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Could a breathalyzer detect cancer?

{0: 'Driven by his curiosity, Julian Burschka is combining multiple technical disciplines with strong business acumen to drive innovation and enable new technological advancements.'}

TED-Ed

How is it that a breathalyzer can measure the alcohol content in someone’s blood, hours after they had their last drink, based on their breath alone? Exhaled breath contains trace amounts of hundreds, even thousands, of volatile organic compounds: small molecules lightweight enough to travel easily as gases. One of these is ethanol, which we consume in alcoholic drinks. It travels through the bloodstream to tiny air sacs in the lungs, passing into exhaled air at a concentration 2,000 times lower, on average, than in the blood. When someone breathes into a breathalyzer, the ethanol in their breath passes into a reaction chamber. There, it’s converted to another molecule, called acetic acid, in a special type of reactor that produces an electric current during the reaction. The strength of the current indicates the amount of ethanol in the sample of air, and by extension in the blood. In addition to the volatile organic compounds like ethanol we consume in food and drink, the biochemical processes of our cells produce many others. And when something disrupts those processes, like a disease, the collection of volatile organic compounds in the breath may change, too. So could we detect disease by analyzing a person’s breath, without using more invasive diagnostic tools like biopsies, blood draws, and radiation? In theory, yes, but testing for disease is a lot more complicated than testing for alcohol. To identify diseases, researchers need to look at a set of tens of compounds in the breath. A given disease may cause some of these compounds to increase or decrease in concentration, while others may not change— the profile is likely to be different for every disease, and could even vary for different stages of the same disease. For example, cancers are among the most researched candidates for diagnosis through breath analysis. One of the biochemical changes many tumors cause is a large increase in an energy-generating process called glycolysis. Known as the Warburg Effect, this increase in glycolysis results in an increase of metabolites like lactate which in turn can affect a whole cascade of metabolic processes and ultimately result in altered breath composition, possibly including an increased concentration of volatile compounds such as dimethyl sulfide. But the Warburg Effect is just one potential indicator of cancerous activity, and doesn’t reveal anything about the particular type of cancer. Many more indicators are needed to make a diagnosis. To find these subtle differences, researchers compare the breath of healthy people with the breath of people who suffer from a particular disease using profiles based on hundreds of breath samples. This complex analysis requires a fundamentally different, more versatile type of sensor from the alcohol breathalyzer. There are a few being developed. Some discriminate between individual compounds by observing how the compounds move through a set of electric fields. Others use an array of resistors made of different materials that each change their resistance when exposed to a certain mix of volatile organic compounds. There are other challenges too. These substances are present at incredibly low concentrations— typically just parts per billion, much lower than ethanol concentrations in the breath. Compounds’ levels may be affected by factors other than disease, including age, gender, nutrition, and lifestyle. Finally, there’s the issue of distinguishing which compounds in the sample were produced in the patient’s body and which were inhaled from the environment shortly before the test. Because of these challenges, breath analysis isn’t quite ready yet. But preliminary clinical trials on lung, colon, and other cancers have had encouraging results. One day, catching cancer early might be as easy as breathing in and out.

The urgent case for antibiotic-free animals

{0: 'Leon Marchal is passionate about discovering more sustainable animal production.'}

TED@DuPont

There was a time when simple infections were deadly, but now, thanks to the wide availability of antibiotics, this is merely a relic of the past. But actually, I should say "was," because nowadays, we're using antibiotics so much that the bacteria that cause these infections are becoming resistant. And that should really scare the hell out of all of us. If we do not change our behavior and wean ourselves off antibiotics, the UN predicts that by 2050, antimicrobial resistance will become our single biggest killer. So we must start to act. But "where to begin" is an interesting question, because we humans are not the only ones using antibiotics. Worldwide, 50 to 80 percent of all antibiotics are used by animals. Not all of these are critical for human health, but if we do not get it under control right now, we're looking at a very scary future for humans and animals alike. To begin, let's talk about how we ended up here. The first large-scale use of antibiotics was in the early '50s of the last century. In the Western world, prosperity was increasing and people wanted to eat more animal protein. When animals were sick, you could now treat them with antibiotics so they did not die and kept growing. But soon, it was discovered that adding small and regular amounts of antibiotics to the feed kept the animals healthy, made them grow faster and caused them to need less feed. So these antibiotics worked well — really well, actually. And with increasing animal production, also antibiotic use skyrocketed worldwide. Unfortunately, so did antibiotic resistance. The reason your doctor tells you to finish the entire bottle of antibiotics is if you shorten your dose, you will not kill all of the bugs. And the ones that stick around build up the antibiotic resistance. It's the same problem with giving animals small and regular doses of antibiotics: some bad bugs die but not all of them. Spread that across an entire industry, and you can understand that we accidentally build up a large reservoir of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But I hate to break it to you — the problem doesn't stop there. You know who else takes antibiotics? Fluffy, your cat, and Rover, your dog. (Laughter) Pets rank even amongst the heaviest users of all, and they use antibiotics that are much more critical for human health. Combine this with how close we live with our companion animals and you understand the risk of you picking up antibiotic-resistant bacteria from your own pet. But how do these antibiotic-resistant bacteria in farm animals affect you? Let me give you an example we have, actually, data on. The levels of antibiotic-resistant salmonella in pigs in Europe against different types of antibiotics range from less than a percent to as high [as] 60 percent. Which means that in most cases, this antibiotic will not work anymore to kill this salmonella. And there was a high correlation between antibiotic-resistant salmonella in the pig and in the final product. Whether that is pork chop, spare ribs or minced meat. Now, luckily, typically less than one percent of all raw meat, fish or eggs will contain salmonella. And this only poses a risk when not treated well. Still, there are over 100,000 human salmonella cases in the EU and more than a million cases in the US. In the US, leading to 23,000 hospitalizations and 450 people dead each year. With antibiotic-resistant salmonella on the rise, this death toll is likely to increase. But it's not only about consuming yourself. This year, more than 100 people got infected with a multidrug-resistant salmonella after feeding pig ears, as a treat, to their dog. So we really must cut back on antibiotic use in animal production. And luckily, this is starting to happen. The EU was the first region to ban putting antibiotics in low doses in the feed. From '99 on, in several steps, the amount of different types of antibiotics allowed was reduced, and in 2006, a complete ban went into place. Antibiotics were only allowed when a veterinarian determined the animal was sick. Sounds great, right? Problem solved. No, wait, not so fast. As soon as the reduction program started, it was very quickly discovered that antibiotics had been the perfect blanket to cover up a lot of bad farm practices. More and more animals became sick and needed to be cured with ... antibiotics. So instead of the total amount going down, it actually increased. Surely, that was not the way to go. But luckily, that was not the end of the story. The whole European agricultural sector started on a journey, and I think it's a journey anybody can learn from. This is also the time I personally entered the scene. I joined a large European feed compