had had an orbit like this, that kisses the orbit of Neptune once around the Sun, that would have actually been really easy to explain. That would have just been an object that had been in a circular orbit around the Sun in that region of icy bodies, had gotten a little bit too close to Neptune one time, and then got slingshot out and is now on its way back in. But Sedna never comes close to anything known in the solar system that could have given it that slingshot. Neptune can't be responsible, but something had to be responsible. This was the first time since 1845 that we saw the gravitational effects of something in the outer solar system and didn't know what it was. I actually thought I knew what the answer was. Sure, it could have been some distant, giant planet in the outer solar system, but by this time, that idea was so ridiculous and had been so thoroughly discredited that I didn't take it very seriously. But 4.5 billion years ago, when the Sun formed in a cocoon of hundreds of other stars, any one of those stars could have gotten just a little bit too close to Sedna and perturbed it onto the orbit that it has today. When that cluster of stars dissipated into the galaxy, the orbit of Sedna would have been left as a fossil record of this earliest history of the Sun. I was so excited by this idea, by the idea that we could look at the fossil history of the birth of the Sun, that I spent the next decade looking for more objects with orbits like Sedna. In that ten-year period, I found zero. (Laughter) But my colleagues, Chad Trujillo and Scott Sheppard, did a better job, and they have now found several objects with orbits like Sedna, which is super exciting. But what's even more interesting is that they found that all these objects are not only on these distant, elongated orbits, they also share a common value of this obscure orbital parameter that in celestial mechanics we call argument of perihelion. When they realized it was clustered in argument of perihelion, they immediately jumped up and down, saying it must be caused by a distant, giant planet out there, which is really exciting, except it makes no sense at all. Let me try to explain it to you why with an analogy. Imagine a person walking down a plaza and looking 45 degrees to his right side. There's a lot of reasons that might happen, it's super easy to explain, no big deal. Imagine now many different people, all walking in different directions across the plaza, but all looking 45 degrees to the direction that they're moving. Everybody's moving in different directions, everybody's looking in different directions, but they're all looking 45 degrees to the direction of motion. What could cause something like that? I have no idea. It's very difficult to think of any reason that that would happen. (Laughter) And this is essentially what that clustering in argument of perihelion was telling us. Scientists were generally baffled and they assumed it must just be a fluke and some bad observations. They told the astronomers, "Do better measurements." I actually took a very careful look at those measurements, though, and they were right. These objects really did all share a common value of argument of perihelion, and they shouldn't. Something had to be causing that. The final piece of the puzzle came into place in 2016, when my colleague, Konstantin Batygin, who works three doors down from me, and I realized that the reason that everybody was baffled was because argument of perihelion was only part of the story. If you look at these objects the right way, they are all actually lined up in space in the same direction, and they're all tilted in space in the same direction. It's as if all those people on the plaza are all walking in the same direction and they're all looking 45 degrees to the right side. That's easy to explain. They're all looking at something. These objects in the outer solar system are all reacting to something. But what? Konstantin and I spent a year trying to come up with any explanation other than a distant, giant planet in the outer solar system. We did not want to be the 33rd and 34th people in history to propose this planet to yet again be told we were wrong. But after a year, there was really no choice. We could come up with no other explanation other than that there is a distant, massive planet on an elongated orbit, inclined to the rest of the solar system, that is forcing these patterns for these objects in the outer solar system. Guess what else a planet like this does. Remember that strange orbit of Sedna, how it was kind of pulled away from the Sun in one direction? A planet like this would make orbits like that all day long. We knew we were onto something. So this brings us to today. We are basically 1845, Paris. (Laughter) We see the gravitational effects of a distant, giant planet, and we are trying to work out the calculations to tell us where to look, to point our telescopes, to find this planet. We've done massive suites of computer simulations, massive months of analytic calculations and here's what I can tell you so far. First, this planet, which we call Planet Nine, because that's what it is, Planet Nine is six times the mass of the Earth. This is no slightly-smaller-than-Pluto, let's-all-argue-about- whether-it's-a-planet-or-not thing. This is the fifth largest planet in our entire solar system. For context, let me show you the sizes of the planets. In the back there, you can the massive Jupiter and Saturn. Next to them, a little bit smaller, Uranus and Neptune. Up in the corner, the terrestrial planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. You can even see that belt of icy bodies beyond Neptune, of which Pluto is a member, good luck figuring out which one it is. And here is Planet Nine. Planet Nine is big. Planet Nine is so big, you should probably wonder why haven't we found it yet. Well, Planet Nine is big, but it's also really, really far away. It's something like 15 times further away than Neptune. And that makes it about 50,000 times fainter than Neptune. And also, the sky is a really big place. We've narrowed down where we think it is to a relatively small area of the sky, but it would still take us years to systematically cover the area of the sky with the large telescopes that we need to see something that's this far away and this faint. Luckily, we might not have to. Just like Bouvard used unrecognized observations of Uranus from 91 years before its discovery, I bet that there are unrecognized images that show the location of Planet Nine. It's going to be a massive computational undertaking to go through all of the old data and pick out that one faint moving planet. But we're underway. And I think we're getting close. So I would say, get ready. We are not going to match Le Verrier's "make a prediction, have the planet found in a single night that close to where you predicted it" record. But I do bet that within the next couple of years some astronomer somewhere will find a faint point of light, slowly moving across the sky and triumphantly announce the discovery of a new, and quite possibly not the last, real planet of our solar system. Thank you. (Applause)

7 beliefs that can silence women -- and how to unlearn them

{0: 'Deepa Narayan is an international advisor on poverty, gender and development with more than 25 years of experience working at the World Bank, the UN and NGOs.'}

TED Talks India: Nayi Baat

Shah Rukh Khan: "A girl should be seen, not heard." "Be quiet," or, "chup." These words are often used to silence girls right from childhood, well into adulthood and deep into old age. I'm proud to introduce our next speaker, a true champion of the female voice, an advisor on poverty, gender and development for the World Bank, United Nations and several NGOs in India and the world over. She calls herself a cultural detective. Let's raise our voices to welcome renowned social scientist and author Deepa Narayan. (Music) (Applause) Deepa Narayan: The goal of every loving parent is to raise good girls, but what parents actually do is to constrain, confine and crush their girls. So as they crush their girls, they prepare them for abuse. This would be so devastating that no parent would be able to bear it, so it's disguised. In India, we call this "adjusting." I'm sure you've heard the word. "Darling, just adjust a bit. Just adjust. No matter what happens, just adjust." "Adjust" trains girls to be powerless, not to exist, not to be seen, not to have a self, and it trains boys to claim power and authority over the world. And in the meantime we keep talking about gender equality and women's empowerment. After 2012, after the gang rape in a moving bus in Delhi, I really wanted to understand the roots of abuse. So I started asking a very simple question: what does it mean to you to be a good woman or a good man today? And I was so surprised by what I heard, the answers particularly that young people gave, that the project became a research project and it took over my life. For three years, I listened to over 600 women, men and children, educated, middle class, and it led to 1,800 hours of listening and 8,000 pages of notes, and it took another year to make sense of it. Nowadays, we see well-dressed, educated women like many of you in this room, all of you in this room, and myself, and we think the world has changed, but these external changes are extremely misleading, because on the inside, we have not changed. So today, I'm not going to talk about poor people. I'm going to talk only about the middle and upper classes, because we are the ones most in denial. We are the ones who have said over and over again that when women are educated, when they're employed and they earn incomes, they will be equal, empowered and free. They're not. Why? From my research, I identify seven habits that delete women, that make women disappear, but these habits persist because they're so familiar to us and we've made them good and moral. Why would you change or drop anything that's good and moral? So, on the one hand, we love our children, we love our daughters, and on the other hand, we crush them. Habit one: You don't have a body. The first step to make a girl a ghost is to make her body disappear, to pretend that she doesn't have a body. Akangsha, who is 23, said, "In my family, we never spoke about the body, never." And it is in this silence that millions and millions of girls get sexually molested, and they don't even tell their mothers. And it's the negative comments from others that leads to 90 percent of women saying that they dislike their bodies. When a girl rejects her body, she rejects her only house and invisibility and insecurity become her very shaky foundation. Habit two: Be quiet. Chup. If you're not supposed to exist and you don't have a body, how can you have a voice? So just about every woman said, "When I was little, my mother used to scold me and say, 'Don't speak, be quiet, be chup, speak softly, don't argue and never answer back. Jawab nahi Dena.'" I'm sure you've all heard that. And so girls become afraid, and they withdraw. And they become quiet and they say, "Let it go. Jaane do. What's the point? Nobody listens." Educated women said that their number one problem was their inability to speak up, as if there was a foot on their throat ready to choke them. Silence slices off women. Habit three: Be a people pleaser. Please others. Everyone likes a nice woman who always smiles, who never says no, who is never angry, even when she's being exploited. Amisha, who is 18, said, "My father said, 'If I don't see you smiling, I don't feel good.'" So she smiles. So her father is teaching her, my happiness is more important than your happiness. And in this business of trying to make everyone happy all the time, girls become afraid to make decisions. And when you ask them, they say, "Anything, whatever! Kuch bhi! Everything goes. Chalta hai." Darsha, who is 25, said with great pride, "I'm highly elastic. I become whatever others want me to be." Such girls give up their dreams, their desires, and nobody even notices, except for depression. It moves in. Another slice of a girl is taken off. Habit four: You have no sexuality. I think you'd all agree that with a population of over 1.3 billion, sex is not new to India. What is new is that more people now acknowledge that women, too, have a right to sexual desire. But how can a woman who has not been allowed to own her body, who hasn't been educated about her body, who may have been sexually molested, who cannot say no and who has been filled with shame, how can she claim her sexual desire? A woman's sexuality is suppressed. Habit five: Don't trust women. Imagine how the world would change if women came together in solidarity, but as to make sure that this doesn't happen, our culture places high moral value on loyalty to men and family secrecy. Woman after woman said, "I know only one trustworthy woman, and that's me." Even Ruchi, who is 30 and who works on women's empowerment at Delhi University, said, "I don't trust women. They're jealous and they backbite." Obviously, then, in cities, women don't join women's groups, and when you ask them why, they say, "We don't have time for gossip." It's much easier to demolish a woman who is alone. Habit six: Duty over desire. Muskan gave a very long definition of a good girl, and she's only 15. "She is kind, gentle, polite, loving, caring, truthful, obedient, respects elders, helps everyone unconditionally, and is good to others and fulfills duty." Tiring, isn't it. By the time you fulfill duty, whatever little desire is left is also lost. And when sacrificing mothers have nothing left to say except talk about food — "Have you eaten? Khana kha liya? What will you eat?" — men like Saurabh, who is 24, call them "boring." A woman becomes a residue. Habit seven: Be totally dependent. So all these habits collectively crush women, fill her with fear and make her totally dependent on men for her survival, and this allows the system of male power to continue. So all these seven habits that we thought were good and moral snatch life away from girls and position men to abuse. We must change. How do we change? A habit is just a habit. Every habit is a learned habit, so we can unlearn them and this personal change is extremely important. I had to change too. But this doesn't change the system that crushes millions of other women. So we have to go to the roots. We must change what it means to be a good woman and a good man, because this a foundation of every society. We don't need elastic women, we need elastic definitions, for men too, and this big societal change cannot happen without men's involvement. We need you. We need men to become champions of change, to develop strong change muscles. Otherwise, it will be two more centuries before our girls, and our boys, are safe and free. Imagine half a billion women coming together, with the support of men, to talk to one another for conversation, for change, both personal and political, and imagine men in their own circles, and imagine women and men coming together to just listen to each other without judgment, without blame, without accusations and without shame. Imagine how much we would change. We can do this together. Women, don't adjust. Men, adjust. It's time. Thank you. (Applause) SRK: How well said, how wonderful. Everyone, Deepa, please. Listening to her, I realized that even in the simplest conversations that we have with women, we're actually being aggressive. For example, I do tell my daughter sometimes, "Yaar Tu hasti hai to mujhe accha lagta hai varna bura lagta hai". So sorry, I would never do that. Aaj Se main meri beti ko yahi bolunga. Whatever you're doing, mujhe accha hi lagta hai, aur accha nahi bhi lagta hai Toh mera kya, tum wohi karo jo tumhare ko lagta hai, right? (Applause) How did you feel, first listening to so many unfulfilled stories, desires, lack of independence, of girls that you normally would assume we think these girls are better off? DN: Very depressed. It was shocking for me, and that's why I couldn't stop, because I had no plans to do a study and no plans to write a book. I'd written 17 books before, and I thought, "I'm done," but when I went to St. Stephen's College and I heard, at most elite colleges you well know from Delhi, and the young women and the men, what they said about what it meant to them to be a woman and man sounded not like me but like my mother's generation. So then I went to another college and another college. The thing that was striking to me is that each woman felt she was alone, that she hides her fear and hides her behavior, because she thinks it's a personal fault. It's not a personal fault, it's training, and I think that's the biggest revelation is that, if we stop pretending, then the world changes. SRK: Do you girls all agree with what Deepa is saying? (Applause) Already see that young girl saying, "Heard, heard what she said? You say this to me." Yeah, that's the way it should be. You, boy, you adjust. We are not adjusting anymore, OK? (Applause) Thank you so much. Have a good evening. Thank you. (Applause)

Can you outsmart this logical fallacy?

TED-Ed

Meet Lucy. She was a math major in college, and aced all her courses in probability and statistics. Which do you think is more likely: that Lucy is a portrait artist, or that Lucy is a portrait artist who also plays poker? In studies of similar questions, up to 80 percent of participants chose the equivalent of the second statement: that Lucy is a portrait artist who also plays poker. After all, nothing we know about Lucy suggests an affinity for art, but statistics and probability are useful in poker. And yet, this is the wrong answer. Look at the options again. How do we know the first statement is more likely to be true? Because it’s a less specific version of the second statement. Saying that Lucy is a portrait artist doesn’t make any claims about what else she might or might not do. But even though it’s far easier to imagine her playing poker than making art based on the background information, the second statement is only true if she does both of these things. However counterintuitive it seems to imagine Lucy as an artist, the second scenario adds another condition on top of that, making it less likely. For any possible set of events, the likelihood of A occurring will always be greater than the likelihood of A and B both occurring. If we took a random sample of a million people who majored in math, the subset who are portrait artists might be relatively small. But it will necessarily be bigger than the subset who are portrait artists and play poker. Anyone who belongs to the second group will also belong to the first– but not vice versa. The more conditions there are, the less likely an event becomes. So why do statements with more conditions sometimes seem more believable? This is a phenomenon known as the conjunction fallacy. When we’re asked to make quick decisions, we tend to look for shortcuts. In this case, we look for what seems plausible rather than what is statistically most probable. On its own, Lucy being an artist doesn’t match the expectations formed by the preceding information. The additional detail about her playing poker gives us a narrative that resonates with our intuitions— it makes it seem more plausible. And we choose the option that seems more representative of the overall picture, regardless of its actual probability. This effect has been observed across multiple studies, including ones with participants who understood statistics well– from students betting on sequences of dice rolls, to foreign policy experts predicting the likelihood of a diplomatic crisis. The conjunction fallacy isn’t just a problem in hypothetical situations. Conspiracy theories and false news stories often rely on a version of the conjunction fallacy to seem credible– the more resonant details are added to an outlandish story, the more plausible it begins to seem. But ultimately, the likelihood a story is true can never be greater than the probability that its least likely component is true.

Why I draw with robots

{0: 'Sougwen 愫君 Chung is an artist and researcher whose work explores the dynamics between humans and systems.'}

TED@BCG Mumbai

Many of us here use technology in our day-to-day. And some of us rely on technology to do our jobs. For a while, I thought of machines and the technologies that drive them as perfect tools that could make my work more efficient and more productive. But with the rise of automation across so many different industries, it led me to wonder: If machines are starting to be able to do the work traditionally done by humans, what will become of the human hand? How does our desire for perfection, precision and automation affect our ability to be creative? In my work as an artist and researcher, I explore AI and robotics to develop new processes for human creativity. For the past few years, I've made work alongside machines, data and emerging technologies. It's part of a lifelong fascination about the dynamics of individuals and systems and all the messiness that that entails. It's how I'm exploring questions about where AI ends and we begin and where I'm developing processes that investigate potential sensory mixes of the future. I think it's where philosophy and technology intersect. Doing this work has taught me a few things. It's taught me how embracing imperfection can actually teach us something about ourselves. It's taught me that exploring art can actually help shape the technology that shapes us. And it's taught me that combining AI and robotics with traditional forms of creativity — visual arts in my case — can help us think a little bit more deeply about what is human and what is the machine. And it's led me to the realization that collaboration is the key to creating the space for both as we move forward. It all started with a simple experiment with machines, called "Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 1." I call the machine "D.O.U.G." for short. Before I built D.O.U.G, I didn't know anything about building robots. I took some open-source robotic arm designs, I hacked together a system where the robot would match my gestures and follow [them] in real time. The premise was simple: I would lead, and it would follow. I would draw a line, and it would mimic my line. So back in 2015, there we were, drawing for the first time, in front of a small audience in New York City. The process was pretty sparse — no lights, no sounds, nothing to hide behind. Just my palms sweating and the robot's new servos heating up. (Laughs) Clearly, we were not built for this. But something interesting happened, something I didn't anticipate. See, D.O.U.G., in its primitive form, wasn't tracking my line perfectly. While in the simulation that happened onscreen it was pixel-perfect, in physical reality, it was a different story. It would slip and slide and punctuate and falter, and I would be forced to respond. There was nothing pristine about it. And yet, somehow, the mistakes made the work more interesting. The machine was interpreting my line but not perfectly. And I was forced to respond. We were adapting to each other in real time. And seeing this taught me a few things. It showed me that our mistakes actually made the work more interesting. And I realized that, you know, through the imperfection of the machine, our imperfections became what was beautiful about the interaction. And I was excited, because it led me to the realization that maybe part of the beauty of human and machine systems is their shared inherent fallibility. For the second generation of D.O.U.G., I knew I wanted to explore this idea. But instead of an accident produced by pushing a robotic arm to its limits, I wanted to design a system that would respond to my drawings in ways that I didn't expect. So, I used a visual algorithm to extract visual information from decades of my digital and analog drawings. I trained a neural net on these drawings in order to generate recurring patterns in the work that were then fed through custom software back into the machine. I painstakingly collected as many of my drawings as I could find — finished works, unfinished experiments and random sketches — and tagged them for the AI system. And since I'm an artist, I've been making work for over 20 years. Collecting that many drawings took months, it was a whole thing. And here's the thing about training AI systems: it's actually a lot of hard work. A lot of work goes on behind the scenes. But in doing the work, I realized a little bit more about how the architecture of an AI is constructed. And I realized it's not just made of models and classifiers for the neural network. But it's a fundamentally malleable and shapable system, one in which the human hand is always present. It's far from the omnipotent AI we've been told to believe in. So I collected these drawings for the neural net. And we realized something that wasn't previously possible. My robot D.O.U.G. became a real-time interactive reflection of the work I'd done through the course of my life. The data was personal, but the results were powerful. And I got really excited, because I started thinking maybe machines don't need to be just tools, but they can function as nonhuman collaborators. And even more than that, I thought maybe the future of human creativity isn't in what it makes but how it comes together to explore new ways of making. So if D.O.U.G._1 was the muscle, and D.O.U.G._2 was the brain, then I like to think of D.O.U.G._3 as the family. I knew I wanted to explore this idea of human-nonhuman collaboration at scale. So over the past few months, I worked with my team to develop 20 custom robots that could work with me as a collective. They would work as a group, and together, we would collaborate with all of New York City. I was really inspired by Stanford researcher Fei-Fei Li, who said, "if we want to teach machines how to think, we need to first teach them how to see." It made me think of the past decade of my life in New York, and how I'd been all watched over by these surveillance cameras around the city. And I thought it would be really interesting if I could use them to teach my robots to see. So with this project, I thought about the gaze of the machine, and I began to think about vision as multidimensional, as views from somewhere. We collected video from publicly available camera feeds on the internet of people walking on the sidewalks, cars and taxis on the road, all kinds of urban movement. We trained a vision algorithm on those feeds based on a technique called "optical flow," to analyze the collective density, direction, dwell and velocity states of urban movement. Our system extracted those states from the feeds as positional data and became pads for my robotic units to draw on. Instead of a collaboration of one-to-one, we made a collaboration of many-to-many. By combining the vision of human and machine in the city, we reimagined what a landscape painting could be. Throughout all of my experiments with D.O.U.G., no two performances have ever been the same. And through collaboration, we create something that neither of us could have done alone: we explore the boundaries of our creativity, human and nonhuman working in parallel. I think this is just the beginning. This year, I've launched Scilicet, my new lab exploring human and interhuman collaboration. We're really interested in the feedback loop between individual, artificial and ecological systems. We're connecting human and machine output to biometrics and other kinds of environmental data. We're inviting anyone who's interested in the future of work, systems and interhuman collaboration to explore with us. We know it's not just technologists that have to do this work and that we all have a role to play. We believe that by teaching machines how to do the work traditionally done by humans, we can explore and evolve our criteria of what's made possible by the human hand. And part of that journey is embracing the imperfections and recognizing the fallibility of both human and machine, in order to expand the potential of both. Today, I'm still in pursuit of finding the beauty in human and nonhuman creativity. In the future, I have no idea what that will look like, but I'm pretty curious to find out. Thank you. (Applause)

How you can use impostor syndrome to your benefit

{0: 'Mike Cannon-Brookes is an entrepreneur, technology investor and passionate clean energy evangelist.'}

TEDxSydney

So I've experienced a lot of success in my life. Over a decade ago, I started a business straight out of uni with my mate, Scott. Now, having no prior business experience and not really any grand plan — in fact, our goals when we started were not to have to get a real job (Laughter) and to not have to wear a suit to work every day. Check and check. (Laughter) Today, we have thousands of amazing employees, and millions of people use our software around the planet. And technically, even outside the planet, if you count those that are currently on their way to Mars. So you'd think that I know what I'm doing every day when I go to work. Well, let me let you in on something: most days, I still feel like I often don't know what I'm doing. I've felt that way for 15 years, and I've since learned that feeling is called "impostor syndrome." Have you ever felt out of your depth, like a fraud, and just kind of guessed/bullshitted your way through the situation — (Laughter) petrified that anytime, someone was going to call you on it? Well, I can think of many examples where I felt like this. Interviewing our first HR manager, having never worked in a company that had an HR department — (Laughter) terrified as I walked into the interview, thinking, "What am I going to ask this person?" Or attending board meetings in a T-shirt surrounded by suits, and acronyms are flying around, feeling like a five-year-old as I surreptitiously write them down in my notebook, so I can look them up on Wikipedia when I get home later. (Laughter) Or, in the early days, when people would call up and ask for accounts payable, I would freeze and think, "Wait, are they asking for money or giving it to us?" (Laughter) And I would cover the phone, cover the mouthpiece of the phone, and say, "Scott, you're in accounts," and pass it across. (Laughter) We both did a lot of jobs back then. So for me, impostor syndrome is a feeling of being well, well out of your depth, yet already entrenched in the situation. Internally, you know you're not skilled enough, experienced enough or qualified enough to justify being there, yet you are there, and you have to figure a way out, because you can't just get out. It's not a fear of failure, and it's not a fear of being unable to do it. It's more a sensation of getting away with something, a fear of being discovered, that at any time, someone is going to figure this out. And if they did figure it out, you'd honestly think, "Well, that's fair enough, actually." (Laughter) One of my favorite writers, Neil Gaiman, put it so beautifully in a commencement address he gave at a university, called "Make Good Art." I want to make sure I get his quote correct. "I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard would be there to tell me that it was all over, that they'd caught up with me, and that I would now have to go and get a real job." Now, when there's a knock on my door, I still feel like some sort of dark-suited clipboard man is going to be there to tell me that my time is kind of up. And being a crap cook, I'm quite relieved when it's just someone with a pizza for the kids. (Laughter) But it's important to note that it's not all bad. There's a lot of goodness, I think, in those feelings. And this isn't some sort of motivational-poster type talk, a "Begin it now." It's more of an introspection into my own experiences of impostor syndrome, and how I've tried to learn to harness them and turn them into some sort of a force for good. And a great example of those experiences is in the early days of Atlassian's history. We were about four years old, and we had about 70 employees. And at the advice of our auditors — most good stories start with advice from an auditor — (Laughter) we entered the New South Wales Entrepreneur of the Year competition. Now, we were surprised when we won the New South Wales Entrepreneur of the Year in the young category for entrepreneurs under 40. There were eight categories. And so surprised, in fact, having looked at the list of people we were up against, I didn't even turn up to the awards ceremony. So Scott collected the gong by himself. And then we traveled off to the national awards. I thought I should probably turn up to those. So we rented some suits, I invited a girl that I had just met — we'll get to her in a second — (Laughter) and off we went to the big black-tie gala. Now, our surprise turned to shock in the first award of the night, the young category, when we beat all of the other states and won the Australian Young Entrepreneur of the Year. When the shock had worn off, we got a lot of champagne to the table and the party began, and the night was surely over. We were having a royally great time. Fast-forward to the last award of the night, and our shock turned into everybody's shock when we won the Australian Entrepreneur of the Year against all of the other categories. Now, so shocked was everybody else, in fact, that the announcer, the CEO of Ernst and Young, opened the envelope, and the first words out of his mouth were, "Oh my God." (Laughter) And then he reset himself and announced that we had won. (Laughter) So we knew we were in way too deep. And from there, the water got a lot deeper, because we jetted off to Monte Carlo to represent Australia in the World Entrepreneur of the Year against 40 other different countries. Now, in another rented suit, I was at one of the dinners and sitting next to a lovely man called Belmiro de Azevedo, who was the winner from Portugal. Total champion. At 65, he had been running his business for 40 years. He had 30,000 employees. Don't forget, at the time, we had 70. And he had four billion euro in turnover. And after a couple of wines, I remember admitting to him that I felt that we did not deserve to be there, that we were well out of our depth, and at some time, someone was going to figure this out and send us home to Australia. And he, I remember, just paused and looked at me and said that he felt exactly the same way and that he suspected all the winners were feeling that way, and that despite not knowing Scott or I or really anything about technology, he said that we were obviously doing something right and should probably just keep going. (Laughter) Now, this was a pretty big light bulb moment for me for two reasons. One, I realized that other people felt this as well. And two, I realized it doesn't go away with any form of success. I had assumed that successful people didn't feel like frauds, and I now know that the opposite is more likely to be true. And this isn't just a feeling that I have at work. It happens in my personal life, too. In the early days, I was flying back and forth to San Francisco every week for Atlassian, and I racked up a lot of frequent flyer points and got access to the Qantas business lounge. Now, if there's ever a place that I don't belong ... (Laughter) It doesn't help when I walk in and they generally look at me in shorts and jeans, or jeans and a T-shirt, and say, "Can I help you, son? Are you lost?" But anyway, sometimes life happens in the Qantas lounge when you'd least expect it. One morning, over a decade ago, I was sitting there on my regularly weekly commute, and a beautiful woman from way out of my league walked into the Qantas lounge and continued walking straight up to me in a case of mistaken identity. She thought I was someone else, so in this case, I actually was an impostor. (Laughter) But rather than freeze as I would have historically done or chivalrously maybe informed her of her error, I just tried to keep the conversation going. (Laughter) And classic Australian bullshit became some sort of forward movement and a phone number. And I took that girl to the awards ceremony a couple of months later. And more than a decade later, I'm incredibly happy that she is now my wife, and we have four amazing children together. (Applause) But you'd think that when I wake up every morning, I wouldn't roll over and look at her and think, "She's going to say, 'Who are you, and who gave you that side of the bed?' (Laughter) 'Get out of here.'" But she doesn't. And I think she sometimes feels the same way. And apparently, that's one of the reasons that we'll likely have a successful marriage. You see, in researching this talk, I learned that one of the attributes of the most successful relationships is when both partners feel out of their league. They feel that their partner is out of their league. They feel like impostors. And if they don't freeze, and they're thankful, and they work harder and they stretch to be the best partner they can, it's likely to be a very successful relationship. So if you have this feeling, don't freeze. Try to keep the conversation going, even if she thinks that you're somebody that you're not. Now, feeling like, or people thinking I'm someone I'm not actually happens quite frequently. A great example from my more recent past, a few months ago, I was up late at night with one of my kids, and I saw something on Twitter about Tesla saying that they could solve South Australia's rolling series of power crises with one of their large industrial batteries. Without thinking, I fired off a bunch of tweets, challenging them and saying were they really serious about this. And in doing so, I managed to kick a very small rock off a very big hill that turned into an avalanche that I found myself tumbling in the middle of. Because you see, a few hours later, Elon tweeted me back and said that they were deadly serious, that within a hundred days of contract signing, they could install a 100-megawatt-hour facility, which is a giant battery of a world-class size, one of the biggest ever made on the planet. And that's when all hell really broke loose. Within 24 hours, I had every major media outlet texting and emailing and trying to get in contact with me to get opinion as some sort of "expert" in energy. (Laughter) Now, at the time, I couldn't really have told you the difference between a one-and-a-half-volt AA battery that goes in my kids' toys and a 100-megawatt-hour industrial-scale battery facility that goes in South Australia that could potentially solve their power crisis. I was now feeling a chronic case of impostor syndrome, (Laughter) and it got truly bizarre. And I remember thinking to myself, "Shit. I've kind of started something here and I can't really get out. If I abandon the situation, I'm going to sort of set back renewables in Australia and maybe just look like a complete idiot because of my idiocy on Twitter." So I thought the only thing I could do was to try not to freeze and to try to learn. So I spent a week trying to learn everything I could about industrial-scale batteries and the electricity grid and renewables and the economics of all of this and whether this was even a feasible proposal. I talked to the chief scientist, I talked to the CSIRO, had multiple ministers and premiers trying to give me their side of the story from both sides of the aisle. I managed to exchange tweets with the prime minister. I even managed to pull off a passing impression, let's say, of an energy expert on ABC Lateline. (Laughter) But as a result of all this, South Australia did put out a battery tender, and they had more than 90 applications for that battery tender. And the national conversation over a period of a few months moved from the sort of theatrical lumps of coal in the parliament to discussing kind of which industrial-scale battery chemistry was the best for building large-scale renewable batteries. So I think that the important lesson is by that time in my life, I knew well that I was an impostor. I knew I was miles out of my depth. But instead of freezing, I tried to learn as much as I could, motivated by my fear of generally looking like an idiot, and tried to turn that into some sort of a force for good. So one of the things I've learned is that people think successful people don't feel like frauds. But I think, especially knowing a lot of entrepreneurs, the opposite is more likely to be true. But the most successful people I know don't question themselves, but they do heavily question, regularly question, their ideas and their knowledge. They know when the water is way too deep, and they're not afraid to ask for advice. They don't see that as a bad thing. And they use that advice to hone those ideas, to improve them and to learn. And it's OK to be out of your depth sometimes. I'm frequently out of my depth. It's OK to be out of your depth. It's OK to be in a situation where you just can't push the eject button, so long as you don't freeze, so long as you harness the situation, don't be paralyzed and try to turn it into some sort of a force for good. And it's important that I say "harness" here, because this isn't sort of pop-psychology BS about conquering impostor syndrome for me. It's merely about being aware of it. In fact, I'm extremely aware of feeling like an impostor right now, as I'm up here, some sort of pseudo-expert on a feeling that I couldn't even put a name to a few months ago, when I agreed to do this talk. Which, if you think about it, is kind of the point, isn't it? (Laughter) Thank you. (Applause)

The incredible chemistry powering your smartphone

{0: 'Cathy Mulzer works on the next generation of materials for all those electronic devices you love: your phone, your TV, your electric car.'}

TED@DuPont

When I waltzed off to high school with my new Nokia phone, I thought I just had the new, coolest replacement for my old pink princess walkie-talkie. Except now, my friends and I could text or talk to each other wherever we were, instead of pretending, when we were running around each other's backyards. Now, I'll be honest. Back then, I didn't think a lot about how these devices were made. They tended to show up on Christmas morning, so maybe they were made by the elves in Santa's workshop. Let me ask you a question. Who do you think the real elves that make these devices are? If I ask a lot of the people I know, they would say it's the hoodie-wearing software engineers in Silicon Valley, hacking away at code. But a lot has to happen to these devices before they're ready for any kind of code. These devices start at the atomic level. So if you ask me, the real elves are the chemists. That's right, I said the chemists. Chemistry is the hero of electronic communications. And my goal today is to convince you to agree with me. OK, let's start simple, and take a look inside these insanely addictive devices. Because without chemistry, what is an information superhighway that we love, would just be a really expensive, shiny paperweight. Chemistry enables all of these layers. Let's start at the display. How do you think we get those bright, vivid colors that we love so much? Well, I'll tell you. There's organic polymers embedded within the display, that can take electricity and turn it into the blue, red and green that we enjoy in our pictures. What if we move down to the battery? Now there's some intense research. How do we take the chemical principles of traditional batteries and pair it with new, high surface area electrodes, so we can pack more charge in a smaller footprint of space, so that we could power our devices all day long, while we're taking selfies, without having to recharge our batteries or sit tethered to an electrical outlet? What if we go to the adhesives that bind it all together, so that it could withstand our frequent usage? After all, as a millennial, I have to take my phone out at least 200 times a day to check it, and in the process, drop it two to three times. But what are the real brains of these devices? What makes them work the way that we love them so much? Well that all has to do with electrical components and circuitry that are tethered to a printed circuit board. Or maybe you prefer a biological metaphor — the motherboard, you might have heard of that. Now, the printed circuit board doesn't really get talked about a lot. And I'll be honest, I don't know why that is. Maybe it's because it's the least sexy layer and it's hidden beneath all of those other sleek-looking layers. But it's time to finally give this Clark Kent layer the Superman-worthy praise it deserves. And so I ask you a question. What do you think a printed circuit board is? Well, consider a metaphor. Think about the city that you live in. You have all these points of interest that you want to get to: your home, your work, restaurants, a couple of Starbucks on every block. And so we build roads that connect them all together. That's what a printed circuit board is. Except, instead of having things like restaurants, we have transistors on chips, capacitors, resistors, all of these electrical components that need to find a way to talk to each other. And so what are our roads? Well, we build tiny copper wires. So the next question is, how do we make these tiny copper wires? They're really small. Could it be that we go to the hardware store, pick up a spool of copper wire, get some wire cutters, a little clip-clip, saw it all up and then, bam — we have our printed circuit board? No way. These wires are way too small for that. And so we have to rely on our friend: chemistry. Now, the chemical process to make these tiny copper wires is seemingly simple. We start with a solution of positively charged copper spheres. We then add to it an insulating printed circuit board. And we feed those positively charged spheres negatively charged electrons by adding formaldehyde to the mix. So you might remember formaldehyde. Really distinct odor, used to preserve frogs in biology class. Well it turns out it can do a lot more than just that. And it's a really key component to making these tiny copper wires. You see, the electrons on formaldehyde have a drive. They want to jump over to those positively charged copper spheres. And that's all because of a process known as redox chemistry. And when that happens, we can take these positively charged copper spheres and turn them into bright, shiny, metallic and conductive copper. And once we have conductive copper, now we're cooking with gas. And we can get all of those electrical components to talk to each other. So thank you once again to chemistry. And let's take a thought and think about how far we've come with chemistry. Clearly, in electronic communications, size matters. So let's think about how we can shrink down our devices, so that we can go from our 1990s Zack Morris cell phone to something a little bit more sleek, like the phones of today that can fit in our pockets. Although, let's be real here: absolutely nothing can fit into ladies' pants pockets, if you can find a pair of pants that has pockets. (Laughter) And I don't think chemistry can help us with that problem. But more important than shrinking the actual device, how do we shrink the circuitry inside of it, and shrink it by 100 times, so that we can take the circuitry from the micron scale all the way down to the nanometer scale? Because, let's face it, right now we all want more powerful and faster phones. Well, more power and faster requires more circuitry. So how do we do this? It's not like we have some magic electromagnetic shrink ray, like professor Wayne Szalinski used in "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" to shrink his children. On accident, of course. Or do we? Well, actually, in the field, there's a process that's pretty similar to that. And it's name is photolithography. In photolithography, we take electromagnetic radiation, or what we tend to call light, and we use it to shrink down some of that circuitry, so that we could cram more of it into a really small space. Now, how does this work? Well, we start with a substrate that has a light-sensitive film on it. We then cover it with a mask that has a pattern on top of it of fine lines and features that are going to make the phone work the way that we want it to. We then expose a bright light and shine it through this mask, which creates a shadow of that pattern on the surface. Now, anywhere that the light can get through the mask, it's going to cause a chemical reaction to occur. And that's going to burn the image of that pattern into the substrate. So the question you're probably asking is, how do we go from a burned image to clean fine lines and features? And for that, we have to use a chemical solution called the developer. Now the developer is special. What it can do is take all of the nonexposed areas and remove them selectively, leaving behind clean fine lines and features, and making our miniaturized devices work. So, we've used chemistry now to build up our devices, and we've used it to shrink down our devices. So I've probably convinced you that chemistry is the true hero, and we could wrap it up there. (Applause) Hold on, we're not done. Not so fast. Because we're all human. And as a human, I always want more. And so now I want to think about how to use chemistry to extract more out of a device. Right now, we're being told that we want something called 5G, or the promised fifth generation of wireless. Now, you might have heard of 5G in commercials that are starting to appear. Or maybe some of you even experienced it in the 2018 winter Olympics. What I'm most excited about for 5G is that, when I'm late, running out of the house to catch a plane, I can download movies onto my device in 40 seconds as opposed to 40 minutes. But once true 5G is here, it's going to be a lot more than how many movies we can put on our device. So the question is, why is true 5G not here? And I'll let you in on a little secret. It's pretty easy to answer. It's just plain hard to do. You see, if you use those traditional materials and copper to build 5G devices, the signal can't make it to its final destination. Traditionally, we use really rough insulating layers to support copper wires. Think about Velcro fasteners. It's the roughness of the two pieces that make them stick together. That's pretty important if you want to have a device that's going to last longer than it takes you to rip it out of the box and start installing all of your apps on it. But this roughness causes a problem. You see, at the high speeds for 5G the signal has to travel close to that roughness. And it makes it get lost before it reaches its final destination. Think about a mountain range. And you have a complex system of roads that goes up and over it, and you're trying to get to the other side. Don't you agree with me that it would probably take a really long time, and you would probably get lost, if you had to go up and down all of the mountains, as opposed to if you just drilled a flat tunnel that could go straight on through? Well it's the same thing in our 5G devices. If we could remove this roughness, then we can send the 5G signal straight on through uninterrupted. Sounds pretty good, right? But hold on. Didn't I just tell you that we needed that roughness to keep the device together? And if we remove it, we're in a situation where now the copper isn't going to stick to that underlying substrate. Think about building a house of Lego blocks, with all of the nooks and crannies that latch together, as opposed to smooth building blocks. Which of the two is going to have more structural integrity when the two-year-old comes ripping through the living room, trying to play Godzilla and knock everything down? But what if we put glue on those smooth blocks? And that's what the industry is waiting for. They're waiting for the chemists to design new, smooth surfaces with increased inherent adhesion for some of those copper wires. And when we solve this problem, and we will solve the problem, and we'll work with physicists and engineers to solve all of the challenges of 5G, well then the number of applications is going to skyrocket. So yeah, we'll have things like self-driving cars, because now our data networks can handle the speeds and the amount of information required to make that work. But let's start to use imagination. I can imagine going into a restaurant with a friend that has a peanut allergy, taking out my phone, waving it over the food and having the food tell us a really important answer to a question — deadly or safe to consume? Or maybe our devices will get so good at processing information about us, that they'll become like our personal trainers. And they'll know the most efficient way for us to burn calories. I know come November, when I'm trying to burn off some of these pregnancy pounds, I would love a device that could tell me how to do that. I really don't know another way of saying it, except chemistry is just cool. And it enables all of these electronic devices. So the next time you send a text or take a selfie, think about all those atoms that are hard at work and the innovation that came before them. Who knows, maybe even some of you listening to this talk, perhaps even on your mobile device, will decide that you too want to play sidekick to Captain Chemistry, the true hero of electronic devices. Thank you for your attention, and thank you chemistry. (Applause)

How I use art to tackle plastic pollution in our oceans

{0: 'Alejandro Durán collects the international trash washing up on the Caribbean coast of Mexico, transforming it into aesthetic yet disquieting artworks that wake us up to the threat of plastic pollution.'}

We the Future

This is Sian Ka'an. Just south of Tulum on Mexico's Caribbean coast, it's a federally protected reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. But when I first visited in 2010, I was horrified and completely confused as to why the beach was covered in trash. I soon realized that it was floating in from all over the world. I've since returned, after that first journey, several times a year to visit Sian Ka'an, to the country of my birth, to work with this trash. And so far, we've documented garbage from 58 different countries and territories on six continents, all washing ashore in this paradise in Mexico. Although I can never know where a product was dropped, I can, at times, based on the label, know where something was made. In red, you see all of the countries represented by their trash in Sian Ka'an. Such as these Haitian butter containers in all shapes and sizes, Jamaican water bottles. Not surprisingly, a lot of the stuff is from neighboring Caribbean countries, but the stuff is from everywhere. Here's a sampling of international water bottles. And one of the ironies is that a lot of what I'm finding are products for cleaning and beautification, such as this item from the United States, which is actually made to protect your plastic, (Laughter) shampoo from South Korea, bleach from Costa Rica and a Norwegian toilet cleaner. And it's items that are all very familiar to us, or at least I hope you're familiar with these toothbrushes. (Laughter) Kitchen utensils. Toys. I'm also finding evidence of burning plastic trash, which releases cancer-causing fumes into the air. People ask what's the most interesting item that I've found, and that's by far this prosthetic leg. And in the background, if you can see that blue little bottle cap, at the time that I found it, it was actually the home to this little hermit crab. This guy is so cute. (Laughter) (Laughter) And it's these fascinating objects, but also horrifying objects, each with their own history, that I use to make my ephemeral, environmental artworks. And it all started with this image in February of 2010, when I first visited Sian Ka'an. I noticed that blue was the most prevalent color among the plastic. Purple is actually the most rare color. It's kind of like gold to me. But blue is the most prevalent, and so I gathered some of the blues and made this little arrangement in front of the blue sky and blue Caribbean waters. And when I took a photograph and looked at the test shot, it was like a lightning bolt hit me in that moment, and I knew I was going to have to come back to create a whole series of installations on location and photograph them. So this turned out to be a sketch for a work that I completed three years later. I had no idea that almost 10 years later, almost a decade later, I'd still be working on it. But the problem persists. So I'm going to show you some of the images from the series that I called "Washed Up: Transforming a Trashed Landscape." Please keep in mind that I do not paint the garbage. I'm collecting it and organizing it by color on the same beaches where I find it. This is my precious trash pile as seen in 2015 after putting on a first edition of the "Museo de la Basura," or "Museum of Garbage." It's fully my intention to care for this garbage, to exalt it, put it on a pedestal and to curate it. We have all seen devastating images of animals dying with plastic in their bellies. And it's so important for us to really see those and to take those in. But it's by making aesthetic — some might say beautiful — arrangements out of the world's waste, that I'm trying to hook the viewer to draw in those that might be numb to the horrors of the world and give them a different way to understand what's happening. Some have described the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as an island twice the size of Texas, but I've been told that it's hard to see because it's more like a smog. So through my artwork, I attempt to depict the reality of what's happening with our environment and to make the invisible visible. My key question at first, after starting the project, was, "What do I do with the garbage when I'm done?" I was told by some that it could be damaged goods after traveling across the ocean and being exposed to the elements, that it could become degraded and potentially ruin a batch of recycling. The landfill was not a happy resting place, either. And then finally, it dawned on me, after all of the effort by me and all of the people who have helped me collect and organize and clean this trash, that I should keep it. And so that's the plan, to use it and to reuse it endlessly to make more artwork and to engage communities in environmental art-making. This is an example of a community-based artwork that we did last year with the local youth of Punta Allen in Sian Ka'an. A key part of the community work are the beach cleans and education programming. And as this community around the project grows and as my trash collection grows, I really believe that the impact will as well. And so, over the years, I've become a little obsessed with my trash collection. I pack it into suitcases and travel with it. I take it on vacation with me. (Laughter) And in the latest work, I've begun to break the two-dimensional plane of the photograph. I'm really excited about this new work. I see these as living artworks that will morph and grow over time. Although my greatest wish is that I run out of the raw material for this work, we're not there yet. So in the next phase of the project, I plan on continuing the community work and making my own work at a much larger scale, because the problem is massive. Eight million tons of plastic waste enter our oceans every year, destroying ecosystems. Right now, as I speak, there's literally an oil spill of plastic happening. I see this project as a plea for help and a call to action. Our health and future is inextricably linked to that of our oceans. I call the project "Washed Up: Transforming a Trashed Landscape," but it's actually transformed me and made me rethink my own behaviors and consumption. And if it can help anybody else gain more awareness, then it will have been worthwhile. Thank you so much. (Applause)

How corn conquered the world

TED-Ed

Corn currently accounts for more than one tenth of our global crop production. The United States alone has enough cornfields to cover Germany. But while other crops we grow come in a range of varieties, over 99% of cultivated corn is the exact same type: Yellow Dent #2. This means that humans grow more Yellow Dent #2 than any other plant on the planet. So how did this single variety of this single plant become the biggest success story in agricultural history? Nearly 9,000 years ago, corn, also called maize, was first domesticated from teosinte, a grass native to Mesoamerica. Teosinte’s rock-hard seeds were barely edible, but its fibrous husk could be turned into a versatile material. Over the next 4,700 years, farmers bred the plant into a staple crop, with larger cobs and edible kernels. As maize spread throughout the Americas, it took on an important role, with multiple indigenous societies revering a “Corn Mother” as the goddess who created agriculture. When Europeans first arrived in America, they shunned the strange plant. Many even believed it was the source of physical and cultural differences between them and the Mesoamericans. However, their attempts to cultivate European crops in American soil quickly failed, and the settlers were forced to expand their diet. Finding the crop to their taste, maize soon crossed the Atlantic, where its ability to grow in diverse climates made it a popular grain in many European countries. But the newly established United States was still the corn capital of the world. In the early 1800’s, different regions across the country produced strains of varying size and taste. In the 1850’s, however, these unique varieties proved difficult for train operators to package, and for traders to sell. Trade boards in rail hubs like Chicago encouraged corn farmers to breed one standardized crop. This dream would finally be realized at 1893’s World’s Fair, where James Reid’s yellow dent corn won the Blue Ribbon. Over the next 50 years, yellow dent corn swept the nation. Following the technological developments of World War II, mechanized harvesters became widely available. This meant a batch of corn that previously took a full day to harvest by hand could now be collected in just 5 minutes. Another wartime technology, the chemical explosive ammonium nitrate, also found new life on the farm. With this new synthetic fertilizer, farmers could plant dense fields of corn year after year, without the need to rotate their crops and restore nitrogen to the soil. While these advances made corn an attractive crop to American farmers, US agricultural policy limited the amount farmers could grow to ensure high sale prices. But in 1972, President Richard Nixon removed these limitations while negotiating massive grain sales to the Soviet Union. With this new trade deal and WWII technology, corn production exploded into a global phenomenon. These mountains of maize inspired numerous corn concoctions. Cornstarch could be used as a thickening agent for everything from gasoline to glue or processed into a low-cost sweetener known as High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Maize quickly became one of the cheapest animal feeds worldwide. This allowed for inexpensive meat production, which in turn increased the demand for meat and corn feed. Today, humans eat only 40% of all cultivated corn, while the remaining 60% supports consumer good industries worldwide. Yet the spread of this wonder-crop has come at a price. Global water sources are polluted by excess ammonium nitrate from cornfields. Corn accounts for a large portion of agriculture-related carbon emissions, partly due to the increased meat production it enables. The use of high fructose corn syrup may be a contributor to diabetes and obesity. And the rise of monoculture farming has left our food supply dangerously vulnerable to pests and pathogens— a single virus could infect the world’s supply of this ubiquitous crop. Corn has gone from a bushy grass to an essential element of the world’s industries. But only time will tell if it has led us into a maze of unsustainability.

How I'm using biological data to tell better stories -- and spark social change

{0: 'Heidi Boisvert harnesses the power of popular culture, emerging technology and neuroscience to ignite culture change.'}

TED Residency

For the past 15 years I've been trying to change your mind. In my work I harness pop culture and emerging technology to shift cultural norms. I've made video games to promote human rights, I've made animations to raise awareness about unfair immigration laws and I've even made location-based augmented reality apps to change perceptions around homelessness well before Pokémon Go. (Laughter) But then I began to wonder whether a game or an app can really change attitudes and behaviors, and if so, can I measure that change? What's the science behind that process? So I shifted my focus from making media and technology to measuring their neurobiological effects. Here's what I discovered. The web, mobile devices, virtual and augmented reality were rescripting our nervous systems. And they were literally changing the structure of our brain. The very technologies I had been using to positively influence hearts and minds were actually eroding functions in the brain necessary for empathy and decision-making. In fact, our dependence upon the web and mobile devices might be taking over our cognitive and affective faculties, rendering us socially and emotionally incompetent, and I felt complicit in this dehumanization. I realized that before I could continue making media about social issues, I needed to reverse engineer the harmful effects of technology. To tackle this I asked myself, "How can I translate the mechanisms of empathy, the cognitive, affective and motivational aspects, into an engine that simulates the narrative ingredients that move us to act?" To answer this, I had to build a machine. (Laughter) I've been developing an open-source biometric lab, an AI system which I call the Limbic Lab. The lab not only captures the brain and body's unconscious response to media and technology but also uses machine learning to adapt content based on these biological responses. My goal is to find out what combination of narrative ingredients are the most appealing and galvanizing to specific target audiences to enable social justice, cultural and educational organizations to create more effective media. The Limbic Lab consists of two components: a narrative engine and a media machine. While a subject is viewing or interacting with media content, the narrative engine takes in and syncs real-time data from brain waves, biophysical data like heart rate, blood flow, body temperature and muscle contraction, as well as eye-tracking and facial expressions. Data is captured at key places where critical plot points, character interaction or unusual camera angles occur. Like the final scene in "Game of Thrones, Red Wedding," when shockingly, everybody dies. (Laughter) Survey data on that person's political beliefs, along with their psychographic and demographic data, are integrated into the system to gain a deeper understanding of the individual. Let me give you an example. Matching people's TV preferences with their views on social justice issues reveals that Americans who rank immigration among their top three concerns are more likely to be fans of "The Walking Dead," and they often watch for the adrenaline boost, which is measurable. A person's biological signature and their survey response combines into a database to create their unique media imprint. Then our predictive model finds patterns between media imprints and tells me which narrative ingredients are more likely to lead to engagement in altruistic behavior rather than distress and apathy. The more imprints added to the database across mediums from episodic television to games, the better the predictive models become. In short, I am mapping the first media genome. (Applause and cheers) Whereas the human genome identifies all genes involved in sequencing human DNA, the growing database of media imprints will eventually allow me to determine the media DNA for a specific person. Already the Limbic Lab's narrative engine helps content creators refine their storytelling, so that it resonates with their target audiences on an individual level. The Limbic Lab's other component, the media machine, will assess how media elicits an emotional and physiological response, then pulls scenes from a content library targeted to person-specific media DNA. Applying artificial intelligence to biometric data creates a truly personalized experience. One that adapts content based on real-time unconscious responses. Imagine if nonprofits and media makers were able to measure how audiences feel as they experience it and alter content on the fly. I believe this is the future of media. To date, most media and social-change strategies have attempted to appeal to mass audiences, but the future is media customized for each person. As real-time measurement of media consumption and automated media production becomes the norm, we will soon be consuming media tailored directly to our cravings using a blend of psychographics, biometrics and AI. It's like personalized medicine based on our DNA. I call it "biomedia." I am currently testing the Limbic Lab in a pilot study with the Norman Lear Center, which looks at the top 50 episodic television shows. But I am grappling with an ethical dilemma. If I design a tool that can be turned into a weapon, should I build it? By open-sourcing the lab to encourage access and inclusivity, I also run the risk of enabling powerful governments and profit-driven companies to appropriate the platform for fake news, marketing or other forms of mass persuasion. For me, therefore, it is critical to make my research as transparent to lay audiences as GMO labels. However, this is not enough. As creative technologists, we have a responsibility not only to reflect upon how present technology shapes our cultural values and social behavior, but also to actively challenge the trajectory of future technology. It is my hope that we make an ethical commitment to harvesting the body's intelligence for the creation of authentic and just stories that transform media and technology from harmful weapons into narrative medicine. Thank you. (Applause and cheers)

Is marijuana bad for your brain?

TED-Ed

In 1970, marijuana was classified as a schedule 1 drug in the United States: the strictest designation possible, meaning it was completely illegal and had no recognized medical uses. For decades, this view persisted and set back research on the drug's mechanisms and effects. Today, marijuana’s therapeutic benefits are widely acknowledged, and some nations have legalized medical use or are moving in that direction. But a growing recognition for marijuana’s medical value doesn’t answer the question: is recreational marijuana use bad for your brain? Marijuana acts on the body’s cannabinoid system, which has receptors all over the brain and body. Molecules native to the body, called endocannabinoids, also act on these receptors. We don’t totally understand the cannabinoid system, but it has one feature that provides a big clue to its function. Most neurotransmitters travel from one neuron to the next through a synapse to propagate a message. But endocannabinoids travel in the opposite direction. When a message passes from the one neuron to the next, the receiving neuron releases endocannabinoids. Those endocannabinoids travel backward to influence the sending neuron— essentially giving it feedback from the receiving neuron. This leads scientists to believe that the endocannabinoid system serves primarily to modulate other kinds of signals— amplifying some and diminishing others. Feedback from endocannabinoids slows down rates of neural signaling. That doesn’t necessarily mean it slows down behavior or perception, though. For example, slowing down a signal that inhibits smell could actually make smells more intense. Marijuana contains two main active compounds, tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, and cannabidiol, or CBD. THC is thought to be primarily responsible for marijuana’s psychoactive effects on behavior, cognition, and perception, while CBD is responsible for the non-psychoactive effects. Like endocannabinoids, THC slows down signaling by binding to cannabinoid receptors. But it binds to receptors all over this sprawling, diffuse system at once, whereas endocannabinoids are released in a specific place in response to a specific stimulus. This widespread activity coupled with the fact that the cannabinoid system indirectly affects many other systems, means that each person’s particular brain chemistry, genetics, and previous life experience largely determine how they experience the drug. That’s true much more so with marijuana than with other drugs that produce their effects through one or a few specific pathways. So the harmful effects, if any, vary considerably from person to person. And while we don’t know how exactly how marijuana produces specific harmful effects, there are clear risk factors that can increase peoples’ likelihood of experiencing them. The clearest risk factor is age. In people younger than 25, cannabinoid receptors are more concentrated in the white matter than in people over 25. The white matter is involved in communication, learning, memory, and emotions. Frequent marijuana use can disrupt the development of white matter tracts, and also affect the brain’s ability to grow new connections. This may damage long-term learning ability and problem solving. For now, it’s unclear how severe this damage can be or whether it’s reversible. And even among young people, the risk is higher the younger someone is— much higher for a 15 year old than a 22 year old, for instance. Marijuana can also cause hallucinations or paranoid delusions. Known as marijuana-induced psychosis, these symptoms usually subside when a person stops using marijuana. But in rare cases, psychosis doesn’t subside, instead unmasking a persistent psychotic disorder. A family history of psychotic disorders, like schizophrenia, is the clearest, though not the only, risk factor for this effect. Marijuana-induced psychosis is also more common among young adults, though it’s worth noting that psychotic disorders usually surface in this age range anyway. What’s unclear in these cases is whether the psychotic disorder would have appeared without marijuana use— whether marijuana use triggers it early, is a catalyst for a tipping point that wouldn’t have been crossed otherwise, or whether the reaction to marijuana is merely an indication of an underlying disorder. In all likelihood, marijuana’s role varies from person to person. At any age, as with many other drugs, the brain and body become less sensitive to marijuana after repeated uses, meaning it takes more to achieve the same effects. Fortunately, unlike many other drugs, there’s no risk of fatal overdose from marijuana, and even heavy use doesn’t lead to debilitating or life-threatening withdrawal symptoms if use stops. There are more subtle forms of marijuana withdrawal, though, including sleep disturbances, irritability, and depressed mood, which pass within a few weeks of stopping use. So is marijuana bad for your brain? It depends who you are. But while some risk factors are easy to identify, others aren’t well understood— which means there’s still some possibility of experiencing negative effects, even if you don’t have any of the known risk factors.

3 ways to be a more effective fundraiser

{0: 'Kara Logan Berlin helps people and organizations accelerate fundraising, getting essential resources into the hands of visionaries on the front lines of real change.'}

TEDxSantaClaraUniversity

I'm here today to talk about fundraising, or as you probably think of it, "the other F-word." (Laughter) Because if you want to change the world, you have to know how to pay for it. I'm not talking about being a good person — you can do that for free. I'm talking about if you want to create something, start something, galvanize a community, improve the lives of others, run for office. Every day, great ideas die on the vine, because they don't have capital to get off the ground. And all of the work, the thought, the vision that goes into the idea, isn't worth much if you can't pay your bills. And while most of the greatest social movements in history were powered purely by an idea and people's belief in that idea, real change and impact require resources. Real people do this work, they need real change, real impact and resources to actually make it happen. The people that believe in this work have to have the support and the resources to do it. That's where I come in. I get essential resources into the hands of people and visionaries on the front lines, doing work that matters. We spend the majority of our waking hours working. We spend more time working than we do with our loved ones. So I decided early on that I have to love my work, and it has to add value. And while I would love to be one of these people who spearheads social change from the ground up, the thing I realized early on in my nonprofit career is that the thing I'm good at, the thing I'm really good at, is raising money. And I love it. I think it is a privilege to work alongside bold, ambitious, optimistic leaders and the organizations they serve. So I teach people how to do the thing I'm good at, because the more people that learn how to be good at my end of this work, the more work will get done. And I teach everyone. I teach CEOs and presidents, and boards of directors and EDs. I teach development directors in all sorts of teams and nonprofit newbies, social change agents and candidates. I teach anyone that wants to do something extraordinary how to fund their dream. My dream is that there will be more people like me doing this work well and that development will be an undergraduate course at universities, so that fundraising animals like me will find this job out of the gate, instead of discovering it years later, accidentally. I even have the curriculum developed, but short of overhauling undergraduate course requirements, I think tonight's probably a good first step to get people to think about fundraising more as an opportunity and less as a dirty word. If you want to change the world, you have to know how to pay for it. To do that well, you have to understand three big things. Your feelings about wealth and money, the importance of building relationships, and how to ask for what you want. Let's start at the top, your feelings about wealth and money. What is your relationship to money? Money is complicated, it makes everyone squeamish, it makes everyone act kind of weird. Anyone who's ever had to split the check after dinner with friends can tell you this. Imagine what it was like before Venmo. (Laughter) To help people learn how to raise money, you have to help them understand their deal with money, because everybody has baggage. Grew up poor? Baggage. Grew up rich? Baggage. Mad or envious that other people have more money than you? Baggage. Think people with money are smarter than you? Baggage. (Laughter) Feel guilty that you have more money than other people? That's some first-class baggage. (Laughter) It's still baggage, people, it's still baggage. So whatever your deal is with your baggage, you have to reconcile it if you're going to be able to ask for money. And here's a little tip about asking people for money. The only difference about really wealthy people and us is that they have more money than us. That's it. Don't overcomplicate it. They come with their own baggage. When you think about how to do this work, it's important to remember that money makes the world go round. You hear that all the time, but it's true. Whether you're a nonprofit, for-profit, or you pay your own bills. We often feel like talking about it is this icky, embarrassing, ugly thing, but it's just money. And it's a fact of life. So how you feel about it directly affects how you approach it. Like everyone else when I started out in this work, I had to examine and understand my own feelings about wealth and money. And I had to learn how to separate them from how I feel about raising money for important causes. How I feel about asking for money to help people do good work in the world is not the same as how I feel about asking for money for myself. This is an important distinction. When I go and talk to someone, I'm not asking them to pay my mortgage. I'm giving them an opportunity to invest in an idea that's going to change the world for the better. Why should I feel bad about that? If you want to be good at raising money, you have to be able to reframe the ask, both for yourself and for other people, as an opportunity. Next, you have to get prepared to build some relationships. People give to people, they don't just give to ideas. And if they don't believe in the person running the place, you're already dead in the water. This is true whether you're in stocks or venture capital, politics or nonprofits. Building a relationship with people takes work. You have to care about more than just what you want or need, you have to also value what someone else wants or needs. I know, it's a shocking, terrible idea. But oftentimes, closing gifts is understanding the person, more than it's important to know the product. And if you think building a relationship with people takes work, building a relationship with someone you're asking for money from takes work, and it takes homework. Have you done any research? Do you have any idea what they care about? Do you know why they should invest in your work? Can you answer that question in less than 30 seconds? If you can't, the meeting is going to be pretty rough. And the answer can't be "Because they're super rich and they live in your zip code." When you talk to people and understand what they care about, it has to be in person. Fundraising is relational, it's not transactional. And you have to ask them questions. When I sit down with a donor, it goes something like this. "Hi, thanks so much for seeing me. How have you been? Did you guys go anywhere fun over holiday? Nice, I love Mexico. Do you always go to the same place? Oh, that's awesome! Are those your kids? They're so cute. How old are they? Where are they in school? Oh, that's a great school, are you guys very involved there? Your spouse in on the board? How's that? How did you guys meet? Oh, at Santa Clara, that's awesome. Are you super involved in the alumni network? So interesting. Where do you guys live, again? That's great. Is that your boat?" (Laughter) I literally go through all of these things, right. And you know why? Because guess what I know now. I know they're out of 120 grand a year in schooling for the next 12 years. Right? Spouse is on the board of the kids' school, I know they're out of 100K probably. It's a six-figure. They're both involved in their school alumni, that's probably 25K. They told me they live on the Upper East Side — I can look up their apartment online and find out what their mortgage is. And I know they own a second home in Mexico. Oh, and they own a boat. Which is like funny money, right? So what I now understand — (Laughter) It's true. What I now understand is that their 1,000-dollar gift is probably more of a starter gift. And I should be thinking about ways to help them partner with us and invest in a more meaningful way. I know this sounds a tad mercenary. I'm not confused about how it sounds. But here's what I want to tell you, because this is the part that all my clients always want to skip, because they think it's the fluff and it's not important. If you don't understand what they care about and what they value, how are you ever going to be able to tell them about your work, right? I want them to fund our work, I do. But I also want them to have a really meaningful experience as a donor, so that they feel like we're partners and they're not an ATM, right? So it's important to ask the questions, because the more you know about them and you know what they value, the more you can steer the conversation in a direction about your work that will resonate for them. And once you get past the get-to-know-you part, you get into the fun stuff, like, "Why are you philanthropic at all?" Right? "Why do you invest in new ideas? Do you want giving back to be a value you pass on to your children? Can we help you do that?" It's really awesome, it's meaningful, and remember, it's a conversation, it's not a cross examination, it's not an interview. Don't walk in there and tell them everything you already know about them, because you did your research. You don't get extra points for knowing how to use Google. It's 75 percent them talking, 25 percent you listening. It's better to be a good listener than a good showman. And once you understand what they care about, you can talk to them about what you care about. You can tell them about you. Now, when you do this, don't get too deep into the weeds, or you'll lose them. It's a lot like when I sit down with guys in finance, right, and I say, you know, "How's work?" I'm looking for, like, a thumbs up, thumbs down. But what I get sometimes is a long description of how the markets are trending, and my brain leaves my body and starts to think about what time my dry cleaner closes. (Laughter) Like, I don't have capacity for that. And they don't have capacity for that level detail of our work. If they want it, they'll ask you the questions. It's this thing that happens over and over, because — here's an example. I worked with this CEO once, and I was hired to teach him how to talk to human people, like a human person. (Laughter) It was a very difficult job. So, he kept getting great donor meetings, and he wasn't closing any gifts. And I could not figure out what the problem was, so finally, I was like, "I'm going to come with you." So I went with him to meetings, and what would happen was, he was getting into such detail with the donors that their eyes were glazing over, and then after he was done with his 15-minute pitch, they literally would say — this happened, like, three times in a row — "God, that sounds great. Congratulations. Keep up the good work." And that was the meeting, which was obviously not the outcome we were looking for. So, he couldn't understand what I was trying to say to him, that I finally, in an act of sheer desperation, was like ... "You know what I love? I love NASA. I love NASA. I think it is unbelievably amazing we have figured out how to get a person to the Moon. I think it's awesome. I think the idea of getting someone to the Moon, and they walk on the Moon, and I love rocket ships. I love rocket ships, rocket ships are amazing. But if you start to tell me about the rocket ship, and how it gets to the Moon, and the math and the science equations, on how the rocket ship gets to the Moon, I promise you, I will hang myself with my own hair." (Laughter) I was like, "That is not how you tell people about your work. What is the need?" Like, what's the point, right? How do you address the need, why are you better at it than anybody else? And what can you do to make it about them? How can they help you get to the Moon? That's the good stuff. If you're able to do that, you're probably ready to make the ask. Now, I don't expect everyone to be super excited to ask people for money. That's why development is an actual profession and not an awkward hobby. (Laughter) Naturally great fundraisers love people, they can and will talk to anyone, they can find common ground with anyone, they're your friends that talk to people in the elevator or at the grocery store. They believe in the work required to both build relationships and keep them. And they naturally have a high tolerance for rejection. But I don't expect everyone to be a natural, and you don't have to be a natural to raise money. You just have to respect the people and the process, and do the work. Will you reconcile your baggage? Will you commit to build relationships? If you will, you're ready to make the ask. And the ask is oftentimes as simple as using the phrase "Would you consider?" Would you consider becoming a monthly donor? Would you consider increasing your support to 100 dollars? Would you consider investing in our work at the one-million-dollar level? "Would you consider" does a couple of awesome things. One, it gives the donor an easy way out. Like, they can say "no" without it being "yes-no." And two, it gives you a second ask. "Well, what would you consider?" (Laughter) It's good, right? (Laughter) When you do this, remember, you're not asking for yourself. You're asking on behalf of all of the people you serve or are touched by your genius. This isn't a personal favor, right? Feel proud of the ask — it's incredible that you do this work. Don't try to be someone you're not, you're going to go to these meetings and think you need to big-shot it. Be yourself, authenticity matters, nobody likes a phony. Just be yourself. And please, please don't torpedo your own ask. What I mean by this is don't walk into the meeting and say — I had an ED that did this all the time, I stopped inviting him. He'd say, "We're not here today to ask you for money." (Laughter) Yes, we are! (Laughter) That's exactly, literally, why we're here today. Don't do that. Don't say, "Whatever you can do to help." That is hands down the fastest way to get the smallest possible gift someone thinks they can give you and get away with. Not kidding. And don't take it back. Once you've made the ask — "Would you consider supporting us at the 10,000-dollar level? Or the five? Or the two? Or one? You know what? Take the year off. You're the best, thanks!" Don't do that! Ask the question, wait till 10, count to 10 before you speak again, keep your face like this. (Laughter) They are grown-ups. They have all the power in this situation. They can answer the question. Don't take it back. Which brings me to my favorite. Don't ask, don't get. If you don't make an actual ask, no one will give you actual money. And if no one gives you actual money, you actually can't do anything with it. It's very simple — don't ask, don't get. Listen, I would love to live in a world where we didn't have to ask people for money to do important work that will change people's lives. I would love to not have to teach people how to make a case for the importance of feeding and housing and educating people. But this is the world that we live in, and if we're committed to doing this work, and doing it well, we have to be as committed to the art of funding this work as we are to the art of executing it. I'm going to repeat that, because I think it's really important. We have to be as committed to the art of funding our work as we are to the art of executing it. And at its core, the art of funding the work means that we have to truly believe that the purpose and the privilege of our work is to provide people with an extraordinary way to use their wealth that will change people's lives. It's an opportunity, because at its core, that's what it is. And how great is that? Thank you. (Applause, cheers)

Why doesn't the Leaning Tower of Pisa fall over?

TED-Ed

In 1990, the Italian government enlisted top engineers to stabilize Pisa’s famous Leaning Tower. There’d been many attempts to right the tower during its 800 year history, but this team’s computer models revealed the urgency of their situation. They projected the tower would topple if it reached an angle of 5.44 degrees— and it was currently leaning at 5.5. No one knew how the tower was still standing, but the crisis was clear: they had to solve a problem that stumped centuries of engineers, and they needed to do it fast. To understand their situation, it’s helpful to understand why the tower tilted in the first place. In the 12th century, the wealthy maritime republic of Pisa set about turning its cathedral square into a magnificent landmark. Workers embellished and enlarged the existing church, and added a massive domed baptistry to the plaza. In 1173, construction began on a free-standing campanile, or bell tower. The engineers and architects of the time were masters of their craft. But for all their engineering knowledge, they knew far less about the ground they stood on. Pisa’s name comes from a Greek word for “marshy land," which perfectly describes the clay, mud, and wet sand below the city’s surface. Ancient Romans counteracted similar conditions with massive stone pillars called piles which rest on Earth’s stable bedrock. However, the tower’s architects believed a three-meter foundation would suffice for their relatively short structure. Unfortunately for them, less than five years later, the tower’s southern side was already underground. Such a shifting foundation would normally have been a fatal flaw. If workers added more weight, the pressure from upper stories would sink the structure and fatally increase the lean. But construction halted at the fourth story for nearly a century as Pisa descended into prolonged warfare. This long pause allowed the soil to settle, and when construction began again in 1272, the foundation was on slightly more stable footing. Under the direction of architect Giovanni di Simone, workers compensated for the tower’s minor tilt by making the next few floors taller on the southern side. But the weight of the extra masonry made that side sink even deeper. By the time they completed the seventh floor and bell chamber, the angle of the tilt was 1.6 degrees. For centuries, engineers tried numerous strategies to address the lean. In 1838, they dug a walkway around the base to examine the sunken foundation. But removing the supporting sand only worsened the tilt. In 1935, the Italian Corps of Engineers injected mortar to strengthen the base. However, the mortar wasn’t evenly distributed throughout the foundation, resulting in another sudden drop. All these failed attempts, along with the ever-sinking foundation, moved the tower closer to its tipping point. And without definitive knowledge of the soil composition, engineers couldn’t pinpoint the tower’s fatal angle or devise a way to stop its fall. In the years following WWII, researchers developed tests to identify those missing variables. And in the 1970’s, engineers calculated the curved tower’s center of gravity. With this data and new computing technology, engineers could model how stiff the soil was, the tower’s trajectory, and the exact amount of excavation needed for the tower to remain standing. In 1992, the team drilled diagonal tunnels to remove 38 cubic meters of soil from under the tower’s north end. Then, they temporarily counterbalanced the structure with 600 tons of lead ingots before anchoring the base with steel cables. More than six centuries after its construction, the tower was finally straightened… to a tilt of about four degrees. No one wanted the tower to fall, but they also didn’t want to lose the landmark’s most famous feature. Today the tower stands at 55– or 56– meters tall, and it should remain stable for at least 300 years as a monument to the beauty of imperfection.

The problem of light pollution -- and 5 ridiculously easy ways to fix it

{0: 'Kelsey Johnson has spent her life in awe of the universe, and she works to inspire that awe in future generations.'}

TED@NAS

Unless you've spent quality time on the International Space Station, this is probably not a view you are super familiar with. This is the east coast of the United States. That's New York down there in the lower right, and it's a band of light all the way up through Washington DC. Those cities are shining like jewels, highways are traced by webs of light. And all of that light is super photogenic. But there's a problem. That light is meant to be illuminating our sidewalks, and our streets and our houses. Instead, it's actually going up into the sky and out into the universe, where it's not doing any of us any good. When I see photos of this, of the Earth, I see environmental catastrophe. Those aren't jewels, those are tumors. I'm an astronomer, so it's really no surprise probably to anyone that I've always loved the night sky. I'm kind of a walking cliché. But when I was growing up in Minnesota, one of my favorite things to do on a summer evening was grab my old Raggedy Ann sleeping bag and take it out into a field behind my house, where I would spend hours looking at the night sky. And to do this, I had to brave not only the darkness, but also swarms of mosquitoes, and my sleeping bag really didn't smell very good. (Laughter) But there was one particular star that I would look for, night after night. And then I would play this game where I would try to focus on that star so intensely, that everything else would fade from my view and that single star would be all that I could see. I could only ever hold on to that focus for a few fleeting moments. But when I did, I felt this deep sense of connection to the universe. And almost a sense of vertigo, like I was going to fall into space. And when this happened — I know this sounds kind of ridiculous, but I would simultaneously feel unfathomably insignificant and also kind of weirdly important. That star I looked to night after night was called Vega. Vega is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, which is not coincidentally the name of one of my dogs. (Laughter) But this experience is being lost. My favorite constellation, Lyra, this is what it would look like from Manhattan. For people who live in urban and suburban environments, if they go outside at night and look up, instead of being awestruck by the majesty of the universe, they see pretty much nothing. These unremarkable, completely blank night skies, of course are due to all of the light we produce at night. Those very same lights we see all the way from space are shining up into the atmosphere, where they bounce around and create this featureless smog of light. And that featureless smog of light has a name. It's called light pollution. As an astronomer, I can actually tell how bad light pollution is by the brightness of stars I can see in the sky. And it turns out that when you're trying to unlock the secrets of the cosmos, it's really helpful to be able to see the cosmos. And — [Laughs] Truth. And this light that we're trying to detect is coming from millions or billions of light-years away, and so it's generally pretty faint. And as an astronomer, I fight with this every day to do my job, and I have to tell you, it is a really big problem. But the problem is far worse than just losing some whimsical ability to gaze at the stars. For example, countless plant and animal species are affected. So we could talk about sea turtles or pollinators or any of these super important species that are also cute. Instead, I want to talk about these quietly unassuming dog whelks. You may have seen them around and not given them really a whole lot of thought. But they're pretty cool. So in an entire year a dog whelk will rarely move more than about 10 meters. That means that when they are attacking their prey they can hit this brisk pace of about a millimeter an hour. And — (Laughter) This works out OK, because they attack things like barnacles. (Laughter) So these dog whelks live in the intertidal area of coasts, where, it turns out, they're a pretty key part of the ecosystem. Not only are they one of the most dominant invertebrate predators, but other animals, like crabs and birds, think they're pretty tasty. So that leaves these poor snails in a kind of precarious situation, because if they go too low in the water, then crabs are a threat, but if they come out of the water too far, birds are going to have a feast. Why is an astronomer telling you about dog whelks? I ask that myself. Because their behavior is impacted by light pollution. For example, if dog whelks are subjected to artificial light at night they're about twice as likely to stay under the water with a predator. And that puts them at increased risk. And it's not like they can make a speedy escape. And so these — (Laughter) And the other issue is because they literally move at a snail's pace. If a population is wiped out, it can take decades to replenish. And that, in turn, affects the rest of their ecosystem and the other species, like the birds and the barnacles and the crabs. So this is just one small and slimy example of how light pollution can unleash a cascade effect on an entire ecosystem. Virtually every species that has been studied to date is impacted by light pollution. And that includes humans. So let's talk about us. You are probably not surprised to hear that light pollution can affect your ability to sleep well at night. But you might be surprised to hear that light pollution is linked to obesity. In fact, in a recent study they found that light pollution contributed to over 70 percent of the obesity rates in 80 countries. More than that, light pollution actually contributed about the same amount to excess weight as eating junk food. And it gets worse. For people who are subjected to significant amounts of artificial light at night they're about 50 percent more likely to get breast cancer. And in fact, light pollution is correlated with types of cancer across the board. And in controlled lab experiments there's a direct link between increased artificial light at night and a rate of tumor growth. You might be wondering how normal light could possibly impact cancer rates. It likely all comes down to the super important hormone called melatonin, which we have evolved over millions of years to produce on a day-night cycle, or a circadian rhythm. What happens is that when light impacts the retina at the back of our eye at night it can disrupt melatonin production, and when melatonin production is disrupted, a whole chain of other chemical processes are affected, and that includes estrogen production. And when we throw this chemical balance out of whack, really bad things can happen. In fact, things are so bad, that the International Agency for Cancer Research has said that disrupting the human circadian rhythm is a probable carcinogen. Also, for fun, I want to let you know that light pollution has been linked to, let's see — headaches, anxiety, depression, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and the list goes on. But maybe you don't care about your health. We're all going to die anyway, you might as well die in a brightly lit room. (Laughter) The fact that you're laughing about death is kind of amazing. (Laughter) You might still care about money. The money that's spent on that wasted light, and I mean just the light that's going out into the universe, and not doing us any good, is three billion dollars a year. That's enough money to build, like, 1,000 utility-grade windmills, or fund the entire DC public-school system for over two years, or — this is my favorite, because I really want one but I can't afford one — buy 30,000 Tesla Model X SUVs. (Laughter) And that includes the electric car tax credit. And then there are the existential costs. I don't have any data on how losing touch with our place in the cosmos impacts us. But I believe that this probably impacts our humanity more than any of the other scary statistics I can share with you. And it's getting worse with time. The amount of light pollution is doubling roughly every 35 years. That means that within the next decade virtually the entire eastern half of the United States will be perpetually brighter than twilight. And there's another issue with light pollution. The problem is way worse than we can see with our own eyes. Our eyes have evolved to just detect this tiny range of the full spectrum of light. All of this other light that we can't see, this invisible light, also has a pollution problem. Mostly it's from modern technology, things like cell phones or car-to-car radar, or now apparently we need appliances that can talk to each other. All of this modern technology is putting out strong signals that can completely swamp this exceedingly faint light we're trying to detect from the rest of the universe outside Earth, which just for the record, is most of the universe. (Laughter) And then, there are satellites. Satellites are a problem at both visible and invisible wavelengths. A host of private companies have plans to deploy tens of thousands of satellites into Earth orbit, where they will not only outnumber, literally outnumber the visible stars in the sky, while also beaming invisible light back to Earth. So for astronomers like me, who use invisible light to study the universe, it's going to be like staring at the Sun and trying to see a birthday candle behind it. Alright, I want to be clear that there's nothing inherently wrong with any of this modern technology. With cell phones or satellites or car radar. I'm not sure about kitchen appliances. (Laughter) I haven't broken down and gotten an oven that talks to my cell phone yet. And I use lights at night like everybody else. But here's the thing. Some problems in the world, like we've heard about today and you'll hear more about, are overwhelming and they seem intractable. Visible light pollution is not one of these problems. This is actually stupidly simple, OK? So here are five super simple things you can do. Don't use lights brighter than you need to. Don't use lights when you don't need them. Those lights you're using, make sure they're shielded down, so they're not shining up into the sky. And let's talk about LED lights. If you have a choice, don't buy the blue ones. Look for words like "warm white." If you buy LEDs with words like "natural light" or "daylight," that's like saying you hate space. (Laughter) And finally, you could advocate for this. Even in your local community, find out if there's a lighting code and whether it could be made more night-sky friendly. Or dare I say, you could even advocate at the federal level, by politely asking our federal officials, some of whom may be here, to please not auction off our view of the invisible universe to the highest bidder to pollute at will, which is actually what happens. Now, like a good professor, I have homework for you. If you have never seen a truly dark night sky, I want you to go out and experience one for yourself. Because if you don't, you don't know what you're missing, and you don't know what humanity is losing. Thank you. (Applause)

How does chemotherapy work?

TED-Ed

During World War I, one of the horrors of trench warfare was a poisonous yellow cloud called mustard gas. For those unlucky enough to be exposed, it made the air impossible to breathe, burned their eyes, and caused huge blisters on exposed skin. Scientists tried desperately to develop an antidote to this vicious weapon of war. In the process they discovered the gas was irrevocably damaging the bone marrow of affected soldiers— halting its ability to make blood cells. Despite these awful effects, it gave scientists an idea. Cancer cells share a characteristic with bone marrow: both replicate rapidly. So could one of the atrocities of war become a champion in the fight against cancer? Researchers in the 1930s investigated this idea by injecting compounds derived from mustard gas into the veins of cancer patients. It took time and trial and error to find treatments that did more good than harm, but by the end of World War II, they discovered what became known as the first chemotherapy drugs. Today, there are more than 100. Chemotherapy drugs are delivered through pills and injections and use "cytotoxic agents," which means compounds that are toxic to living cells. Essentially, these medicines cause some level of harm to all cells in the body— even healthy ones. But they reserve their most powerful effects for rapidly-dividing cells, which is precisely the hallmark of cancer. Take, for example, those first chemotherapy drugs, which are still used today and are called alkylating agents. They’re injected into the bloodstream, which delivers them to cells all over the body. Once inside, when the cell exposes its DNA in order to copy it, they damage the building blocks of DNA’s double helix structure, which can lead to cell death unless the damage is repaired. Because cancer cells multiply rapidly, they take in a high concentration of alkylating agents, and their DNA is frequently exposed and rarely repaired. So they die off more often than most other cells, which have time to fix damaged DNA and don’t accumulate the same concentrations of alkylating agents. Another form of chemotherapy involves compounds called microtubule stabilizers. Cells have small tubes that assemble to help with cell division and DNA replication, then break back down. When microtubule stabilizers get inside a cell, they keep those tiny tubes from disassembling. That prevents the cell from completing its replication, leading to its death. These are just two examples of the six classes of chemotherapy drugs we use to treat cancer today. But despite its huge benefits, chemotherapy has one big disadvantage: it affects other healthy cells in the body that naturally have to renew rapidly. Hair follicles, the cells of the mouth, the gastrointestinal lining, the reproductive system, and bone marrow are hit nearly as hard as cancer. Similar to cancer cells, the rapid production of these normal cells means that they’re reaching for resources more frequently— and are therefore more exposed to the effects of chemo drugs. That leads to several common side effects of chemotherapy, including hair loss, fatigue, infertility, nausea, and vomiting. Doctors commonly prescribe options to help manage these side-effects, such as strong anti-nausea medications. For hair loss, devices called cold caps can help lower the temperature around the head and constrict blood vessels, limiting the amount of chemotherapy drugs that reach hair follicles. And once a course of chemo treatment is over, the healthy tissues that’ve been badly affected by the drug will recover and begin to renew as usual. In 2018 alone, over 17 million people world-wide received a cancer diagnosis. But chemotherapy and other treatments have changed the outlook for so many. Just take the fact that up to 95% of individuals with testicular cancer survive it, thanks to advances in treatment. Even in people with acute myeloid leukemia— an aggressive blood cancer— chemotherapy puts an estimated 60% of patients under 60 into remission following their first phase of treatment. Researchers are still developing more precise interventions that only target the intended cancer cells. That’ll help improve survival rates while leaving healthy tissues with reduced harm, making one of the best tools we have in the fight against cancer even better.

A video game that helps us understand loneliness

{0: 'Cornelia Geppert creates innovative, visually original video games that explore the depths of human emotion.'}

TED Salon Brightline Initiative

Have you ever felt lonely? The urge of wanting to connect with people, but you seem to have no one you really would want to contact? Or, it's a Friday night and you want to be with others, but you have no energy to go out, so instead you sit at home all evening, watch Netflix and feel more alone than ever? You feel like a monster between humans that know how to function. This is what loneliness felt like to me. So I'm an artist, and I process my emotional world by sharing my feelings through my art. If you share your feelings with someone, and they understand and share those feelings too, you create an emotional and deep connection. This is why you can be surrounded by hundreds of people, jump from one candidate to the next, but still feel lonely. It's because these deeper connections haven't been made. I was an always-happy child. I think we nearly have no single photo of me where I don't smile broadly or laugh or joke around. And this went on until ... well, it's still the case. But I had many friend groups up until, as a young adult, I moved to another city for my first job as a comic artist. And like so many young, thriving people all over the planet, I concentrated all my energy into my work life. But, if you spend, like, 90 percent of your daily capacity trying to succeed at work, of course there is nothing left to take care of all the other important aspects in your life, like your human relationships. Nourishing friendships as an adult is work. You need to be consistent with connecting. You need to be open, you need to be honest. And this is all I struggled with, because I tend to camouflage my real feelings by trying to appear always happy and trying to make everyone else happy, too, by trying to fix their problems. And I know a lot of us are guilty of this, because it's an easy way to not think about your own issues. Isn't it? Hmm? Hmm? Hmm? (Laughter) OK. The turning point came when I fell into an emotionally abusive relationship just a few years ago. He isolated me and left me feeling more alone than ever. It was the lowest point in my life, but it was also my wake-up call, because it was the first time that I really felt loneliness. Many others put their feelings into their art. There are endless books, movies, paintings, music, all filled with the real emotion of an artist. So, as an artist myself, I did the same. I shared my feelings. I wanted to help people cope with loneliness. I wanted, yeah, to make them understand it, to really experience it through my art in the form of an interactive story, a video game. So, in our game — we called it "Sea of Solitude" — you are a person named Kay, who is suffering from such strong loneliness that her inner feelings — the anger, the feeling of hopelessness, worthlessness — turn to the outside, and she becomes a monster. The game — well, Kay — is actually a representation of me and the path I went through to overcome my struggles. The game plays, actually, in Kay's mind, so you walk through a world that is flooded by her tears, and the weather is changing by her mood, how her mood is changing. And, well, the only thing Kay wears, the only thing, is her backpack. It's the baggage we all carry throughout our life. And Kay doesn't know how to cope with her emotions in the right way, so her backpack becomes bigger and bigger until it bursts, and she finally is forced to overcome her own struggles. In our story, we present many different manifestations of loneliness. Loneliness through social exclusion is very common. In our game, the brother of Kay got bullied in his school, and he just wants to hide and fly away. And we portray him as a huge bird monster surrounded by thick fog. The player has to actually walk through his school and experience, really feel the harm, that the brother had been through, because for a long time, nobody really listens to him. But the very moment friends and family start to listen, the first step towards overcoming this form of loneliness had been made. We also show loneliness in relationships, like when parents just stay together for the sake of their kids but end up hurting the entire family. We put the player literally in between the two parents while they are fighting, and you get hurt in the middle. They don't even see that their daughter, Kay, is right there until she breaks down. We also show loneliness through mental health issues, with the boyfriend of Kay, who suffers from depression and shows that sometimes it is most important to focus on your own well-being first. The boyfriend also tends to camouflage his feelings, so he appears like a lone, shiny white wolf. But the moment he starts to interact with his girlfriend, Kay, the mask falls off, and we see the black dog beneath it: depression. Sometimes we put on a smile instead of dealing with the issues at hand, and that can ultimately make it worse, affect the people around us and damage our relationships. So Kay herself we portray as ripped apart into her basic emotions. Some help you, some are trying to stop you. Self-Doubt is a huge creature, always telling Kay how worthless she is and that she should just give up. Like in real life, Self-Doubt is blocking the path, and it seems impossible to overcome it. Destroying the omnipresence of Self-Doubt is a slow process. But in the game, you can slowly, like, shrink her, so she turns from self-doubt to actually healthy doubt, and you can finally trust her advice. We also show Self-Destruction. It's a huge monster always lurking nearby under the water's surface. Self-Destruction is actually the main antagonist of the game, and she is always trying to drown you in the ocean of tears. But, when she actually drowns you, you wake up just a few moments [before], and you have a chance to progress again. We wanted to show that we all go through hardships in our life, we all do. But if you at least, like, stand up and try to move forward, you are very likely to make it through your struggle, step by step. Joy is something that Kay cannot really embrace or touch. It's always something in the distance. We portrayed Joy as a child version of Kay, with a yellow raincoat, so she is invulnerable to the ocean of tears. But Joy can also turn into obsession and start to be actually harmful for Kay, like when she starts obsessing over her boyfriend. Joy will not turn back to normal until Kay realizes that her happiness should not depend on anybody else but herself. So our monsters appear huge and scary, but if you overcome your reluctance and approach them, you soon see that they are no monsters at all, but just fragile beings that are simply overwhelmed by what life throws at them. All of those emotions, be it self-doubt or even self-destruction, don't completely vanish in our game. The key message is to not only chase for joy or happiness but to embrace all your emotions and bring them into balance, being OK with sometimes not being OK. Everyone has their own loneliness story to tell. This realization changed everything for me. Being much more open with my emotions and concentrating much more on my private life, my friends, my family. When we released the game, literally thousands of fans wrote us, all sharing their stories with us and telling us they felt not so alone anymore just because they played our game. Many people wrote us that they felt hope for a better future for themselves for the first time in decades. Many wrote us that they seek therapy now, just because they played our game and felt hopeful to overcome their own struggles. Our game is not a therapy. It's not meant to be a therapy. It's just my friends and me sharing our stories through our art, video games. But we are so deeply thankful for every single message that people feel better, just because we shared our story with them. So ... I didn't completely overcome my urge to help others. But I don't want to overcome it anymore. I love it. I just needed to bring it to a healthy size, so it doesn't stand in the way of deeper relationships anymore, but even help me to connect with people. So, if you have an inner monster that is born out of negative emotions, it is not only the goal to kill that monster but to understand that we humans are complex beings. Look at what part of your life is so big that others fall short. Look at what emotions you barely feel or maybe feel too much and move towards lowering those peaks. Most of all, it's about understanding that all the wide range of emotions and struggles makes us what we are: humans. Thank you. (Applause)

The profound power of an authentic apology

{0: 'Eve Ensler created the groundbreaking "Vagina Monologues," whose success propelled her to found V-Day -- a movement to end violence against women and girls everywhere.'}

TEDWomen 2019

For the past few years, we've been calling men out. It had to be done. (Applause) But lately, I've been thinking we need to do something even harder. We need, as my good friend Tony Porter says, to find a way to call men in. My father began to sexually abuse me when I was five years old. He would come into my room in the middle of the night. He appeared to be in a trance. The abuse continued until I was 10. When I tried to resist him, when I was finally able to say no, he began to beat me. He called me stupid. He said I was a liar. The sexual abuse ended when I was 10, but actually, it never ended. It changed who I was. I was filled with anxiety and guilt and shame all the time, and I didn't know why. I hated my body, I hated myself, I got sick a lot, I couldn't think, I couldn't remember things. I was drawn to dangerous men and women who I allowed — actually, I invited — to treat me badly, because that is what my father taught me love was. I waited my whole life for my father to apologize to me. He didn't. He wouldn't. And then, with the recent scandals of famous men, as one after another was exposed, I realized something: I have never heard a man who has committed rape or physical violence ever publicly apologize to his victim. I began to wonder, what would an authentic, deep apology be like? So, something strange began to happen. I began to write, and my father's voice began to come through me. He began to tell me what he had done and why. He began to apologize. My father is dead almost 31 years, and yet, in this apology, the one I had to write for him, I discovered the power of an apology and how it actually might be the way to move forward in the crisis we now face with men and all the women they abuse. Apology is a sacred commitment. It requires complete honesty. It demands deep self-interrogation and time. It cannot be rushed. I discovered an apology has four steps, and, if you would, I'd like to take you through them. The first is you have to say what, in detail, you did. Your accounting cannot be vague. "I'm sorry if I hurt you" or "I'm sorry if I sexually abused you" doesn't cut it. You have to say what actually happened. "I came into the room in the middle of the night, and I pulled your underpants down." "I belittled you because I was jealous of you and I wanted you to feel less." The liberation is in the details. An apology is a remembering. It connects the past with the present. It says that what occurred actually did occur. The second step is you have to ask yourself why. Survivors are haunted by the why. Why? Why would my father want to sexually abuse his eldest daughter? Why would he take my head and smash it against a wall? In my father's case, he was a child born long after the other children. He was an accident that became "the miracle." He was adored and treated as the golden boy. But adoration, it turns out, is not love. Adoration is a projection of someone's need for you to be perfect onto you. My father had to live up to this impossible ideal, and so he was never allowed to be himself. He was never allowed to express tenderness or vulnerability, curiosity, doubt. He was never allowed to cry. And so he was forced to push all those feelings underground, and they eventually metastasized. Those suppressed feelings later became Shadowman, and he was out of control, and he eventually unleashed his torrent on me. The third step is you have to open your heart and feel what your victim felt as you were abusing her. You have to let your heart break. You have to feel the horror and betrayal and the long-term impacts of your abuse on your victim. You have to sit with the suffering you have caused. And, of course, the fourth step is taking responsibility for what you have done and making amends. So, why would anyone want to go through such a grueling and humbling process? Why would you want to rip yourself open? Because it is the only thing that will set yourself free. It is the only thing that will set your victim free. You didn't just destroy your victim. You destroyed yourself. There is no one who enacts violence on another person who doesn't suffer from the effects themselves. It creates an incredibly dark and contaminating spirit, and it spreads throughout your entire life. The apology I wrote — I learned something about a different lens we have to look through to understand the problem of men's violence that I and one billion other women have survived. We often turn to punishment first. It's our first instinct, but actually, although punishment sometimes is effective, on its own, it is not enough. My father punished me. I was shut down, and I was broken. I think punishment hardens us, but it doesn't teach us. Humiliation is not revelation. We actually need to create a process that may involve punishment, whereby we open a doorway where men can actually become something and someone else. For so many years, I hated my father. I wanted him dead. I wanted him in prison. But actually, that rage kept me connected to my father's story. What I really wanted wasn't just for my father to be stopped. I wanted him to change. I wanted him to apologize. That's what we want. We don't want men to be destroyed, we don't want them to only be punished. We want them to see us, the victims that they have harmed, and we want them to repent and change. And I actually believe this is possible. And I really believe it's our way forward. But we need men to join us. We need men now to be brave and be part of this transformation. I have spent most of my life calling men out, and I am here now, right now, to call you in. Thank you. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) Thank you, thank you. (Applause)

The unforeseen consequences of a fast-paced world

{0: "Kathryn Bouskill's work explores how our health is shaped as much by our biology as it is by our behaviors and cultural contexts."}

TEDxManhattanBeach

Do you ever wonder why we're surrounded with things that help us do everything faster and faster and faster? Communicate faster, but also work faster, bank faster, travel faster, find a date faster, cook faster, clean faster and do all of it all at the same time? How do you feel about cramming even more into every waking hour? Well, to my generation of Americans, speed feels like a birthright. Sometimes I think our minimum speed is Mach 3. Anything less, and we fear losing our competitive edge. But even my generation is starting to question whether we're the masters of speed or if speed is mastering us. I'm an anthropologist at the Rand Corporation, and while many anthropologists study ancient cultures, I focus on modern day cultures and how we're adapting to all of this change happening in the world. Recently, I teamed up with an engineer, Seifu Chonde, to study speed. We were interested both in how people are adapting to this age of acceleration and its security and policy implications. What could our world look like in 25 years if the current pace of change keeps accelerating? What would it mean for transportation, or learning, communication, manufacturing, weaponry or even natural selection? Will a faster future make us more secure and productive? Or will it make us more vulnerable? In our research, people accepted acceleration as inevitable, both the thrills and the lack of control. They fear that if they were to slow down, they might run the risk of becoming obsolete. They say they'd rather burn out than rust out. Yet at the same time, they worry that speed could erode their cultural traditions and their sense of home. But even people who are winning at the speed game admit to feeling a little uneasy. They see acceleration as widening the gap between the haves, the jet-setters who are buzzing around, and the have-nots, who are left in the digital dust. Yes, we have good reason to forecast that the future will be faster, but what I've come to realize is that speed is paradoxical, and like all good paradoxes, it teaches us about the human experience, as absurd and complex as it is. The first paradox is that we love speed, and we're thrilled by its intensity. But our prehistoric brains aren't really built for it, so we invent roller coasters and race cars and supersonic planes, but we get whiplash, carsick, jet-lagged. We didn't evolve to multitask. Rather, we evolved to do one thing with incredible focus, like hunt — not necessarily with great speed but with endurance for great distance. But now there's a widening gap between our biology and our lifestyles, a mismatch between what our bodies are built for and what we're making them do. It's a phenomenon my mentors have called "Stone Agers in the fast lane." (Laughter) A second paradox of speed is that it can be measured objectively. Right? Miles per hour, gigabytes per second. But how speed feels, and whether we like it, is highly subjective. So we can document that the pace at which we are adopting new technologies is increasing. For example, it took 85 years from the introduction of the telephone to when the majority of Americans had phones at home. In contrast, it only took 13 years for most of us to have smartphones. And how people act and react to speed varies by culture and among different people within the same culture. Interactions that could be seen as pleasantly brisk and convenient in some cultures could be seen as horribly rude in others. I mean, you wouldn't go asking for a to-go cup at a Japanese tea ceremony so you could jet off to your next tourist stop. Would you? A third paradox is that speed begets speed. The faster I respond, the more responses I get, the faster I have to respond again. Having more communication and information at our fingertips at any given moment was supposed to make decision-making easier and more rational. But that doesn't really seem to be happening. Here's just one more paradox: If all of these faster technologies were supposed to free us from drudgery, why do we all feel so pressed for time? Why are we crashing our cars in record numbers, because we think we have to answer that text right away? Shouldn't life in the fast lane feel a little more fun and a little less anxious? German speakers even have a word for this: "Eilkrankheit." In English, that's "hurry sickness." When we have to make fast decisions, autopilot brain kicks in, and we rely on our learned behaviors, our reflexes, our cognitive biases, to help us perceive and respond quickly. Sometimes that saves our lives, right? Fight or flight. But sometimes, it leads us astray in the long run. Oftentimes, when our society has major failures, they're not technological failures. They're failures that happen when we made decisions too quickly on autopilot. We didn't do the creative or critical thinking required to connect the dots or weed out false information or make sense of complexity. That kind of thinking can't be done fast. That's slow thinking. Two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, started pointing this out back in 1974, and we're still struggling to do something with their insights. All of modern history can be thought of as one spurt of acceleration after another. It's as if we think if we just speed up enough, we can outrun our problems. But we never do. We know this in our own lives, and policymakers know it, too. So now we're turning to artificial intelligence to help us make faster and smarter decisions to process this ever-expanding universe of data. But machines crunching data are no substitute for critical and sustained thinking by humans, whose Stone Age brains need a little time to let their impulses subside, to slow the mind and let the thoughts flow. If you're starting to think that we should just hit the brakes, that won't always be the right solution. We all know that a train that's going too fast around a bend can derail, but Seifu, the engineer, taught me that a train that's going too slowly around a bend can also derail. So managing this spurt of acceleration starts with the understanding that we have more control over speed than we think we do, individually and as a society. Sometimes, we'll need to engineer ourselves to go faster. We'll want to solve gridlock, speed up disaster relief for hurricane victims or use 3-D printing to produce what we need on the spot, just when we need it. Sometimes, though, we'll want to make our surroundings feel slower to engineer the crash out of the speedy experience. And it's OK not to be stimulated all the time. It's good for adults and for kids. Maybe it's boring, but it gives us time to reflect. Slow time is not wasted time. And we need to reconsider what it means to save time. Culture and rituals around the world build in slowness, because slowness helps us reinforce our shared values and connect. And connection is a critical part of being human. We need to master speed, and that means thinking carefully about the trade-offs of any given technology. Will it help you reclaim time that you can use to express your humanity? Will it give you hurry sickness? Will it give other people hurry sickness? If you're lucky enough to decide the pace that you want to travel through life, it's a privilege. Use it. You might decide that you need both to speed up and to create slow time: time to reflect, to percolate at your own pace; time to listen, to empathize, to rest your mind, to linger at the dinner table. So as we zoom into the future, let's consider setting the technologies of speed, the purpose of speed and our expectations of speed to a more human pace. Thank you. (Applause)

The Train Heist

{0: 'Alex Rosenthal takes everyday experiences and turns them into mind-bending puzzles.'}

TED-Ed

Ethic, Hedge, and Adila, the leader of the revolution, plot out how they can steal an artifact called the Node of Power. It’s being used to run a heavily fortified train that runs all around the country, providing supplies to settlements and facilities. This armored behemoth undergoes a complex and unpredictable unloading procedure— a procedure which is displayed, in detail, on a screen within the engine car. Right means the train will go one car length forward, and left means the train will go the same distance backwards. While unloading, the train frequently moves back and forth, so a typical sequence might look like this. Also within the engine car is a button that can only be pressed once. When pressed, it lets down the force field over the artifact for 10 seconds. The engine car is tiny and designed for a robot. Of your team, only Hedge can fit. The members of the resistance have positioned a crane over the train tracks that can pluck the artifact once it’s exposed. They’ll know when to lower the crane by sight. But the only way Hedge can determine the train’s position and know when to lower the force field is by analyzing the unloading procedure, because he’ll be inside the windowless engine car. Hedge can’t program himself though, so it’s up to Ethic to tell him what to do. The artifact is in the car 10 positions behind the one that’s directly under the crane at the start. What instructions can Ethic give Hedge so that he hits the button at just the right moment? Here’s a hint to get you started. The key to this problem, as with many programming challenges, is to reframe the information in a way that a computer can work with. A computer doesn’t know what a train is, nor does it need to. It can, however, work with variables. Try making a variable that tracks the train’s position. How will it change as the train moves? Let’s start by breaking this problem into two objectives. The first is to know where the train will be as it carries out its instructions. The second is to hit the button when the train is in just the right position. For the first objective it’ll help to think of the train as a big number line. Let’s make 0 the car with the node, 1 the car in front of it, and so on. That means car 10 is under the crane at the start. When the train moves one car right, car 9 is under the crane. So a right arrow can be thought of as “subtract 1.” And when the train moves left from there, 10 is back under the crane, making a left arrow the same as “add 1." Let’s set our train position variable to 10, since that’s where we start. We can now use a loop to read the instructions one at a time, adding or subtracting as we go, to track which car is under the crane. The nice thing about setting up the variable this way is that it tells us how far the node is from the crane. So as soon as the variable hits 0, Hedge should hit the button. And here’s what happens. Ethic gets into position on the crane while Hedge rushes off and slips into the engine car unnoticed, just before the train lurches to life. It rolls 3 cars back. 1 forward, another 4 back. Then so far forward Ethic loses track before it reverses once more. When the artifact finally rolls into position, Adila lowers the crane, hoping Ethic and Hedge got it right. At the last possible moment, the force field sputters and falls. Ethic swoops in, and lifts the Node of Power to freedom. When Ethic gives the node to Hedge for safe keeping, something incredible happens. The artifact shimmers to life with a vision of the past: When the crystal was unearthed, no one could make the console inside work. The government put out a call for people to try their luck with it, one at a time. Ethic loved to figure out what made things tick, so she signed up. Within moments at the console, something clicked into place, and she created her first robot. The government hired Ethic as chief robotics engineer on the spot. Within a year her creations ran almost every aspect of society, and the nation and its people thrived, no longer needing to toil in the fields and factories. The vision ends, and Hedge detects the second artifact in the 198forest, to the southeast. Luckily, the train is going there next, and has just enough reserve fuel for the trip. Ethic and Hedge smuggle themselves aboard and find a hiding spot for the long journey ahead.

The paradox of efficiency

{0: 'Edward Tenner is an independent writer, speaker and editor who analyzes the cultural aspects of technological change.'}

TED2019

Who doesn't love efficiency? I do. Efficiency means more for less. More miles per gallon, more light per watt, more words per minute. More for less is the next best thing to something for nothing. Algorithms, big data, the cloud are giving us more for less. Are we heading toward a friction-free utopia or toward a nightmare of surveillance? I don't know. My interest is in the present. And I'd like to show you how the past can help us understand the present. There's nothing that summarizes both the promise and the danger of efficiency like the humble potato. The potato originated in the Andes and it spread to Europe from the ancient Inca. The potato is a masterpiece of balanced nutrition. And it had some very powerful friends. King Frederick the Great of Prussia was the first enthusiast. He believed that the potato could help increase the population of healthy Prussians. And the more healthy Prussians, the more healthy Prussian soldiers. And some of those healthy Prussian soldiers captured a French military pharmacist named Parmentier. Parmentier, at first, was appalled by the morning, noon and night diet fed to POWs of potatoes, but he came to enjoy it. He thought they were making him a healthier person. And so, when he was released, he took it on himself to spread the potato to France. And he had some powerful friends. Benjamin Franklin advised him to hold a banquet, at which every dish included potatoes. And Franklin was a guest of honor. Even the king and queen of France were persuaded to wear potatoes, potato flowers, pardon me. (Laughter) The king wore a potato flower in his lapel, and the queen wore a potato flower in her hair. That was a truly great public relations idea. But there was a catch. The potato was too efficient for Europe's good. In Ireland, it seemed a miracle. Potatoes flourished, the population grew. But there was a hidden risk. Ireland's potatoes were genetically identical. They were a very efficient breed, called the Lumper. And the problem with the Lumper was that a blight from South America that affected one potato would affect them all. Britain's exploitation and callousness played a role, but it was because of this monoculture that a million people died and another two million were forced to emigrate. A plant that was supposed to end famine created one of the most tragic ones. The problems of efficiency today are less drastic but more chronic. They can also prolong the evils that they were intended to solve. Take the electronic medical records. It seemed to be the answer to the problem of doctors' handwriting, and it had the benefit of providing much better data for treatments. In practice, instead, it has meant much more electronic paperwork and physicians are now complaining that they have less, rather than more time to see patients individually. The obsession with efficiency can actually make us less efficient. Efficiency also bites back with false positives. Hospitals have hundreds of devices registering alarms. Too often, they're crying wolf. It takes time to rule those out. And that time results in fatigue, stress and, once more, the neglect of the problems of real patients. There are also false positives in pattern recognition. A school bus, viewed from the wrong angle, can resemble a punching bag. So precious time is required to eliminate misidentification. False negatives are a problem, too. Algorithms can learn a lot — fast. But they can tell us only about the past. So many future classics get bad reviews, like "Moby Dick," or are turned down by multiple publishers, like the "Harry Potter" series. It can be wasteful to try to avoid all waste. Efficiency is also a trap when the opposition copies it. Take the late 19th-century French 75-millimeter artillery piece. It was a masterpiece of lethal design. This piece could fire a shell every four seconds. But that wasn't so unusual. What was really brilliant was that because of the recoil mechanism, it could return to the exact same position without having to be reaimed. So the effective rate of firing was drastically increased. Now, this seemed to be a way for France to defeat Germany the next time they fought. But, predictably, the Germans were working on something very similar. So when the First World War broke out, the result was the trench warfare that lasted longer than anybody had expected. A technology that was designed to shorten the war, prolonged it. The biggest cost of all may be missed opportunities. The platform economy connecting buyers and sellers can be a great investment, and we have seen that in the last few weeks. Companies that are still losing hundreds of millions of dollars may be creating billionaires with initial public offerings. But the really difficult inventions are the physical and chemical ones. They mean bigger risks. They may be losing out, because hardware is hard. It's much harder to scale up a physical or chemical invention than it is a software-based invention. Think of batteries. Lithium-ion batteries in portable devices and electric cars are based on a 30-year-old principle. How many smartphone batteries today will last a full day on a single charge? Yes, hardware is hard. It took over 20 years for the patent on the principle of dry photocopying, by Chester Carlson in 1938, to result in the Xerox 914 copier introduced in 1959. The small, brave company, Haloid in Rochester, NY had to go through what most corporations would never have tolerated. There was one failure after another, and one of the special problems was fire. In fact, when the 914 was finally released, it still had a device that was called a scorch eliminator but actually it was a small fire extinguisher built in. My answer to all these questions is: inspired inefficiency. Data and measurement are essential, but they're not enough. Let's leave room for human intuition and human skills. There are seven facets of inspired inefficiency. First, take the scenic route, say yes to serendipity. Wrong turns can be productive. Once, when I was exploring the east bank of the Mississippi, I took the wrong turn. I was approaching a toll bridge crossing the great river, and the toll collector said I could not turn back. So I paid my 50 cents — that's all it was at the time — and I was in Muscatine, Iowa. I had barely heard of Muscatine, but it proved to be a fascinating place. Muscatine had some of the world's richest mussel beds. A century ago, a third of the world's buttons were produced in Muscatine, 1.5 billion a year. The last plants have closed now, but there is still a museum of the pearl button industry that's one of the most unusual in the world. But buttons were only the beginning. This is the house in Muscatine where China's future president stayed in 1986, as a member of an agricultural delegation. It is now the Sino-US Friendship House, and it's a pilgrimage site for Chinese tourists. How could I have foreseen that? (Laughter) Second, get up from the couch. Sometimes it can be more efficient to do things the hard way. Consider the internet of things. It's wonderful to be able to control lights, set the thermostat, even vacuum the room without leaving one's seat. But medical research has shown that actually fidgeting, getting up, walking around is one of the best things you can do for your heart. It's good for the heart and the waistline. Third, monetize your mistakes. Great forms can be created by imaginative development of accidents. Tad Leski, an architect of the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center, was working on a sketch and some white ink fell on the drawing. Other people might just have thrown it away, but Leski was inspired to produce a starburst chandelier that was probably the most notable of its kind of the 20th century. Fourth, sometimes try the hard way. It can be more efficient to be less fluent. Psychologists call this desirable difficulty. Taking detailed notes with a keyboard would seem to be the best way to grasp what a lecturer is saying, to be able to review it verbatim. However, studies have shown that when we have to abbreviate, when we have to summarize what a speaker is saying, when we're taking notes with a pen or a pencil on paper, we're processing that information. We're making that our own, and we are learning much more actively than when we were just transcribing what was being said. Fifth, get security through diversity. Monoculture can be deadly. Remember the potato? It was efficient until it wasn't. Diversity applies to organizations, too. Software can tell what has made people in an organization succeed in the past. And it's useful, sometimes, in screening employees. But remember, the environment is constantly changing, and software, screening software, has no way to tell, and we have no way to tell, who is going to be useful in the future. So, we need to supplement whatever the algorithm tells us by an intuition and by looking for people with various backgrounds and various outlooks. Sixth, achieve safety through redundancy and human skills. Why did two 737 Max aircraft crash? We still don't know the full story, but we know how to prevent future tragedies. We need multiple independent systems. If one fails, then the others can override it. We also need skilled operators to come to the rescue and that means constant training. Seventh, be rationally extravagant. Thomas Edison was a pioneer of the film industry, as well as of camera technology. Nobody has done more for efficiency than Thomas Edison. But his cost cutting broke down. His manager hired a so-called efficiency engineer, who advised him to save money by using more of the film stock that he'd shot, having fewer retakes. Well, Edison was a genius, but he didn't understand the new rules of feature films and the fact that failure was becoming the price of success. On the other hand, some great directors, like Erich Von Stroheim, were the opposite. They were superb dramatists, and Stroheim was also a memorable actor. But they couldn't live within their budgets. So that was not sustainable. It was Irving Thalberg, a former secretary with intuitive genius, who achieved rational extravagance. First at Universal, and then at MGM, becoming the ideal of the Hollywood producer. Summing up, to be truly efficient, we need optimal inefficiency. The shortest path may be a curve rather than a straight line. Charles Darwin understood that. When he encountered a tough problem, he made a circuit of a trail, the sandwalk that he'd built behind his house. A productive path can be physical, like Darwin's, or a virtual one, or an unforeseen detour from a path we had laid out. Too much efficiency can weaken itself. But a bit of inspired inefficiency can strengthen it. Sometimes, the best way to move forward is to follow a circle. Thank you. (Applause)

Why I protest for climate justice

{0: 'Jane Fonda has had four extraordinary careers (so far): Oscar-winning actor, author, fitness guru and impassioned activist.'}

TEDWomen 2019

Pat Mitchell: It's so great to see you, my friend. Jane Fonda: Hi Pat. It's great to be with you. PM: Jane, for the ones who may not have seen the extraordinary coverage around the world of Fire Drill Fridays and the impact that they have already had, talk to us about the origin of this idea, this particular response to the climate crisis. JF: I was very inspired by Greta Thunberg, the Swedish student, and by the young school climate strikers. Greta says we've got to get out of our comfort zone. We have to behave like our house is burning, because it is. And so she really struck a chord in me. And then, learning that just about 100 percent of climate scientists agree. They agree that a drastic emergency is upon us, that it is human-caused. But they said we can do something about it. We have the time, the technology, the tools. We have everything we need except political will to meet the challenge, and it's an enormous challenge. We have 11 years, many say, a decade, and I thought, "Oh, I'm so lucky that I am healthy and living in a decade where we who are alive can actually make the difference. We can make the difference as to whether there's going to be a livable future or not. What a glorious responsibility we have. We have to step up to the plate." And when you're famous, there's a lot of things that you can do. You have a bigger platform. So I decided that, like Greta, I was going to put my body on the line and move to the center of American power, Washington, DC, and have a rally every Friday like the students do. And we work with the students. They speak at my rallies, and I speak at their rallies. And then after we speak, we engage in civil disobedience and risk getting arrested. Civil disobedience is a powerful tool that has changed history many times, both in the United States in the '60s during the civil rights movement, of course in India with Mahatma Gandhi. And I didn't know in the beginning if it was going to work or not, but it's made me very happy to see what's happening. PM: It's also led to your being arrested — multiple times, actually, spending at least a night or two in Washington, DC jails. And while all of us, I think, recognize the emergency and the actions that you so kindly mentioned others have taken, I'm not sure that we would put our bodies at risk, our lives, our careers and our lives on hold, as you have done. Do you have any concerns about that at this point? JF: Well, I realize that not everybody can leave work and go and do what I'm doing. But I must say that requests are pouring in, not only from around the United States but from other countries, people who want to start Fire Drill Fridays. And the people who are coming and getting arrested with me and engaging with civil disobedience, many of them have never done it before, and they find it to be transformative. But the fact is that there are so many things that people can do, starting with talking about it, expressing how you feel about it and talking about it, even when it's uncomfortable. At a holiday dinner table and maybe Uncle Bob doesn't agree, but, you know, maybe Uncle Bob is worried about his grandkids, maybe he loves birds. There's always a way in with people to get them to feel concerned about the climate crisis. Of course, voting is very, very important, and we have to vote for the people that are the bravest, the boldest of our elected officials, because the task ahead of us — all over the world, but certainly here in the United States — we have to get rid of this current administration, and we have to elect people that are really brave, that will step up — (Applause) and do the bold actions that are needed, the way Franklin Delano Roosevelt did during the 1930s, during the Great Depression, when he really changed a great deal about American society. And that's what is needed now. PM: So Jane, we should also explain, because many people who are here are thinking, what can they do? Can they come to Washington and join you in this action? We should explain, not everyone who participates in Fire Drill Fridays is under threat of being arrested. There are other parts of what you're doing, like you are currently in the Greenpeace offices in Washington. So explain what else is a part of Fire Drill Fridays and how we could participate in civil disobedience without the risk of getting arrested. JF: First of all, you want to try not do anything as a lone individual. You know, it's by our powers combined. There's strength in numbers. There's also community in numbers, and one of the hardest things about what we're facing now is: this is a collective crisis, coming at a time when the whole notion of the collective, of the commons, of the public sphere, is being eroded quite deliberately by neoliberalism and conservatism. And so reconnecting with groups of people, like-minded people in a common action, is solace to the soul. It gives you such strength. It's a great antidote to depression. So find out what organizations that are concerned about the climate crisis are in your area. Of course, Greenpeace has chapters all around the world. And even if you just start yourself, have house parties, invite people over to talk about what's happening. Find an article that you can all read and discuss together. Obviously, if there's a climate action where you live, try to join it. It's not necessary to engage in civil disobedience and risk getting arrested, but it is going to become the new normal, I think. It feels like it is here in DC with Fire Drill Fridays. People seem to want to come back and do it again. My grandkids just got arrested last weekend. It was a transformative experience. (Laughter) My fellow actor Sam Waterston, who is a self-described centrist, he had never spoken at a rally or risked getting arrested, and he was arrested with me. Last week, I see that he was arrested at the Harvard-Yale game. He sent me a picture of himself in handcuffs, saying, "Now look what you started!" (Laughter) You know, we're at a point, I think, in this crisis where people are looking to take the next step. They want to put their bodies on the line, as Greta Thunberg has exhorted us to do. And they find it very rewarding, and they want to do it again. So I think that this is good, what we're doing. I met with the Senate [Climate Change Task Force] a few weeks ago, and I asked the senators, "Is there something else we should be doing? Should we be doing more?" And Senator Ed Markey said to me, "You're building an army. That's what we need. Make it bigger. We need pressure from the outside." And I think that's true all over the world. People need to be amassing armies for the climate, armies for the environment, in the streets, shutting down governments if necessary. I'm thinking of Brazil right now. You know, we can't allow the burning of our precious rainforests. PM: And as you have done so many times in the past, Jane, you are leading these changes. Eventually, one assumes, especially the fans of "Grace and Frankie," that you will go back to your life and resume that program. But will Fire Drill Fridays continue? JF: Well, there's been such an interest in it, as I said, from all around the country, people asking if they can start one. And, you know, I have a lot of celebrity friends who haven't, for scheduling reasons, been able to come to DC, so we're thinking about maybe doing it in Los Angeles. But I just want to correct one thing: I'm not leading. It's the young people, it's the students that are leading. It's always the young people that step up with the courage, and it's pretty amazing, because they're risking a lot. It's pretty brave to take a Friday off from school. You could get bad grades. You could make your teachers mad. But they're doing it anyway. There have been millions of them at a time, all around the world. And they're saying, "Don't let us have to deal with this by ourselves. We didn't create this problem. Come and help us." So, Grandmas unite! (Laughter) (Applause) PM: And you are in a city that is probably more divided than it has been in a very long time. The polarities that exist there and in many other places around the world have kept our collective strength from being unified and used, and in that way, you have been leading us. What would success look like to you from Fire Drill Fridays? JF: Well, I can just speak as a citizen of the United States. Success would look like every state stops all new fossil fuel expansion, because if they keep drilling and fracking and mining, the problem will just get worse, so that no matter what we do with windmills and solar collectors and so forth, we'll never be able to catch up. We have to stop all new expansion. The other thing is, they would phase out fossil fuel emissions gradually, making sure that the workers who would be impacted would be retrained at union wages and get good new union jobs. There are going to be so many good jobs with the Green New Deal, building windmills and solar collectors, retrofitting all the houses in this country, for example, laying a new energy grid. There's tens of millions of jobs waiting to be unleashed, and that's the other thing that has gotten me mobilized. A Green New Deal is a framework for how to take ourselves into the future in a way that's sustainable and equitable. So that just gives you such hope, because if we do it right, it's going to be a win-win for everyone. And that has to be the case, or it won't work, because to make this work, everybody's going to have to be involved. And in order for everybody to be involved, they have to see something in it for themselves, and that's what a Green New Deal does. PM: Jane, you, as always — (Applause) as you have done so many times in your life, you have taken risk, and you have stepped up to the front lines. Do you leave this experience with any new learning or a new level of commitment, hope or optimism? JF: Yeah, I am optimistic. People in this country are really scared about the climate crisis, and they want to do something, but nobody has asked them. We just have to ask them. We have to get organized, you know? And we can do that. So I feel very hopeful. I must say that I am going to go back to work on "Grace and Frankie," but part of my heart is going to be with Fire Drill Fridays, and I hope I can continue with that. I just think that we do have to build an army. This coming year is the critical year. What happens is going to be so important. So we have to be sure, especially someone who's healthy, who feels relatively young, who has a platform — we have to use it in every possible way we can. And if I didn't have that, then I would find other little ways that I could do it: talk to my neighbors, talk to my friends, talk to my family, join an organization. That's how, also, as I've said, to stave off depression, is to do something active. PM: Jane, at 81, you are modeling what that can be like for sure, and I think we just recruited a new army. (Applause) Thank you very much, my friend. Stay safe. Thank you for all that you have done for the planet and so much else. JF: Thank you, Pat. PM: Join me in thanking Jane. (Applause)

What is economic value, and who creates it?

{0: 'Mariana Mazzucato is dedicated to changing how policymakers understand the economy -- and how we think about value -- to make it harder for value extractors to pass for value creators.'}

TEDSummit 2019

Value creation. Wealth creation. These are really powerful words. Maybe you think of finance, you think of innovation, you think of creativity. But who are the value creators? If we use that word, we must be implying that some people aren't creating value. Who are they? The couch potatoes? The value extractors? The value destroyers? To answer this question, we actually have to have a proper theory of value. And I'm here as an economist to break it to you that we've kind of lost our way on this question. Now, don't look so surprised. What I mean by that is, we've stopped contesting it. We've stopped actually asking really tough questions about what is the difference between value creation and value extraction, productive and unproductive activities. Now, let me just give you some context here. 2009 was just about a year and a half after one of the biggest financial crises of our time, second only to the 1929 Great Depression, and the CEO of Goldman Sachs said Goldman Sachs workers are the most productive in the world. Productivity and productiveness, for an economist, actually has a lot to do with value. You're producing stuff, you're producing it dynamically and efficiently. You're also producing things that the world needs, wants and buys. Now, how this could have been said just one year after the crisis, which actually had this bank as well as many other banks — I'm just kind of picking on Goldman Sachs here — at the center of the crisis, because they had actually produced some pretty problematic financial products mainly but not only related to mortgages, which saw many thousands of people actually lose their homes. In 2010, in just one month, September, 120,000 people lost their homes through the foreclosures of that crisis. Between 2007 and 2010, 8.8 million people lost their jobs. The bank also had to then be bailed out by the US taxpayer for the sum of 10 billion dollars. We didn't hear the taxpayers bragging that they were value creators, but obviously, having bailed out one of the biggest value-creating productive companies, perhaps they should have. What I want to do next is kind of ask ourselves how we lost our way, how it could be, actually, that a statement like that could almost go unnoticed, because it wasn't an after-dinner joke; it was said very seriously. So what I want to do is bring you back 300 years in economic thinking, when, actually, the term was contested. It doesn't mean that they were right or wrong, but you couldn't just call yourself a value creator, a wealth creator. There was a lot of debate within the economics profession. And what I want to argue is, we've kind of lost our way, and that has actually allowed this term, "wealth creation" and "value," to become quite weak and lazy and also easily captured. OK? So let's start — I hate to break it to you — 300 years ago. Now, what was interesting 300 years ago is the society was still an agricultural type of society. So it's not surprising that the economists of the time, who were called the Physiocrats, actually put the center of their attention to farm labor. When they said, "Where does value come from?" they looked at farming. And they produced what I think was probably the world's first spreadsheet, called the "Tableau Economique," and this was done by François Quesnay, one of the leaders of this movement. And it was very interesting, because they didn't just say, "Farming is the source of value." They then really worried about what was happening to that value when it was produced. What the Tableau Economique does — and I've tried to make it a bit simpler here for you — is it broke down the classes in society into three. The farmers, creating value, were called the "productive class." Then others who were just moving some of this value around but it was useful, it was necessary, these were the merchants; they were called the "proprietors." And then there was another class that was simply charging the farmers a fee for an existing asset, the land, and they called them the "sterile class." Now, this is a really heavy-hitting word if you think what it means: that if too much of the resources are going to the landlords, you're actually putting the reproduction potential of the system at risk. And so all these little arrows there were their way of simulating — again, spreadsheets and simulators, these guys were really using big data — they were simulating what would actually happen under different scenarios if the wealth actually wasn't reinvested back into production to make that land more productive and was actually being siphoned out in different ways, or even if the proprietors were getting too much. And what later happened in the 1800s, and this was no longer the Agricultural Revolution but the Industrial Revolution, is that the classical economists, and these were Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, the revolutionary, also asked the question "What is value?" But it's not surprising that because they were actually living through an industrial era with the rise of machines and factories, they said it was industrial labor. So they had a labor theory of value. But again, their focus was reproduction, this real worry of what was happening to the value that was created if it was getting siphoned out. And in "The Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith had this really great example of the pin factory where he said if you only have one person making every bit of the pin, at most you can make one pin a day. But if you actually invest in factory production and the division of labor, new thinking — today, we would use the word "organizational innovation" — then you could increase the productivity and the growth and the wealth of nations. So he showed that 10 specialized workers who had been invested in, in their human capital, could produce 4,800 pins a day, as opposed to just one by an unspecialized worker. And he and his fellow classical economists also broke down activities into productive and unproductive ones. (Laughter) And the unproductive ones weren't — I think you're laughing because most of you are on that list, aren't you? (Laughter) Lawyers! I think he was right about the lawyers. Definitely not the professors, the letters of all kind people. So lawyers, professors, shopkeepers, musicians. He obviously hated the opera. He must have seen the worst performance of his life the night before writing this book. There's at least three professions up there that have to do with the opera. But this wasn't an exercise of saying, "Don't do these things." It was just, "What's going to happen if we actually end up allowing some parts of the economy to get too large without really thinking about how to increase the productivity of the source of the value that they thought was key, which was industrial labor. And again, don't ask yourself is this right or is this wrong, it was just very contested. By making these lists, it actually forced them also to ask interesting questions. And their focus, as the focus of the Physiocrats, was, in fact, on these objective conditions of production. They also looked, for example, at the class struggle. Their understanding of wages had to do with the objective, if you want, power relationships, the bargaining power of capital and labor. But again, factories, machines, division of labor, agricultural land and what was happening to it. So the big revolution that then happened — and this, by the way, is not often taught in economics classes — the big revolution that happened with the current system of economic thinking that we have, which is called "neoclassical economics," was that the logic completely changed. It changed in two ways. It changed from this focus on objective conditions to subjective ones. Let me explain what I mean by that. Objective, in the way I just said. Subjective, in the sense that all the attention went to how individuals of different sorts make their decisions. OK, so workers are maximizing their choices of leisure versus work. Consumers are maximizing their so-called utility, which is a proxy for happiness, and firms are maximizing their profits. And the idea behind this was that then we can aggregate this up, and we see what that turns into, which are these nice, fancy supply-and-demand curves which produce a price, an equilibrium price. It's an equilibrium price, because we also added to it a lot of Newtonian physics equations where centers of gravity are very much part of the organizing principle. But the second point here is that that equilibrium price, or prices, reveal value. So the revolution here is a change from objective to subjective, but also the logic is no longer one of what is value, how is it being determined, what is the reproductive potential of the economy, which then leads to a theory of price but rather the reverse: a theory of price and exchange which reveals value. Now, this is a huge change. And it's not just an academic exercise, as fascinating as that might be. It affects how we measure growth. It affects how we steer economies to produce more of some activities, less of others, how we also remunerate some activities more than others. And it also just kind of makes you think, you know, are you happy to get out of bed if you're a value creator or not, and how is the price system itself if you aren't determining that? I mentioned it affects how we think about output. If we only include, for example, in GDP, those activities that have prices, all sorts of really weird things happen. Feminist economists and environmental economists have actually written about this quite a bit. Let me give you some examples. If you marry your babysitter, GDP will go down, so do not do it. Do not be tempted to do this, OK? Because an activity that perhaps was before being paid for is still being done but is no longer paid. (Laughter) If you pollute, GDP goes up. Still don't do it, but if you do it, you'll help the economy. Why? Because we have to actually pay someone to clean it. Now, what's also really interesting is what happened to finance in the financial sector in GDP. This also, by the way, is something I'm always surprised that many economists don't know. Up until 1970, most of the financial sector was not even included in GDP. It was kind of indirectly, perhaps not knowingly, still being seen through the eyes of the Physiocrats as just kind of moving stuff around, not actually producing anything new. So only those activities that had an explicit price were included. For example, if you went to get a mortgage, you were charged a fee. That went into GDP and the national income and product accounting. But, for example, net interest payments didn't, the difference between what banks were earning in interest if they gave you a loan and what they were paying out for a deposit. That wasn't being included. And so the people doing the accounting started to look at some data, which started to show that the size of finance and these net interest payments were actually growing substantially. And they called this the "banking problem." These were some people working inside, actually, the United Nations in a group called the Systems of National [Accounts], SNA. They called it the "banking problem," like, "Oh my God, this thing is huge, and we're not even including it." So instead of stopping and actually making that Tableau Economique or asking some of these fundamental questions that also the classicals were asking about what is actually happening, the division of labor between different types of activities in the economy, they simply gave these net interest payments a name. So the commercial banks, they called this "financial intermediation." That went into the NIPA accounts. And the investment banks were called the "risk-taking activities," and that went in. In case I haven't explained this properly, that red line is showing how much quicker financial intermediation as a whole was growing compared to the rest of the economy, the blue line, industry. And so this was quite extraordinary, because what actually happened, and what we know today, and there's different people writing about this, this data here is from the Bank of England, is that lots of what finance was actually doing from the 1970s and '80s on was basically financing itself: finance financing finance. And what I mean by that is finance, insurance and real estate. In fact, in the UK, something like between 10 and 20 percent of finance finds its way into the real economy, into industry, say, into the energy sector, into pharmaceuticals, into the IT sector, but most of it goes back into that acronym, FIRE: finance, insurance and real estate. It's very conveniently called FIRE. Now, this is interesting because, in fact, it's not to say that finance is good or bad, but the degree to which, by just having to give it a name, because it actually had an income that was being generated, as opposed to pausing and asking, "What is it actually doing?" — that was a missed opportunity. Similarly, in the real economy, in industry itself, what was happening? And this real focus on prices and also share prices has created a huge problem of reinvestment, again, this real attention that both the Physiocrats and the classicals had to the degree to which the value that was being generated in the economy was in fact being reinvested back in. And so what we have today is an ultrafinancialized industrial sector where, increasingly, a share of the profits and the net income are not actually going back into production, into human capital training, into research and development but just being siphoned out in terms of buying back your own shares, which boosts stock options, which is, in fact, the way that many executives are getting paid. And, you know, some share buybacks is absolutely fine, but this system is completely out of whack. These numbers that I'm showing you here show that in the last 10 years, 466 of the S and P 500 companies have spent over four trillion on just buying back their shares. And what you see then if you aggregate this up at the macroeconomic level, so if we look at aggregate business investment, which is a percentage of GDP, you also see this falling level of business investment. And this is a problem. This, by the way, is a huge problem for skills and job creation. You might have heard there's lots of attention these days to, "Are the robots taking our jobs?" Well, mechanization has for centuries, actually, taken jobs, but as long as profits were being reinvested back into production, then it didn't matter: new jobs appeared. But this lack of reinvestment is, in fact, very dangerous. Similarly, in the pharmaceutical industry, for example, how prices are set, it's quite interesting how it doesn't look at these objective conditions of the collective way in which value is created in the economy. So in the sector where you have lots of different actors — public, private, of course, but also third-sector organizations — creating value, the way we actually measure value in this sector is through the price system itself. Prices reveal value. So when, recently, the price of an antibiotic went up by 400 percent overnight, and the CEO was asked, "How can you do this? People actually need that antibiotic. That's unfair." He said, "Well, we have a moral imperative to allow prices to go what the market will bear," completely dismissing the fact that in the US, for example, the National Institutes of Health spent over 30 billion a year on the medical research that actually leads to these drugs. So, again, a lack of attention to those objective conditions and just allowing the price system itself to reveal the value. Now, this is not just an academic exercise, as interesting as it may be. All this really matters [for] how we measure output, to how we steer the economy, to whether you feel that you're productive, to which sectors we end up helping, supporting and also making people feel proud to be part of. In fact, going back to that quote, it's not surprising that Blankfein could say that. He was right. In the way that we actually measure production, productivity and value in the economy, of course Goldman Sachs workers are the most productive. They are in fact earning the most. The price of their labor is revealing their value. But this becomes tautological, of course. And so there's a real need to rethink. We need to rethink how we're measuring output, and in fact there's some amazing experiments worldwide. In New Zealand, for example, they now have a gross national happiness indicator. In Bhutan, also, they're thinking about happiness and well-being indicators. But the problem is that we can't just be adding things in. We do have to pause, and I think this should be a moment for pause, given that we see so little has actually changed since the financial crisis, to make sure that we are not also confusing value extraction with value creation, so looking at what's included, not just adding more, to make sure that we're not, for example, confusing rents with profits. Rents for the classicals was about unearned income. Today, rents, when they're talked about in economics, is just an imperfection towards a competitive price that could be competed away if you take away some asymmetries. Second, we of course can steer activities into what the classicals called the "production boundary." This should not be an us-versus-them, big, bad finance versus good, other sectors. We could reform finance. There was a real lost opportunity in some ways after the crisis. We could have had the financial transaction tax, which would have rewarded long-termism over short-termism, but we didn't decide to do that globally. We can. We can change our minds. We can also set up new types of institutions. There's different types of, for example, public financial institutions worldwide that are actually providing that patient, long-term, committed finance that helps small firms grow, that help infrastructure and innovation happen. But this shouldn't just be about output. This shouldn't just be about the rate of output. We should also as a society pause and ask: What value are we even creating? And I just want to end with the fact that this week we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing. This required the public sector, the private sector, to invest and innovate in all sorts of ways, not just around aeronautics. It included investment in areas like nutrition and materials. There were lots of actual mistakes that were done along the way. In fact, what government did was it used its full power of procurement, for example, to fuel those bottom-up solutions, of which some failed. But are failures part of value creation? Or are they just mistakes? Or how do we actually also nurture the experimentation, the trial and error and error and error? Bell Labs, which was the R and D laboratory of AT and T, actually came from an era where government was quite courageous. It actually asked AT and T that in order to maintain its monopoly status, it had to reinvest its profits back into the real economy, innovation and innovation beyond telecoms. That was the history, the early history of Bell Labs. So how we can get these new conditions around reinvestment to collectively invest in new types of value directed at some of the biggest challenges of our time, like climate change? This is a key question. But we should also ask ourselves, had there been a net present value calculation or a cost-benefit analysis done about whether or not to even try to go to the Moon and back again in a generation, we probably wouldn't have started. So thank God, because I'm an economist, and I can tell you, value is not just price. Thank you. (Applause)

Hacking bacteria to fight cancer

{0: 'Tal Danino explores the emerging frontier of combining biology and engineering (and art). He is a 2015 TED Fellow.'}

TED-Ed

In 1884, a patient’s luck seemed to go from bad to worse. This patient had a rapidly growing cancer in his neck, and then came down with an unrelated bacterial skin infection. But soon, something unexpected happened: as he recovered from the infection, the cancer also began to recede. When a physician named William Coley tracked the patient down 7 years later, no visible signs of the cancer remained. Coley believed something remarkable was happening: that the bacterial infection had stimulated the patient’s immune system to fight off the cancer. Coley’s fortunate discovery led him to pioneer the intentional injection of bacteria to successfully treat cancer. Over a century later, synthetic biologists have found an even better way to use these once unlikely allies— by programming them to safely deliver drugs directly to tumors. Cancer occurs when normal functions of cells are altered, causing them to rapidly multiply and form growths called tumors. Treatments like radiation, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy attempt to kill malignant cells, but can affect the entire body and disrupt healthy tissues in the process. However, some bacteria like E. coli have the unique advantage of being able to selectively grow inside tumors. In fact, the core of a tumor forms an ideal environment where they can safely multiply, hidden from immune cells. Instead of causing infection, bacteria can be reprogrammed to carry cancer-fighting drugs, acting as Trojan Horses that target the tumor from within. This idea of programming bacteria to sense and respond in novel ways is a major focus of a field called Synthetic Biology. But how can bacteria be programmed? The key lies in manipulating their DNA. By inserting particular genetic sequences into bacteria, they can be instructed to synthesize different molecules, including those that disrupt cancer growth. They can also be made to behave in very specific ways with the help of biological circuits. These program different behaviors depending on the presence, absence, or combination of certain factors. For example, tumors have low oxygen and pH levels and over-produce specific molecules. Synthetic biologists can program bacteria to sense those conditions, and by doing so, respond to tumors while avoiding healthy tissue. One type of biological circuit, known as a synchronized lysis circuit, or SLC, allows bacteria to not only deliver medicine, but to do so on a set schedule. First, to avoid harming healthy tissue, production of anti-cancer drugs begins as bacteria grow, which only happens within the tumor itself. Next, after they’ve produced the drugs, a kill-switch causes the bacteria to burst when they reach a critical population threshold. This both releases the medicine and decreases the bacteria’s population. However, a certain percentage of the bacteria remain alive to replenish the colony. Eventually their numbers grow large enough to trigger the kill switch again, and the cycle continues. This circuit can be fine-tuned to deliver drugs on whatever periodic schedule is best to fight the cancer. This approach has proven promising in scientific trials using mice. Not only were scientists able to successfully eliminate lymphoma tumors injected with bacteria, but the injection also stimulated the immune system, priming immune cells to identify and attack untreated lymphomas elsewhere in the mouse. Unlike many other therapies, bacteria don’t target a specific type of cancer, but rather the general characteristics shared by all solid tumors. Nor are programmable bacteria limited to simply fighting cancer. Instead, they can serve as sophisticated sensors that monitor sites of future disease. Safe probiotic bacteria could perhaps lie dormant within our guts, where they’d detect, prevent, and treat disorders before they have the chance to cause symptoms. Advances in technology have created excitement around a future of personalized medicine driven by mechanical nanobots. But thanks to billions of years of evolution we may already have a starting point in the unexpectedly biological form of bacteria. Add synthetic biology to the mix, and who knows what might soon be possible.

A guide to collaborative leadership

{0: 'Lorna Davis inspires, coaches and provokes leaders to use business as a force for good.'}

TED@BCG Mumbai

It was a fantastic new pink suit with big buttons and shoulder pads. It was 1997, and I was the new boss of Griffin's Foods, an iconic cookie and snacks company in New Zealand. It was my first time as the leader of a company, and I was on the stage to give a big speech about our ambitious new goals. I knew exactly what my call to action was, which was "One in every four times a Kiwi eats a snack, it will be one of ours." I emphasized that we knew how to measure our results and that our future was in our control. Embarrassingly enough, I finished up with "If not this, what? If not us, who? And if not now, when?" I got this huge round of applause and I was really, really pleased with myself. I wanted so much to be a good leader. I wanted to be followed by a devoted team, I wanted to be right. In short, I wanted to be a hero. A hero selling chips and biscuits in a pink suit. (Laughter) What happened after that speech? Nothing. All of that applause did not lead to action. Nothing changed. Not because they didn't like me or the message. The problem was that no one knew what they were expected to do. And most importantly, they didn't know that I needed them. Now, you may think that this is a classic hero speech, where I'm going to tell you that I overcame that obstacle and triumphed. Actually, I'm going to tell you that in a world as complex and interconnected as the one we live in, the idea that one person has the answer is ludicrous. It's not only ineffective, it's dangerous, because it leads us to believe that it's been solved by that hero, and we have no role. We don't need heroes. We need radical interdependence, which is just another way of saying we need each other. Even though other people can be really difficult, sometimes. I spent decades trying to work out how to be a good leader. I've lived in seven countries and five continents. And in recent years, I've spent a lot of time with the B Corp community, originally as a corporate participant and more recently as an ambassador. Now, B Corps are a group of companies who believe in business as a force for good. There's a tough certification with about 250 questions about your social and environmental performance. You must legally declare your intention to serve the community as well as your shareholders and you must sign the declaration of interdependence. Now one of the things that inspires me the most about the companies in this movement is that they see themselves as part of a whole system. It's sort of as if they imagine themselves on a big, flowing river of activity, where, if they are, for example, soft drinks manufacturers, they understand that upstream from them, there's water and sugar, and farmers that grow that sugar, and plastic and metal and glass, all of which flows into this thing that we call a company which has financial results. And the flowing continues with consequences. Some of them intended, like refreshment and hydration, and some unintended, like garbage and obesity. Spending time with leaders in this space has led me to see that true collaboration is possible, but it's subtle and it's complex. And the leaders in this space are doing a few things very differently from traditional heroic leaders. They set goals differently, they announce those goals differently and they have a very different relationship with other people. Let's begin with the first difference. A hero sets a goal that can be individually delivered and neatly measured. You can recognize a heroic goal — they use terms like "revenue" and "market share" and are often competitive. I mean, remember pink-suit day? Interdependent leaders, on the other hand, start with a goal that's really important, but is actually impossible to achieve by one company or one person alone. I want to give you an example from the clothing industry, which produces 92 million tons of waste a year. Patagonia and Eileen Fisher are clothing manufacturers, both of them B Corps, both of them deeply committed to reducing waste. They don't see that their responsibility ends when a customer buys their clothes. Patagonia encourages you not to buy new clothes from them, and will repair your old clothes for free. Eileen Fisher will pay you when you bring back your clothes, and either sell them on or turn them into other clothes. While these two companies are competitive in some ways, they work together and with others in the industry to solve shared problems. They take responsibility for things that happen upstream as well. Around the world, there are around 300 million people who work from home in this industry, most of them women, many of them in very difficult circumstances with poor lighting, sewing on buttons and doing detailed stitching. Until 2014, there was no protection for these workers. A group of companies got together with a not-for-profit called Nest to create a set of standards that's now been adopted by the whole industry. Once you've seen problems like this, you can't unsee them, so you have to ask others to help you to solve them. These folks take interdependence as a given, and said to me, "We don't compete on human rights." The second big difference for collaborators is their willingness to declare their goals before they have a plan. Now the hero only reveals their carefully crafted goal when the path to achieve it is clear. In fact, the role of the hero announcement is to set the stage for the big win. Hero announcements are full of triumph. Interdependent leaders, on the other hand, want other people to help them, so their announcements are often an invitation for co-creation, and sometimes, they're a call for help. At the North American division of the French food company Danone, I announced that we wanted to become a B Corp. And unlike pink-suit day, I had no plan to get there. I remember the day really clearly. Everybody in the room gasped, because they knew we didn't have a plan. But they also knew that we had seen our role in the river that is the food system, and we wanted to make a change. Making that declaration without a plan meant that so many young people in our company stepped up to help us, and B Corps around us all rallied around. And the day we became a B Corp wasn't just a self-congratulatory moment of a hero company — it was more like a community celebration. Now when you gave goals that you can't achieve alone, and you've told everyone about them, inevitably, you'll end up at the third big difference, which is how you see other people, inside your company and outside. Heroes see everyone as a competitor or a follower. Heroes don't want input, because they want to control everything because they want the credit. And you can see this in a typical hero meeting. Heroes like making speeches. People lean back in their chairs, maybe impressed but not engaged. Interdependent leaders, on the other hand, understand that they need other people. They know that meetings are not just mindless calendar fillers. These are the most precious things you have. It's where people collaborate and communicate and share ideas. People lean forward in meetings like this, wondering where they might fit in. When I was in Shanghai in China, where I lived for six years, running the Kraft Foods business, selling, amongst other things, Oreo cookies, we had a problem with hero culture. We kept on launching new products that failed. And we would find out afterwards that everyone in the company knew they were going to fail, they just didn't feel free to tell us. So we changed the way we ran our innovation and planning meetings in two important ways. First of all, language went back to Chinese. Because even though everyone spoke great English, when I was in the room and the meeting was in English, they focused on me. And I was the foreigner, and I was the boss and I apparently had that intimidating hero look. The second thing is we asked every single person in the meeting their opinion. And our understanding of the subtleties of the differences between American taste and Chinese taste, in this case, really improved, and our new product success rate radically turned around and we launched a lot of winners, including the now famous green-tea-flavored Oreos. Hero culture sneaks in everywhere. At Danone, we had a lot of great stuff happening in one part of the world, and we wanted it to spread to another part of the world. But when you put a person in business gear up in front of a group of people with PowerPoint, they have the urge to become sort of heroic. And they make everything look super shiny and they don't tell the truth. And it's not compelling and it's not even interesting. So, we changed it and we created these full-day marketplaces, kind of like a big bazaar. And everybody was dressed up in costume, some people a little, some people a lot. And sellers had to man their stalls and sell their ideas as persuasively as possible, and people who were convinced bought them with fake check books. Creating just a bit of silliness with the environment and a hat or a scarf drops people's guard and causes ideas to spread like wildfire. There's no recipe here, but time together has to be carefully curated and created so that people know that their time is valuable and important, and they can bring their best selves to the table. Hero culture is present right here in TED. This whole process makes it look like I think I'm a hero. So just in case there's any doubt about the point that I'm trying to make, I want to apply these ideas in an area in which I have zero credibility and zero experience. I'm originally South African, and I'm deeply passionate about wildlife conservation, most particularly rhinos. Those majestic creatures with big horns. Every day, three rhinos are killed, because there are people who think that those horns are valuable, even though they're just made of the same stuff as hair and fingernails. It breaks my heart. Like all good recovering heroes, I did everything I could to reduce this goal to something that I could do by myself. But clearly, stopping rhino poaching is a goal way too big for me. So I'm immediately in interdependence land. I'm declaring my goal on this stage. I found other people as passionate as I am and I've asked if I could join them. And after today, there may be more. And we're now in the complex but inspiring process of learning how to work together. My dream is that one day, someone will stand on this stage and tell you how radical interdependence saved my beloved rhinos. Why does hero culture persist, and why don't we work together more? Well, I don't know why everyone else does it, but I can tell you why I did it. Interdependence is a lot harder than being a hero. It requires us to be open and transparent and vulnerable, and that's not what traditional leaders have been trained to do. I thought being a hero would keep me safe. I thought that in the elevation and separation that comes from heroic leadership, that I would be untouchable. This is an illusion. The joy and success that comes from interdependence and vulnerability is worth the effort and the risk. And if we're going to solve the challenges that the world is facing today, we have no alternative, so we had better start getting good at it. Thank you. (Applause)

Why should you read "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding?

TED-Ed

William Golding was losing his faith in humanity. Serving aboard a British destroyer in World War II, the philosophy teacher turned Royal Navy lieutenant was constantly confronted by the atrocities of his fellow man. And when he returned to England to find Cold War superpowers threatening one another with nuclear annihilation, he was forced to interrogate the very roots of human nature. These musings on the inevitability of violence would inspire his first and most famous novel: "Lord of the Flies." After being rejected by 21 publishers, the novel was finally published in 1954. It takes its title from Beelzebub, a demon associated with pride and war— two themes very much at the heart of Golding’s book. The novel was a bleak satire of a classic island adventure story, a popular genre where young boys get shipwrecked in exotic locations. The protagonists in these stories are able to master nature while evading the dangers posed by their new environments. The genre also endorsed the problematic colonialist narrative found in many British works at the time, in which the boys teach the island’s native inhabitants their allegedly superior British values. Golding’s satire even goes so far as to explicitly use the setting and character names from R.M. Ballantyne’s "Coral Island"— one of the most beloved island adventure novels. But while Ballantyne’s book promised readers "pleasure... profit... and unbounded amusement,” Golding’s had darker things in store. "Lord of the Flies" opens with the boys already on the island, but snippets of conversation hint at their terrifying journey— their plane had been shot down in the midst of an unspecified nuclear war. The boys, ranging in age from 6 to 13, are strangers to each other. All except for a choir, clad in black uniforms and led by a boy named Jack. Just as in Ballantyne’s "Coral Island," the boy’s new home appears to be a paradise— with fresh water, shelter, and abundant food sources. But even from the novel’s opening pages, a macabre darkness hangs over this seemingly tranquil situation. The boys’ shadows are compared to “black, bat-like creatures” while the choir itself first appears as “something dark... fumbling along” the beach. Within hours of their arrival, the boys are already trading terrifying rumors of a vicious “beastie” lurking in the woods. From these ominous beginnings, Golding’s narrative reveals how quickly cooperation unravels without the presence of an adult authority. Initially, the survivors try to establish some sense of order. A boy named Ralph blows into a conch shell to assemble the group, and delegate tasks. But as Jack vies for leadership with Ralph, the group splinters and the boys submit to their darker urges. The mob of children soon forgets their plans for rescue, silences the few voices of reason, and blindly follows Jack to the edge of the island, and the edge of sanity. The novel’s universal themes of morality, civility, and society have made it a literary classic, satirizing both conventions of its time and long held beliefs about humanity. While island adventure stories often support colonialism, "Lord of the Flies" turns this trope on its head. Rather than cruelly casting native populations as stereotypical savages, Golding transforms his angelic British schoolboys into savage caricatures. And as the boys fight their own battle on the island, the far more destructive war that brought them there continues off the page. Even if the boys were to be rescued from themselves, what kind of world would they be returning to? With so few references to anchor the characters in a specific place or period, the novel feels truly timeless— an examination of human nature at its most bare. And though not all readers may agree with Golding’s grim view, "Lord of the Flies" is unsettling enough to challenge even the most determined optimist.

To help solve global problems, look to developing countries

{0: 'Bright Simons is a technology thinker, social innovator and "ideas activist."'}

We the Future

I am an ideas activist. That means I fight for ideas I believe in to have their place in the sun, regardless of which side of the equator they were born. As well I should. I myself am from that part of the world often euphemistically referred to as either "the Global South" or "the developing world." But let's be blunt about it: when we say those words, what we really mean is the poor world — those corners of the world with ready-made containers for the hand-me-down ideas of other places and other people. But I'm here to depart a little bit from the script and to try and convince you that these places are actually alive and bubbling with ideas. My real issue is: Where do I even start? So maybe Egypt, Alexandria, where we meet Rizwan. When he walks outside his souk, walks into a pharmacy for heart medicine that can prevent the blood in his arteries from clotting, he confronts the fact that, despite a growing epidemic that currently accounts for 82 percent of all deaths in Egypt, it is the medicines that can address these conditions that counterfeiters, ever the evil geniuses they are, have decided to target. Counterfeiters making knockoff medicines. Luckily for Rizwan, my team and I, working in partnership with the largest pharmaceutical company in Africa, have placed unique codes — think of them like one-time passwords — on each pack of the best-selling heart medicine in Egypt. So when Rizwan buys heart medicine, he can key in these one-time passwords to a toll-free short code that we've set up on all the telecom companies in Egypt for free. He gets a message — call it the message of life — which reassures him that this medicine is not one of the 12 percent of all medicines in Egypt that are counterfeits. From the gorgeous banks of the Nile, we glide into the beautiful Rift Valley of Kenya. In Narok Town, we meet Ole Lenku, salt-of-the-earth fellow. When he walks into an agrodealer's shop, all he wants is certified and proper cabbage seeds that, if he were to plant them, will yield a harvest rich enough that he can pay for the school fees of his children. That's all he wants. Unfortunately, by the reckoning of most international organizations, 40 percent of all the seeds sold in Eastern and Southern Africa are of questionable quality, sometimes outrightly fake. Luckily for Ole, once again, our team has been at work, and, working with the leading agriculture regulator in Kenya, we've digitized the entire certification process for seeds in that country, every seed — millet, sorghum, maize — such that when Ole Lenku keys in a code on a packet of millet, he's able to retrieve a digital certificate that assures him that the seed is properly certified. From Kenya, we head to Noida in India, where the irrepressible Ambika is holding on very fast to her dream of becoming an elite athlete, safe in the knowledge that because of our ingredients rating technology, she's not going to ingest something accidentally, which will mess up her doping tests and kick her out of the sports she loves. Finally, we alight in Ghana, my own home country, where another problem needs addressing — the problem of under-vaccination or poor-quality vaccination. You see, when you put some vaccines into the bloodstream of an infant, you are giving them a lifetime insurance against dangerous diseases that can cripple them or kill them. Sometimes, this is for a lifetime. The problem is that vaccines are delicate organisms really, and they need to be stored between two degrees and eight degrees. And if you don't do that, they lose their potency, and they no longer confer the immunity the child deserves. Working with computer vision scientists, we've converted simple markers on the vials of vaccines into what you might regard as crude thermometers. So then, these patterns change slowly over time in response to temperature until they leave a distinct pattern on the surface of the vaccine, such that a nurse, with a scan of the phone, can detect if the vaccine was stored properly in the right temperature and therefore is still good for use before administering this to the child — literally securing the next generation. These are some of the solutions at work saving lives, redeeming societies, in these parts of the world. But I would remind you that there are powerful ideas behind them, and I'll recap a few. One, that social trust is not the same as interpersonal trust. Two, that the division between consumption and regulation in an increasingly interdependent world is no longer viable. And three, that decentralized autonomy, regardless of what our blockchain enthusiasts in the West — whom I respect a lot — say, are not as important as reinforcing social accountability feedback loops. These are some of the ideas. Now, every time I go somewhere and I give this speech and I make these comments and I provide these examples, people say, "If these ideas are so damn brilliant, why aren't they everywhere? I've never heard of them." I want to assure you, the reason why you have not heard of these ideas is exactly the point I made in the beginning. And that is that there are parts of the world whose good ideas simply don't scale because of the latitude on which they were born. I call that "mental latitude imperialism." (Laughter) That really is the reason. But you may counter and say, "Well, maybe it's an important problem, but it's sort of an obscure problem in parts of the world. Why do you want to globalize such problems? I mean, they are better local." What if, in response, I told you that actually, underlying each of these problems that I've described is a fundamental issue of the breakdown of trust in markets and institutions, and that there's nothing more global, more universal, closer to you and I than the problem of trust. For example, a quarter of all the seafood marketed in the US is falsely labeled. So when you buy a tuna or salmon sandwich in Manhattan, you are eating something that could be banned for being toxic in Japan. Literally. Most of you have heard of a time when horsemeat was masquerading as beef in burger patties in Europe? You have. What you don't know is that a good chunk of these fake meat patties were also contaminated with cadmium, which can damage your kidneys. This was Europe. Many of you are aware of plane crashes and you worry about plane crashes, because every now and then, one of them intrudes into your consciousness. But I bet you don't know that a single investigation uncovered one million counterfeit incidents in the aeronautical supply chain in the US. So this is a global problem, full stop. It's a global problem. The only reason we are not addressing it with the urgency it deserves is that the best solutions, the most advanced solutions, the most progressive solutions, are, unfortunately, in parts of the world where solutions don't scale. And that is why it is not surprising that attempts to create this same verification models for pharmaceuticals are now a decade behind in the USA and Europe, while it's already available in Nigeria. A decade, and costing a hundred times more. And that is why, when you walk into a Walgreens in New York, you cannot check the source of your medicine, but you can in Maiduguri in Northern Nigeria. That is the reality. (Applause) That is the reality. (Applause) So we go back to the issue of ideas. Remember, solutions are merely packaged ideas, so it is the ideas that are most important. In a world where we marginalize the ideas of the Global South, we cannot create globally inclusive problem-solving models. Now, you might say, "Well, that's bad, but in such a world where we have so many other problems, do we need another cause?" I say yes, we need another cause. Actually, that cause will surprise you: the cause of intellectual justice. You say, "What? Intellectual justice? In a world of human rights abuses?" And I explain this way: all the solutions to the other problems that affect us and confront us need solutions. So you need the best ideas to address them. And that is why today I ask you, can we all give it one time for intellectual justice? (Applause)

How we can turn the tide on climate

{0: 'After a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas worth spreading.', 1: 'Christiana Figueres is an internationally recognized leader on global climate change.'}

Countdown

[Citizens of the world] [We face a global crisis of unprecedented scale] [Please stand by for a message from ... ] [the Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres] The climate emergency is the defining crisis of our time. We are in a race against time, and we are losing. There is a growing tide of impatience, especially among young people, with global inaction. We need more ambition from all: governments, cities, businesses, investors and people everywhere. So I'm pleased you are launching TED Countdown. Your influence and ideas can help accelerate momentum for a carbon-neutral world by 2050. That is the only way to avert the worst impacts of global heating. We have the tools, the science and the resources. Let us now get into this race with political will and energy. To do anything less will be a betrayal of our entire human family and generations to come. Thank you. Announcer: And now, please welcome one of the architects of the Paris Climate Agreement Christiana Figueres and the head of TED, Chris Anderson. (Applause) Chris Anderson: Welcome, welcome. Something remarkable is going to happen in the next hour. The world's single most alarming challenge, which looks something like this ... is about to go head-to-head with some of the world's most amazing minds and courageous hearts, which look something like you. The extraordinary audience we have here in New York and around the world. Christiana, it's quite the crowd we get to hang out with this morning. Christiana Figueres: It sure is, no kidding. It's a good thing that everyone is here together, because actually, this initiative that we're just about to launch needs everyone to participate. And here it is. Countdown. CA: Countdown is a global initiative to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It's seeking bold solutions in five big areas, imagining what could be achieved if different groups broke out of their silos and acted together. Starting today, you can go to countdown.ted.com and sign up to join the Countdown. Early in 2020, we'll be sharing plans on how you can connect with others in your company, your city or your school to engage in this issue. It's all leading up to global gatherings on 10.10.2020. Everyone in the world is invited to participate. CF: And so that's why, although I've been part of many initiatives along the years, I'm really excited about this one. Because Countdown is an invitation to everyone, everyone, to play their part in saving our planet and creating an exciting future. Politicians and citizens, CEOs and their customers, their employees, their investors, old and young, north and south. CA: (Laughs) I see what you did there. (Laughter) But look, our goal is not to plunge in with something new that is competitive with the amazing initiatives already out there. No. It's to identify the best solutions that have already been worked on, to cross-fertilize them, to amplify them and then activate them by bringing together these different groups. CF: And if that happens, we believe there is a way out of the climate crisis. That's what we want to facilitate. But now, Chris, question: Why are you and TED interested in participating and actually activating the climate agenda, when I thought you were all about spreading ideas? CA: Well, indeed, that has been our focused mission for the last 15 years, Ideas Worth Spreading. But last summer, we concluded that the urgency of some issues, and especially climate, demanded that we try to do more than just spread ideas, that we actually try to activate them. Now, we're just a relatively small nonprofit — that would not amount to anything if we fail to bring other people on board. But the amazing thing is that that has happened. Everyone we've spoken to about this has got excited about participating. And one of the key moments, frankly, was when you came on board, Christiana. I mean, you were key to the Paris Agreement. And the world was stunned at the consensus that emerged there. What was the key to creating that consensus? CF: I would say it was to really challenge and change people's assumption about what is possible if we set a shared intention and then collectively pursue it and achieve it. So our mantra then, and continues to be: "Impossible is not a fact, it's an attitude." In fact, only an attitude, and that is something we can change. CA: Well, that mantra, certainly, we're going to have to hold onto in the months ahead, because the scientific consensus is actually worsening. For a quick report from the front lines, here's the head of the thousands of scientists who make up the IPCC, Dr. Hoesung Lee. (Video) Hoesung Lee: We recently released three special reports that show the damage and risks of past and future climate change. They also show that stabilizing climate would imply a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the near term. Society will have to go through unprecedented changes to meet this goal. Even limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will bring more extreme weather, rising sea levels and water shortages in some regions, and threats to food security and biodiversity. Higher temperature will bring more of these damages, threatening lives and livelihoods of millions of people all around the world. CA: We're lucky to have with us another world-leading scientist, Johan Rockström here. He was responsible for creating the Planetary Boundaries framework. Johan, how serious is our situation? (Video) Johan Rockström: Last week, we released in "Nature" the 10-year update of the risk of crossing tipping points, irreversible tipping points, in the Earth system. We know 15 such tipping points, including the Greenland and West Antarctic ice shelf, and the permafrost in the Siberian tundra, for example, and we today have observational evidence, I mean, empirical evidence, that nine of the 15 have woken up and are on the move. We haven't crossed the tipping point yet, the window is still open, but they are warning us that now is the time to truly move, because the moment we cross them, like, for example, approaching a tipping point in the Amazon rain forest, we would risk losing the battle, because the planet will be taking over its self-reinforced warming. So that is why this initiative is so incredibly important. Let's go. CA: Well said. (Applause) So, both are very clear there that this agenda of cutting emissions is absolutely crucial. How has that been going? CF: Not very well, because despite what we know, despite everything that science has told us, despite everything that we have done, including adopting the Paris Agreement, we've actually been increasing greenhouse gases consistently over the past few decades, to the point where we're now at 55 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent that we are collectively, as humanity, emitting every year. And as we have heard, we have one path, there is one path that we have to follow, and that is: Start now to decrease emissions, instead of going up, go down — reverse the trend, bend the curve. Reduce emissions, starting in 2020, to the point where we will be at one half the current level of emissions by 2030, and then continue decreasing them, until we are at net zero by 2050. It's the only path that we can accept. CA: How do you even begin to start tackling a goal as daunting as that? CF: Well, we could starting by breaking the simple, yet daunting, challenge into its constituent pieces, five main areas. CA: And so these five together are actually all huge, and if we can find compelling solutions in each of them, they would actually add up to an action plan that matches the scale of the problem. Well, here are the five. CF: Power. How rapidly can we move to 100 percent clean energy? CA: The built environment. How can we re-engineer the stuff that surrounds us? CF: Transport. How do we transform the ways we move — ourselves and goods? CA: Food. How can we spark a worldwide shift to healthier food systems? CF: And certainly, nature. How extensively can we re-green the earth? Now, it's worth noting that the answers to these questions and the measures that we would undertake don't just reduce net emissions — they do that, certainly, together, to zero — but they also point the way to a future that is much better and genuinely exciting. So, think about cool new forms of transport, clean air, healthier food, beautiful forests and oceans bursting with life. So, you know, solving the climate crisis isn't about sacrificing and settling for a mediocre future, it's about the exact opposite. It's about co-creating a much better future for all of us. CA: So how do we tackle these questions? (Laughter) CA: Let's take this question here and think about this. How extensively can we re-green the earth? I mean, there are obviously many responses to this question, many proposals. It's fundamentally about, "How do we increase the amount of sustainable photosynthesis on planet Earth." Photosynthesis sequesters carbon. There could be proposals around giant kelp forests or seagrass, or about forms of plants that have deeper roots and can sequester across the planet. But suppose a major proposal that came out was about reforestation. A massive, global reforestation campaign. I mean, a single organization, no matter how big, cannot take that on. The key is for everyone to join forces, for governments (with zoning), businesses to invest, investors to do that investing, environmental groups and philanthropists who support them, and just a massive movement among citizens everywhere, transforming their lawns, their cities, their neighborhoods, going on trips together. That is where, suddenly, you can dream about something really big. CF: So can we test that theory? Because we are fortunate to have with us today someone who grew up inside a tree-planting movement, probably the most well-recognized tree-planting movement. And she is the daughter of the Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, and she heads up the Wangari Maathai Foundation today. So can we invite our very dear friend Wanjira Mathai? (Applause) (Video) Wanjira Mathai: Thank you very much, Christiana and Chris, for doing this. Trees have been, indeed, a part of my life for as long as I can remember, but we also know that for centuries, trees and forests have cushioned us against the harsh impacts of climate variation for very many years. In my lifetime, my mother, through the Green Belt Movement, as you mentioned, inspired the planting of 50 million trees and counting through the work of the Green Belt Movement, one organization. But the world now needs us to plant 100 times more trees than we did then. And the only way to do that is for all of us to come together — cities, citizens, governments, companies, environmental organizations — and we must believe, therefore, in the capacity for each of us to be potent agents of change. And that together, we are a force. And I hope you will all join us. (Applause) CF: So together we are a force. I think Wanjira really hits it right there on the head, because it's all about collaborating across a pretty broad spectrum of people. And happily, there are representatives from all of those groups here today. And we will be inviting you toward further engagement. But we wanted today to introduce you to a couple of those people, speaking from their own perspective. So we would like to start with the voice of a politician. We are incredibly honored to have with us today the former prime minister of Bhutan, and I will have you know that Bhutan is the only country in the world that actually absorbs more carbon than what it emits. Our good friend, Tshering Tobgay. (Applause) Tshering Tobgay: My country is typical of the global south, in that we have not caused this climate-change crisis. Indeed, we are blessed with lush forests and many bountiful rivers that have enabled my country, Bhutan, to remain carbon-negative. And yet, climate change threatens to destroy our forests. And to turn those very rivers into terrible dangers for our people, as the Himalayan glaciers melt and threaten both near-term flooding and the longer-term loss of our natural water reserves. So, I'm proud to join this Countdown initiative and work with all of you and with you, and with you, (Laughter) constructively, to find solutions that are both powerful and just. Thank you. (Applause) CA: Thank you. (Applause) CA: Business, of course, has a crucial role to play, and so do those who control the world's vast pools of investment capital. I was pleased to make the acquaintance recently of the chief investment officer of Japan's 1.6-trillion-dollar government pension fund. It's actually the world's largest pension fund. He's willing and interested to come with us on this journey and to bring others with him. So, somewhere is, I believe, Hiro. Hiro Mizuno. And you're live. Welcome, Hiro. (Video) Hiro Mizuno: Great. Thanks, Chris and Christiana, and the staff of TED, for making this possible. As a person in charge of the largest pension fund in the world and responsible for securing pension benefits for multiple generations, it is a hugely important issue, how to manage climate risk. We recently analyzed our global portfolio, how it's aligned with the Paris Agreement. It was diagnosed, our portfolio is on the path for more than three degrees. Far away from the Paris Agreement goals. Our portfolio is not only sizable but also one of the most globally diversified portfolios. So that means, the world is on that path. I'm tired of hearing the same comment repeatedly from our portfolio companies and, obviously, investment professionals: "We are realistic." Sorry, but being "realistic" is no longer an option. We are fully aware of our responsibility as the world's largest asset owner to inspire changes in the capital market. We will be actively engaging with all actors in the capital market to move the needle. I look forward to participating in this crucial dialogue with you all. Thank you. (Applause) CF: I'm sure all of you know that throughout the past 12 to 18 months, what has really been new and powerful and exciting is the amazing voices of so many young people, millions of young people who are out there on the streets, with anger, with outrage, with despair, and also, asking us to do our thing. And they have been inspired by Greta Thunberg but by so many other fantastic young people in almost every country of the world. And today, we are delighted to have four young activists come join us today. (Applause) (Cheers) (Applause) Alexandria Villaseñor: This Friday, I'll have been on climate strike for 52 weeks. That's an entire year. During that time, I found that many people don't know about climate change or how serious the climate crisis is. So I founded Earth Uprising International to teach young people about climate change, because when they know the science and the impacts, they want to take action. Being an activist means making change happen. Jamie Margolin: I became a climate activist because my life depends on it. I'm applying to colleges right now, trying to plan for my future. There will be nothing to look forward to if we don't take urgent action to stop the climate crisis now. I started the youth climate justice movement called Zero Hour back in 2017, because this is zero hour to act on climate change. We have no more time. It became clear to me that our leaders were not going to take real action unless the people stood up and demanded it, so that's exactly what we did. Natalie Sweet: I became a climate-justice activist because if I don't fight for the rights of the people today, and for the people in the future, who will? Xiye Bastida: I became a climate justice activist when I realized that the climate crisis impacts marginalized communities the most, including my town in Mexico. I strike with Fridays for Future every Friday, because our movement is not about gaining momentum but about igniting cultural change. But the fact that thousands of students strike for climate means that we are already implementing climate justice into every aspect of our lives, which is already redefining the world. JM: Over the course of our lifetimes, we've seen the Earth deteriorate at a rapid speed and groups of people traumatized and displaced by an ever-increasing number of natural disasters. In 2030, I'll be 28 years old. AV: I'll be 24 years old. XB: I will be 27. NS: I'll be 26. We want to be able to hand the planet over to our children and our children's children, just like many of you have been able to do. AV: So unless everyone — governments, companies, schools, scientists and citizens — make a united commitment to reversing the damage that we've caused, it will be too late. XB: We are not only asking you to take care of our future, we are also asking you to take care of our past. Indigenous people have been taking care of the Earth for thousands of years, which is why indigenous philosophy is crucial when implementing climate action. JM: This climate crisis can feel like an impossible thing to fix. But it's not. And it can't be, because failure is simply not an option. Failure means losing everything we love and everything that matters. So many of us are already working to save the future of our world, but it can't just be on the next generation to fix. This is too much of a burden to just put on young people's shoulders. It is time for you to go all hands on deck and do everything within your power to save everything before it's too late. Are you with us? Audience: Yes. (Applause and cheers) (Applause) CA: Thank you. Thank you, thank you. And then, of course, there's a crucial role to be played by the world's storytellers, and those with influence on social media platforms. Each of the following has expressed excitement to be part of this project. They've lent us their names and support. We have some of them here today. Thank you so much for being here. And let's hear from one of them, actually. Jimmy Kimmel: Hi, I'm Jimmy Kimmel, and I was asked to explain why I'm passionate about climate change. And the reason I'm passionate about climate change is the same reason people who are drowning are passionate about lifeguards. I care about this planet, because I live on it. I don't want to move to Mars, Mars seems terrible. I want my kids and their kids to be able to live on Earth, with air they can breathe and water they can drink. That's why I care about climate change. And also, I have a crush on Leonardo DiCaprio. (Applause) CF: So with all these people coming together, we have an opportunity to explore a new space of possibility for solutions based on working together, challenging each other and inspiring one another. So in October next year, we will be inviting more or less 1,000 people from different constituencies to meet in Bergen, Norway to align on specific answers to our five big questions. CA: It will certainly be an epic event. But even more significant than what happens in Norway is what happens elsewhere in the world. Because on the final day of that conference, we're planning a major activation of our global TEDx community. TEDx allows initiatives to organize local events, and there are now 4,000 such events annually. Here's what they look like. They take place in more than 200 different countries, generate more than a billion views annually on YouTube. We're expecting to see events in hundreds of cities. We'll be connecting our TEDx organizers with city mayors committed to a clean future for their cities. This is the key to this. It's this connection between the powerful, who usually own the conversation, and millions of people around the world. Because of the zeitgeist shift that's happened in the last year or two, suddenly, ignition can happen here, because there's enough critical groundswell. If we can give people visibility of each other, connection to each other, let's dream a little here, and give each other permission to dream. CF: So our goal here is to build connections with and among all of the other organizations that are working on climate. For example, the Solutions Project is a wonderful initiative founded by Mark Ruffalo and Don Cheadle. And let's hear from some of the leaders that they have supported. CA: Welcome, you're live. (Laughter) (Video) Wahleah Johns: Hi, my name is Wahleah Johns, I'm with Native Renewables, and we are working to provide solar power for tribes throughout the world. We have over 15,000 Native American families that don't have access to electricity, and we are working to provide solar plus battery storage for these families in the United States that don't have access to electricity. And they are located on my reservation, the Navajo Nation. Anna Lappé: Hi, everyone, I am Anna Lappé with Real Food Media, and we work to uplift the stories of farmers and ranchers as a key solution to the climate crisis. The global food system right now is a huge contributor to this crisis, but it doesn't have to be. Farmers and ranchers we really see as on the front lines of being part of solving the crisis. So we try to share the stories of the millions of farmers from Andhra Pradesh, India to the highlands of Oaxaca that are using regenerative agriculture to build healthy, carbon-rich soil, grow good food and foster the kind of resilient communities that we need. Rahwa Ghirmatzion: Hello from PUSH Buffalo — my name is Rahwa — where every day, residents are visioning, planning and designing an equitable, holistic and sacred neighborhood, like where I'm phoning in from, School 77, a renovated vacant school building that has the first 100 percent affordable community solar array in New York state installed by local residents. It's also serving 30 affordable senior apartments and a mix of intergenerational spaces that serves as a community hub, where we're practicing new economy strategies towards a livable planet. CF: Thank you. CA: Bravo. (Applause) CA: It's so great. (Applause) CF: So you see, this is about everyone. It's about cities, it's about grassroots organizations, but it's also, of course, about business. And so we're inviting all companies — underlined "all" — to join this initiative, to engage with your employees on how you can best protect the planet and your future, at the same time. So early next year, we'll be sharing a toolkit that can guide companies toward moving quickly towards science-based targets, which gets them then to net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. CA: So think about this, because as an individual, many individuals feel powerless on this issue. But if you were to team up with others in your company, you might be amazed at how much power you actually have. Almost all emissions come from a company somewhere on the planet. And the thing is, many CEOs today are actually eager to help solve the problem. We just heard this morning from Anand Mahindra, who heads India's biggest business group, that he is personally committed on this issue and wants to be part of this journey with us — he's a supporter of Countdown. CEOs will be able to move much faster if there's a group of employees there to brainstorm with, to support them, to keep that sort of sense of urgency on the topic. Our website will help you connect with others in your company and give you guidance on smart questions to ask, initiatives to suggest, because if companies can be persuaded to do the right thing, suddenly, this problem seems to become solvable. CF: So all of these efforts are building toward one fantastic day: Saturday, October 10, 2020 — that is, "10.10.2020." — easy to remember — when this fantastic gathering will take place around the world. And we hope to have, by then, thrilling news of the report of the very specific solutions that nations, cities, companies, citizens are actually already collaborating on by then. It's a day when every citizen of the planet is invited to participate. Your one ticket of entrance is you are a citizen of the planet. CA: Key to the success of the event is for this to happen at scale. We want to make it easy for anyone and everyone to find out about the initiative and to play an active part in it. But how do you do that? You know, the world's a noisy place. I mean, the TED platform can help a bit, maybe, but there's a much bigger content platform out there. It's called YouTube. And we're delighted to be working with them on this endeavor. We'll be inviting many of their top creators to be part of Countdown. Collectively, they could reach an audience in the many millions. In fact, let's meet one of them, Dr. Joe Hanson of "Hot Mess," a new web series about the impact of climate change on all of us. (Video) My name's Joe Hanson, and I am a YouTube educator. And you can count me in. I work with tomorrow's scientists, inventors and leaders, and they deserve to know the truth of what the science says, so that they can help us invent a better future for everyone. CA: Imagine that multiplied by many others — it's very, very exciting, honestly. CF: And of course, when it comes to spreading the word, every one of you in this room can actually play your part. So if you have any way of reaching anyone who is concerned about building a better future — and that should be every single one of us — please, invite them to join Countdown. CA: There's one more card up our sleeve. We're excited to unveil a global media campaign. This is a campaign with a difference. Just as TEDx exploded by being allowed to grow as a grassroots phenomenon, this campaign is designed to be co-opted everywhere on the planet. If you happen to own a billboard company, or a TV station, or a radio station, or a website, or a social media account, we invite all of you to take the images you're about to see and to just spread them far and wide. Our website will make this easy. We actually plan to translate them into many languages, courtesy of our volunteer army of more than 20,000 translators worldwide. Some of them are with us here. If you're a TED translator, would you wave, please? CF: There we go. (Applause) CA: Your work carries powerful ideas to every corner of the earth. We're so proud of you, so grateful to you. So this campaign's designed to grab attention and to communicate, yes, urgency but also a little smidgen of hope. We think it might be that combination is what is needed to really drive action. We'd love you to let us know what you think of these. CF: Right now. [Choose your future.] (Applause) [Turn fear into action Join the countdown.] (Applause) [Action inspires action Join the countdown. The Earth will thank you.] (Applause) [10.10.2020 Climate's Day of Destiny. You're invited.] CF: Remember the date. [Mass destruction. No biggie. (If we prevent it.)] (Applause) [Giant asteroid heading our way The common enemy that can unite us.] (Applause) [We love natural disasters anyway — said no one ever. So why are we causing them?] (Applause) [Relax, there's nothing you can do about the climate Unless you work for a company. Or live in a city. Or own a phone. Or a brain.] [Cause of death: Apathy. But there's an antidote.] (Applause) [Stop f*cking everything up Inaction on climate is obscene. We can fix this.] CA: Too much? CF: No, not too much, yay, go for it. (Applause) [Have you gotten any action lately? Here's your chance. Help turn the tide on climate.] (Laughter) CA: I didn't like this one, but my team, you know — CF: Apparently, there are many who do like it. (Laughter) [We give up. Sincerely, TED. Spreading ideas isn't enough. It's time to act. Join us?] CA: This is, unfortunately, truer than you know. [Some things matter more than partisan politics Come fight the enemy that can unite us.] (Applause) [Stop burnout Your company can help save the earth.] [Give the planet more than you take from it Join the countdown.] [Despair, meet hope We can avoid climate catastrophe if we take urgent action now.] CA: That's it. (Applause and cheers) CF: To bring this full circle, we would like to bring someone very special in. (Video) Hi, I'm Claire O'Neill. I am the COP president-designate for next year's Conference of the Parties, the annual UN climate change talks, which will be in the UK, and we're looking forward to welcoming you there. But right now, I'm in Spain, in Madrid, at COP25, this annual event where we send negotiators and activists from all over the world to see what we can do to reduce CO2 emissions. But the problem is this: emissions are going up, not down. And what I'm feeling is that 2020 is the year of action, the year where we have to stop talking and we have to start acting. And not just here, in these conference centers, but everybody. And so the value of the TED process, the value of what we're all doing together is that we're spreading out the conversations and the solutions from inside this space out to everybody. And I'm really looking forward to working with the TED group over the next year. 2020, for me, will be the most important year for climate action, and we're all going to deliver this together. (Applause) CF: OK, friends, so we're nearly there but just a few more very special snippets. First, a word from one of the many great minds who will be accompanying us on this journey. A message from the great author, historian and futurist Yuval Harari. Yuval Harari: Climate change is about inequality. Inequality between the rich, who are mainly responsible for it, and the poor, who will suffer the most. Inequality between us, Homo sapiens, who control this planet, and the other animals, who are our helpless victims. Inequality between the scientists, who painstakingly search for the truth, and the professional deceivers, who spread falsehoods at the click of a button. Climate change is about making a choice. What kind of planet do we want to inhabit, and what kind of humans do we want to be? A choice between greed and compassion, between carelessness and responsibility, between closing our eyes to the truth and opening our hearts to the world. Climate change is a crisis, but for humans, a crisis is always also an opportunity. If we make the right choices in the coming years, we cannot only save the ecosystem, but we can also create a more just world and make ourselves better people. (Applause) CF: So isn't that a powerful framing of what we have ahead of us, and honestly, I think it is tragic that the power of transformation that we have ahead of us is so severely diminished by those who would want to politicize the issue and separate it into partisan politics. It cannot be a partisan issue, it cannot be a politicized issue. Happily, there are some who are working against that. Today, we have one of those people, a fantastically courageous climate scientist, who is a committed Christian, and who has been working on this issue with conservatives and with the religious and spiritual communities for years, with incredible courage. Katharine Hayhoe. (Applause) Katherine Hayhoe: When someone says climate change, we often think, "Oh, that's just an environmental issue. People who are tree huggers or scientists care about it, or maybe people who are on the left hand-side of the political spectrum." But the reality is, whether we know it or not, we already care about climate change, no matter who we are. Why? Because climate change affects everything we already care about today. It affects our health, it affects the food we eat, the water we drink, the air that we breathe. Climate change affects the economy and national security. I care about a changing climate because it is, as the military calls it, a threat multiplier. It takes issues like poverty and hunger, disease, lack of access to clean water, even political instability, and exacerbates or amplifies them. That's why, to care about a changing climate, we don't have to be a certain type of person. A thermometer isn't blue or red, liberal or conservative — it gives us the same number no matter how we vote. And we are all affected by the impacts of a changing climate. So to care about a changing climate, all we have to be is one thing: a human, living on planet Earth. And we're all that. (Applause) CF: And finally, the man who brought this issue so powerfully to everyone's attention years ago and has continued tirelessly to work on that issue ever since. The one and very only, Al Gore. (Applause) (Video) Al Gore: Thank you. (Applause) Thank you so much, Christiana, and thank you for your outstanding leadership, and thank you, Chris Anderson and the entire TED community, YouTube and all of the others who are joining in this fantastic initiative. I have just three messages. Number one, this crisis is incredibly urgent. Just yesterday, the scientists gave us the report that emissions are still going up. Every single day, we're putting 150 million tons of man-made global warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet. The accumulated amount now traps as much extra energy every day as would be released by 500,000 first-generation atomic bombs exploding every single day. And the consequences are increasingly clear — all that mother nature is telling us, the fires, and the sea-level rise, and the floods, and the mud slides, and the loss of living species. But the second message that I have is the hope is very real. We actually do have the solutions available to us. It is unfortunately true at this moment, that the crisis is getting worse faster than we are mobilizing these solutions. But renewable energy and electric vehicles and batteries and regenerative agriculture, circular manufacturing, and all of these other solutions are gaining momentum. The late economist Rudi Dornbusch, in articulating what's known as Dornbusch's law, said, "Things take longer to happen than you think they will. But then, they happen much faster than you thought they could." We can pick up the pace. We are gaining momentum and soon, we will be gaining on the crisis. But it is essential that everyone join — of every political persuasion, every ideological persuasion, every nationality, every division has to be obliterated, so that we, humanity, can join together. And in closing, I would just say that for anyone who doubts that we as human beings have the ability to rise to this occasion, when everything is on the line, just remember that political will is itself a renewable resource. (Laughter) (Applause) CA: Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Al, for your leadership on this issue for so many years. None of this would be possible without an extraordinary and fast-growing list of partners. I'd like to acknowledge them. (Applause) If you're watching this, you believe your organization should be part of this, you can help in some way, join us, email me, [email protected]. This is going to take everyone. OK, before the Q and A, I just want to ask you a question personally, Christiana. Like, what do you really think? (Laughter) No, you've been in so many of these. Does this initiative have a chance? CF: Well, first of all, we are at the point where everything plays. Everything plays. And I'm really excited about this, because it has been very painful to me to see how over the past 12 to 18 months because of the tragically insufficient response that we have had to climate change, how that zeitgeist has been changing from where we were in Paris, which was pretty positive and optimistic, to, now, despair, helplessness, anger. That's what is out there, roaming on the streets. And I don't blame them, and I have the same feelings. But the point is, we have to be able to transform that into making the difference. And I think this is what this initiative is actually potentially ready to do, which is to give every single person who feels helpless — give them a tool to do something. Some will contribute small efforts, some will contribute large efforts — depends on what your influence area is. And to those who feel angry and despairing, well, give them also an opportunity to channel that energy — which is very powerful energy — into solutions. And finally, what is very exciting about this is the scale, Chris, right? I mean, just look at those partners that are going to be there. We have attempted many, many things to bring to scale. But this, I think, is the most promising initiative that I have seen, to be able to bring people to scale, to bring efforts and solutions to scale. And speed. Because if there's one thing that we cannot, cannot fail on, is addressing climate change, but not only that, to do so in a timely way. CA: Thank you, that is eloquent. And thank you. That's it. (Applause) OK, we have many members of the world's leading media here. We're going to have a Q and A, they should probably have priority on questions. If it all goes deathly silent, someone else can ask a question. If you're a member of the media here, please feel free to put your hand up — we'll throw a mic to you, and we'll do the best we can. Rachel Crane: Hi, Rachel Crane from CNN. My question for you is about more specific action that will come out of Countdown. We heard a lot today about how this is mobilizing the globe on this issue, breaking people out of their silos, companies out of their silos, but I'm curious to know, paint a picture for us, of what the action that will come out of this initiative could potentially look like. I'm sure it's all in early phases, we won't hold you specifically to this. CA: There's an intense process going on between now and October, where we're trying to engage all of the world's best thinking on climate around those five big areas. What we're hoping to have there is multiple proposals in there that collectively take a huge bite out of those issues. Some of them, there may be one big one that dominates. You know, so transport, for example. Could we accelerate the end of the internal combustion engine, somehow? What would that take? That would be a classic problem made for this approach, because what governments decide right now depends on what they see happening elsewhere. Would the decisions of auto executives be shifted if they saw millions of people on social media saying, "I will never buy a combustion engine"? Would they be shifted by the market signal of a few hundred mayors, saying, "We are creating a carbon-zero zone in our city, and we're going to expand it, and we're doing that soon"? Would they be shifted by a visionary auto CEO taking the risk and coming forward and saying, "You know when we said we were going to continue this till 2050? No. We can see the writing on the wall, we want to be on the right side of history, we're doing this in 2030." We think there might be a pathway to that. So on some of these issues, it's going to depend on a massive amount of discussion, bringing people together, showing — this is what you're so masterful at — is showing that other people don't have the attitudes that you think they have. They're actually shifting, you better shift. And so it's mutually raising everyone's ambition level. And that is a cycle that happens, and we've already seen it happening. And so, on each of these issues, that's what we're looking for. The biggest, boldest things. Dream bigger than we normally do, because there are more people at the table than there normally are, i.e. millions of citizens engaged in this. That's the process, and while that is happening, there'll be multiple other engagements in companies and cities around the world. We hope that it all comes together in a thrilling manner in October and we have something to celebrate. Dominique Drakeford: My name is Dominique Drakeford with MelaninASS, or social media as a form of media. In understanding the inherent correlation between the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere and the cumulative exploitation and extraction, extractivism economy, which creates sacrifice zones for black and indigenous communities, how do we plan to, or how do you guys plan to mitigate those systems of oppression as part of your strategies within those five various components, so that we can really begin to reduce emissions? CF: If the transformation in our economy and our society does not include inequality closing and social justice issues, then we're doing nothing. Because all of those things will come back to bite us. So we have to put our arms around the entire package. That is not easy, but it is entirely possible. And that's one of the things that I am so excited about climate change, because it is at the front of this transformation, but it will bring many of the other issues that have been relegated to nonattention. It will bring those issues to the fore as well. So the transformation has to be an integrative transformation. Ellen Maloney: Hi, Chris, hi, Christina. My question is, are individual efforts, like ditching plastic straws or going vegan, making a difference or are they just tokenistic drops in the ocean? CF: Good question. CA: It's a good question. CF: They are totally important. Absolutely important. Because it's not just about the one straw that I use. It's about me not using that straw, going to a restaurant and telling the waitress, "Excuse me, I don't want a plastic straw, because —" and giving her a little lesson, then she goes up to the manager, the manager comes to the table and says, "Excuse me, could you explain that to me?" Then you go through the lesson. And sooner than you think, you have that restaurant, plus the other ones. Actually, information is contagious. And wanting to do the right thing is also contagious. So don't look at it as just simply, you know, "What is a straw? Am I using the straw or am I not using plastic bags, I have my plant-based bags to go shopping," etc., etc. All of that counts. It counts for you, first of all, because it is a personal reminder of who you are and what you stand for, but it is also a very important tool to educate everyone around you. CA: Right, and I think the core of our initiative is, all that stuff matters — what you eat, how you transport yourself, etc., it matters a lot. But there is another piece of power that individuals have that they don't think about as much, perhaps, and that we think that they should, we invite them to, which is what they can do as an employee and what they can do as a member of a city. There's a coming together here, where by getting organized, by connecting with others, we think there is a direct route to changing decisions that will have an even bigger impact on the problem. So it's yes, all of that, but more as well. (Laughter) CF: There is an online [question], from a classroom of children. CA: From a classroom of children? CF: "What can students do?" Yay, I love that question, totally love that question. So first of all, Fridays, 11 o'clock, go strike. I mean, honestly, right? (Applause) Let's go, let's go. And that pressure has to be maintained. I'm totally delighted that there's some people here who've been here doing it for 52 weeks. The problem with this is, folks, this is not a sprint, it's a marathon. So you better get ready for many more 52 weeks, right? And get more people involved, because this is not easy. If it were easy, we would have done it. This is going to be a long-term effort. But fantastic to be out there in the streets, you are getting so much more attention from the media, from us stupid adults who have not done our job — it is fantastic. So, you know, get your voices out there. Also, in school, you can definitely go and improve — The question that you just asked to TED, that's the question every student should be asking their school: "Where's my energy coming from?" Let's get with it, right? Students in colleges — how is it possible that we still have colleges and universities that are not 100 percent clean energy and that haven't shifted their capital and their endowment over to low carbon? I mean, it's just incredible. (Applause) And finally, the most important thing that young people can do is ask your parents, "What the hell are you doing about my future?" Because here is an amazing thing. I have spoken in — I was thinking how many — I've spoken to at least three if not four CEOs from the oil and gas industry. I've spoken to three or four major investors, heads of their investment firms, who come up to me, usually in private, and say, "Christiana, the reason why I'm changing what I do in my business is because my daughter, or my son, asks me at night, 'What the hell are you doing about my future?' " That is a very powerful question, and only young people can ask that question. Use that tool — ask your parents what are they doing about your future. Sorry about the h-word. (Applause) Jo Confino: Hi, I'm Jo Confino, the HuffPost. Christiana, a question for you, which is one of the things that didn't come out so much and this is about the spiritual traditions and the role they play, because what we're seeing is that, actually, old wisdom is coming out in terms of interdependence and nothing is separate from anything else. What is the spiritual tradition we can bring to this that will make, also, a difference? CF: What I think is very powerful about understanding, whether you happen to be a spiritual person that pursues meditation and mindfulness or whether you're a religious person or not, what I think is very powerful about the spiritual understanding of the human presence on this earth, is to understand that we are not separate. It's not like, "Over there is planet Earth, and then humans are over here." And we are totally interconnected with all other species and with all other living beings, and doing the responsible thing by them, does the responsible thing by us. And vice versa. And so that interconnectedness is one that comes from the spiritual traditions, but you don't have to be religious or spiritual to understand that. You know, the fact is, every single drop of water that we drink comes from nature. Every single morsel of food that we eat comes from nature. And we've got to heal that connection. CA: We would welcome engagement. (Applause) Kaley Roshitsh: Hi, Kaley Roshitsh from Women's Wear Daily. Obviously, the fashion industry is responsible for a lot of the carbon output, so I wondered what is your perspective on conscious consumption? CA: The key goal here is to align, at the same time, to change opinion on what companies do, what employees do, what consumers do. It's the shifts all happening at the same time that can make change. Right now, someone else is always the problem. "Our investors wouldn't allow us to do that." "There is no market for this better, more sustainable product." And so, all the pieces need to happen at the same time. That's our hope. And so the lead on this is not us, it's employees and CEOs and leadership teams working in that industry. Get together, make something happen. And ride the tide of the zeitgeist shift that is happening — it's going to work out from the business point of view as well. CF: Can I jump on that as well? Because for years, for centuries, we have been on a consumer extract-and-consume mentality. They way we go about our life and the way that businesses are created is extract, use, discard, extract, use, discard. That's a simplification, but honestly, it's about as simple as that. And to understand that that linear extraction to discard can no longer be the case, that it needs to be circular now, we have to go into a circular economy that uses every single resource that we extract — because we will continue to extract — that uses it not once but two, three, four, five, 10 times, around and around in circles. That's a circular economy. And we have to get to that point, because frankly, we're running out of resources to continue to extract. Jodi Xu Klein: Hi, my name is Jodi Xu Klein. I'm with the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong publication here in the US. So, we've been reporting on trade war for more than a year, and we're actually living in a world where countries are decoupling from each other. How do you overcome that trend and bring everyone together? CA: We don't know, these are really challenging issues. What we do know is that we have to bring everyone to the table and have the discussion. There are so many people in China, including, on many occasions, the Chinese government has made bold steps to tackle this issue. There's a lot that the West can learn from what's happening in China. CF: I would say, in a world in which we're seeing a wave of nationalism and populism, the way we go at this is actually to expand the breadth of engagement, so not to let the responsibility of engaging on climate be in national government hands only. Yes, they have an important role, but we can bring it down as well to a different level of engagement which is every single human being. And once we understand that we're all human beings and that we all have a common future, there's no such thing as all of us being in a boat and only the one closest to the hole in the boat are going to sink. No. Either we all sink or we all float together. Justine Calma: My name is Justine Calma, I'm with The Verge, thanks so much for this. My question is about TED and YouTube's own carbon footprint. Streaming video eats up a huge amount of energy, and I'm curious what TED and YouTube might be doing to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions connected to that. CA: I can't speak for YouTube, obviously. I will say that, to quote a line from George Monbiot, all of us are hypocrites in this movement. If you've ever bought something or you're wearing clothes, or you're eating food, you're a hypocrite, you're creating emissions. It's part of life. And I think perfection is — There's a risk that perfection, that an overpursuit and focus on that and the judging that comes with it can slow everyone down. We want this to be a coalition of the willing who accept that they're not perfect but are willing to act. Now, this whole process has sparked a huge conversation in TED about how we act more responsibly, and that will continue. We're certainly not going to stop streaming videos. At some point you have to do math, it's like that — give to the planet more than you take from it, I think is the golden rule that I personally really believe in. And so if an idea, powered by a little bit of electricity, can ignite in someone's brain, I would bet on the idea over saving the electricity. But there's no perfection in this. And we definitely have a lot that we need to improve on. Let's go here and then back. Lane Florsheim: Hi, I'm Lane Florsheim from the Wall Street Journal Magazine and Chris, I really liked what you were saying about the fashion industry and what they can do to change and how it requires employees and CEOs to meet together because who understands an industry better than the people in it and their processes and infrastructure, but I'm wondering, what about companies with huge footprints, and two that come to mind first are Amazon and Zara, where, by all accounts, the workers, the employees there don't have very much power and the CEOs don't have very much incentive to change right now. What would you say about those kinds of companies? CA: So this is going to be such an important conversation going forward, because we're in the ironic position where the people who can do the most to solve this problem are the people who are currently the worst offenders. So what do we do? Do we make them part of the conversation or not? I say we make them part of the conversation, so long as we see serious engagement. So take Amazon. Jeff Bezos has actually listened to what many of his employees have said — they've been very vigorous, the employee base there, about carbon footprint — has listened, has engaged with you and with others. And they have announced, I think it's correct to say announced — CF: Yes, they have. CA: ... an acceleration of their own commitment to go to, basically, a net zero track by 2040, if I have it right. It's the companies with the thousands, the tens of thousands of trucks and the packaging and all the rest of it. That is how this problem will get solved. So I say we invite these CEOs to be part of this, and urge them to take it seriously and to go fast and maybe even faster than they're completely comfortable doing. But that's, I think, what we have to do. Not to defame, denounce, before we've at least had a serious conversation about, "It's time, your employees want to do this, your customers want to do this, your investors increasingly want to do this, let's do this." That's our hope. CF: And the wonderful thing about companies the size of Amazon, or Walmart when they did it, is that they have a huge trickle-up effect. Because when Jeff Bezos came out and said, "I'm going to make Amazon climate-neutral by 2040 — " Paris Agreement says 2050, of course he wants to do everything better than that, so 2040 is for Amazon. Well good, we're going to keep him to it. Now, the amazing thing about that is that in order for Amazon to be climate-neutral by 2040, they have to work with all their supply chain going up. They have to work with all of those companies that deliver services and goods to them for them to also be climate neutral ASAP. Because otherwise, they can't meet their own commitment. So large companies are actually very, very key and instrumental to this, because it's not just about their footprint, it's about the embedded footprint that they inherit in their supply chain. And the transformation of that is really huge. CA: Last question. Jackie Padilla: My name is Jackie with NowThis News, and every day, I work with young climate activists like the ones we've heard today, but when we do stories on them, you know, including Greta Thunberg, I see fierce criticism that they face and largely, it's because of a generational gap. I don't know if you're familiar with the phrase "OK Boomer," but it seems like there's a lot of guilt or accountability that some are looking for, and on the other end, we're looking at a lack of education or just ignorance on the issue. So what is your advice to young people to respond to that criticism to foster constructive conversations? CF: We should probably ask them. XB: Hi, thank you for your question. CA: Come here. (Applause) XB: It is true that we increasingly face criticism, and it's not only when we speak to people, with climate deniers or things like that, but also on social media. It is as much a tool to spread information and organize our strikes and get the information out there, but it's also a tool for people who want to undermine us, to personally attack us. And the way in which we stay resilient is when we build community with each other, when we organize, we mimic the world we want to see. There is no hierarchy in our organizing, we are all working towards the same goal constructively, choosing our passions towards making the strike the best it can be. We got 300,000 people striking in New York, we put together a whole concert, people called it "Climchella," it was great. (Laughter) But the point is that it's not going to stop us. The criticism is not going to stop us. And even though we know that we are kids, and we are not here to tell you all the solutions that already are out there. We are going to do it, because every kid who cares about the climate crisis is going to grow up to study through an environmental lens and to change the world through that. So we are here to tell you, personally, climate activists that I know don't use "OK Boomer," because we strive for intergenerational cooperation. And I think that blaming and dividing each other is not going to get us anywhere, which is why we don't use it, and I don't think it should be used, and I actually want to thank everybody who is doing something, because action inspires action. And you inspire us, and we're glad that we inspire you as well. (Cheers and applause) (Applause) CA: Wow. (Applause) CF: There you have it. (Applause and cheers) (Applause) CA: There is no better note on which to end this. Thank you. (Applause)

Why lakes and rivers should have the same rights as humans

{0: 'As a water scholar and protector, Kelsey Leonard seeks to establish Indigenous traditions of water conservation as the foundation for international water policy-making.'}

TEDWomen 2019

Aquay Wunne Kesuk. Kelsey Leonard Nooweesuonk. Hello, good day, everyone. I'm from the Shinnecock Nation. Tabutni to the Cahuilla peoples, whose land we gather on today. I was taught that water is alive. It can hear, it holds memories. And so I brought a water vessel up with me today, because I want it to hold the memories of our conversation today. Who gets legal rights? History has shown us some people but not others. In the United States, Indigenous peoples like myself were not citizens under the law until 1924. My Shinnecock ancestors, pictured here, were not citizens under the law. Then why do we claim to be nations governed by the rule of law if some people are protected, but not others? Because it remains one of the best ways to fight injustice. And, as Indigenous people, we know injustice. A dear friend, mentor, water walker, Nokomis, Grandmother Josephine Mandamin-ba, she told me of a prophecy that comes from her people, the Anishinaabe of the Midewiwin Society. And in that prophecy, she told me that it tells of a day that will come where an ounce of water costs more than an ounce of gold. When she told me that prophecy, I sat for a moment, and I thought about all of the injustices we see in our world today, the water crises we see in our world today, and I said, "Nokomis, Grandmother, I feel like we are already in that time of prophecy." And she looked back at me directly, and she said, "So what are you going to do about it?" That's why I'm here with you today, because I believe that one of the many solutions to solving the many water injustices we see in our world today is recognizing that water is a living relation and granting it the legal personhood it deserves. So to do so, we need to transform the way in which we value water. We have to start to think about how do we connect to water. Usually, someone might ask you, "What is water?" and you would respond with "Rain, ocean, lake, river, H20, liquid." You might even understand the sacred essentiality of water and say that water is life. But what if I asked you, instead, "Who is water?" In the same way that I might ask you, "Who is your grandmother?" "Who is your sister?" That type of orientation fundamentally transforms the way in which we think about water, transforms the way in which we make decisions about how we might protect water, protect it in the way that you would protect your grandmother, your mother, your sister, your aunties. That is the type of transformation that we need if we are going to address the many water crises we see in our world today, these harrowing water crises that have streamed across our digital devices in countdowns to Day Zero, the point at which municipal water supplies are shut off. Places like Cape Town, South Africa, where in 2018, residents were limited to two-minute showers and 23 gallons of water per day per person, or just this past summer, where the mismanagement of water led the streets of Chennai to be lined with thousands of plastic water jugs as residents waited hours for water tankers to deliver water, first by rail, then by truck, to meet their daily needs. Or even here in the United States, one of the most developed nations in the world. Today, Flint, Michigan still does not have clean water. But you are likely unfamiliar with these water crises, such as Neskantaga First Nation in Northern Ontario, Canada, where residents have been on a boil water advisory since 1995. Or Grassy Narrows First Nation, which for decades has been dealing with water contamination from the paper mill industry and where a recent study found that nearly 90 percent of the Indigenous population has some form of mercury poisoning, causing severe health complications. Or even among the Navajo Nation. Pictured here is the Animas River on an early morning in 2015, prior to the Gold King Mine spill. After the spill leaked millions of hazardous mine waste into the river system, this was it later that day. Today, the Navajo Nation and the Diné People and the river itself are still trying to recover from contamination. Or even right here in Palm Springs, California, where the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians has been fighting for decades to protect groundwater from exploitation so that future generations can not only live but thrive in their homelands, as they have since time immemorial. You see, a recent study by DIGDEEP and the US Water Alliance found that race, in the United States, is the strongest predictor of water and sanitation access, and that for us, as Native American people, we are the group most likely to have access issues as it comes to water and sanitation. So, as an Indigenous legal scholar and scientist, I believe that many of these water injustices are the result of the Western legal system's failure to recognize the legal personhood of water. And so we must ask ourselves — who is justice for? Humanity alone? We've granted legal personhood to corporations. In the US, the Supreme Court found in "Citizens United" that a corporation was a person with similar protections under the Constitution, such as freedom of speech, and applied similar reasoning in "Hobby Lobby," finding that a corporation had the right to freedom of religion in defense against the implementation of the Affordable Care Act for its employees. Now, these are controversial cases, and as a Shinnecock woman and a legal scholar, they make me question the moral compass of the Western world, where you can grant legal personhood to a corporation but not nature. You see, legal personhood grants us the ability to be visible in a court of law, and to have our voices heard as a person protected under the law. And so if you can grant that to a corporation, why not the Great Lakes? Why not the Mississippi River? Why not the many waterways across our planet that we all depend on to survive? We know we are in a global climate crisis, but globally, our waters are also threatened, and we are facing a global water crisis, and if we want to address these crises in our lifetime, we need to change. We need to fundamentally transform the way in which we value water. And this is not something new for us as Indigenous peoples. Our Indigenous legal systems have a foundational principle of understanding our nonhuman relations as being living and protected under our laws. And even for the Western world, environmental legal theorists have argued for the rights of nature since the 1970s. But we need to do better. We need to change. And we need to grant legal personhood to water, because it affords the following rights and protections. It grants water the right to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve, and most of all, it protects the water from us, from human beings that would do it harm, from human-caused climate-change impacts, from pollutants, and from man-made contamination. Moreover, it reverses the accepted hierarchy of humanity's domination over nature. As human beings on this planet, we are not superior to other beings on this planet. We are not superior to the water itself. We have to learn how to be good stewards again. We often imagine that the world is filled with infinite water. In fact, it's not. This planet, Ohke, Mother Earth, has very finite freshwater resources. Currently, nearly two billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress. It is also estimated that by 2030, up to 700 million people could be displaced, worldwide, due to water scarcity. We have to address this crisis. And so it's time for us to change. We have to transform the way in which we value water. And we can do that. We can learn to be good stewards again. We can create laws through which we grant legal personhood to water. We can start to honor the original treaties between Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous peoples for water protection. We can appoint guardians for the water that ensure the water's rights are always protected. We can also develop water-quality standards that have a holistic approach, that ensure the well-being of the water before our human needs. And moreover, we can work to dismantle exclusive property ownership over water. And there are amazing successful examples of this around the world. The Whanganui River in Aotearoa, in New Zealand, and the Ganges River in India were both granted legal personhood in 2017. And even this year, the residents of the city of Toledo recognized the legal personality of Lake Erie. And right here in California, the Yurok Tribe granted legal personhood to the Klamath River. You see, I imagine a world where we value water as a living relation, where we work to restore our connection to water. As women, we are water carriers. We nurture water in our wombs for nine months. It's the first medicine that each of us as human beings is exposed to. See, we are all born as human beings with a natal connection to water, but somewhere along the way, we lost that connection, and we have to work to restore it. Because I imagine a world in which water is healthy and ecosystems are thriving. I imagine a world where each of us takes up our right of responsibility as water citizens and protects water. So, in the words of Nokomis, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do for the water? Well, you can call your local politician. You can go to a town meeting. You can advocate for granting legal personhood to water. You can be like the residents of the city of Toledo and build from the grass roots, and craft your own legislation if the politicians won't write it, recognizing legal personality of water. You can learn about the Indigenous lands and waters that you now occupy and the Indigenous legal systems that still govern them. And most of all, you can connect to water. You can restore that connection. Go to the water closest to your home, and find out why it is threatened. But most of all, if you do anything, I ask that you make a promise to yourself, that each day, you will ask, "What have I done for the water today?" If we are able to fulfill that promise, I believe we can create a bold and brilliant world where future generations are able to form the same relationship to water that we have been privileged to have, where all communities of human and nonhuman relations have water to live, because water is life. Tabutni. Thank you. (Applause)

How the gut microbes you're born with affect your lifelong health

{0: 'Henna-Maria Uusitupa investigates innovative solutions to minimize health risks that infants might have due to disruptions in microbiota development. '}

TED@DuPont

Now, I know it might be easy to think that microbes are bad, especially for infants, but research has in fact proven the opposite. And the truth might be a little bit more complex, but it's actually way more interesting. It seems that we need microbes to be programmed for good health, but not just any microbes, we need the right combination. We succeed best with the little microbial bodies we have adapted to coexist with during evolution. And I guess it won't surprise you to learn that we start acquiring that right combination right at birth. Well, at least some of us do. Babies born by C-section and babies born vaginally aren't the same when it comes to microbial start to life, and after birth there are countless different early life events and circumstances that further modulate the way the gut microbiota is developing, such as the medications that might be prescribed for the infant or the mother, number of pets and siblings in the family, as well as level of hygiene at home, and, in this case, it's actually better if it's not that perfectly clean all the time. And also nutrition, both mothers and infants. All of these events and circumstances play a huge role in the gut microbial development and that has a huge impact on the lifelong health of that baby. And I'm not talking about small health implications here. I'm talking about the big stuff. Microbes we acquire or do not acquire affect our likelihood of developing diseases like obesity, diabetes and even some cancers. Since many of these early life events I just listed are such that we cannot affect them, they are inevitable, for example C-sections have been invented to save lives, and they do that daily, and most medications are prescribed for a valid reason, especially for infants, and so on. That is why we have to learn how to protect the health of these babies after the occurrence of such early life events that might disrupt their gut microbiota development. I work as a researcher and as a technical lead of an infant health platform, and the question I'm trying to find a solution to every day at work, and the same question I'm aiming to answer in this talk, is how can we make sure that all babies get the same shot at lifelong health, no matter how they're born or what early life events they encounter. Seems like a noble cause, right? Great. So let's figure this out. To begin, remember how I said that we need the right combination of microbes? Well, to get that combination right, we need to receive those microbes that inhabit our bodies in a certain order. You can think of it like a colonization march. The very early microbes that inhabit our bodies first change the environment in the infant's gut so that the next microbes are able to move in, kind of like the first invaders come in first and set up the infrastructure for the other settlers to build upon. Now, if babies are born via C-section, that early phase of colonization is greatly altered, because instead of vaginal, fecal and skin bacteria of the mother, mainly only skin bacteria enter the infant gut. And that sets that colonization march to a totally different tone, and simply because that's different to what we've adapted to during evolution, that might cause some health disadvantages for C-section-born babies later on. We can take weight development as an example here. It has been already shown in several studies that gut microbiota composition is associated to weight as well as the likelihood of developing diseases like diabetes or cardiovascular diseases. But now there are some indications that you could already at infancy see from a fecal sample of a baby some microbes missing from those individuals who will later on develop to be obese or overweight. It has also been shown that those same microbes might be missing from babies who are born by C-section or who are predisposed to heavy loads of antibiotics in early life. And to kind of close this loop, it has also been shown in some research that babies born by C-section or are prescribed with many, many antibiotics early in life are more likely to be obese or overweight, even by 50 percent, which is a lot. Now, I know you might be thinking at this point that, oh no, I just had a C-section or I was born via C-section or my child had the antibiotics. But I want you to not worry. If these microbes are missing or are lost for any reason, they can be acquired later, but the baby just needs a little help with that. One thing that has already for some time been known to help is breastfeeding. Breast milk is kind of miraculous: in addition to containing nutrients for the baby, it seems to contain food for the good microbes as well. That's great for a breastfed baby, but we all know that all babies are not breastfed. So what could we do to ensure that also those babies who are not breastfed could restore their microbiota development after encountering those disruptive early life events that might disrupt their gut microbiota development? And now we get to the actual solution part of this talk. The research in this field has been taking giant steps lately. First, it was understood that if there are some microbes missing, they can be ingested. We call the good microbes, when they are ingested, probiotics, and probiotics have been tested in several clinical trials during the years, also in infants, with great effects, such as reducing their risk of eczema later in life. Now, a second revolution was realized when the eyes of researchers were turned to breast milk. That was logical, as, like I mentioned, it was already known that breastfeeding is able to support the healthy development of gut microbiota. There were these particles in breast milk that were found already in the 1930s called human milk oligosaccharides, but their function remained a mystery for decades and decades after their initial discovery. They were really puzzling for researchers, as they are really abundant in human milk. They are actually the third-largest group of solids, but they are not digestible by humans, not even infants. So why would mothers synthesize something to breast milk, use their resources to put something there that is not utilizable by the infant? Usually nature does not work that way. Right? So it was quite a revelation when it was finally understood what's the role of these particles, and that it is to selectively feed the microbes that are best for infants, and that way to affect the infant health. There are over a hundred of different HMO structures, and nowadays we are able to synthesize some of them also in the lab, and that enables us to package them up with probiotics for children and infants who are not able to receive them from breast milk to restore their microbiota after encountering disruptive early life events. And that is the solution. As a researcher, I must say at this point that research in this field is still ongoing and a lot of work remains to be done. That's a favorite sentence of us scientists. But we are taking steps towards understanding better and better which are the key missing microbes in various situations and what HMOs we should package with which probiotics to help restore the microbiota of that particular baby in that particular case. What I wish you to remember from this talk is that, yes, vaginally born breastfed baby has the microbiota we have evolved to adapt to, but in cases where that is not possible, there are means to reduce the negative health consequences. Lastly, I wish you to imagine a world for a while, a world where there would be such a health care system that when you take your baby to a health care check, they would routinely monitor the gut microbiota development of that baby, and if any disruptions would be noted, a tailor-made product to restore the microbiota would be prescribed. I mean, how wonderful would that be, if the onset of any chronic diseases would be extremely rare because of this preemptive health care system? Can you imagine such a world? Do you believe that that kind of future would be possible? I do. I believe in that future and I want to contribute in the unfolding of that future, a future in which each baby has an equal starting point for life to be programmed for lifelong health. Thank you. (Applause)

Why should you read "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan?

TED-Ed

In her Auntie An-mei’s home, Jing-Mei reluctantly takes her seat at the eastern corner of the mahjong table. At the north, south, and west corners are her aunties, long-time members of the Joy Luck Club. This group of immigrant families comes together weekly to trade gossip, feast on wonton and sweet chaswei, and play mahjong. However, the club’s founder, Jing-Mei’s mother Suyuan, has recently passed away. At first, Jing-Mei struggles to fill her place at the table. But when her aunties reveal a deeply buried secret about Suyuan’s life, Jing-Mei realizes she still has a lot to learn about her mother, and herself. In Amy Tan’s 1989 debut novel, "The Joy Luck Club," this gathering at the mahjong table is the point of departure for a series of interconnected vignettes. The book itself is loosely structured to imitate the format of the Chinese game. Just as mahjong is played over four rounds with at least four hands each, the book is divided into four parts, each with four chapters. Alternately set in China or San Francisco, each chapter narrates a single story from one of the four matriarchs of the Joy Luck Club or their American-born daughters. These stories take the reader through war zones and villages of rural China, and into modern marriages and tense gatherings around the dinner table. They touch upon themes of survival and loss, love and the lack of it, ambitions and their unsatisfied reality. In one, Auntie Lin plots an escape from the hostile family of her promised husband, ultimately leading to her arrival in America. In another, the Hsu family’s all-American day at the beach turns dire when Rose is overwhelmed by the responsibility her mother assigns to her. The resulting tragedy traumatizes the family for years to come. These tales illustrate the common divides that can form between generations and cultures, especially in immigrant families. The mothers have all experienced great hardships during their lives in China, and they’ve worked tirelessly to give their children better opportunities in America. But their daughters feel weighed down by their parent’s unfulfilled hopes and high expectations. Jing-Mei feels this pressure as she plays mahjong with her mother’s friends. She worries, “In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America.” Time and again, the mothers strive to remind their daughters of their history and heritage. Meanwhile, their daughters struggle to reconcile their mothers’ perception of them with who they really are. "Does my daughter know me?" some of the stories ask. "Why doesn’t my mother understand?" others respond. In her interrogation of these questions, Tan speaks to anxieties that plague many immigrants, who often feel both alienated from their homeland and disconnected from their adopted country. But by weaving the tales of these four mothers and daughters together, Tan makes it clear that Jing-Mei and her peers find strength to tackle their present-day problems through the values their mothers passed on to them. When "The Joy Luck Club" was first published, Tan expected minimal success. But against her predictions, the book was a massive critical and commercial achievement. Today, these characters still captivate readers worldwide. Not only for the way they speak to Chinese American and immigrant experiences, but also for uncovering a deeper truth: the need to be seen and understood by the ones you love.

Why should you read "Dune" by Frank Herbert?

TED-Ed

A mother and her son trek across an endless desert. Wearing special skin-tight suits to dissipate heat and recycle moisture, the travelers aren’t worried about dying of thirst. Their fears are much greater. The pair try to walk without rhythm, letting the vibrations of their footsteps blend into the shifting sands. But soon, the sound of the desert is drowned out by a louder hissing. As a mound of sand races towards them, the pair’s unnatural gait turns into a sprint. The two clamber into a nearby rock face, as a sandworm 400 meters long bursts from the desert floor. This is the world of "Dune." Written by Frank Herbert and published in 1965, "Dune" takes place in a far-flung future, where humanity rules the stars in a giant feudal empire. This medieval motif goes beyond just the government. Unlike most interstellar sci-fi, Herbert's humans conquered the stars without any computers. Following an ancient war with robots, humanity has forbidden the construction of any machine “in the likeness of a human mind.” But rather than stifling their expansion, this edict forced humans to evolve in startling ways— becoming biological computers, psychic witches, and prescient space pilots. Members of these super-powered factions are regularly employed by various noble houses, all competing for power and new planets to add to their kingdoms. But almost all these superhuman skills rely on the same precious resource: the spice. This mystical crop also known as “melange” is essential for all space travel, making it the cornerstone of the galactic economy. And it only grows on the desert planet Arrakis, a dangerous and inhospitable world whose native inhabitants have long rebelled against the empire. Arrakis, also called Dune, is the setting for Herbert’s novel, which follows Paul of the noble House Atreides. The book begins with Paul’s family being assigned control of Dune as part of an elaborate plot by their sworn enemies: the sadistic slave drivers of House Harkonnen. The conflict between these houses upends the delicate political balance on Arrakis. Soon, Paul is catapulted into the middle of a planetary revolution, where he must prove himself capable of leading— and surviving— on this hostile desert world. But Arrakis is not simply an endless sea of sand. Herbert was an avid environmentalist, who spent over five years creating Dune’s complex ecosystem. The planet is checkered with climate belts and wind tunnels that have shaped its rocky topography. Different temperate zones produce varying desert flora. And almost every element of Dune’s ecosystem works together to produce the planet’s essential export. Herbert’s world building also includes a rich web of philosophy and religion. Paul’s mother Jessica, is a member of the Bene Gesserit, an ancient cult of spice-assisted psychics. Sometimes called “witches” for their mysterious powers, the Bene Gesserit have operated as a shadow government for millennia in an effort to guide society towards enlightenment. Similarly ancient are the Mentats— human computers capable of processing incredible amounts of data. While the Mentats are bastions of logic and reason, their results are not mere calculations, but rather, streams of constantly shifting possibilities. However, no group is more central to "Dune" than the Fremen. Natives of Arrakis, they are the keepers of the planet’s many secrets. Paul’s journey takes him deep into the Fremen’s exclusive brotherhood, where he must prove himself trustworthy in a series of increasingly deadly challenges. All these factions have deep histories that pervade the text, and Herbert also incorporates that sense of scale into the book’s structure. Each chapter begins with a quote from a future history book, recalling elements of the events that are about to unfold. The book also contains in-universe appendices that further explore the Empire’s history; alongside a glossary of words like “Gom jabbar” and “Shai-Hulud." Dune’s epic story continues to unfold over a six-book saga that spans millennia. But every story of Arrakis’ future begins here: as Paul pursues a path that is dangerous, demanding, and always on the verge of being consumed by the oncoming storm.

How we can protect truth in the age of misinformation

{0: 'Sinan Aral sheds light on how social media is disrupting our democracies, our economies and our public.'}

TEDxCERN

So, on April 23 of 2013, the Associated Press put out the following tweet on Twitter. It said, "Breaking news: Two explosions at the White House and Barack Obama has been injured." This tweet was retweeted 4,000 times in less than five minutes, and it went viral thereafter. Now, this tweet wasn't real news put out by the Associated Press. In fact it was false news, or fake news, that was propagated by Syrian hackers that had infiltrated the Associated Press Twitter handle. Their purpose was to disrupt society, but they disrupted much more. Because automated trading algorithms immediately seized on the sentiment on this tweet, and began trading based on the potential that the president of the United States had been injured or killed in this explosion. And as they started tweeting, they immediately sent the stock market crashing, wiping out 140 billion dollars in equity value in a single day. Robert Mueller, special counsel prosecutor in the United States, issued indictments against three Russian companies and 13 Russian individuals on a conspiracy to defraud the United States by meddling in the 2016 presidential election. And what this indictment tells as a story is the story of the Internet Research Agency, the shadowy arm of the Kremlin on social media. During the presidential election alone, the Internet Agency's efforts reached 126 million people on Facebook in the United States, issued three million individual tweets and 43 hours' worth of YouTube content. All of which was fake — misinformation designed to sow discord in the US presidential election. A recent study by Oxford University showed that in the recent Swedish elections, one third of all of the information spreading on social media about the election was fake or misinformation. In addition, these types of social-media misinformation campaigns can spread what has been called "genocidal propaganda," for instance against the Rohingya in Burma, triggering mob killings in India. We studied fake news and began studying it before it was a popular term. And we recently published the largest-ever longitudinal study of the spread of fake news online on the cover of "Science" in March of this year. We studied all of the verified true and false news stories that ever spread on Twitter, from its inception in 2006 to 2017. And when we studied this information, we studied verified news stories that were verified by six independent fact-checking organizations. So we knew which stories were true and which stories were false. We can measure their diffusion, the speed of their diffusion, the depth and breadth of their diffusion, how many people become entangled in this information cascade and so on. And what we did in this paper was we compared the spread of true news to the spread of false news. And here's what we found. We found that false news diffused further, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth in every category of information that we studied, sometimes by an order of magnitude. And in fact, false political news was the most viral. It diffused further, faster, deeper and more broadly than any other type of false news. When we saw this, we were at once worried but also curious. Why? Why does false news travel so much further, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth? The first hypothesis that we came up with was, "Well, maybe people who spread false news have more followers or follow more people, or tweet more often, or maybe they're more often 'verified' users of Twitter, with more credibility, or maybe they've been on Twitter longer." So we checked each one of these in turn. And what we found was exactly the opposite. False-news spreaders had fewer followers, followed fewer people, were less active, less often "verified" and had been on Twitter for a shorter period of time. And yet, false news was 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than the truth, controlling for all of these and many other factors. So we had to come up with other explanations. And we devised what we called a "novelty hypothesis." So if you read the literature, it is well known that human attention is drawn to novelty, things that are new in the environment. And if you read the sociology literature, you know that we like to share novel information. It makes us seem like we have access to inside information, and we gain in status by spreading this kind of information. So what we did was we measured the novelty of an incoming true or false tweet, compared to the corpus of what that individual had seen in the 60 days prior on Twitter. But that wasn't enough, because we thought to ourselves, "Well, maybe false news is more novel in an information-theoretic sense, but maybe people don't perceive it as more novel." So to understand people's perceptions of false news, we looked at the information and the sentiment contained in the replies to true and false tweets. And what we found was that across a bunch of different measures of sentiment — surprise, disgust, fear, sadness, anticipation, joy and trust — false news exhibited significantly more surprise and disgust in the replies to false tweets. And true news exhibited significantly more anticipation, joy and trust in reply to true tweets. The surprise corroborates our novelty hypothesis. This is new and surprising, and so we're more likely to share it. At the same time, there was congressional testimony in front of both houses of Congress in the United States, looking at the role of bots in the spread of misinformation. So we looked at this too — we used multiple sophisticated bot-detection algorithms to find the bots in our data and to pull them out. So we pulled them out, we put them back in and we compared what happens to our measurement. And what we found was that, yes indeed, bots were accelerating the spread of false news online, but they were accelerating the spread of true news at approximately the same rate. Which means bots are not responsible for the differential diffusion of truth and falsity online. We can't abdicate that responsibility, because we, humans, are responsible for that spread. Now, everything that I have told you so far, unfortunately for all of us, is the good news. The reason is because it's about to get a whole lot worse. And two specific technologies are going to make it worse. We are going to see the rise of a tremendous wave of synthetic media. Fake video, fake audio that is very convincing to the human eye. And this will powered by two technologies. The first of these is known as "generative adversarial networks." This is a machine-learning model with two networks: a discriminator, whose job it is to determine whether something is true or false, and a generator, whose job it is to generate synthetic media. So the synthetic generator generates synthetic video or audio, and the discriminator tries to tell, "Is this real or is this fake?" And in fact, it is the job of the generator to maximize the likelihood that it will fool the discriminator into thinking the synthetic video and audio that it is creating is actually true. Imagine a machine in a hyperloop, trying to get better and better at fooling us. This, combined with the second technology, which is essentially the democratization of artificial intelligence to the people, the ability for anyone, without any background in artificial intelligence or machine learning, to deploy these kinds of algorithms to generate synthetic media makes it ultimately so much easier to create videos. The White House issued a false, doctored video of a journalist interacting with an intern who was trying to take his microphone. They removed frames from this video in order to make his actions seem more punchy. And when videographers and stuntmen and women were interviewed about this type of technique, they said, "Yes, we use this in the movies all the time to make our punches and kicks look more choppy and more aggressive." They then put out this video and partly used it as justification to revoke Jim Acosta, the reporter's, press pass from the White House. And CNN had to sue to have that press pass reinstated. There are about five different paths that I can think of that we can follow to try and address some of these very difficult problems today. Each one of them has promise, but each one of them has its own challenges. The first one is labeling. Think about it this way: when you go to the grocery store to buy food to consume, it's extensively labeled. You know how many calories it has, how much fat it contains — and yet when we consume information, we have no labels whatsoever. What is contained in this information? Is the source credible? Where is this information gathered from? We have none of that information when we are consuming information. That is a potential avenue, but it comes with its challenges. For instance, who gets to decide, in society, what's true and what's false? Is it the governments? Is it Facebook? Is it an independent consortium of fact-checkers? And who's checking the fact-checkers? Another potential avenue is incentives. We know that during the US presidential election there was a wave of misinformation that came from Macedonia that didn't have any political motive but instead had an economic motive. And this economic motive existed, because false news travels so much farther, faster and more deeply than the truth, and you can earn advertising dollars as you garner eyeballs and attention with this type of information. But if we can depress the spread of this information, perhaps it would reduce the economic incentive to produce it at all in the first place. Third, we can think about regulation, and certainly, we should think about this option. In the United States, currently, we are exploring what might happen if Facebook and others are regulated. While we should consider things like regulating political speech, labeling the fact that it's political speech, making sure foreign actors can't fund political speech, it also has its own dangers. For instance, Malaysia just instituted a six-year prison sentence for anyone found spreading misinformation. And in authoritarian regimes, these kinds of policies can be used to suppress minority opinions and to continue to extend repression. The fourth possible option is transparency. We want to know how do Facebook's algorithms work. How does the data combine with the algorithms to produce the outcomes that we see? We want them to open the kimono and show us exactly the inner workings of how Facebook is working. And if we want to know social media's effect on society, we need scientists, researchers and others to have access to this kind of information. But at the same time, we are asking Facebook to lock everything down, to keep all of the data secure. So, Facebook and the other social media platforms are facing what I call a transparency paradox. We are asking them, at the same time, to be open and transparent and, simultaneously secure. This is a very difficult needle to thread, but they will need to thread this needle if we are to achieve the promise of social technologies while avoiding their peril. The final thing that we could think about is algorithms and machine learning. Technology devised to root out and understand fake news, how it spreads, and to try and dampen its flow. Humans have to be in the loop of this technology, because we can never escape that underlying any technological solution or approach is a fundamental ethical and philosophical question about how do we define truth and falsity, to whom do we give the power to define truth and falsity and which opinions are legitimate, which type of speech should be allowed and so on. Technology is not a solution for that. Ethics and philosophy is a solution for that. Nearly every theory of human decision making, human cooperation and human coordination has some sense of the truth at its core. But with the rise of fake news, the rise of fake video, the rise of fake audio, we are teetering on the brink of the end of reality, where we cannot tell what is real from what is fake. And that's potentially incredibly dangerous. We have to be vigilant in defending the truth against misinformation. With our technologies, with our policies and, perhaps most importantly, with our own individual responsibilities, decisions, behaviors and actions. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Your body was forged in the spectacular death of stars

{0: 'Looking not at the heavens but at computer models, Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz studies some of the most powerful explosions since the birth of the universe.'}

TED@NAS

We are all atomically connected. Fundamentally, universally. But what does that mean? I'm an astrophysicist, and as such, it is my responsibility to trace the cosmic history of every single one of your atoms. In fact, I would say that one of the greatest achievements of modern astronomy is the understanding of how our atoms were actually put together. While hydrogen and helium were made during the first two minutes of the big bang, the origin of heavy elements, such as the iron in your blood, the oxygen we're breathing, the silicone in your computers, lies in the life cycle of stars. Nuclear reactions take lighter elements and transform them into heavier ones, and that causes stars to shine and ultimately explode, therefore enriching the universe with these heavy elements. So without stellar death there would be no oxygen or other elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, and therefore, there would be no life. There are more atoms in our bodies than stars in the universe. And these atoms are extremely durable. The origins of our atoms can be traceable to stars that manufactured them in their interiors and exploded them all across the Milky Way, billions of years ago. And I should know this, because I am indeed a certified stellar mortician. (Laughter) And today, I want to take you on a journey that starts in a supernova explosion and ends with the air that we're breathing right now. So what is our body made of? Ninety-six percent consists of only four elements: hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. Now the main character of this cosmic tale is oxygen. Not only is the vast majority of our bodies made of oxygen, but oxygen is the one element fighting to protect life on earth. The vast majority of oxygen in the universe was indeed produced over the entire history of the universe in these supernova explosions. These supernova explosions signal the demise of very massive stars. And for a brilliant month, one supernova explosion can be brighter than an entire galaxy containing billions of stars. That is truly remarkable. That is because massive stars burn brighter and have a spectacular death, compared to other stars. Nuclear fusion is really the lifeblood of all stars, including the sun, and as a result is the root source of all the energy on earth. You can think of stars as these fusion factories which are powered by smashing atoms together in their hot and dense interiors. Now, stars like our sun, which are relatively small, burn hydrogen into helium, but heavier stars of about eight times the mass of the sun continue this burning cycle even after they exhausted their helium in their cores. So at this point, the massive star is left with a carbon core, which, as you know, is the building block of life. This carbon core continues to collapse and as a result, the temperature increases, which allows further nuclear reactions to take place, and carbon then burns into oxygen, into neon, silicon, sulphur and ultimately iron. And iron is the end. Why? Because iron is the most bound nuclei in the universe, which means that we cannot extract energy by burning iron. So when the entire core of the massive star is made of iron, it's run out of fuel. And that's an incredibly bad day for a star. (Laughter) Without fuel, it cannot generate heat, and therefore gravity has won the battle. The iron core has no other choice but to collapse, reaching incredibly high densities. Think of 300 million tons reduced to a space the size of a sugar cube. At these extreme high densities, the core actually resists collapse, and as a result, all of this infalling material bounces off the core. And this dramatic bounce, which happens in a fraction of a second or so, is responsible for ejecting the rest of the star in all directions, ultimately forming a supernova explosion. So, sadly, from the perspective of an astrophysicist, the conditions in the centers of these exploding stars cannot be recreated in a laboratory. (Laughter) Now, thankfully for humanity, we're not able to do that. (Laughter) But what does that mean? That means that as astrophysicists, we have to rely on sophisticated computer simulations in order to understand these complex phenomena. These simulations can be used to really understand how gas behaves under such extreme conditions. And can be used to answer fundamental questions like, "What ultimately disrupted the massive star?" "How is it that this implosion can be reversed into an explosion?" There's a huge amount of debate in the field, but we all agree that neutrinos, which are these elusive elementary particles, play a crucial role. Yeah? I'm about to show you one of those simulations. So neutrinos are produced in huge numbers once the core collapses. And in fact, they are responsible for transferring the energy in this core. Like thermal radiation in a heater, neutrinos pump energy into the core, increasing the possibility of disrupting the star. In fact, for about a fraction of a second, neutrinos pump so much energy that the pressure increases high enough that a shock wave is produced and the shock wave goes and disrupts the entire star. And it is in that shock wave where elements are produced. So thank you, neutrinos. (Laughter) Supernovas shine bright, and for a brief period of time, they radiate more energy than the sun will in its entire lifetime. That point of light that you see there, which was certainly not there before, burns like a beacon, clearly indicating the position where the massive star has died. In a galaxy like our own Milky Way, we estimate that about once every 50 years, a massive star dies. This implies that somewhere in the universe, there's a supernova explosion every second or so. And thankfully for astronomers, some of them are actually found relatively close to earth. Various civilizations recorded these supernova explosions long before the telescope was invented. The most famous of all of them is probably the supernova explosion that gave rise to the Crab Nebula. Yeah? Korean and Chinese astronomers recorded this supernova in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans. This supernova happened about 5,600 light-years away from earth. And it was so incredibly bright that astronomers could see it during the day. And it was visible to the naked eye for about two years in the night sky. Fast forward 1,000 years or so later, and what do we see? We see these filaments that were blasted by the explosion, moving at 300 miles per second. These filaments are essential for us to understand how massive stars die. The image that you see there was assembled by the Hubble Space Telescope over a span of three months. And it is incredibly important to astronomers because it ultimately carries the chemical legacy of the star that exploded. The orange filaments that you see there are the tattered remains of the star, and are made primarily of hydrogen, while the blue and red filaments that you see are the freshly synthesized oxygen. So studying supernova remnants, like the Crab Nebula, allowed astronomers to firmly conclude that the vast majority of oxygen on earth was produced by supernova explosions over the history of the universe. And we can estimate that in order to assemble all the atoms of oxygen in our body, it took on the order of a 100 million supernova. So every bit of you, or at least the majority of it, came from one of these supernova explosions. So now you may be wondering, how is it that these atoms that were generated in such extreme conditions ultimately took residence in our body? So I want you to follow the thought experiment. Imagine that we're in the Milky Way, and a supernova happens. It blasted tons and tons of oxygen atoms almost into empty space. A few of them were able to be assembled in a cloud. Now, 4.5 billion years ago, something unsettled that cloud and caused it to collapse, forming the sun in its center and the solar system. So the sun, the planets and life on earth depend on this beautiful cycle of stellar birth, stellar death and stellar rebirth. And this continues the recycling of atoms in the universe. And as a result, astronomy and chemistry are intimately connected. We are life forms that have evolved to inhale the waste products of plants. But now you know that we also inhale the waste products of supernova explosions. (Laughter) So take a moment, inhale. An oxygen atom has just gone into your body. It is certain that that oxygen [atom] remembers that it was in the interior of a star and it was probably manufactured by a supernova explosion. This atom may have traveled the entire solar system until it splashed on earth, long before reaching you. When we breathe, we use hundreds of liters of oxygen every day. So I'm incredibly lucky to be standing in front of this beautiful audience, but I'm actually stealing your oxygen atoms. (Laughter) And because I'm speaking to you, I'm giving you some of them back, that once resided in me. So breathing, yeah, participates in this beautiful exchange of atoms. And you can then ask, "Well, how many atoms in our body once belonged to Frida Kahlo?" (Laughter) About 100,000 of them. 100,000 more probably belonged to Marie Curie, 100,000 more to Sally Ride, or whoever you want to think of. So breathing is not only filling our lungs with cosmic history, but with human history. I would like to end my talk by sharing a myth that is very close to my heart. A myth from the Chichimeca culture, which is a very powerful Mesoamerican culture. And the Chichimecas believe that our essence was assembled in the heavens. And on its journey towards us, it actually fragmented into tons of different pieces. So my abuelo used to say, "One of the reasons you feel incomplete is because you are missing your pieces." (Laughter) "But don't be fooled by that. You've been given an incredible opportunity of growth. Why? Because it's not like those pieces were scattered on earth and you have to go and pick them up. No, those pieces fell into other people. And only by sharing them you will become more complete. Yes, during your life, there's going to be individuals that have these huge pieces that make you feel whole. But in your quest of being complete, you have to treasure and share every single one of those pieces." Sounds a lot like the story of oxygen to me. (Laughter) Which started in the heavens in a supernova explosion, and continues today, within the confines of our humanity. Our atoms in our body have embarked on an epic odyssey, with time spans from billions of years to mere centuries, all leading to you, all of you, witnesses of the universe. Thank you. (Applause)

How to choose your news

TED-Ed

How do you know what's happening in your world? The amount of information just a click away may be limitless, but the time and energy we have to absorb and evaluate it is not. All the information in the world won't be very useful unless you know how to read the news. To your grandparents, parents, or even older siblings, this idea would have sounded strange. Only a few decades ago, news was broad-based. Your choices were limited to a couple of general interest magazines and newspaper of record, and three or four TV networks where trusted newscasters delivered the day's news at the same reliable time every evening. But the problems with this system soon became apparent as mass media spread. While it was known that authoritarian countries controlled and censored information, a series of scandals showed that democratic governments were also misleading the public, often with media cooperation. Revelations of covert wars, secret assassinations, and political corruption undermined public faith in official narratives presented by mainstream sources. This breakdown of trust in media gatekeepers lead to alternative newspapers, radio shows, and cable news competing with the major outlets and covering events from various perspectives. More recently, the Internet has multiplied the amount of information and viewpoints, with social media, blogs, and online video turning every citizen into a potential reporter. But if everyone is a reporter, nobody is, and different sources may disagree, not only opinions, but on the facts themselves. So how do you get the truth, or something close? One of the best ways is to get the original news unfiltered by middlemen. Instead of articles interpreting a scientific study or a politician's speech, you can often find the actual material and judge for yourself. For current events, follow reporters on social media. During major events, such as the Arab Spring or the Ukrainian protests, newscasters and bloggers have posted updates and recordings from the midst of the chaos. Though many of these later appear in articles or broadcasts, keep in mind that these polished versions often combine the voice of the person who was there with the input of editors who weren't. At the same time, the more chaotic the story, the less you should try to follow it in real time. In events like terrorist attacks and natural disasters, today's media attempts continuous coverage even when no reliable new information is available, sometimes leading to incorrect information or false accusations of innocent people. It's easy to be anxious in such events, but try checking for the latest information at several points in the day, rather than every few minutes, allowing time for complete details to emerge and false reports to be refuted. While good journalism aims for objectivity, media bias is often unavoidable. When you can't get the direct story, read coverage in multiple outlets which employ different reporters and interview different experts. Tuning in to various sources and noting the differences lets you put the pieces together for a more complete picture. It's also crucial to separate fact from opinion. Words like think, likely, or probably mean that the outlet is being careful or, worse, taking a guess. And watch out for reports that rely on anonymous sources. These could be people who have little connection to the story, or have an interest in influencing coverage, their anonymity making them unaccountable for the information they provide. Finally, and most importantly, try to verify news before spreading it. While social media has enabled the truth to reach us faster, it's also allowed rumors to spread before they can be verified and falsehoods to survive long after they've been refuted. So, before you share that unbelievable or outrageous news item, do a web search to find any additional information or context you might have missed and what others are saying about it. Today, we are more free than ever from the old media gatekeepers who used to control the flow of information. But with freedom comes responsibility: the responsibility to curate our own experience and ensure that this flow does not become a flood, leaving us less informed than before we took the plunge.

The language of lying

{0: 'Noah Zandan uses data science to illuminate hidden (and often unconscious) messages in our communications -- and suggests ways that speakers might heighten their impact.'}

TED-Ed

"Sorry, my phone died." "It's nothing. I'm fine." "These allegations are completely unfounded." "The company was not aware of any wrongdoing." "I love you." We hear anywhere from 10 to 200 lies a day, and we spent much of our history coming up with ways to detect them, from medieval torture devices to polygraphs, blood-pressure and breathing monitors, voice-stress analyzers, eye trackers, infrared brain scanners, and even the 400-pound electroencephalogram. But although such tools have worked under certain circumstances, most can be fooled with enough preparation, and none are considered reliable enough to even be admissible in court. But, what if the problem is not with the techniques, but the underlying assumption that lying spurs physiological changes? What if we took a more direct approach, using communication science to analyze the lies themselves? On a psychological level, we lie partly to paint a better picture of ourselves, connecting our fantasies to the person we wish we were rather than the person we are. But while our brain is busy dreaming, it's letting plenty of signals slip by. Our conscious mind only controls about 5% of our cognitive function, including communication, while the other 95% occurs beyond our awareness, and according to the literature on reality monitoring, stories based on imagined experiences are qualitatively different from those based on real experiences. This suggests that creating a false story about a personal topic takes work and results in a different pattern of language use. A technology known as linguistic text analysis has helped to identify four such common patterns in the subconscious language of deception. First, liars reference themselves less, when making deceptive statements. They write or talk more about others, often using the third person to distance and disassociate themselves from their lie, which sounds more false: "Absolutely no party took place at this house," or "I didn't host a party here." Second, liars tend to be more negative, because on a subconscious level, they feel guilty about lying. For example, a liar might say something like, "Sorry, my stupid phone battery died. I hate that thing." Third, liars typically explain events in simple terms since our brains struggle to build a complex lie. Judgment and evaluation are complex things for our brains to compute. As a U.S. President once famously insisted: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." And finally, even though liars keep descriptions simple, they tend to use longer and more convoluted sentence structure, inserting unnecessary words and irrelevant but factual sounding details in order to pad the lie. Another President confronted with a scandal proclaimed: "I can say, categorically, that this investigation indicates that no one on the White House staff, no one in this administration presently employed was involved in this very bizarre incident." Let's apply linguistic analysis to some famous examples. Take seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong. When comparing a 2005 interview, in which he had denied taking performance-enhancing drugs to a 2013 interview, in which he admitted it, his use of personal pronouns increased by nearly 3/4. Note the contrast between the following two quotes. First: "Okay, you know, a guy in a French, in a Parisian laboratory opens up your sample, you know, Jean-Francis so-and-so, and he tests it. And then you get a phone call from a newspaper that says: 'We found you to be positive six times for EPO." Second: "I lost myself in all of that. I'm sure there would be other people that couldn't handle it, but I certainly couldn't handle it, and I was used to controlling everything in my life. I controlled every outcome in my life." In his denial, Armstrong described a hypothetical situation focused on someone else, removing himself from the situation entirely. In his admission, he owns his statements, delving into his personal emotions and motivations. But the use of personal pronouns is just one indicator of deception. Let's look at another example from former Senator and U.S. Presidential candidate John Edwards: "I only know that the apparent father has said publicly that he is the father of the baby. I also have not been engaged in any activity of any description that requested, agreed to, or supported payments of any kind to the woman or to the apparent father of the baby." Not only is that a pretty long-winded way to say, "The baby isn't mine," but Edwards never calls the other parties by name, instead saying "that baby," "the woman," and "the apparent father." Now let's see what he had to say when later admitting paternity: "I am Quinn's father. I will do everything in my power to provide her with the love and support she deserves." The statement is short and direct, calling the child by name and addressing his role in her life. So how can you apply these lie-spotting techniques to your life? First, remember that many of the lies we encounter on a daily basis are far less serious that these examples, and may even be harmless. But it's still worthwhile to be aware of telltale clues, like minimal self-references, negative language, simple explanations and convoluted phrasing. It just might help you avoid an overvalued stock, an ineffective product, or even a terrible relationship.

What causes headaches?

TED-Ed

In ancient Greece, headaches were considered powerful afflictions. Victims prayed for relief from Asclepius, the god of medicine. And if pain continued, a medical practitioner would perform the best-known remedy— drilling a small hole in the skull to drain supposedly infected blood. This dire technique, called trepanation, often replaced the headache with a more permanent condition. Fortunately, doctors today don’t resort to power tools to cure headaches. But we still have a lot to learn about this ancient ailment. Today, we’ve classified headaches into two camps— primary headaches and secondary headaches. The former are not symptomatic of an underlying disease, injury, or condition; they are the condition. But we’ll come back to them in a minute because while primary headaches account for 50% of reported cases, we actually know much more about secondary headaches. These are caused by other health problems, with triggers ranging from dehydration and caffeine withdrawal to head and neck injury, and heart disease. Doctors have classified over 150 diagnosable types, all with different potential causes, symptoms, and treatments. But we’ll take just one common case —a sinus infection—as an example. The sinuses are a system of cavities that spread behind our foreheads, noses, and upper cheeks. When our sinuses are infected, our immune response heats up the area, roasting the bacteria and inflaming the cavities well past their usual size. The engorged sinuses put pressure on the cranial arteries and veins, as well as muscles in the neck and head. Their pain receptors, called nociceptors, trigger in response, cueing the brain to release a flood of neuropeptides that inflame the cranial blood vessels, swelling and heating up the head. This discomfort, paired with hyper-sensitive head muscles, creates the sore, throbbing pain of a headache. Not all headache pain comes from swelling. Tense muscles and inflamed, sensitive nerves cause varying degrees of discomfort in each headache. But all cases are reactions to some cranial irritant. While the cause is clear in secondary headaches, the origins of primary headaches remain unknown. Scientists are still investigating potential triggers for the three types of primary headaches: recurring, long-lasting migraines; intensely painful, rapid-fire cluster headaches; and, most common of all, the tension headache. As the name suggests, tension headaches are known for creating the sensation of a tight band squeezed around the head. These headaches increase the tenderness of the pericranial muscles, which then painfully pulse with blood and oxygen. Patients report stress, dehydration, and hormone changes as triggers, but these don’t fit the symptoms quite right. For example, in dehydration headaches, the frontal lobe actually shrinks away from the skull, creating forehead swelling that doesn’t match the location of the pain in tension headaches. Scientists have theories for what the actual cause is, ranging from spasming blood vessels to overly sensitive nociceptors, but no one knows for sure. Meanwhile, most headache research is focused on more severe primary headaches. Migraines are recurring headaches, which create a vise-like sensation on the skull that can last from four hours to three days. In 20% of cases, these attacks are intense enough to overload the brain with electrical energy, which hyper-excites sensory nerve endings. This produces hallucinations called auras, which can include seeing flashing lights and geometric patterns and experiencing tingling sensations. Cluster headaches, another primary headache type, cause burning, stabbing bursts of pain behind one eye, leading to a red eye, constricted pupil, and drooping eyelid. What can be done about these conditions, which dramatically affect many people’s quality of life? Tension headaches and most secondary cases can be treated with over-the-counter pain medications, such as anti-inflammatory drugs that reduce cranial swelling. And many secondary headache triggers, like dehydration, eye strain, and stress, can be proactively avoided. Migraines and cluster headaches are more complicated, and we haven’t yet discovered reliable treatments that work for everyone. But thankfully, pharmacologists and neurologists are hard at work cracking these pressing mysteries that weigh so heavily on our minds.

How to stay calm under pressure

TED-Ed

Your favorite athlete closes in for a victorious win. The crowd holds its breath, and, at the crucial moment, she misses the shot. That competitor just experienced the phenomenon known as "choking," where despite months, even years, of practice, a person fails right when it matters most. Choking is common in sports, where performance often occurs under intense pressure and depends on key moments. And yet, performance anxiety also haunts public speakers, contestants in spelling bees, and even world-famous musicians. Most people intuitively blame it on their nerves, but why does being nervous undermine expert performance? There are two sets of theories, which both say that primarily, choking under pressure boils down to focus. First, there are the distraction theories. These suggest that performance suffers when the mind is preoccupied with worries, doubts, or fears, instead of focusing its attention on performing the task at hand. When relevant and irrelevant thoughts compete for the same attention, something has to give. The brain can only process so much information at once. Tasks that challenge working memory, the mental “scratch pad” we use to temporarily store phone numbers and grocery lists, are especially vulnerable to pressure. In a 2004 study, a group of university students were asked to perform math problems, some easy, others more complex and memory-intensive. Half the students completed both problem types with nothing at stake, while the others completed them when calm and under pressure. While everyone did well on the easy problems, those who were stressed performed worse on the more difficult, memory-intensive tasks. Explicit monitoring theories make up the second group of explanations for choking under pressure. They’re concerned with how pressure can cause people to overanalyze the task at hand. Here, the logic goes that once a skill becomes automatic, thinking about its precise mechanics interferes with your ability to do it. Tasks we do unconsciously seem to be most vulnerable to this kind of choking. A study on competitive golfers compared their performance when instructed to simply focus on putting as accurately as possible, versus when they were primed to be acutely aware of the mechanics of their putting stroke. Golfers usually perform this action subconsciously, so those who suddenly tuned in to the precise details of their own moves also became worse at making accurate shots. Choking may not be inevitable for everyone though. Research suggests that some are more susceptible than others, especially those who are self-conscious, anxious, and afraid of being judged negatively by others. So, how can we avoid choking when it really counts? First, it helps to practice under stressful conditions. In a study on expert dart players, researchers found that those who hadn’t practiced under stress performed worse when anxious, compared to those who had become accustomed to pressure. Secondly, many performers extol the virtues of a pre-performance routine, whether it’s taking a few deep breaths, repeating a cue word, or doing a rhythmic sequence of movements. Studies on golfing, bowling, and water polo find that short rituals can lead to more consistent and accurate performance under pressure. And thirdly, researchers have shown that having an external focus on the ultimate goal works better than an internal focus, where someone is tuned into the mechanics of what they’re doing. A study of experienced golfers revealed that those who hit chip shots while focused on the flight of the ball performed significantly better than those who focused on the motion of their arms. So, perhaps we can modify that age-old saying: practice, under pressure, with focus, and with that glorious end goal in sight, makes perfect.

How do focus groups work?

TED-Ed

Why do we buy certain products or choose certain brands? This is the sort of question advertisers have always asked, and there are no easy answers. However, there is a handy tool that helps companies explore this and similar questions, and it's called the focus group. Until the 1940s, market research was often quantitative using things like sales figures and customer polls to track consumption. But this changed during World War II. Sociologists Robert Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld set out to learn how unprecedented exposure to wartime propaganda was affecting the public. Instead of polling large numbers of people with straightforward questions and quantifiable answers, the researchers conducted in-person interviews, sometimes with small groups, engaging them in more open discussions. Later, this method was picked up by the advertising industry with the help of consultants, like Austrian-born psychologist Ernest Dichter, who first coined the term focus group. This new technique was a type of qualitative research focused on the nature of people's preferences and thoughts. It couldn't tell marketers what percentage of people buy a certain product or brand, but it could tell them more about the people who do, their reasoning for doing so, and even the unconscious motivations behind those reasons. Rather than providing definite conclusions for business and sales, focus groups would be used for exploratory research, generating new ideas for products and marketing based on deeper understanding of consumer habits. For example, early focus groups found that contrary to popular opinion at the time, wives often had more influence than their husbands when choosing which car to buy, so Chrysler shifted gears by marketing cars directly to women. And Dr. Dichter himself conducted focus groups for Mattel to learn what girls wanted in a doll. The result was the original Barbie doll. So how does a focus group work? First, companies recruit between six and ten participants according to specific criteria that meet their research objectives. They could be mothers of children between five and seven, or teenagers planning to buy a new phone in the next three months. This is often done through professional recruiters who manage lists of people who've agreed to participate in focus groups for payment or other rewards. During a session, participants are asked to respond to various prompts from the group moderator, like sharing their opinions on a certain product, or their emotional reactions to an advertisement. They may even be asked to do seemingly unrelated tasks, like imagining brands as animals in a zoo. The idea is that this can reveal useful information about the participant's feelings that traditional questions might not get to. Beyond these basics, many variations are possible. A focus group may have two or more moderators perhaps taking opposite sides on a question, or a researcher might be hidden in the focus group unknown to other participants to see how their answers can be influenced. And the whole process may also be observed by researchers through a one-way mirror. But although they can provide valuable insight, focus groups do have their limitations, and one of the main ones is that the simple act of observing something can change it. This principle is called observer interference. The answers participants give are likely to be affected by the presence of the researchers, social pressure from the rest of the group, or simply knowing that they're taking part in a focus group. And because researchers often use a small sample size in a specific setting, it's hard to generalize their results. The findings that researchers do reach from focus groups are often tested through experiments and data gathering. Those put numbers on questions like how many potential customers there are and what price they'd be willing to pay. This part of the process changes as technology evolves. But focus groups have remained largely the same for decades. Perhaps when it comes to the big, important questions, there's no substitute for people genuinely interacting with each other.

How miscommunication happens (and how to avoid it)

TED-Ed

Have you ever talked with a friend about a problem only to realize that he just doesn't seem to grasp why the issue is so important to you? Have you ever presented an idea to a group and it's met with utter confusion? Or maybe you've been in an argument when the other person suddenly accuses you of not listening to what they're saying at all? What's going on here? The answer is miscommunication, and in some form or another, we've all experienced it. It can lead to confusion, animosity, misunderstanding, or even crashing a multimillion dollar probe into the surface of Mars. The fact is even when face-to-face with another person, in the very same room, and speaking the same language, human communication is incredibly complex. But the good news is that a basic understanding of what happens when we communicate can help us prevent miscommunication. For decades, researchers have asked, "What happens when we communicate?" One interpretation, called the transmission model, views communication as a message that moves directly from one person to another, similar to someone tossing a ball and walking away. But in reality, this simplistic model doesn't account for communication's complexity. Enter the transactional model, which acknowledges the many added challenges of communicating. With this model, it's more accurate to think of communication between people as a game of catch. As we communicate our message, we receive feedback from the other party. Through the transaction, we create meaning together. But from this exchange, further complications arise. It's not like the Star Trek universe, where some characters can Vulcan mind meld, fully sharing thoughts and feelings. As humans, we can't help but send and receive messages through our own subjective lenses. When communicating, one person expresses her interpretation of a message, and the person she's communicating with hears his own interpretation of that message. Our perceptual filters continually shift meanings and interpretations. Remember that game of catch? Imagine it with a lump of clay. As each person touches it, they shape it to fit their own unique perceptions based on any number of variables, like knowledge or past experience, age, race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or family background. Simultaneously, every person interprets the message they receive based on their relationship with the other person, and their unique understanding of the semantics and connotations of the exact words being used. They could also be distracted by other stimuli, such as traffic or a growling stomach. Even emotion might cloud their understanding, and by adding more people into a conversation, each with their own subjectivities, the complexity of communication grows exponentially. So as the lump of clay goes back and forth from one person to another, reworked, reshaped, and always changing, it's no wonder our messages sometimes turn into a mush of miscommunication. But, luckily, there are some simple practices that can help us all navigate our daily interactions for better communication. One: recognize that passive hearing and active listening are not the same. Engage actively with the verbal and nonverbal feedback of others, and adjust your message to facilitate greater understanding. Two: listen with your eyes and ears, as well as with your gut. Remember that communication is more than just words. Three: take time to understand as you try to be understood. In the rush to express ourselves, it's easy to forget that communication is a two-way street. Be open to what the other person might say. And finally, four: Be aware of your personal perceptual filters. Elements of your experience, including your culture, community, and family, influence how you see the world. Say, "This is how I see the problem, but how do you see it?" Don't assume that your perception is the objective truth. That'll help you work toward sharing a dialogue with others to reach a common understanding together.

The left brain vs. right brain myth

{0: 'Elizabeth Waters is a neuroscientist and educator working to enrich and expand science education. '}

TED-Ed

Behold the human brain, it's lumpy landscape visibly split into a left and right side. This structure has inspired one of the most pervasive ideas about the brain, that the left side controls logic and the right, creativity. And yet, this is a myth unsupported by scientific evidence. So how did this misleading idea come about, and what does it get wrong? It's true that the brain has a right and a left side. This is most apparent with the outer layer, or the cortex. Internal regions, like the striatum, hypothalamus, thalamus, and brain stem appear to be made from continuous tissue, but in fact, they're also organized with left and right sides. The left and the right sides of the brain do control different body functions, such as movement and sight. The brain's right side controls the motion of the left arm and leg and vice versa. The visual system is even more complex. Each eye has a left and right visual field. Both left visual fields are sent to the right side of the brain, and both right fields are sent to the left side. So the brain uses both sides to make a complete image of the world. Scientists don't know for sure why we have that crossing over. One theory is it began soon after animals developed more complex nervous systems because it gave the survival advantage of quicker reflexes. If an animal sees a predator coming from its left side, it's best off escaping to the right. So we can say that vision and movement control are two systems that rely on this left-right structure, but problems arise when we over-extend that idea to logic and creativity. This misconception began in the mid-1800s when two neurologists, Broca and Wernicke, examined patients who had problems communicating due to injuries. The researchers found damage to the patients' left temporal lobes, so they suggested that language is controlled by the left side of the brain. That captured the popular imagination. Author Robert Louis Stevenson then introduced the idea of a logical left hemisphere competing with an emotional right hemisphere represented by his characters Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But this idea didn't hold up when doctors and scientists examined patients who were missing a hemisphere or had their two hemispheres separated. These patients showed a complete range of behaviors, both logical and creative. Later research showed that one side of the brain is more active than the other for some functions. Language is more localized to the left and attention to the right. So one side of the brain may do more work, but this varies by system rather than by person. There isn't any evidence to suggest that individuals have dominant sides of the brain, or to support the idea of a left-right split between logic and creativity. Some people may be particularly logical or creative, but that has nothing to do with the sides of their brains. And even the idea of logic and creativity being at odds with each other doesn't hold up well. Solving complex math problems requires inspired creativity and many vibrant works of art have intricate logical frameworks. Almost every feat of creativity and logic carries the mark of the whole brain functioning as one.

The power of the placebo effect

TED-Ed

In 1996, 56 volunteers took part in a study to test a new painkiller called Trivaricaine. On each subject, one index finger was covered in the new painkiller while the other remained untouched. Then, both were squeezed in painful clamps. The subjects reported that the treated finger hurt less than the untreated one. This shouldn't be surprising, except Trivaricaine wasn't actually a painkiller, just a fake concotion with no pain-easing properties at all. What made the students so sure this dummy drug had worked? The answer lies in the placebo effect, an unexplained phenomenon wherein drugs, treatments, and therapies that aren't supposed to have an effect, and are often fake, miraculously make people feel better. Doctors have used the term placebo since the 1700s when they realized the power of fake drugs to improve people's symptoms. These were administered when proper drugs weren't available, or if someone imagined they were ill. In fact, the word placebo means "I shall please" in Latin, hinting at a history of placating troubled patients. Placebos had to mimic the real treatments in order to be convincing, so they took the form of sugar pills, water-filled injections, and even sham surgeries. Soon, doctors realized that duping people in this way had another use: in clinical trials. By the 1950s, researchers were using placebos as a standard tool to test new treatments. To evaluate a new drug, for instance, half the patients in a trial might receive the real pill. The other half would get a placebo that looked the same. Since patients wouldn't know whether they'd received the real thing or a dud, the results wouldn't be biased, researchers believed. Then, if the new drug showed a significant benefit compared to the placebo, it was proved effective. Nowadays, it's less common to use placebos this way because of ethical concerns. If it's possible to compare a new drug against an older version, or another existing drug, that's preferable to simply giving someone no treatment at all, especially if they have a serious ailment. In these cases, placebos are often used as a control to fine-tune the trial so that the effects of the new versus the old or alternative drug can be precisely compared. But of course, we know the placebos exert their own influence, too. Thanks to the placebo effect, patients have experienced relief from a range of ailments, including heart problems, asthma, and severe pain, even though all they'd received was a fake drug or sham surgery. We're still trying to understand how. Some believe that instead of being real, the placebo effect is merely confused with other factors, like patients trying to please doctors by falsely reporting improvements. On the other hand, researchers think that if a person believes a fake treatment is real, their expectations of recovery actually do trigger physiological factors that improve their symptoms. Placebos seem to be capable of causing measurable change in blood pressure, heart rate, and the release of pain-reducing chemicals, like endorphins. That explains why subjects in pain studies often say placebos ease their discomfort. Placebos may even reduce levels of stress hormones, like adrenaline, which can slow the harmful effects of an ailment. So shouldn't we celebrate the placebo's bizarre benefits? Not necessarily. If somebody believes a fake treatment has cured them, they may miss out on drugs or therapies that are proven to work. Plus, the positive effects may fade over time, and often do. Placebos also cloud clinical results, making scientists even more motivated to discover how they wield such power over us. Despite everything we know about the human body, there are still some strange and enduring mysteries, like the placebo effect. So what other undiscovered marvels might we contain? It's easy to investigate the world around us and forget that one of its most fascinating subjects lies right behind our eyes.

Rethinking thinking

{0: 'Relationship Builder | Trevor Maber teaches in the areas of project management, leadership, human resources, training and development, presentation skills, and case analysis. He has learned that the key to work-life balance is focusing on relationships. One of his greatest passions is connecting people and ideas with an emphasis on building and nurturing the relationships necessary for this to happen – a significant portion of his research and consulting work focuses on relational approaches to group, team, and community engagement. Trevor is a full-time faculty member at the Edwards School of Business, partners with several of leading Canadian consulting groups, and is an active contributor to the online TED-ED global learning initiative, working closely with TED on projects and initiatives. He is currently working toward his PhD with Fielding Graduate University. Trevor holds a Masters degree in Leadership and numerous coaching, facilitation, and assessment certifications.'}

TED-Ed

Imagine a microscopic-sized ladder contained in the part of our brain that we'll label our subconscious. The Ladder of Inference, which was first proposed by Harvard professor Chris Argyris, is the basis of this model. Every time we interact with someone, that experience enters the ladder at the bottom. That same experience zips up the ladder in the blink of an eye, exiting at the top. This process happens thousands of times a day without us knowing it. Let's focus on what happens on each rung of the ladder. On the first rung, we have the raw data and observations of our experience. This is very similar to what someone watching a video recording of our experience would see. Moving up to the second rung, we filter in specific information and details from our experience. We unknowingly filter based on our preferences, tendencies, and many other aspects that we believe are important. On to the third rung. We assign meaning to the information we have filtered through. This is where we start to interpret what our information is telling us. On our fourth rung, a very crucial thing happens. We develop assumptions based on the meaning we created on the previous rung, and we start to blur the distinction between what is fact and what is story. On the fifth rung, we develop conclusions based on our assumptions. This is also where our emotional reactions are created. On the sixth rung, we adjust our beliefs about the world around us, including the person or people involved in our experience of the moment. On the seventh and final rung, we take action based on our adjusted beliefs. Still with me? Great! Let's take a real-life example and run it up the ladder to see how this all works. Have you ever been cut off in a parking lot, signal light on as you steer toward your coveted spot, only to slam on your brakes at the last minute as someone pulls in front of you and steals your spot away? Imagine that experience and notice all of the data and observations landing on the first rung of your ladder. Now let's watch what we pay attention to on the second rung. Who cares that it's sunny out and the birds are chirping? The 50% off sign outside of your favorite store is meaningless. You filter in the sensation of your grip tightening on the wheel, you feel your blood pressure rise, you hear the squeal of your brakes, and you notice the expression on the face of the other driver as he pulls in front of you and quickly looks away. Time for our third rung. Ever since you were young, your parents taught you the importance of waiting in line and taking your turn. You live and die by the rule of first come, first served. And now this guy has just stolen your spot. What gives? Up to the fourth rung we go. Watch closely as our assumptions take over and our story creates itself. "That stupid jerk, didn't his parents teach him anything? How could he not see my signal light? He must never pay attention! Why does he think he's more important than anyone else?" Jumping quickly to the fifth rung, we conclude that this guy is heartless, inconsiderate, he needs to be taught a lesson and put in his place. We feel angry, frustrated, vindictive, justified. On our sixth rung, we adjust our beliefs based on the experience. "That's the last time I give in! Next time someone tries to cut me off, tires will be smoking on the pavement as I squeal past them into my spot." And finally our last rung: we take action. We back up, pull up behind his car, honk our horn, and roll down our window to scream a few choice words as well. Now imagine, he walks over quickly, apologizing. His wife, who's almost due with their first baby, called him from inside the mall to say she is in labor and needs to get to the hospital immediately. We're momentarily shocked, apologize profusely, and wish him luck as he rushes toward the entrance. What just happened here? What changed? Why is this so significant? In our parking lot example, our beliefs were short-circuited by the ladder of the other individual. "My wife is in labor, I need to get there quick, there's a parking spot. Whew! Oh, jeez, I cut someone off. I'd better apologize quickly so they don't think I'm a jerk." But what if we were able to short-circuit our ladders ourselves? Proactively, by choice? Guess what? We can! Let's return to our unique human function of free will. Next time you notice yourself reacting to your experience, pay focused attention to your ladder. Ask yourself what beliefs are at play, where do they come from? What data and observations did you filter in as a result of your beliefs, and why? Are your assumptions valid and supported by facts? Would a different set of assumptions create different feelings, and result in new and better conclusions and actions? We all have our own unique ladder. Be mindful of yours, and help others to see theirs.

How does the immune system work?

TED-Ed

A mosquito lands on your arm, injects its chemicals into your skin, and begins to feed. You wouldn’t even know it was there, if not for the red lump that appears, accompanied by a telltale itch. It’s a nuisance, but that bump is an important signal that you’re protected by your immune system, your body’s major safeguard against infection, illness, and disease. This system is a vast network of cells, tissues, and organs that coordinate your body’s defenses against any threats to your health. Without it, you’d be exposed to billions of bacteria, viruses, and toxins that could make something as minor as a paper cut or a seasonal cold fatal. The immune system relies on millions of defensive white blood cells, also known as leukocytes, that originate in our bone marrow. These cells migrate into the bloodstream and the lymphatic system, a network of vessels which helps clear bodily toxins and waste. Our bodies are teeming with leukocytes: there are between 4,000 and 11,000 in every microliter of blood. As they move around, leukocytes work like security personnel, constantly screening the blood, tissues, and organs for suspicious signs. This system mainly relies on cues called antigens. These molecular traces on the surface of pathogens and other foreign substances betray the presence of invaders. As soon as the leukocytes detect them, it takes only minutes for the body’s protective immune response to kick in. Threats to our bodies are hugely variable, so the immune response has to be equally adaptable. That means relying on many different types of leukocytes to tackle threats in different ways. Despite this diversity, we classify leukocytes in two main cellular groups, which coordinate a two-pronged attack. First, phagocytes trigger the immune response by sending macrophages and dendritic cells into the blood. As these circulate, they destroy any foreign cells they encounter, simply by consuming them. That allows phagocytes to identify the antigen on the invaders they just ingested and transmit this information to the second major cell group orchestrating the defense, the lymphocytes. A group of lymphocyte cells called T-cells go in search of infected body cells and swiftly kill them off. Meanwhile, B-cells and helper T-cells use the information gathered from the unique antigens to start producing special proteins called antibodies. This is the pièce de résistance: Each antigen has a unique, matching antibody that can latch onto it like a lock and key, and destroy the invading cells. B-cells can produce millions of these, which then cycle through the body and attack the invaders until the worst of the threat is neutralized. While all of this is going on, familiar symptoms, like high temperatures and swelling, are actually processes designed to aid the immune response. A warmer body makes it harder for bacteria and viruses to reproduce and spread because they’re temperature-sensitive. And when body cells are damaged, they release chemicals that make fluid leak into the surrounding tissues, causing swelling. That also attracts phagocytes, which consume the invaders and the damaged cells. Usually, an immune response will eradicate a threat within a few days. It won’t always stop you from getting ill, but that’s not its purpose. Its actual job is to stop a threat from escalating to dangerous levels inside your body. And through constant surveillance over time, the immune system provides another benefit: it helps us develop long-term immunity. When B- and T-cells identify antigens, they can use that information to recognize invaders in the future. So, when a threat revisits, the cells can swiftly deploy the right antibodies to tackle it before it affects any more cells. That’s how you can develop immunity to certain diseases, like chickenpox. It doesn’t always work so well. Some people have autoimmune diseases, which trick the immune system into attacking the body’s own perfectly healthy cells. No one knows exactly what causes them, but these disorders sabotage the immune system to varying degrees, and underlie problems like arthritis, Type I diabetes, and multiple sclerosis. For most individuals, however, a healthy immune system will successfully fight off an estimated 300 colds and innumerable other potential infections over the course of a lifetime. Without it, those threats would escalate into something far more dangerous. So the next time you catch a cold or scratch a mosquito bite, think of the immune system. We owe it our lives.

What we're getting wrong in the fight to end hunger

{0: 'Jasmine Crowe is the creator of Goodr, a tech-enabled sustainable food waste management company that strives to eliminate hunger and save food from landfills.'}

TEDWomen 2019

In June of 2017, I volunteered with a group at a local food pantry on the south side of my home city in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a Friday afternoon, the day of their weekly food giveaway. And as I drove up, I saw people beginning to arrive, many with their rolling carts in tow, prepared to receive their food supply for the week. As I was walking in the door, there were about 40 people outside waiting in line. And I was so excited, because there are very few things I enjoy more than giving back. But then, as I entered the room where the volunteer meeting was taking place, I immediately realized: we weren't about to give these people any real meals. We were essentially just giving them food. I took my place on the assembly line, where — get this — I was in charge of making sure that the Weight Watchers Ding Dongs made it into every family's bag. As the bags started to come around, I'm thinking to myself: What on earth are we doing here? Each bag contained two 20-ounce diet Snapples, a gallon of barbecue sauce, a bag of kettle potato chips, a box of superhero-shaped vegetable-enriched macaroni noodles, a box of belVita breakfast bars, a can of refried beans, a can of sweet peas, a miniature can of corn, I can't forget about those Ding Dongs and french fried green onions, you know, the kind that go on top of a green bean casserole. And that was it. We made over a hundred of those bags that day, and people indeed stood in line to receive one. But a feeling came over me; I felt bad and a little angry. It was like, how could I even feel good about the work that I was doing when I knew for a fact that not one meal was to come from the food we had just given to over 100 families? I mean, who wants to have a meal with barbecue sauce and Ding Dongs? (Laughter) And the reality is, I've been part of this process all my life. I've participated in food drives, I've collected cans since I was a kid, I've donated in the grocery store more times than I can count, I've volunteered at shelters, I've worked in food pantries, and I'm sure, like me, so many of you have, too. In 2013, I even created a pop-up restaurant, called Sunday Soul. And I rented tables and chairs and linens and I printed out menus and I took these experiences to alleyways, underneath bridges and in parks to allow people that were experiencing homelessness to dine with dignity. So I've invested in this fight for quite some time. In almost every major US city, the food bank is viewed as a beloved community institution. Corporations send volunteers down on a weekly basis to sort through food items and make boxes of food for the needy. And can drives — they warm the hearts of schools and office buildings that participate and fill the shelves of food banks and food pantries across the nation. This is how we work to end hunger. And what I've come to realize is that we are doing hunger wrong. We are doing the same things over and over and over again and expecting a different end result. We've created a cycle that keeps people dependent on food banks and pantries on a monthly basis for food that is often not well-balanced and certainly doesn't provide them with a healthy meal. In the US, our approach to doing good, or what we call "charity," has actually hindered us from making real progress. We're educating the world on how many people are food insecure. There are television commercials, billboards, massive donations, the engagement of some of our biggest celebrities in the fight. But the ever-present reality is that, even with all of this work, millions of people are still going hungry. And we can do better. Globally, 821 million people are hungry. That's one in nine people on this planet. And here in the United States, nearly 40 million people experience hunger every single year, including more than 11 million children that go to bed hungry every night. Yet, we're wasting more food than ever before — more than 80 billion pounds a year, to be exact. The EPA estimates that food waste has more than doubled between 1970 and 2017, and now accounts for 27 percent of everything in our landfills. And as this food sits, it gradually rots and produces harmful methane gas, a leading contributor to global climate change. We have the waste of the food itself, the waste of all the money associated with producing this now-wasted food and the waste of labor with all of the above. And then there's the social inequity between people who really need food and can't get it and people who have too much and simply throw it away. All of this made me realize that hunger was not an issue of scarcity but rather a matter of logistics. So in 2017, I set out to end hunger using technology. After all, food delivery apps had begun to explode on the scene, and I thought surely we can reverse-engineer this technology and get food from businesses like restaurants and grocery stores and into the hands of people in need. I believe that technology and innovation have the power to solve real problems, especially hunger. So in 2017, I created an app that would inventory everything that a business sells and make it super easy for them to donate this excess food that would typically go to waste at the end of the night. All the user has to do now is click on an item, tell us how many they have to donate, and our platform calculates the weight and the tax value of those items at time of donation. We then connect with local drivers in the shared economy to get this food picked up and delivered directly to the doors of nonprofit organizations and people in need. I provided the data and the analytics to help businesses reduce food waste at the source by letting them know the items that they waste repeatedly on a regular basis, and they even saved millions of dollars. Our mission was simple: feed more, waste less. And by 2018, our clients included the world's busiest airport, Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson, and we were working with brands and corporations like Hormel, Chick-fil-A and Papa John's. We even had the opportunity to work with the NFL for Super Bowl LIII. And over the last two years, we've worked with over 200 business to divert more than two million pounds of edible food from landfills into the hands of people that needed it most. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) This has accounted for about 1.7 million meals and allowed us to start to expand our efforts to other cities, like Washington, DC, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia and more. That's just one approach that actually tackles the problem. Another was the launch of our pop-up grocery stores. We recover excess food from businesses and set up free community grocery stores right in the middle of food deserts. We bring out a chef, and we do on-site taste-testings and allow families to leave with recipe cards. We give every family reusable grocery bags and allow them to simply shop minus the price tag. We wanted to give people access to meals and not just food. We wanted to change the way that we think and work to solve hunger in this country, get people to believe that we can solve hunger, not as a nonprofit, not as a food bank but as a social enterprise, with the goal of reducing waste and ending hunger. But it hasn't been as easy as I thought to change the narrative and the thought process on how we think that hunger can be solved. In 2016, France became the first country to ban supermarkets from throwing away unused food. Instead, they must donate it, and they're fined if they don't. Yes. (Applause) In 2017, Italy followed suit, becoming the second European nation to pass an anti-food-waste ban. And they stated it so simply as it was passed through legislation: "We have millions of pounds of good food going to waste, and we have poor people that are going hungry." That simple. Denmark now has a mandated food waste grocery store. Its name: Wefood. They recover excess food from local grocery stores and sell it at up to a 50 percent off discount. They then use all the proceeds and donate it to emergency aid programs and social need issues for the people in need. It has been hailed as "the Goodwill of grocery." And last year, the world got its first pay-what-you-can grocery store, when Feed it Forward opened in Toronto. Their shelves remain stocked by recovering excess food from major supermarkets and allowing families to simply pay what they can at their grocery store. This is amazing. This innovation we need more of. Everyone can take on the roles of changing the attitudes about how we solve hunger. When we think of how we've allowed innovation and technology to change our lives, from how we communicate with each other to how we view our entertainment to how we even receive food, it's amazing that we haven't solved hunger yet. We literally have cars that can drive themselves and millions of people that cannot feed themselves. With millions of dollars being donated to end food insecurity, we should've solved hunger years ago. And I asked myself — (Applause) I asked myself, why can't we escape this vicious cycle? Why haven't we solved this problem? I remember meeting with investors and pitching the idea, trying to raise funds for my business, and one of them said to me, in true seriousness, "Hunger is already being solved," as if millions of people weren't going to go to bed hungry that very night, and as if there was nothing else to do. And the reality is, one would think that hunger is being solved, but the truth is, it's being worked on. If we really want to solve hunger, then we have to change the way we've been doing it. The same actions will always garner the same results. There are hundreds of social entrepreneurs all over the world. They have a focus to solve really big problems, like hunger, but they'll never get the same support that we give national hunger-fighting organizations and food banks. But, if given the opportunity, they have the ability to foster insight and perhaps be forward-thinking enough to solve this problem. That's why I'm traveling the world and I'm really talking about what hunger looks like in America and explaining the difference between giving people access to food and access to meals. I've been meeting with city council members and city organizers across the US and telling them that technology indeed does have the power to connect businesses with surplus food to people in need, and explaining to them what a meal can actually mean to a family. I've been meeting with school boards and school districts to talk about how we feed hungry children, and health care organizations, sharing the message that food is health, and food is life, and that, by solving hunger, we can solve so many more problems. So if we want to know that we don't live in a nation where perfectly good food goes to waste when our neighbors don't have food to eat, then we need to change the laws. We need to introduce new policies, and, most importantly, we need to change our minds and our actions. Food drives are fine. Food banks serve a huge purpose. And yes, sometimes I like Ding Dongs, too. But the reality is that food drives do not solve hunger. And if we are smart about connecting the dots that are right in front of our noses, we can do far more than give a family a box of superhero-shaped vegetable-enriched macaroni noodles and a gallon of barbecue sauce to feed themselves. Instead, we can give them back their dignity. Perhaps we can increase school attendance in schools. We can improve the health outcomes for millions. And, most importantly, we can reduce food waste in our landfills, creating a better environment for all of us. The thing I love most is that we can feel good about it in the process. If we solve hunger, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain. So let's do it. Thank you. (Applause) Thank you.

The power of creative constraints

{0: "Brandon Rodriguez is the Educator Professional Development Specialist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as part of a collaboration with Texas State University. Before working at JPL, he taught high school chemistry and physics. Prior to teaching, he spent seven years in the private sector doing research and development for green alternatives to petrochemical products. Brandon received his bachelors from Vanderbilt University and his Ph.D. in chemistry from Northwestern University. He holds over a dozen publications and patents, and has presented at numerous conferences in both science and education in the United States and internationally."}

TED-Ed

Imagine you're asked to invent something new. It could be whatever you want made from anything you choose in any shape or size. That kind of creative freedom sounds so liberating, doesn't it? Or does it? If you're like most people, you'd probably be paralyzed by this task. Without more guidance, where would you even begin? As it turns out, boundless freedom isn't always helpful. In reality, any project is restricted by many factors, such as the cost, what materials you have at your disposal, and unbreakable laws of physics. These factors are called creative constraints, and they're the requirements and limitations we have to address in order to accomplish a goal. Creative constraints apply across professions, to architects and artists, writers, engineers, and scientists. In many fields, constraints play a special role as drivers of discovery and invention. During the scientific process in particular, constraints are an essential part of experimental design. For instance, a scientist studying a new virus would consider, "How can I use the tools and techniques at hand to create an experiment that tells me how this virus infects the body's cells? And what are the limits of my knowledge that prevent me from understanding this new viral pathway?" In engineering, constraints have us apply our scientific discoveries to invent something new and useful. Take, for example, the landers Viking 1 and 2, which relied on thrusters to arrive safely on the surface of Mars. The problem? Those thrusters left foreign chemicals on the ground, contaminating soil samples. So a new constraint was introduced. How can we land a probe on Mars without introducing chemicals from Earth? The next Pathfinder mission used an airbag system to allow the rover to bounce and roll to a halt without burning contaminating fuel. Years later, we wanted to send a much larger rover: Curiosity. However, it was too large for the airbag design, so another constraint was defined. How can we land a large rover while still keeping rocket fuel away from the Martian soil? In response, engineers had a wild idea. They designed a skycrane. Similar to the claw machine at toy stores, it would lower the rover from high above the surface. With each invention, the engineers demonstrated an essential habit of scientific thinking - that solutions must recognize the limitations of current technology in order to advance it. Sometimes this progress is iterative, as in, "How can I make a better parachute to land my rover?" And sometimes, it's innovative, like how to reach our goal when the best possible parachute isn't going to work. In both cases, the constraints guide decision-making to ensure we reach each objective. Here's another Mars problem yet to be solved. Say we want to send astronauts who will need water. They'd rely on a filtration system that keeps the water very clean and enables 100% recovery. Those are some pretty tough constraints, and we may not have the technology for it now. But in the process of trying to meet these objectives, we might discover other applications of any inventions that result. Building an innovative water filtration system could provide a solution for farmers working in drought-stricken regions, or a way to clean municipal water in polluted cities. In fact, many scientific advances have occurred when serendipitous failures in one field address the constraints of another. When scientist Alexander Fleming mistakenly contaminated a Petri dish in the lab, it led to the discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin. The same is true of synthetic dye, plastic, and gunpowder. All were created mistakenly, but went on to address the constraints of other problems. Understanding constraints guides scientific progress, and what's true in science is also true in many other fields. Constraints aren't the boundaries of creativity, but the foundation of it.

How civilization could destroy itself -- and 4 ways we could prevent it

{0: 'Nick Bostrom works on big questions: What should we do, as individuals and as a species, to optimize our long-term prospects?', 1: 'After a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas worth spreading.'}

TED2019

Chris Anderson: Nick Bostrom. So, you have already given us so many crazy ideas out there. I think a couple of decades ago, you made the case that we might all be living in a simulation, or perhaps probably were. More recently, you've painted the most vivid examples of how artificial general intelligence could go horribly wrong. And now this year, you're about to publish a paper that presents something called the vulnerable world hypothesis. And our job this evening is to give the illustrated guide to that. So let's do that. What is that hypothesis? Nick Bostrom: It's trying to think about a sort of structural feature of the current human condition. You like the urn metaphor, so I'm going to use that to explain it. So picture a big urn filled with balls representing ideas, methods, possible technologies. You can think of the history of human creativity as the process of reaching into this urn and pulling out one ball after another, and the net effect so far has been hugely beneficial, right? We've extracted a great many white balls, some various shades of gray, mixed blessings. We haven't so far pulled out the black ball — a technology that invariably destroys the civilization that discovers it. So the paper tries to think about what could such a black ball be. CA: So you define that ball as one that would inevitably bring about civilizational destruction. NB: Unless we exit what I call the semi-anarchic default condition. But sort of, by default. CA: So, you make the case compelling by showing some sort of counterexamples where you believe that so far we've actually got lucky, that we might have pulled out that death ball without even knowing it. So there's this quote, what's this quote? NB: Well, I guess it's just meant to illustrate the difficulty of foreseeing what basic discoveries will lead to. We just don't have that capability. Because we have become quite good at pulling out balls, but we don't really have the ability to put the ball back into the urn, right. We can invent, but we can't un-invent. So our strategy, such as it is, is to hope that there is no black ball in the urn. CA: So once it's out, it's out, and you can't put it back in, and you think we've been lucky. So talk through a couple of these examples. You talk about different types of vulnerability. NB: So the easiest type to understand is a technology that just makes it very easy to cause massive amounts of destruction. Synthetic biology might be a fecund source of that kind of black ball, but many other possible things we could — think of geoengineering, really great, right? We could combat global warming, but you don't want it to get too easy either, you don't want any random person and his grandmother to have the ability to radically alter the earth's climate. Or maybe lethal autonomous drones, massed-produced, mosquito-sized killer bot swarms. Nanotechnology, artificial general intelligence. CA: You argue in the paper that it's a matter of luck that when we discovered that nuclear power could create a bomb, it might have been the case that you could have created a bomb with much easier resources, accessible to anyone. NB: Yeah, so think back to the 1930s where for the first time we make some breakthroughs in nuclear physics, some genius figures out that it's possible to create a nuclear chain reaction and then realizes that this could lead to the bomb. And we do some more work, it turns out that what you require to make a nuclear bomb is highly enriched uranium or plutonium, which are very difficult materials to get. You need ultracentrifuges, you need reactors, like, massive amounts of energy. But suppose it had turned out instead there had been an easy way to unlock the energy of the atom. That maybe by baking sand in the microwave oven or something like that you could have created a nuclear detonation. So we know that that's physically impossible. But before you did the relevant physics how could you have known how it would turn out? CA: Although, couldn't you argue that for life to evolve on Earth that implied sort of stable environment, that if it was possible to create massive nuclear reactions relatively easy, the Earth would never have been stable, that we wouldn't be here at all. NB: Yeah, unless there were something that is easy to do on purpose but that wouldn't happen by random chance. So, like things we can easily do, we can stack 10 blocks on top of one another, but in nature, you're not going to find, like, a stack of 10 blocks. CA: OK, so this is probably the one that many of us worry about most, and yes, synthetic biology is perhaps the quickest route that we can foresee in our near future to get us here. NB: Yeah, and so think about what that would have meant if, say, anybody by working in their kitchen for an afternoon could destroy a city. It's hard to see how modern civilization as we know it could have survived that. Because in any population of a million people, there will always be some who would, for whatever reason, choose to use that destructive power. So if that apocalyptic residual would choose to destroy a city, or worse, then cities would get destroyed. CA: So here's another type of vulnerability. Talk about this. NB: Yeah, so in addition to these kind of obvious types of black balls that would just make it possible to blow up a lot of things, other types would act by creating bad incentives for humans to do things that are harmful. So, the Type-2a, we might call it that, is to think about some technology that incentivizes great powers to use their massive amounts of force to create destruction. So, nuclear weapons were actually very close to this, right? What we did, we spent over 10 trillion dollars to build 70,000 nuclear warheads and put them on hair-trigger alert. And there were several times during the Cold War we almost blew each other up. It's not because a lot of people felt this would be a great idea, let's all spend 10 trillion dollars to blow ourselves up, but the incentives were such that we were finding ourselves — this could have been worse. Imagine if there had been a safe first strike. Then it might have been very tricky, in a crisis situation, to refrain from launching all their nuclear missiles. If nothing else, because you would fear that the other side might do it. CA: Right, mutual assured destruction kept the Cold War relatively stable, without that, we might not be here now. NB: It could have been more unstable than it was. And there could be other properties of technology. It could have been harder to have arms treaties, if instead of nuclear weapons there had been some smaller thing or something less distinctive. CA: And as well as bad incentives for powerful actors, you also worry about bad incentives for all of us, in Type-2b here. NB: Yeah, so, here we might take the case of global warming. There are a lot of little conveniences that cause each one of us to do things that individually have no significant effect, right? But if billions of people do it, cumulatively, it has a damaging effect. Now, global warming could have been a lot worse than it is. So we have the climate sensitivity parameter, right. It's a parameter that says how much warmer does it get if you emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases. But, suppose that it had been the case that with the amount of greenhouse gases we emitted, instead of the temperature rising by, say, between three and 4.5 degrees by 2100, suppose it had been 15 degrees or 20 degrees. Like, then we might have been in a very bad situation. Or suppose that renewable energy had just been a lot harder to do. Or that there had been more fossil fuels in the ground. CA: Couldn't you argue that if in that case of — if what we are doing today had resulted in 10 degrees difference in the time period that we could see, actually humanity would have got off its ass and done something about it. We're stupid, but we're not maybe that stupid. Or maybe we are. NB: I wouldn't bet on it. (Laughter) You could imagine other features. So, right now, it's a little bit difficult to switch to renewables and stuff, right, but it can be done. But it might just have been, with slightly different physics, it could have been much more expensive to do these things. CA: And what's your view, Nick? Do you think, putting these possibilities together, that this earth, humanity that we are, we count as a vulnerable world? That there is a death ball in our future? NB: It's hard to say. I mean, I think there might well be various black balls in the urn, that's what it looks like. There might also be some golden balls that would help us protect against black balls. And I don't know which order they will come out. CA: I mean, one possible philosophical critique of this idea is that it implies a view that the future is essentially settled. That there either is that ball there or it's not. And in a way, that's not a view of the future that I want to believe. I want to believe that the future is undetermined, that our decisions today will determine what kind of balls we pull out of that urn. NB: I mean, if we just keep inventing, like, eventually we will pull out all the balls. I mean, I think there's a kind of weak form of technological determinism that is quite plausible, like, you're unlikely to encounter a society that uses flint axes and jet planes. But you can almost think of a technology as a set of affordances. So technology is the thing that enables us to do various things and achieve various effects in the world. How we'd then use that, of course depends on human choice. But if we think about these three types of vulnerability, they make quite weak assumptions about how we would choose to use them. So a Type-1 vulnerability, again, this massive, destructive power, it's a fairly weak assumption to think that in a population of millions of people there would be some that would choose to use it destructively. CA: For me, the most single disturbing argument is that we actually might have some kind of view into the urn that makes it actually very likely that we're doomed. Namely, if you believe in accelerating power, that technology inherently accelerates, that we build the tools that make us more powerful, then at some point you get to a stage where a single individual can take us all down, and then it looks like we're screwed. Isn't that argument quite alarming? NB: Ah, yeah. (Laughter) I think — Yeah, we get more and more power, and [it's] easier and easier to use those powers, but we can also invent technologies that kind of help us control how people use those powers. CA: So let's talk about that, let's talk about the response. Suppose that thinking about all the possibilities that are out there now — it's not just synbio, it's things like cyberwarfare, artificial intelligence, etc., etc. — that there might be serious doom in our future. What are the possible responses? And you've talked about four possible responses as well. NB: Restricting technological development doesn't seem promising, if we are talking about a general halt to technological progress. I think neither feasible, nor would it be desirable even if we could do it. I think there might be very limited areas where maybe you would want slower technological progress. You don't, I think, want faster progress in bioweapons, or in, say, isotope separation, that would make it easier to create nukes. CA: I mean, I used to be fully on board with that. But I would like to actually push back on that for a minute. Just because, first of all, if you look at the history of the last couple of decades, you know, it's always been push forward at full speed, it's OK, that's our only choice. But if you look at globalization and the rapid acceleration of that, if you look at the strategy of "move fast and break things" and what happened with that, and then you look at the potential for synthetic biology, I don't know that we should move forward rapidly or without any kind of restriction to a world where you could have a DNA printer in every home and high school lab. There are some restrictions, right? NB: Possibly, there is the first part, the not feasible. If you think it would be desirable to stop it, there's the problem of feasibility. So it doesn't really help if one nation kind of — CA: No, it doesn't help if one nation does, but we've had treaties before. That's really how we survived the nuclear threat, was by going out there and going through the painful process of negotiating. I just wonder whether the logic isn't that we, as a matter of global priority, we shouldn't go out there and try, like, now start negotiating really strict rules on where synthetic bioresearch is done, that it's not something that you want to democratize, no? NB: I totally agree with that — that it would be desirable, for example, maybe to have DNA synthesis machines, not as a product where each lab has their own device, but maybe as a service. Maybe there could be four or five places in the world where you send in your digital blueprint and the DNA comes back, right? And then, you would have the ability, if one day it really looked like it was necessary, we would have like, a finite set of choke points. So I think you want to look for kind of special opportunities, where you could have tighter control. CA: Your belief is, fundamentally, we are not going to be successful in just holding back. Someone, somewhere — North Korea, you know — someone is going to go there and discover this knowledge, if it's there to be found. NB: That looks plausible under current conditions. It's not just synthetic biology, either. I mean, any kind of profound, new change in the world could turn out to be a black ball. CA: Let's look at another possible response. NB: This also, I think, has only limited potential. So, with the Type-1 vulnerability again, I mean, if you could reduce the number of people who are incentivized to destroy the world, if only they could get access and the means, that would be good. CA: In this image that you asked us to do you're imagining these drones flying around the world with facial recognition. When they spot someone showing signs of sociopathic behavior, they shower them with love, they fix them. NB: I think it's like a hybrid picture. Eliminate can either mean, like, incarcerate or kill, or it can mean persuade them to a better view of the world. But the point is that, suppose you were extremely successful in this, and you reduced the number of such individuals by half. And if you want to do it by persuasion, you are competing against all other powerful forces that are trying to persuade people, parties, religion, education system. But suppose you could reduce it by half, I don't think the risk would be reduced by half. Maybe by five or 10 percent. CA: You're not recommending that we gamble humanity's future on response two. NB: I think it's all good to try to deter and persuade people, but we shouldn't rely on that as our only safeguard. CA: How about three? NB: I think there are two general methods that we could use to achieve the ability to stabilize the world against the whole spectrum of possible vulnerabilities. And we probably would need both. So, one is an extremely effective ability to do preventive policing. Such that you could intercept. If anybody started to do this dangerous thing, you could intercept them in real time, and stop them. So this would require ubiquitous surveillance, everybody would be monitored all the time. CA: This is "Minority Report," essentially, a form of. NB: You would have maybe AI algorithms, big freedom centers that were reviewing this, etc., etc. CA: You know that mass surveillance is not a very popular term right now? (Laughter) NB: Yeah, so this little device there, imagine that kind of necklace that you would have to wear at all times with multidirectional cameras. But, to make it go down better, just call it the "freedom tag" or something like that. (Laughter) CA: OK. I mean, this is the conversation, friends, this is why this is such a mind-blowing conversation. NB: Actually, there's a whole big conversation on this on its own, obviously. There are huge problems and risks with that, right? We may come back to that. So the other, the final, the other general stabilization capability is kind of plugging another governance gap. So the surveillance would be kind of governance gap at the microlevel, like, preventing anybody from ever doing something highly illegal. Then, there's a corresponding governance gap at the macro level, at the global level. You would need the ability, reliably, to prevent the worst kinds of global coordination failures, to avoid wars between great powers, arms races, cataclysmic commons problems, in order to deal with the Type-2a vulnerabilities. CA: Global governance is a term that's definitely way out of fashion right now, but could you make the case that throughout history, the history of humanity is that at every stage of technological power increase, people have reorganized and sort of centralized the power. So, for example, when a roving band of criminals could take over a society, the response was, well, you have a nation-state and you centralize force, a police force or an army, so, "No, you can't do that." The logic, perhaps, of having a single person or a single group able to take out humanity means at some point we're going to have to go this route, at least in some form, no? NB: It's certainly true that the scale of political organization has increased over the course of human history. It used to be hunter-gatherer band, right, and then chiefdom, city-states, nations, now there are international organizations and so on and so forth. Again, I just want to make sure I get the chance to stress that obviously there are huge downsides and indeed, massive risks, both to mass surveillance and to global governance. I'm just pointing out that if we are lucky, the world could be such that these would be the only ways you could survive a black ball. CA: The logic of this theory, it seems to me, is that we've got to recognize we can't have it all. That the sort of, I would say, naive dream that many of us had that technology is always going to be a force for good, keep going, don't stop, go as fast as you can and not pay attention to some of the consequences, that's actually just not an option. We can have that. If we have that, we're going to have to accept some of these other very uncomfortable things with it, and kind of be in this arms race with ourselves of, you want the power, you better limit it, you better figure out how to limit it. NB: I think it is an option, a very tempting option, it's in a sense the easiest option and it might work, but it means we are fundamentally vulnerable to extracting a black ball. Now, I think with a bit of coordination, like, if you did solve this macrogovernance problem, and the microgovernance problem, then we could extract all the balls from the urn and we'd benefit greatly. CA: I mean, if we're living in a simulation, does it matter? We just reboot. (Laughter) NB: Then ... I ... (Laughter) I didn't see that one coming. CA: So what's your view? Putting all the pieces together, how likely is it that we're doomed? (Laughter) I love how people laugh when you ask that question. NB: On an individual level, we seem to kind of be doomed anyway, just with the time line, we're rotting and aging and all kinds of things, right? (Laughter) It's actually a little bit tricky. If you want to set up so that you can attach a probability, first, who are we? If you're very old, probably you'll die of natural causes, if you're very young, you might have a 100-year — the probability might depend on who you ask. Then the threshold, like, what counts as civilizational devastation? In the paper I don't require an existential catastrophe in order for it to count. This is just a definitional matter, I say a billion dead, or a reduction of world GDP by 50 percent, but depending on what you say the threshold is, you get a different probability estimate. But I guess you could put me down as a frightened optimist. (Laughter) CA: You're a frightened optimist, and I think you've just created a large number of other frightened ... people. (Laughter) NB: In the simulation. CA: In a simulation. Nick Bostrom, your mind amazes me, thank you so much for scaring the living daylights out of us. (Applause)

The philosophy of cynicism

TED-Ed

In the 4th century BCE, a banker’s son threw the city of Sinope into scandal by counterfeiting coins. When the dust finally settled, the young man, Diogenes of Sinope, had been stripped of his citizenship, his money, and all his possessions. At least, that’s how the story goes. While many of the details of Diogenes’ life are shadowy, the philosophical ideas born out of his disgrace survive today. In exile, Diogenes decided that by rejecting the opinions of others and societal measures of success, he could be truly free. He would live self-sufficiently, close to nature, without materialism, vanity, or conformity. In practice, this meant he spent years wandering around Greek cities with nothing but a cloak, staff, and knapsack— outdoors year-round, forgoing technology, baths, and cooked food. He didn’t go about this new existence quietly, but is said to have teased passers-by and mocked the powerful, eating, urinating and even masturbating in public. The citizens called him a kyôn— a barking dog. Though meant as an insult, dogs were actually a good symbol for his philosophy— they’re happy creatures, free from abstractions like wealth or reputation. Diogenes and his growing number of followers became known as “dog philosophers,” or kynikoi, a designation that eventually became the word “Cynic.” These early Cynics were a carefree bunch, drawn to the freedom of a wandering lifestyle. As Diogenes’ reputation grew, others tried to challenge his commitment. Alexander the Great offered him anything he desired. But instead of asking for material goods, Diogenes only asked Alexander to get out of his sunshine. After Diogenes’ death, adherents to his philosophy continued to call themselves Cynics for about 900 years, until 500 CE. Some Greek philosophers, like the Stoics, thought everyone should follow Diogenes’ example. They also attempted to tone down his philosophy to be more acceptable to conventional society— which, of course, was fundamentally at odds with his approach. Others viewed the Cynics less charitably. In the Roman province of Syria in the 2nd century CE, the satirist Lucian described the Cynics of his own time as unprincipled, materialistic, self-promoting hypocrites, who only preached what Diogenes had once actually practiced. Reading Lucian’s texts centuries later, Renaissance and Reformation writers called their rivals cynics as an insult— meaning people who criticized others without having anything worthwhile to say. This usage eventually laid the groundwork for the modern meaning of the word “cynic:" a person who thinks everyone else is acting out of pure self-interest, even if they claim a higher motive. Still, the philosophy of cynicism had admirers, especially among those who wished to question the state of society. The 18th-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was called the “new Diogenes” when he argued that the arts, sciences, and technology, corrupt people. In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche reimagined a story in which Diogenes went into the Athenian marketplace with a lantern, searching in vain for a single honest person. In Nietszche’s version, a so-called madman rushes into a town square to proclaim that “God is dead.” This was Nietzsche’s way of calling for a “revaluation of values,” and rejecting the dominant Christian and Platonic idea of universal, spiritual insights beyond the physical world. Nietzsche admired Diogenes for sticking stubbornly to the here-and-now. More recently, the hippies of the 1960s have been compared with Diogenes as counter-cultural rebels. Diogenes’ ideas have been adopted and reimagined over and over again. The original cynics might not have approved of these fresh takes: they believed that their values of rejecting custom and living closely with nature were the only true values. Whether or not you agree with that, or with any of the later incarnations, all have one thing in common: they questioned the status quo. And that’s an example we can still follow: not to blindly follow conventional or majority views, but to think hard about what is truly valuable.

How to turn off work thoughts during your free time

{0: 'Guy Winch asks us to take our emotional health as seriously as we take our physical health -- and explores how to heal from common heartaches.'}

TED Salon Brightline Initiative

I wanted to be a psychologist since I was a teenager, and I spent years pursuing that one goal. I opened my private practice as soon as I was licensed. It was a risky move, not getting a day job at a hospital or a clinic, but within one year, my practice was doing quite well and I was making more money than I ever made before. Of course, I was a full-time student my entire life. (Laughter) I could have worked at McDonald's and made more money than I ever made before. That one-year mark came on a Friday night in July. I walked home to my apartment and got into the elevator with a neighbor who was a doctor in the ER. The elevator rose, then it shuddered and stalled between floors. And the man who dealt with emergencies for a living began poking at the buttons and banging on the door, saying, "This is my nightmare, this is my nightmare!" And I was like, "And this is my nightmare." (Laughter) I felt terrible afterwards, though. Because I wasn't panicked and I knew what to say to calm him down. I was just too depleted to do it, I had nothing left to give, and that confused me. After all, I was finally living my dream, so why wasn't I happy? Why did I feel so burned out? For a few terrible weeks, I questioned whether I'd made a mistake. What if I had chosen the wrong profession? What if I had spent my entire life pursuing the wrong career? But then I realized, no, I still loved psychology. The problem wasn't the work I did in my office. It was the hours I spent ruminating about work when I was home. I closed the door to my office every night, but the door in my head remained wide-open and the stress just flooded in. That's the interesting thing about work stress. We don't really experience much of it at work. We're too busy. We experience it outside of work, when we are commuting, when we're home, when we're trying to rejuvenate. It is important to recover in our spare time, to de-stress and do things we enjoy, and the biggest obstruction we face in that regard is ruminating. Because each time we do it, we're actually activating our stress response. Now, to ruminate means to chew over. The word refers to how cows digest their food. For those of you unfamiliar with the joys of cow digestion, cows chew, then they swallow, then they regurgitate it back up and chew it again. (Laughter) It's disgusting. (Laughter) But it works for cows. (Laughter) It does not work for humans. Because what we chew over are the upsetting things, the distressing things, and we do it in ways that are entirely unproductive. It's the hours we spend obsessing about tasks we didn't complete or stewing about tensions with a colleague, or anxiously worrying about the future, or second-guessing decisions we've made. Now there's a lot of research on how we think about work when we are not at work, and the findings are quite alarming. Ruminating about work, replaying the same thoughts and worries over and over again, significantly disrupts our ability to recover and recharge in the off hours. The more we ruminate about work when we're home, the more likely we are to experience sleep disturbances, to eat unhealthier foods and to have worse moods. It may even increase our risk of cardiovascular disease and of impairing our executive functioning, the very skill sets we need to do our jobs well. Not to mention the toll it takes on our relationships and family lives, because people around us can tell we're checked out and preoccupied. Now, those same studies found that while ruminating about work when we're home damages our emotional well-being, thinking about work in creative or problem-solving ways does not. Because those kinds of thinking do not elicit emotional distress and, more importantly, they're in our control. We can decide whether to respond to an email or leave it till morning, or whether we want to brainstorm about work projects that excite us. But ruminations are involuntary. They're intrusive. They pop into our head when we don't want them to. They upset us when we don't want to be upset. They switch us on when we are trying to switch off. And they are very difficult to resist, because thinking of all our unfinished tasks feels urgent. Anxiously worrying about the future feels compelling. Ruminating always feels like we're doing something important, when in fact, we're doing something harmful. And we all do it far more than we realize. Back when I was burned out, I decided to keep a journal for a week and document exactly how much time I spent ruminating. And I was horrified by the results. It was over 30 minutes a night when I was trying to fall asleep. My entire commute, to and from my office — that was 45 minutes a day. Totally checked out for 20 minutes during the dinner party at a colleague's house. Never got invited there again. (Laughter) And 90 minutes during a friend's "talent show" that, coincidentally, was 90 minutes long. (Laughter) In total, that week, it was almost 14 hours. That's how much "downtime" I was losing to something that actually increased my stress. Try keeping a journal for one week. See how much you do it. That's what made me realize that I still loved my work. But ruminating was destroying that love and it was destroying my personal life, too. So I read every study I could find, and I went to war against my ruminations. Now, habit change is hard. It took real diligence to catch myself ruminating each time, and real consistency to make the new habits stick. But eventually, they did. I won my war against ruminating, and I'm here to tell you how you can win yours. First, you need clear guardrails. You have to define when you switch off every night, when you stop working. And you have to be strict about it. The rule I made to myself at the time was that I was done at 8pm. And I forced myself to stick to it. Now people say to me, "Really? You didn't return a single email after 8pm? You didn't even look at your phone?" No, not once. Because it was the '90s, we didn't have smartphones. (Laughter) I got my first smartphone in 2007. You know, the iPhone had just come out, and I wanted a phone that was cool and hip. I got a BlackBerry. (Laughter) I was excited, though, you know, my first thought was, "I get my emails wherever I am." And 24 hours later, I was like, "I get my emails wherever I am." (Laughter) I mean, battling ruminations was hard enough when they just invaded our thoughts. But now they have this Trojan horse, our phones, to hide within. And each time we just look at our phone after hours, we can be reminded of work and ruminative thoughts can slip out and slaughter our evening or weekend. So, when you switch off, switch off your email notifications. And if you have to check them, decide on when to do it, so it doesn't interfere with your plans, and do it only then. Cell phones aren't the only way technology is empowering rumination, because we have an even bigger fight coming. Telecommuting has increased 115 percent over the past decade. And it's expected to increase even more dramatically going forward. More and more of us are losing our physical boundary between work and home. And that means that reminders of work will be able to trigger ruminations from anywhere in our home. When we lack a physical boundary between work and home, we have to create a psychological one. We have to trick our mind into defining work and nonwork times and spaces. So here's how you do that. First, create a defined work zone in your home, even if it's tiny, and try to work only there. Try not to work on the living room couch or on the bed because really, those areas should be associated with living and ... bedding. (Laughter) Next, when you're working from home, wear clothes you only wear when you're working. And then at the end of the day, change clothes, and use music and lighting to shift the atmosphere from work to home. Make it a ritual. Now, some of you might think that's silly. That changing clothes and lighting will convince my mind I'm no longer at work. Trust me, your mind will fall for it. Because we are really smart, our mind is really stupid. (Laughter) It falls for random associations all the time, right? I mean, that's why Pavlov's dog began drooling at the sound of a bell. And why TED speakers begin sweating at the sight of a red circle. (Laughter) Now those things will help, but ruminations will still invade. And when they do, you have to convert them into productive forms of thinking, like problem-solving. My patient Sally is a good example. Sally was given the promotion of a lifetime, but it came with a price. She was no longer able to pick up her daughter from school every day, and that broke her heart. So she came up with a plan. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Sally left work early, picked up her daughter from school, played with her, fed her, bathed her and put her to bed. And then she went back to the office and worked past midnight to catch up. Only, Sally's rumination journal indicated she spent almost every minute of her quality time with her daughter ruminating about how much work she had to do. Ruminations often deny us our most precious moments. Sally's rumination, "I have so much work to do," is a very common one. And like all of them, it's useless and it's harmful, because we'd never think it when we're at work, getting stuff done. We think it when we're outside of work, when we're trying to relax or do things that we find meaningful, like playing with our children, or having a date night with our partner. To convert a ruminative thought into a productive one, you have to pose it as a problem to be solved. The problem-solving version of "I have so much work to do" is a scheduling question. Like, "Where in my schedule can I fit the tasks that are troubling me?" Or, "What can I move in my schedule to make room for this more urgent thing?" Or even, "When do I have 15 minutes to go over my schedule?" All those are problems that can be solved. "I have so much work to do" is not. Battling rumination is hard, but if you stick to your guardrails, if you ritualize the transition from work to home, and if you train yourself to convert ruminations into productive forms of thinking, you will succeed. Banishing ruminations truly enhanced my personal life, but what it enhanced even more was the joy and satisfaction I get from my work. Ground zero for creating a healthy work-life balance is not in the real world. It's in our head. It's with ruminating. If you want to reduce your stress and improve your quality of life, you don't necessarily have to change your hours or your job. You just have to change how you think. Thank you. (Applause)

¿Como será el cine del futuro?

{0: 'Diego viene del mundo de la producción, los efectos visuales y la animación, y dirige Intel Studio en Los Angeles, un estudio de tecnologías inmersivas en video. Y no es nuevo en este mudo: fundó Replay Technologies y fue uno de los creativos en Framestore CFC (Londres) e Ilion Animation Studios (Madrid), en donde realizó los efectos visuales y animaciones de muchas películas que seguramente todos vimos. Estudio diseño y computación en Israel y ganó el premio Emmy en 2015 por mejor tecnología.'}

TEDxRiodelaPlata

The art of movies has existed for more than 100 years. And the way we make movies hasn't changed much from a dimensional perspective. Placing a camera and press the rec button, this has not changed at all. Cinema is still a frontal experience, and it's still perceived as such. The experience of watching movies is the same since their creation. You stand in front of a screen and look at the image displayed. In fact, there's nothing wrong with that. I love going to the movies, watching movies on TV; the experience of watching stories in motion can be so powerful to even move us emotionally. The question we ponder on is how stories in motion can go beyond the flat screen. If we look at the media of the future there is an opportunity to create content that adapts to new platforms. When we shoot a film, we traditionally imagine a scene inside a frame, creating depth with foreground, middleground and background, as the camera moves. Obviously, with new devices like virtual reality or augmented reality goggles or new smart platforms that allow us to navigate in 3D, there is an opportunity to create much more immersive content. In a way that we could move inside it and try to live the experience from a new perspective. I'm not talking about video games or computer-created characters, even if they look super realistic. I'm talking about real actors. Flesh-and-blood performance. Artistic performance. To do such a thing we would have to start redefining or thinking about new technologies and methodologies to enable these new experiences. We already know about 360-degree filming, putting a camera in the center that allows us to create a 360-degree immersive image. This already takes us one step further in an interaction. But it's still a frontal experience. To start investigating how we could get into the scene we would have to capture the light from all angles, putting cameras and sensors to capture all the light from all perspectives. These solutions allow us to recreate the subject in three dimensions. It would be like a 3D photograph. This allows us to not just record the image on one single plane but capture it as a volume. This is what we call volumetric video. It is the process of capturing light and storing it inside a voxel. But what is a voxel? A voxel is like a pixel in three dimensions. Instead of being a flat square with light information, it's like a cube in space, with position X, Y and Z, saving all the light information from all perspectives. This methodology allows us to generate a volume of light visible from all sides. And with this, we can start thinking and opening up the opportunities for new content. Obviously, to capture and create film and scenes and stories with this kind of solution we would have to create a space large enough to accommodate entire scenes and montages, and powerful enough to install hundreds of cameras and process that huge amount of information. It sounds like a crazy idea, but it's exactly what we did. For the last three years we've been building the studio of the future. We installed hundreds of cameras. And we built a gigantic dome that allows us to create exactly what we wanted. We called it Intel Studios. It is the world's largest volumetric camera, created to develop, research, and define new methodologies for interactive content. But what does interactive content mean? What does it mean to get into the scene? To test these new hypotheses and ideas we decided, for the first time we used the studio, to choose a classic scene. We picked a scene from the Far West. We brought scenarios, filled the studio with dirt, actors, four horses, to recreate an entire scene but this time captured from all angles. The actors, to work on these new media, faced a challenge. They had to act flawlessly to be seen from all angles. There is no longer a frontal position that you just refer to. But now we have to think of all perspectives. Very similar to theater. Let's see now what came out with the first result. What you see here opened our eyes to the opportunities we can have with these new technologies and media. The result was a complete full scan of the entire scene. And it allowed us to move inside in a free way that we couldn't before. With this new solution we can see not only the image or light emitted on a screen but also get into that light and navigate inside its volume, perceiving it from new angles. Now let's look at one of the shots we rendered using this technology. What you will see is done entirely with a virtual camera that moves in space. (Volumetric video) (End of volumetric video) (Applause) Thank you. As you can see, with this solution we manage to have total control of space and movement, allowing new angles and freedom for content creation. But what else can we do with this freedom? Can we put a virtual camera in the eyes of the actors, from their points of view? What if instead of the actor we chose the horse? Let's look at the same scene — there wasn't a new take — but this time, from the horse. (Volumetric video) (End of volumetric video) (Applause) No horse was harmed and no camera was placed on his head. Actually, this frees up the possibilities of navigating within the scene. This is perfect for filmmakers or content creators as it gives them the tools to create these new visualizations. But what about the audience? We can look into how the audience can get immersed. That's why we partnered up with Paramount Pictures. We researched how the experience and interactions within stories in motion would be like in some Hollywood movies. Together with director Randal Kleiser we got together and recreated the 1978 film Grease. Bringing 20 dancers to the stage, we recreated the song "You're the One That I Want" in a brand new take. What you see here really allowed the directors and us to break down the barriers of 2D thinking. And start thinking in a whole new way and let new tools come up for content and for creating new stories. But why see it in a flat way? Let's invite them to the stage. Not really, we'll bring them in augmented reality. I'm going to use this tablet, I'm mapping the scenario, recording the information in 3D. (Applause) Let's see what they say. (AR video) (Clapping) (End of AR video) (Applause) Thanks to the augmented dancers. As you can see, the content can be experienced as a traditional movie or as an immersive experience. It all depends on how and what we're seeing it with. We're not trying to change the traditional ways of creating content, but to enhance them. We are at a unique moment in the history of cinema, opening up and understanding new ways to create immersive content. The journey has just begun. I invite you all to join us. Thank you. (Applause)

Will the ocean ever run out of fish?

{0: 'Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist and policy expert.'}

TED-Ed

Fish are in trouble. The cod population off Canada's East Coast collapsed in the 1990s, intense recreational and commercial fishing has decimated goliath grouper populations in South Florida, and most populations of tuna have plummeted by over 50%, with the Southern Atlantic bluefin on the verge of extinction. Those are just a couple of many examples. Overfishing is happening all over the world. How did this happen? When some people think of fishing, they imagine relaxing in a boat and patiently reeling in the day's catch. But modern industrial fishing, the kind that stocks our grocery shelves, looks more like warfare. In fact, the technologies they employ were developed for war. Radar, sonar, helicopters, and spotter planes are all used to guide factory ships towards dwindling schools of fish. Long lines with hundreds of hooks or huge nets round up massive amounts of fish, along with other species, like seabirds, turtles, and dolphins. And fish are hauled up onto giant boats, complete with onboard flash freezing and processing facilities. All of these technologies have enabled us to catch fish at greater depths and farther out at sea than ever before. And as the distance and depth of fishing have expanded, so has the variety of species we target. For example, the Patagonian toothfish neither sounds nor looks very appetizing. And fishermen ignored it until the late 1970s. Then it was rebranded and marketed to chefs in the U.S. as Chilean sea bass, despite the animal actually being a type of cod. Soon it was popping up in markets all over the world and is now a delicacy. Unfortunately, these deep water fish don't reproduce until they're at least ten years old, making them extremely vulnerable to overfishing when the young are caught before they've had the chance to spawn. Consumer taste and prices can also have harmful effects. For example, shark fin soup is considered such a delicacy in China and Vietnam that the fin has become the most profitable part of the shark. This leads many fishermen to fill their boats with fins leaving millions of dead sharks behind. The problems aren't unique to toothfish and sharks. Almost 31% of the world's fish populations are overfished, and another 58% are fished at the maximum sustainable level. Wild fish simply can't reproduce as fast as 7 billion people can eat them. Fishing also has impacts on broader ecosystems. Wild shrimp are typically caught by dragging nets the size of a football field along the ocean bottom, disrupting or destroying seafloor habitats. The catch is often as little as 5% shrimp. The rest is by-catch, unwanted animals that are thrown back dead. And coastal shrimp farming isn't much better. Mangroves are bulldozed to make room for shrimp farms, robbing coastal communities of storm protection and natural water filtration and depriving fish of key nursery habitats. So what does it look like to give fish a break and let them recover? Protection can take many forms. In national waters, governments can set limits about how, when, where, and how much fishing occurs, with restrictions on certain boats and equipment. Harmful practices, such as bottom trawling, can be banned altogether, and we can establish marine reserves closed to all fishing to help ecosystems restore themselves. There's also a role for consumer awareness and boycotts to reduce wasteful practices, like shark finning, and push fishing industries towards more sustainable practices. Past interventions have successfully helped depleted fish populations recover. There are many solutions. The best approach for each fishery must be considered based on science, respect for the local communities that rely on the ocean, and for fish as wild animals. And then the rules must be enforced. International collaboration is often needed, too, because fish don't care about our borders. We need to end overfishing. Ecosystems, food security, jobs, economies, and coastal cultures all depend on it.

Why winning doesn't always equal success

{0: "Valorie Kondos Field is the retired head coach of the seven-time NCAA Champion, 22-time Regional Champion and 18-time Pac 12 Champion UCLA Women's Gymnastics team."}

TEDWomen 2019

OK, I have a question for all of us. You ready? Is all winning success? (Murmurs) Oh. (Laughter) Whoa. OK. I am the recently retired head coach of the UCLA Women's Gymnastics Team, a position that I held for 29 years. (Applause) Thank you. And during my tenure, I experienced a lot of winning. I led our team to seven National Championships, I was inducted into the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame and I was even voted the Coach of the Century by the Pac-12 Conference. (Applause) Winning is really, really, like, really, really fun. (Laughter) But I am here to share my insight: winning does not always equal success. All across America and around the world, we have a crisis in the win-at-all-cost cultures that we have created. In our schools, in our businesses, in politics, winning at all cost has become acceptable. As a society, we honor the people at the top of the pyramid. We effusively applaud those people who win championships and elections and awards. But sadly, quite often, those same people are leaving their institutions as damaged human beings. Sadly, with straight A's, kids are leaving school damaged. With awards and medals, athletes often leave their teams damaged, emotionally, mentally, not just physically. And with huge profits, employees often leave their companies damaged. We have become so hyperfocused on that end result, and when the end result is a win, the human component of how we got there often gets swept under the proverbial rug, and so does the damage. So I'm calling for a time-out. Time-out. We need to redefine success. Real success is developing champions in life for our world, win or lose. (Applause) Real success is developing champions in life, not for your team, not for your business and, I'm sad to tell you, not even for your Christmas card bragging rights. Sorry. So how do we do this? First of all, you may be able to dictate your way to a win, but you can't dictate your way to success. Let me take you back to 1990, when I was first appointed the head coach of the UCLA Women's Gymnastics Team. And I would like to share with you that I've never done gymnastics. I grew up in the world of ballet. I have never done a cartwheel, and I couldn't teach you how to do a proper cartwheel. (Laughter) It's sadly true. And I knew nothing about how to develop a team culture. The best I could do was mimic other coaches who had won. And so I became tough-talking, tough-minded, relentless, unsympathetic, bullish, unempathetic and oftentimes downright mean. I acted like a head coach whose only thought was to figure out how to win. My first few seasons as a head coach were abysmal, and after putting up with my brash coaching style for a few years, our team asked me for a team meeting. Well, I love team meetings, so I said, "Yay! Let's have a team meeting." And for two solid hours, they gave me examples of how my arrogance was hurtful and demeaning. Yeah, not yay. They explained to me that they wanted to be supported, not belittled. They wanted to be coached up, not torn down. They wanted to be motivated, not pressured or bullied. That was my time-out, and I chose to change. Being a dogmatic dictator may produce compliant, good little soldiers, but it doesn't develop champions in life. It is so much easier, in any walk of life, to dictate and give orders than to actually figure out how to motivate someone to want to be better. And the reason is — we all know this — motivation takes a really long time to take root. But when it does, it is character-building and life-altering. I realized that I needed to fortify our student-athletes as whole human beings, not just athletes who won. So success for me shifted from only focusing on winning to developing my coaching philosophy, which is developing champions in life through sport. And I knew if I did this well enough, that champion mentality would translate to the competition floor. And it did. The key ingredient was to develop trust through patience, respectful honesty and accountability — all of the ingredients that go into tough love. Speaking of tough love, Katelyn Ohashi is a perfect example of this. You may have all seen her floor routine. It has had over 150 million views. And the consensus is, her performance is pure joy. However, when Katelyn came to UCLA, she was broken in body, mind and spirit. She had grown up in a stereotypical, very high-level athletic world, and she was damaged. So when Katelyn came to UCLA her freshman year, she found her inner rebel quite well, to the point where she was no longer able to do gymnastics at the level at which she was recruited. And I will never forget a team meeting we had halfway through her freshman season. We were in there with the team, the coaching staff, the support staff, sports psychologist, and Katelyn very clearly and unapologetically said, "I just don't want to be great again." I felt like I got sucker punched. My first thought was, "Then why the heck am I going to honor your scholarship?" It was a really snarky thought, and thankfully I didn't say it out loud, because then I had clarity. Katelyn didn't hate gymnastics. Katelyn hated everything associated with being great. Katelyn didn't want to be a winner, because winning at all cost had cost her her joy. My job was to figure out how to motivate her to want to be great again, by helping her redefine success. My enthusiasm for that challenge turned into determination when one day Katelyn looked me in the eye and said, "Ms. Val, I just want you to know, everything you tell me to do, I do the exact opposite." (Laughter) Yeah, it was like, yeah, Katelyn, challenge accepted. OK. (Laughter) And further proof that dictating was not going to win. So I embarked on the painfully slow process of building trust and proving to her that first and foremost I cared about her as a whole human being. Part of my strategy was to only talk to Katelyn about gymnastics in the gym. Outside of the gym, we talked about everything else: school, boys, families, friends, hobbies. I encouraged her to find things outside of her sport that brought her joy. And it was so cool to see the process of Katelyn Ohashi literally blossom before our eyes. And through that process, she rediscovered her self-love and self-worth. And slowly, she was able to bring that joy back to her gymnastics. She went on to earn the NCAA title on floor, and she helped our team win our seventh NCAA championship in 2018. So — Thank you. (Applause) So let's think about the Katelyn Ohashis in your life. Let's think about those people under your care and your guidance. What are you telling your kids on the car ride home? That car ride home has much more impact than you know. Are you focusing on the end result, or are you excited to use that time to help your child develop into a champion? It's very simple: you will know you're focusing on the end result if you ask questions about the end result. "Did you win?" "How many points did you score?" "Did you get an A?" If you truly are motivated about helping your child develop into a champion, you will ask questions about the experience and the process, like, "What did you learn today?" "Did you help a teammate?" And, my favorite question, "Did you figure out how to have fun at working really, really hard?" And then the key is to be very still and listen to their response. I believe that one of the greatest gifts we can give another human being is to silence our minds from the need to be right or the need to formulate the appropriate response and truly listen when someone else is talking. And in silencing our minds, we actually hear our own fears and inadequacies, which can help us formulate our response with more clarity and empathy. Kyla Ross, another one of our gymnasts, is one of the greatest gymnasts in the history of the sport. She's the only athlete to have earned the trifecta: she's a national champion, a world champion and an Olympic champion. She's also not one for small talk, so I was a bit surprised one day when she came to my office, sat on the couch and just started talking — first about her major, then about graduate school and then about everything else that seemed to pop into her mind. My inner voice whispered to me that something was on her mind, and if I was still and gave her enough time, it would come out. And it did. It was the first time that Kyla had shared with anyone that she had been sexually abused by Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics team doctor, who was later convicted of being a serial child molester. Kyla came forward and joined the army of Nassar survivors who shared their stories and used their voices to invoke positive change for our world. I felt it was extremely important at that time to provide a safe space for Kyla and our team. And so I chose to talk about this in a few team meetings. Later that year, we won the national championship, and after we did, Kyla came up to me and shared with me the fact that she felt one reason that we'd won was because we had addressed the elephant in the room, the tragedy that had not only rocked the world but that had liberated the truths and the memories in herself and in so many of her friends and her peers. As Kyla said, "Ms. Val, I literally felt myself walk taller as the season went on, and when I walked onto that championship floor, I felt invincible." Simply — (Applause) Simply because she had been heard. As parents, as coaches, as leaders, we can no longer lead from a place where winning is our only metric of success, where our ego sits center stage, because it has been proven that that process produces broken human beings. And I emphatically know that it is absolutely possible to produce and train champions in life in every single walk of life without compromising the human spirit. (Applause) It starts with defining success for yourself and those under your care and then consistently self-examining whether your actions are in alignment with your goals. We are all coaches in some capacity. We all have a collective responsibility to develop champions in life for our world. That is what real success looks like, and in the world of athletics, that is what we call a win-win. Thank you. (Applause)

The beautiful balance between courage and fear

{0: 'Cara E. Yar Khan is an international human rights advocate promoting the inclusion of people with disabilities within all facets of society.'}

TEDWomen 2019

When we're young, we're innocently brave, and we fearlessly dream about what our lives might be like. Maybe you wanted to be an astronaut or a rocket scientist. Maybe you dreamed of traveling to every continent. Since I was very young, I dreamed of working for the United Nations in some of the most difficult countries in the world. And thanks to a lot of courage that dream came true. But here's the thing about courage: it doesn't just appear whenever we need it. It's the result of tough reflection and real work, involving the balance between fear and bravery. Without fear, we'll do foolish things. And without courage, we'll never step into the unknown. The balance of the two is where the magic lies, and it's a balance we all deal with every day. First, a word about my fancy wheels. I haven't always used a wheelchair. I grew up like many of you, running, jumping and dancing. I love to dance. However, in my mid-twenties, I began to experience a series of inexplicable falls. And a few years later, I was diagnosed with a recessive genetic condition called hereditary inclusion body myopathy, or HIBM. It's a progressive muscle wasting disease that affects all of my muscles from head to toe. HIBM is very rare. In the United States there are less than 200 people diagnosed. To date, there is no proved treatment or cure, and within 10 to 15 years of its onset, HIBM typically leads to quadriplegia, which is why I now use a wheelchair. When I was first diagnosed, everything changed. It was frightening news because I had no experience with chronic illness or disabilities. And I had no idea how the disease might progress. But what was most disheartening was to listen to other people advise me to limit my ambitions and dreams, and to change my expectations of what to expect from life. "You should quit your international career." "No one will marry you this way." "You would be selfish to have children." The fact that someone who wasn't me was putting limitations on my dreams and ambitions was preposterous. And unacceptable. So I ignored them. (Cheers and applause) I did get married. And I decided for myself not to have children. And I continued my career with the United Nations after my diagnosis, going to work for two years in Angola, a country recovering from 27 years of brutal civil war. However, it would be another five years until I officially declared my diagnosis to my employer. Because I was afraid that they would question my capacity to manage and I'd lose my job. I was working in countries where polio had been common, so when I overheard someone say that they thought I might have survived polio, I thought my secret was safe. No one asked why I was limping. So I didn't say anything. It took me over a decade to internalize the severity of HIBM, even as basic tasks and functions became increasingly difficult. Yet, I continued to pursue my dream of working all over the world, and was even appointed as a disability focal point for UNICEF in Haiti, where I served for two years after the devastating 2010 earthquake. And then my work brought me to the United States. And even as the disease progressed significantly and I needed leg braces and a walker to get around, I still longed for adventure. And this time, I started dreaming of a grand outdoor adventure. And what's more grand than the Grand Canyon? Did you know that for every five million people who visit the Rim only one percent go down to the canyon's base? I wanted to be a part of that one percent. The only thing is — (Applause) The only thing is that the Grand Canyon isn't exactly accessible. I was going to need some assistance to get down the 5,000-foot descent of vertical loose terrain. Now, when I face obstacles, fear doesn't necessarily immediately set in because I assume that one way or another, I'll figure it out. And in this case, my thought was, well, if I can't walk down, I could learn to ride a horse. So that's what I did. And with that fateful decision began a four-year commitment, tossing back and forth between fear and courage to undertake a 12-day expedition. Four days on horseback to cross Grand Canyon rim to rim, and eight days rafting 150 miles of the Colorado River, all with a film crew in tow. Spoiler alert — we made it. But not without showing me how my deepest fear can somehow manifest a mirror response of equal courage. On April 13, 2018, sitting eight feet above the ground, riding a mustang horse named Sheriff, my first impression of Grand Canyon was one of shock and terror. Who knew I had a fear of heights. (Laughter) But there was no giving up now. I mustered up every ounce of courage inside me to not let my fear get the best of me. Embarking on the South Rim, all I could do to keep myself composed was to breathe deeply, stare up into the clouds and focus on my team's voices. But then, in the first hour, disaster struck. Unable to hold myself upright in the saddle, going down an oversized step, I flung forward and smacked my face on the back of the horse's head. There was panic, my head hurt fiercely, but the path was too narrow for us to dismount. Only at the halfway point at 2,300 feet, at least another two hours down, could we stop and remove my helmet and see the egg-sized bump protruding from my forehead. For all of that planning and gear, how is it that we didn't even have an ice pack? (Laughter) Luckily for all of us, the swelling came outwards, and would drain into my face as two fantastic black eyes which is an amazing way to look in a documentary film. (Laughter) (Applause and cheers) This was not an easy, peaceful journey, and yet, that was exactly the point. Even though I was afraid to get back into the saddle, I got back in. The descent alone to the canyon floor took a total of 10 hours and that was just day one of four riding. Next came the mighty rapids. The Colorado River in the Grand Canyon has some of the highest white water in the country. And just to be prepared in case we should capsize, we'd practice having me swim through a smaller rapid. And it's safe to say it wasn't glamorous. (Laughter) I took my breath in the wrong part of the wave, choked on river water and was unable to steer myself. Yes, it was scary, but it was also fantastic. Waterfalls, slick canyons and a couple billion years of bedrock that seemed to change color throughout the day. The Grand Canyon is true wilderness and worthy of all of its accolades. (Applause) The expedition, all that planning and the trip itself, showed me a level of fear I had never experienced before. But more importantly, it showed me how boldly courageous I can be. My Grand Canyon journey was not easy. This was not a vision of an Amazonian woman effortlessly making her way through epic scenery. This was me crying, exhausted and beat up with two black eyes. It was scary, it was stressful, it was exhilarating. Now that the trip is over, it's easy to be blasé about what we achieved. I know I want to raft the river again. This time, all 277 miles of it. (Applause) But I also know that I would never do the horseback-riding part again. (Laughter) It's just too dangerous. And that's my real point. I'm not just here to show you my film footage. I'm here to remind us all that life is really just a lesson in finding the balance between fear and courage. And understanding what is and what isn't a good idea. (Laughter) Life is already scary, so for our dreams to come true, we need to be brave. In facing my fears and finding the courage to push through them, I swear my life has been extraordinary. So live big and try to let your courage outweigh your fear. You never know where it might take you. Thank you. (Applause and cheers)

Dangerous times call for dangerous women

{0: 'Pat Mitchell is a lifelong advocate for women and girls.'}

TEDWomen 2019

Recently, I've been declaring to anyone who would listen that I am a dangerous woman. (Applause) Now, declaring that boldly like this still feels a bit dangerous, but it also feels right. At this time in my life, about to be 77, I have — (Applause) I love when you're applauded for your age — (Laughter) but I'll take it. (Applause) About to be 77, I realize that I have nothing left to prove, less to lose, and I'm more impatient about everything. The true, slow pace towards equality, the rise in sexism, racism, violence against women and girls ... And I'm angry, too, at the climate deniers who are stealing the future from our children and grandchildren. Friends, we are living in dangerous times. And such times call for all of us to be more dangerous. Now, what do I mean by this? I don't mean being feared. It's not that kind of dangerous. But I do mean being more fearless. I mean speaking the truth when silence is a lot safer. I mean speaking up in rooms for those who aren't present, especially those rooms where decisions are made about our lives and our bodies. We need to be in those rooms, showing up for one another, challenging the cultural construct that encourages us, especially women and girls, to compete, compare, criticize. We have to end this. And speaking out against the policies and the politics that divide us and diminish our collective power as a global community of women, and the men and the allies who stand with us. Becoming dangerous also means embracing whatever risks are necessary to create a world where women and girls are safe in their homes and at work, where all voices are represented and respected, all votes counted, the planet protected. And this is all possible. Because we're ready for this. We're better prepared than any generation ever before us, better resourced, better connected. In many parts of the world, we're living longer than ever. Women over 65 are among the fastest-growing populations on earth, with the potential for becoming the most powerful, too. Now — (Applause) What a change this represents. Postmenopausal women like me, not that long ago, were considered useless or crazy. We were valued for caregiving and grandmothering — and I really love that part. But we were pushed aside and expected to retire to our rocking chairs. Women on the dangerous side of 60 are not retiring. We are rewiring — (Applause) taking all that we know and have done — and that is a lot — to redefine what age looks like, can do, can accomplish. But becoming dangerous isn't about becoming a certain age, because at each end of the age spectrum, brave women and girls are stepping up, taking the risk to create change. I became a risk-taker early in my life's journey. I had to, or have my life defined by the limitations for a girl growing up in the rural South, with no money, no connections, no influence. But what wasn't limited was my curiosity about the world beyond my small town, beyond the small minds of a still-segregated South, a world that I glimpsed in the newsreels at the one movie theater in town, and a world that got a lot closer to me when I met Miss Shirley Rountree, my eighth-grade English teacher. From the minute she walked into the classroom, her high heels clicking, she was a woman in charge, with perfect hair, signature red lips, colorfully coordinated, head to toe. I wanted to be her. Gratefully, she became my first mentor and helped me become me. With her support, I got a scholarship to college — the first in my family — and landed at a big state university, right in the middle of two great social justice movements: civil rights for African Americans and equal rights for women. I joined both with enthusiasm, only to discover that my newfound activism and my fermenting feminism would often be in direct conflict with my deeply embedded need to please and be popular. In my first job as a college teacher, I broke the rules, and I encouraged students to join me in the protest marches. And when I found out that my male colleague with the same experience and education was being paid more than me, I mounted a personal protest. When my raise was denied, with the excuse that he had a family to support, so did I as a single mom. But I dropped my protest to keep my job. Today, millions of women are making this compromise, staying in their jobs without equal pay for equal work. And as one of the first women on television in the '70s, I was warned that focusing on women's stories would limit my career opportunities, and maybe it did. But I got to produce and host breakthrough programming for women, while at the same time, remaining silent about sexual harassment and listening to consultants who were hired to advise me about my appearance. "Become a blonde." I did. "Lower your voice." I tried. "Lower your necklines." I didn't. (Laughter) But I did wear those ugly anchor suits with those scarves that look something like men's ties. And later, in the power positions in media, often as the first or only woman, aware of being judged through that gender lens, I struggled from time to time to find the right balance between being a leader for women and not being entirely defined as a woman leader. But today, I'm proud to be known as a woman leader. (Applause) As an activist, advocate, feminist and as a newly declared dangerous woman, I'm caring less what others say and saying more clearly what I think and feel. And let me be clear: I acknowledge my privilege in being able to do that, to speak my truth. And to stand here today with this opportunity to talk to you about women and power — note I did not say "empowered." I don't think we're waiting to be empowered. I think we have power. (Applause) What we need are more opportunities to claim it, to use it, to share it. And yes, I know — there are women with power who don't use it well or wisely and who don't share it. I've heard, as I'm sure you have, those stories that begin with, "The worst boss I ever had was a woman ... " And we could all name women leaders who have not made us proud. But we can change all of that with a simple but brilliant idea that I first heard from a risk-taking, dangerous congresswoman from New York named Bella Abzug. Bella said, "In the 21st century, women will change the nature of power rather than power changing the nature of women." From the moment I heard that — (Applause) I thought, "This is our call to action. This is our biggest opportunity." And as a journalist and an activist, I've seen this idea in action, documenting the stories of women on both sides in long-term conflicts, coming together and defying the official power to form alliances and find their own ways to ending violence in their communities. And as an activist, I've traveled to places where it's dangerous to be born a woman, like eastern Congo, where a war is being waged on the bodies of women. There, at a healing and leadership center called City of Joy, brave Congolese women are transforming pain into power by training survivors of sexual assault to return to their villages as leaders. And at recent climate summits, I've observed women climate leaders working behinds the scenes, out of the public spotlight, making sure that the negotiations toward global climate agreement continue to move forward. So as we move forward in our lives and work and we have more power and influence, let's change the nature of power by dismantling some of the barriers that remain for those who follow by advocating and agitating for fairer and truer and more equal representation in every room and at every table. Now, be warned: if you advocate for a woman for an open position or promotion, you could be challenged with, "You're playing the women's card" or "the race card" if advocating for a woman of color. I've had this experience, as I'm sure you have. "Are you running an affirmative action program here at PBS?" asked one of my board members when, as a new president, I announced my first hires as five qualified women. Now, my affirmative action had been to ask that the search firm bring me a candidate list that included the names of women and people of color who just happened to be, in my judgment, the best candidates for the position as well. I say, dangerous women and our allies: it's time to play the women's card, play the race card, play all our cards. (Applause) Not to win the power game, but to lead to better outcomes for everyone. And it's time, too, to discard that scarcity theory, the one that says, there's only room for one of us at the top, so protect your turf, don't make friends or allies. Changing the nature of power transforms "protect your turf" into "share your turf," it encourages coalitions, it builds alliances, it strengthens and sustains friendships. My women friends are my source of renewable energy. (Applause) So are my mentors, my champions, my supporters, my sponsors, and all of the ways that we can and do show up for each other. We can become our sources of renewable power for each other. And along the way, we need to take better care of ourselves, and here, I am not the best role model. I don't meditate. I don't exercise regularly. But I do live aerobically. (Laughter) (Applause) Because I believe we can't be dangerous from the sidelines, and there's just too much to be done. So let's use all our power. How about the power of money? Let's allocate more of our philanthropic dollars, our campaign donations, our investment funds, to increase economic and political equity. And let's leverage the power of media and technology that we have in our hands, quite literally, to elevate each other's stories and ideas; to practice civility; to seek the truth, which is diminishing and is threatening free and open societies. Yes, we have all that we need to move our communities forward. And the best thing we have, and what we must remember, is to be there for each other. We will move forward together, willing now to take more risk, to be more fearless, to speak up, speak out and show up for one another. George Bernard Shaw once wrote that he believed in his opinion that his life belonged to the community, that the harder he worked, the more he lived and that he wanted to be thoroughly used up when he died. He went on to write, "Life is no brief candle to me but a splendid torch that I have got hold of for a moment before passing to future generations." I, too, do not view my life as a brief candle, although I am burning it at both ends. (Laughter) And I do want it, and me, to be thoroughly used up when I die. But at this point in my life's journey, I am not passing my torch. I am holding it higher than ever, boldly, brilliantly, inviting you to join me in its dangerous light. Thank you. (Applause)

A brief history of alcohol

TED-Ed

This chimpanzee stumbles across a windfall of overripe plums. Many of them have split open, drawing him to their intoxicating fruity odor. He gorges himself and begins to experience some… strange effects. This unwitting ape has stumbled on a process that humans will eventually harness to create beer, wine, and other alcoholic drinks. The sugars in overripe fruit attract microscopic organisms known as yeasts. As the yeasts feed on the fruit sugars they produce a compound called ethanol— the type of alcohol in alcoholic beverages. This process is called fermentation. Nobody knows exactly when humans began to create fermented beverages. The earliest known evidence comes from 7,000 BCE in China, where residue in clay pots has revealed that people were making an alcoholic beverage from fermented rice, millet, grapes, and honey. Within a few thousand years, cultures all over the world were fermenting their own drinks. Ancient Mesopotamians and Egyptians made beer throughout the year from stored cereal grains. This beer was available to all social classes, and workers even received it in their daily rations. They also made wine, but because the climate wasn’t ideal for growing grapes, it was a rare and expensive delicacy. By contrast, in Greece and Rome, where grapes grew more easily, wine was as readily available as beer was in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Because yeasts will ferment basically any plant sugars, ancient peoples made alcohol from whatever crops and plants grew where they lived. In South America, people made chicha from grains, sometimes adding hallucinogenic herbs. In what’s now Mexico, pulque, made from cactus sap, was the drink of choice, while East Africans made banana and palm beer. And in the area that’s now Japan, people made sake from rice. Almost every region of the globe had its own fermented drinks. As alcohol consumption became part of everyday life, some authorities latched onto effects they perceived as positive— Greek physicians considered wine to be good for health, and poets testified to its creative qualities. Others were more concerned about alcohol’s potential for abuse. Greek philosophers promoted temperance. Early Jewish and Christian writers in Europe integrated wine into rituals but considered excessive intoxication a sin. And in the middle east, Africa, and Spain, an Islamic rule against praying while drunk gradually solidified into a general ban on alcohol. Ancient fermented beverages had relatively low alcohol content. At about 13% alcohol, the by-products wild yeasts generate during fermentation become toxic and kill them. When the yeasts die, fermentation stops and the alcohol content levels off. So for thousands of years, alcohol content was limited. That changed with the invention of a process called distillation. 9th century Arabic writings describe boiling fermented liquids to vaporize the alcohol in them. Alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, so it vaporizes first. Capture this vapor, cool it down, and what’s left is liquid alcohol much more concentrated than any fermented beverage. At first, these stronger spirits were used for medicinal purposes. Then, spirits became an important trade commodity because, unlike beer and wine, they didn’t spoil. Rum made from sugar harvested in European colonies in the Caribbean became a staple for sailors and was traded to North America. Europeans brought brandy and gin to Africa and traded it for enslaved people, land, and goods like palm oil and rubber. Spirits became a form of money in these regions. During the Age of Exploration, spirits played a crucial role in long distance sea voyages. Sailing from Europe to east Asia and the Americas could take months, and keeping water fresh for the crews was a challenge. Adding a bucket of brandy to a water barrel kept water fresh longer because alcohol is a preservative that kills harmful microbes. So by the 1600s, alcohol had gone from simply giving animals a buzz to fueling global trade and exploration— along with all their consequences. As time went on, its role in human society would only get more complicated.

To challenge the status quo, find a "co-conspirator"

{0: 'Ipsita Dasgupta drives the consumption of entertainment and sports at an over-the-top media service.'}

TED@BCG Mumbai

So I've been thinking about how to explain this concept to you, and I've decided I'm just going to start with something we all understand. To achieve great heights or change the world, no matter how smart we are, we all need people. And for conventional people, the universe seems to conspire to make them successful. For the unconventional, I think we need something that I like to call "co-conspirators." Co-conspirators are different not because they're different themselves, but because of the people who need them. They tend to be people who are willing to bend the rules — actually even break them sometimes — and challenge the status quo to stand beside someone who is going against societal norms. I'm actually going to describe an experience that I had that first crystallized the idea of co-conspirators in my mind. In 2014, I was a corporate executive with an American multinational in India, and we were actually faced with an interesting problem: we didn't have enough women in the workforce. And just to give you some context, 27 percent of women work in India. If you look at most of Asia, that number is around 48 percent. So we knew the numbers were deplorable, and it was manifesting itself in our own organization. So we decided — actually, I'll just give you a quick example of a young engineer, a 25-year-old woman, who told us a great story about her daily life, to just exemplify it for us. She said, "As I walk out of the house in the morning, I am running around doing a bunch of chores, and my mother-in-law — I live with my in-laws — is starting to get a little bit irritated, because she's going to be left with all the housework to do. And then, as I get back home in the evening, I've overshot the time I'm going to be home by an hour or two at least, and by then, two of my biggest champions, my father-in-law and my husband, are also starting to get a little bit irritated. And my mother-in-law is furious, because she's taken care of everything that needs to be done. And through the middle of the day, I'm actually surrounded by men my age, and there's only one expectation from them by society. It's to achieve in their careers and provide for their families financially. How do you expect me to bring this same level of enthusiasm, excitement and passion to the workplace?" And she was right. And I thought the women's network volunteers came up with a great idea. They instituted a "bring your mother-in-law to work" day. So we heralded a group of mothers-in-law and a few mothers into the office, and we took them to our R and D labs. We took them to the medical equipment that their daughters-in-law were creating and building. And as we did, we described to them what their daughters-in-law actually did: they impacted maternal mortality rates and infant mortality rates. They brought them down. They identified complex diseases early enough to be able to prevent and cure them. And then we took them to lunch. We gave them a lavish lunch and thanked them for the role they played for freeing up a young woman to work shoulder to shoulder with us to literally change the world. There wasn't a dry eye in the room. Every one of these women were grateful and proud. They were proud of who their daughters-in-law were, but they were grateful to be included as part of the conversation. And I wondered at the time whether what we'd done was just a great touchy-feely moment and was cute but really wasn't going to have long-term impact. And a couple of days later, one of my mentees swung by my office, and she was super excited. She said, "I went home from work yesterday, and I was bracing myself, because I was really late, and I was bracing myself for a lecture, and my mother-in-law turned to my husband and said, 'Can you please get up and make her a cup of tea? She's exhausted. She's saving lives. You work at a bank.'" (Laughter) And there you had it. You had the perfect co-conspirator, someone that we don't always recognize or value, but was changing the way somebody else could challenge the status quo, by standing beside her and questioning the societal norms and making a difference. The next example I'm going to use will be closer to almost everyone in this room. When I graduated from business school and started working in a company, a group of us, my peers and I, were asked to work on a strategy for a business that hadn't been doing too well over the last decade and was being neglected. We put our hearts and souls into it, and we did a lot of analysis on our nights and weekends and put together what we thought was a good strategy. And after presenting it to a number of people that we were getting buy-in with, we were actually asked to present to the global CEO at his annual strategy meet that happened over a week. And we were both excited and apprehensive as we flew into headquarters. We were excited because this was an opportunity to show how much we had learned. But we were also nervous because, though a brilliant, dynamic man, he had a fiery temper and wasn't really the easiest person to present to. Five or six hours before our presentation, a senior colleague pulled us aside and sat down and gave us a front-seat view of what had happened all week. We knew about people who had bombed their presentations. We knew about people who had almost been instantaneously promoted in the room. We knew what was keeping the CEO up at night and what he thought were tailwinds to the business. And when we walked into that presentation later in the day, we actually got buy-in with both the CEO and his senior staff. And it wasn't just because of our analysis or our strategy. It was because we were prepped to be able to communicate in a way that the team could absorb. Now, this senior colleague of ours didn't pull us aside, because he wanted to gossip. He pulled us aside because he believed we were unconventional in the boardroom. That unconventionality was exactly why he wanted us to think about this new, fresh perspective and provide a view on where this business should go. But he also knew it was a distinct disadvantage for us, because we didn't know how to present in that room, and we hadn't done it before, and they weren't used to receiving us. And that again is an example, in my mind, of somebody bending the rules. Because he decided to co-conspire with us, he not only changed the career trajectories of six young people in the organization who suddenly got all this visibility, but he actually changed the trajectory of a business that people were neglecting and didn't have any fresh ideas for. The last example I want to share with you is actually very far removed from the corporate world and somewhat personal. This is the story of my mother. In her early 20s, she lost her father. He had passed away in his late 40s, leaving behind six children, four younger siblings and one older sibling than her, and a widowed mother who had never worked. My mom and her older sister realized that they actually needed to start earning an income — they were both in grad school — to ensure the rest of the siblings could get through their schooling and start to work. So she shifted her law school classes to evening classes, and she started to work during the day as a schoolteacher to bring home an income. And every day, she would actually get off a bus at the end of her evening law school classes on the streets of Calcutta. Now, mind you, this is a woman who wasn't used to taking public transportation at all, let alone at night. And as she would get off the bus, she would take about a seven- to eight-minute walk to her home from the bus stop on a street that was largely deserted, because it was a residential street with some shops that closed around 8pm or a little bit before that. One day, a store owner was closing his store a little bit later than usual, because there was a customer who had actually left a little bit later. And he saw my mother get off the bus. He waited for her. He actually knew the family. The store had been in the neighborhood for more than 20 years, so he knew her since she was a baby. He watched her walk to the street that her house was on, turned off the lights, shut the store and went home. From the next day, he found that he waited for her every single day until he she made her way to her own house. Other store owners on that same street suddenly noticed this one store that was open longer, and suddenly started to see a bunch of end-of-day customers walk in to buy odds and ends that, from after their long day from work and their commute home, realized they hadn't picked up for the next morning. Some people who came in the mornings also started to come the night before. A few of the storekeepers decided that actually what was happening was he was monopolizing a bunch of customers, and they started to keep their store lights on and keep their shop open till 9 o'clock. From that time on, my mother had a lit street with plenty of activity on the street. I believe that that store owner was my mother's co-conspirator. Because of him, a small change to what was conventional on that street at the time allowed for her and her family to do something that was completely unconventional. A woman her age from an upper-middle-class family actually got married at that age or studied in grad school with the protection of their family. Because of that store owner, all of my mother's siblings went on to become engineers, lawyers, accountants and teachers, and my mother went on to become a lawyer. The world needs co-conspirators. As we get into a complex environment where more and more complex problems exist and we need to find more solutions, we need unconventional people in our boardrooms and at the table. For that to happen, we need co-conspirators. In my own life, whether it's because of my gender, my ethnicity or sometimes, as I've been living in this part of the world for over a decade, my accent, I'm often perceived to be unconventional. It's my co-conspirators that have shown me the path forward, and actually, it's my co-conspirators that keep me seeking out the unconventional paths to go down. So what I'd like to ask of all of you today is that you look around and find the people that inspire you to co-conspire. I promise you that your empathy and your courage will change someone's life and may even change the world. Thank you. (Applause)

The past, present and future of nicotine addiction

{0: "Mitch Zeller leads the US Food and Drug Administration's efforts to reduce disease and death from tobacco use and bring previously unavailable information about its dangers to light."}

TEDxMidAtlantic

I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story about how the deadliest consumer product imaginable came to be. It's the cigarette. The cigarette is the only consumer product that, when used as intended, will kill half of all long-term users prematurely, later in life. But this is also a story about the work that we're doing at the Food and Drug Administration, and specifically, the work that we're doing to create the cigarette of the future, that is no longer capable of creating or sustaining addiction. A lot of people think that the tobacco problem or the smoking problem has been solved in the United States because of the great progress that's been made over the last 40, 50 years, when it comes to both consumption and prevalence. And it's true; smoking rates are at historic lows. It's true for both adults and for kids. And it's true that those who continue to smoke are smoking far fewer cigarettes per day than at any time in history. But what if I told you that tobacco use, primarily because of firsthand and secondhand exposure to the smoke in cigarettes, remains the leading cause of completely preventable disease and death in this country? Well, that's true. And what if I told you that it's actually killing more people than we thought to be the case ever before? That's true, too. Smoking kills more people each year than alcohol, AIDS, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined. Year in and year out. In 2014, Dr. Adams's predecessor released the 50th anniversary Surgeon General's report on smoking and health. And that report upped the annual death toll from smoking, because the list of smoking-related illnesses got bigger. And so it is now conservatively estimated that smoking kills 480,000 Americans every year. These are completely preventable deaths. How do we wrap our heads around a statistic like this? So much of what we've heard at this conference is about individual experiences and personal experiences. How do we deal with this at a population level, when there are 480,000 moms, dads, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles dying unnecessary deaths every year from tobacco? And then what happens when you think about this trajectory for the future? And just do the simple math: from the time of the 50th anniversary Surgeon General's report five years ago, when this horrible statistic was raised, just through mid-century — that's more than 17 million avoidable deaths in the United States from tobacco use, primarily because of cigarettes. The Surgeon General concluded that 5.6 million children alive in the United States in 2014 will die prematurely later in life because of cigarettes. Five point six million children. So this is an enormous public health problem for all of us but especially for us as regulators at the Food and Drug Administration and the Center for Tobacco Products. What can we do about it? What can we do to reverse this trajectory of disease and death? Well, we have an interesting guide to help unravel issues like: How did the cigarette as we know it come to be? What is the true nature of the tobacco and cigarette business? How did the industry behave in the historically unregulated marketplace? And our guide is previously secret internal documents from the tobacco industry. Come with me in a tobacco industry document time machine. Nineteen sixty-three was 25 years before the Surgeon General was finally able to conclude that the nicotine and cigarettes was addictive. That did not happen until the Surgeon General's report in 1998. Nineteen sixty-three was one year before the first-ever Surgeon General's report in 1964. I remember 1964. I don't remember the Surgeon General's report, but I remember 1964. I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, New York. This was at a time when almost one in two adults in the United States smoked. Both of my parents were heavy smokers at the time. Tobacco use was so incredibly normalized that — and this wasn't North Carolina, Virginia or Kentucky, this was Brooklyn — we made ashtrays for our parents in arts and crafts class. (Laughter) The ashtrays I made were pretty awful, but they were ashtrays. (Laughter) So normalized that I remember seeing a bowl of loose cigarettes in the foyer of our house and other houses as a welcoming gesture when friends came over for a visit. OK, we're back in 1963. The top lawyer for Brown and Williamson, which was then the third-largest cigarette company in the United States, wrote the following: "Nicotine is addictive. We are, then, in the business of selling nicotine — an addictive drug." It's a remarkable statement, as much for what it doesn't say as for what it does say. He didn't say they were in the cigarette business. He didn't say they were in the tobacco business. He said they were in the business of selling nicotine. Philip Morris in 1972: "The cigarette isn't a product, it's a package. The product is nicotine. The pack is a storage container for a day's supply of nicotine. The cigarette, a dispenser for a dose unit of nicotine." We'll come back to this dose unit notion later. And R.J. Reynolds in 1972: "In a sense, the tobacco industry may be thought of as being a specialized, highly ritualized and stylized segment of the pharmaceutical industry. Tobacco products uniquely contain and deliver nicotine, a potent drug with a variety of physiological effects." At the time, and for many decades, publicly, the industry completely denied addiction and completely denied causality. But they knew the true nature of their business. And from time to time, there have been health scares made public about cigarettes, going back many decades. How did the industry respond? And how did they respond in this historically unregulated marketplace? Going back to the 1930s, it was with advertising that heavily featured imagery of doctors and other health care professionals sending messages of reassurance. This is an ad for Lucky Strikes, the popular cigarette of the time in the '30s: [20,679 physicians say "Luckies are less irritating." Your throat protection against irritation, against cough.] (Laughter) We laugh, but this was the kind of advertising that was there to send a health message of reassurance. Fast-forward to 1950s, '60s and '70s. And here, again, in the absence of regulation, what we're going to see is modifications to the product and product design to respond to the health concerns of the day. This is the Kent Micronite filter. And here, the innovation, if you will, was the filtered cigarette. [Full smoking pleasure ... plus proof of the greatest health protection ever.] What the smoker of this product didn't know, what their doctor didn't know, what the government didn't know, is that this was a filter that was lined with asbestos — (Gasps) so that when smokers were smoking this filtered cigarette and still inhaling the chemicals and smoke that we know are associated with cancer and lung disease and heart disease, they were also sucking down asbestos fibers. (Gasps) In the 1960s and the 1970s, the so-called innovation was the light cigarette. This is a typical brand of the day called True. And this is after the Surgeon General's reports have started coming out. And you see the look of concern on her face. [Considering all I'd heard, I decided to either quit or smoke True. I smoke True.] (Laughter) [The low tar, low nicotine cigarette.] And then it says, "Think about it." And then even below that in the small print are tar numbers and nicotine numbers. What was a light cigarette? How did it work? This is an illustration of the product modification known as "filter ventilation." That's not a real filter blown up. That's just a picture so that you could see the rows of laser-perforated ventilation holes that were put on the filter. When you look at a real cigarette, it's harder to see. Every patent for this product shows that the ventilation holes should be 12 millimeters from the lip end of the filter. How did it work? The cigarette got stuck into a machine. The machine started puffing away on the cigarette and recording tar and nicotine levels. As the machine smoked, outside air came through those ventilation holes and diluted the amount of smoke that was coming through the cigarette. So as the machine smoked, there really was less tar and nicotine being delivered compared to a regular cigarette. What the tobacco industry knew was that human beings don't smoke like machines. How do human beings smoke this? Where do the fingers go? (Murmurs) Where do the lips go? I told you that the patent said that the holes are 12 millimeters from the lip end. The smoker didn't even know they were there, but between fingers and lips, the holes get blocked. And when the holes get blocked, it's no longer a light cigarette. Turns out that there's actually basically as much nicotine inside a light cigarette as a regular cigarette. The difference was what's on the outside. But once you block what's on the outside, it's a regular cigarette. Congress put FDA in the business of regulating tobacco products 10 years ago this June. So you heard the statistics at the beginning about the extraordinary contribution to disease and death that cigarettes make. We've also been paying a lot of attention to how the cigarette works as a drug-delivery device and the remarkable efficiency with which it delivers nicotine. So let's take a look. When the smoker puffs on the cigarette, the nicotine from that puff gets up into the brain in less than 10 seconds. Less than 10 seconds. Up in the brain, there are these things called "nicotinic receptors." They're there ... waiting. They're waiting for, in the words of that Philip Morris document, the next "dose unit of nicotine." The smoker that you see outside, huddled with other smokers, in the cold, in the wind, in the rain, is experiencing craving and may be experiencing the symptoms of withdrawal. Those symptoms of withdrawal are a chemical message that these receptors are sending to the body, saying, "Feed me!" And a product that can deliver the drug in less than 10 seconds turns out to be an incredibly efficient and incredibly addictive product. We've spoken to so many addiction treatment experts over the years. And the story I hear is the same over and over again: "Long after I was able to get somebody off of heroin or cocaine or crack cocaine, I can't get them to quit cigarettes." A large part of the explanation is the 10-second thing. FDA has it within its regulatory reach to use the tools of product regulation to render cigarettes as we know them minimally or nonaddictive. We're working on this. And this could have a profound impact at a population level from this one policy. We did dynamic population-level modeling a year ago, and we published the results in "The New England Journal." And because of the generational effect of this policy, which I'll explain in a minute, here's what we project out through the end of the century: more than 33 million people who would otherwise have gone on to become regular smokers won't, because the cigarette that they'll be experimenting with can't create or sustain addiction. This would drive the adult smoking rate down to less than one and a half percent. And these two things combined would result in the saving of more than eight million cigarette-related deaths that would otherwise have occurred from the generational impact of this. Now, why am I saying "generational"? It's about kids. Ninety percent of adult smokers started smoking when they were kids. Half of them became regular smokers before they were legally old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes. Half of them became regular smokers before they were 18 years old. Experimentation. Regular smoking. Addiction. Decades of smoking. And then the illness, and that's why we're talking about a product that will kill half of all long-term users prematurely later in life. The generational impact of this nicotine-reduction policy is profound. Those old industry documents had a word for young people. They were described as "the replacement smokers." The replacement smokers for addicted adult smokers who died or quit. Future generations of kids, especially teens, are going to engage in risky behavior. We can't stop that. But what if the only cigarette that they could get their hands on could no longer create or sustain addiction? That's the public health return on investment at a population level over time. Haven't said anything about e-cigarettes. But I have to say something about e-cigarettes. (Laughter) We are dealing with an epidemic of kids' use of e-cigarettes. And what troubles us the most, in combination with the rising numbers when it comes to prevalence, is frequency. Not only are more kids using e-cigarettes, but more kids are using e-cigarettes 20 or more days in the past 30 days than at any time since e-cigarettes came onto the market. And at FDA, we're doing everything that we can using program and policy, first to get the word out to kids that this is not a harmless product and to make sure that kids aren't initiating and experimenting on any tobacco product, whether combustion is present or not. But think about e-cigarettes in a properly regulated marketplace as something that could be of benefit to addicted adult cigarette smokers who are trying to transition away from cigarettes. So, I'll leave you with this vision: imagine a world where the only cigarette that future generations of kids could experiment with could no longer create or sustain addiction because of a single policy. Imagine a world where health-concerned cigarette smokers, especially if a policy goes into effect that takes the nicotine levels down to minimally or nonaddictive levels, could transition to alternative and less harmful forms of nicotine delivery, starting with FDA-approved nicotine medications, like the gum, patch and lozenge. And finally, imagine a world and a properly regulated marketplace, whether it's e-cigarettes or whatever the technology of the day, it's not the product developers and the marketers who decide which products come to market and what claims get made for them, it's review scientists at FDA, who look at applications and decide, using the standard that Congress has entrusted us to implement and enforce, whether a particular product should come to market, because the marketing of that product and the words of our law would be appropriate for the protection of the public health. These are the kinds of powerful regulatory tools that are within our reach to deal with what remains the leading cause of completely preventable disease and death in the country. If we get this right, that trajectory, those 5.6 million kids, is breakable. Thank you. (Applause)

The "opportunity gap" in US public education -- and how to close it

{0: 'Anindya Kundu suggests all students can succeed if provided collective support systems and opportunities.'}

TED Residency

My first job out of college was as an academic researcher at one of the largest juvenile detention centers in the country. And every day I would drive to this building on the West Side of Chicago, go through the security checkpoint and walk down these brown, brick hallways as I made my way down to the basement to observe the intake process. The kids coming in were about 10 to 16 years old, usually always black and brown, most likely from the same impoverished South and West Sides of Chicago. They should've been in fifth to tenth grade, but instead they were here for weeks on end awaiting trial for various crimes. Some of them came back to the facility 14 times before their 15th birthday. And as I sat there on the other side of the glass from them, idealistic with a college degree, I wondered to myself: Why didn't schools do something more to prevent this from happening? It's been about 10 years since then, and I still think about how some kids get tracked towards college and others towards detention, but I no longer think about schools' abilities to solve these things. You see, I've learned that so much of this problem is systemic that often our school system perpetuates the social divide. It makes worse what it's supposed to fix. That's as crazy or controversial as saying that our health care system isn't preventative but somehow profits off of keeping us sick ... oops. (Laughter) I truly do believe though that kids can achieve great things despite the odds against them, and in fact, my own research shows that. But if we're serious about helping more kids from across the board to achieve and make it in this world, we're going to have to realize that our gaps in student outcomes are not so much about achievement as much as they are about opportunity. A 2019 EdBuild report showed that majority-white districts receive about 23 billion dollars more in annual funding than nonwhite districts, even though they serve about the same number of students. Lower resource schools are dealing with lower quality equipment, obsolete technology and paying teachers way less. Here in New York, those are also the schools most likely to serve the one in 10 elementary school students who will most likely have to sleep in a homeless shelter tonight. The student, parent and teacher are dealing with a lot. Sometimes places are misplacing the blame back on them. In Atlanta, we saw that teachers felt desperate enough to have to help their students cheat on standardized tests that would impact their funding. Eight of them went to jail for that in 2015 with some sentences as high as 20 years, which is more than what many states give for second-degree murder. The thing is though, in places like Tulsa, teachers' pay has been so bad that these people have had to go to food pantries or soup kitchens just to feed themselves. The same system will criminalize a parent who will use a relative's address to send their child to a better school, but for who knows how long authorities have turned a blind eye to those who can bribe their way onto the most elite and beautiful college campuses. And a lot of this feels pretty heavy to be saying — and maybe to be hearing — and since there's nothing quite like economics talk to lighten the mood — that's right, right? Let me tell you about some of the costs when we fail to tap into our students' potential. A McKinsey study showed that if in 1998 we could've closed our long-standing student achievement gaps between students of different ethnic backgrounds or students of different income levels, by 2008, our GDP — our untapped economic gains — could have gone up by more than 500 billion dollars. Those same gaps in 2008, between our students here in the US and those across the world, may have deprived our economy of up to 2.3 trillion dollars of economic output. But beyond economics, numbers and figures, I think there's a simpler reason that this matters, a simpler reason for fixing our system. It's that in a true democracy, like the one we pride ourselves on having — and sometimes rightfully so — a child's future should not be predetermined by the circumstances of their birth. A public education system should not create a wider bottom and more narrow top. Some of us can sometimes think that these things aren't that close to home, but they are if we broaden our view, because a leaky faucet in our kitchen, broken radiator in our hallway, those parts of the house that we always say we're going to get to next week, they're devaluing our whole property. Instead of constantly looking away to solutions like privatization or the charter school movement to solve our problems, why don't we take a deeper look at public education, try to take more pride in it and maybe use it to solve some of our social problems. Why don't we try to reclaim the promise of public education and remember that it's our greatest collective responsibility? Luckily some of our communities are doing just that. The huge teacher strikes in the spring of 2019 in Denver and LA — they were successful because of community support for things like smaller class sizes and getting things into schools like more counselors in addition to teacher pay. And sometimes for the student, innovation is just daring to implement common sense. In Baltimore a few years ago, they enacted a free breakfast and lunch program, taking away the stigma of poverty and hunger for some students but increasing achievement in attendance for many others. And in Memphis, the university is recruiting local, passionate high school students and giving them scholarships to go teach in the inner city without the burden of college debt. And north of here in The Bronx, I recently researched these partnerships being built between high schools, community colleges and local businesses who are creating internships in finance, health care and technology for students without "silver spoon" connections to gain important skills and contribute to the communities that they come from. So today I don't necessarily have the same questions about education that I did when I was an idealistic, perhaps naïve college grad working in a detention center basement. It's not: Can schools save more of our students? Because I think we have the answer to that — and it's yes they can, if we save our schools first. We can start by caring about the education of other people's children ... And I'm saying that as someone who doesn't have kids yet but wants to worry a little bit less about the future when I do. Cultivating as much talent as possible, getting as many girls as we can from all over into science and engineering, as many boys as we can into teaching — those are investments for our future. Our students are like our most valuable resource, and when you put it that way, our teachers are like our modern-day diamond and gold miners, hoping to help make them shine. Let's contribute our voices, our votes and our support to giving them the resources that they will need not just to survive but hopefully thrive, allowing all of us to do so as well. Thank you. (Applause and cheers)

The search for dark matter -- and what we've found so far

{0: 'Risa Wechsler uses computer simulations of the entire universe to explore questions about our existence on the largest scales.'}

TED@NAS

Do you ever think about what would happen if the world were a little bit different? How your life would be different if you were born 5,000 years from now instead of today? How history would be different if the continents were at different latitudes or how life in the Solar system would have developed if the Sun were 10 percent larger. Well, playing with these kinds of possibilities is what I get to do for a living but with the entire universe. I make model universes in a computer. Digital universes that have different starting points and are made of different amounts of different kinds of material. And then I compare these universes to our own to see what it is made of and how it evolved. This process of testing models with measurements of the sky has taught us a huge amount about our universe so far. One of the strangest things we have learned is that most of the material in the universe is made of something entirely different than you and me. But without it, the universe as we know it wouldn't exist. Everything we can see with telescopes makes up just about 15 percent of the total mass in the universe. Everything else, 85 percent of it, doesn't emit or absorb light. We can't see it with our eyes, we can't detect it with radio waves or microwaves or any other kind of light. But we know it is there because of its influence on what we can see. It's a little bit like, if you wanted to map the surface of our planet and everything on it using this picture of the Earth from space at night. You get some clues from where the light is, but there's a lot that you can't see, everything from people to mountain ranges. And you have to infer what is there from these limited clues. We call this unseen stuff "dark matter." Now, a lot of people have heard of dark matter, but even if you have heard of it, it probably seems abstract, far away, probably even irrelevant. Well, the interesting thing is, dark matter is all around us and probably right here. In fact, dark matter particles are probably going through your body right now as you sit in this room. Because we are on Earth and Earth is spinning around the Sun, and the Sun is hurtling through our galaxy at about half a million miles per hour. But dark matter doesn't bump into us, it just goes right through us. So how do we figure out more about this? What is it, and what does it have to do with our existence? Well, in order to figure out how we came to be, we first need to understand how our galaxy came to be. This is a picture of our galaxy, the Milky Way, today. What did it look like 10 billion years in the past or what would it look like 10 billion years in the future? What about the stories of the hundreds of millions of other galaxies that we've already mapped out with large surveys of the sky? How would their histories be different if the universe was made of something else or if there was more or less matter in it? So the interesting thing about these model universes is that they allow us to test these possibilities. Let's go back to the first moment of the universe — just a fraction of a second after the big bang. In this first moment, there was no matter at all. The universe was expanding very fast. And quantum mechanics tells us that matter is being created and destroyed all the time, in every moment. At this time, the universe was expanding so fast that the matter that got created couldn't get destroyed. And thus we think that all of the matter was created during this time. Both the dark matter and the regular matter that makes up you and me. Now, let's go a little bit further to a time after the matter was created, after protons and neutrons formed, after hydrogen formed, about 400,000 years after the big bang. The universe was hot and dense and really smooth but not perfectly smooth. This image, taken with a space telescope called the Planck satellite, shows us the temperature of the universe in all directions. And what we see is that there were places that were a little bit hotter and denser than others. The spots in this image represent places where there was more or less mass in the early universe. Those spots got big because of gravity. The universe was expanding and getting less dense overall over the last 13.8 billion years. But gravity worked hard in those spots where there was a little bit more mass and pulled more and more mass into those regions. Now, all of this is a little hard to imagine, so let me just show you what I am talking about. Those computer models I mentioned allow us to test these ideas, so let's take a look at one of them. This movie, made by my research group, shows us what happened to the universe after its earliest moments. You see the universe started out pretty smooth, but there were some regions where there was a little bit more material. Gravity turned on and brought more and more mass into those spots that started out with a little bit extra. Over time, you get enough stuff in one place that the hydrogen gas, which was initially well mixed with the dark matter, starts to separate from it, cool down, form stars, and you get a small galaxy. Over time, over billions and billions of years, those small galaxies crash into each other and merge and grow to become larger galaxies, like our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Now, what happens if you don't have dark matter? If you don't have dark matter, those spots never get clumpy enough. It turns out, you need at least a million times the mass of the Sun in one dense region, before you can start forming stars. And without dark matter, you never get enough stuff in one place. So here, we're looking at two universes, side by side. In one of them you can see that things get clumpy quickly. In that universe, it's really easy to form galaxies. In the other universe, the things that start out like small clumps, they just stay really small. Not very much happens. In that universe, you wouldn't get our galaxy. Or any other galaxy. You wouldn't get the Milky Way, you wouldn't get the Sun, you wouldn't get us. We just couldn't exist in that universe. OK, so this crazy stuff, dark matter, it's most of the mass in the universe, it's going through us right now, we wouldn't be here without it. What is it? Well, we have no idea. (Laughter) But we have a lot of educated guesses, and a lot of ideas for how to find out more. So, most physicists think that dark matter is a particle, similar in many ways to the subatomic particles that we know of, like protons and neutrons and electrons. Whatever it is, it behaves very similarly with respect to gravity. But it doesn't emit or absorb light, and it goes right through normal matter, as if it wasn't even there. We'd like to know what particle it is. For example, how heavy is it? Or, does anything at all happen if it interacts with normal matter? Physicists have lots of great ideas for what it could be, they're very creative. But it's really hard, because those ideas span a huge range. It could be as small as the smallest subatomic particles, or it could be as large as the mass of 100 Suns. So, how do we figure out what it is? Well, physicists and astronomers have a lot of ways to look for dark matter. One of the things we're doing is building sensitive detectors in deep underground mines, waiting for the possibility that a dark matter particle, which goes through us and the Earth, would hit a denser material and leave behind some trace of its passage. We're looking for dark matter in the sky, for the possibility that dark matter particles would crash into each other and create high-energy light that we could see with special gamma-ray telescopes. We're even trying to make dark matter here on Earth, by smashing particles together and looking for what happens, using the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Now, so far, all of these experiments have taught us a lot about what dark matter isn't (Laughter) but not yet what it is. There were really good ideas that dark matter could have been, that these experiments would have seen. And they didn't see them yet, so we have to keep looking and thinking harder. Now, another way to get a clue to what dark matter is is to study galaxies. We already talked about how our galaxy and many other galaxies wouldn't even be here without dark matter. Those models also make predictions for many other things about galaxies: How they're distributed in the universe, how they move, how they evolve over time. And we can test those predictions with observations of the sky. So let me just give you two examples of these kinds of measurements we can make with galaxies. The first is that we can make maps of the universe with galaxies. I am part of a survey called the Dark Energy Survey, which has made the largest map of the universe so far. We measured the positions and shapes of 100 million galaxies over one-eighth of the sky. And this map is showing us all the matter in this region of the sky, which is inferred by the light distorted from these 100 million galaxies. The light distorted from all of the matter that was between those galaxies and us. The gravity of the matter is strong enough to bend the path of light. And it gives us this image. So these kinds of maps can tell us about how much dark matter there is, they also tell us where it is and how it changes over time. So we're trying to learn about what the universe is made of on the very largest scales. It turns out that the tiniest galaxies in the universe provide some of the best clues. So why is that? Here are two example simulated universes with two different kinds of dark matter. Both of these pictures are showing you a region around a galaxy like the Milky Way. And you can see that there's a lot of other material around it, little small clumps. Now, in the image on the right, dark matter particles are moving slower than they are in the one on the left. If those dark matter particles are moving really fast, then the gravity in small clumps is not strong enough to slow those fast particles down. And they keep going. They never collapse into these small clumps. So you end up with fewer of them than in the universe on the right. If you don't have those small clumps, then you get fewer small galaxies. If you look up at the southern sky, you can actually see two of these small galaxies, the largest of the small galaxies that are orbiting our Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud. In the last several years, we have detected a whole bunch more even smaller galaxies. This is an example of one of them that we detected with the same dark energy survey that we used to make maps of the universe. These really small galaxies, some of them are extremely small. Some of them have as few as a few hundred stars, compared to the few hundred billion stars in our Milky Way. So that makes them really hard to find. But in the last decade, we've actually found a whole bunch more of these. We now know of 60 of these tiny galaxies that are orbiting our own Milky Way. And these little guys are a big clue to dark matter. Because just the existence of these galaxies tells us that dark matter can't be moving very fast, and not much can be happening when it runs into normal matter. In the next several years, we're going to make much more precise maps of the sky. And those will help refine our movies of the whole universe and the entire galaxy. Physicists are also making new, more sensitive experiments to try to catch some sign of dark matter in their laboratories. Dark matter is still a huge mystery. But it's a really exciting time to be working on it. We have really clear evidence it exists. From the scale of the smallest galaxies to the scale of the whole universe. Will we actually find it and figure out what it is? I have no idea. But it's going to be a lot of fun to find out. We have a lot of possibilities for discovery, and we definitely will learn more about what it is doing and about what it isn't. Regardless of whether we find that particle anytime soon, I hope I have convinced you that this mystery is actually really close to home. The search for dark matter may just be the key to a whole new understanding of physics and our place in the universe. Thank you. (Applause)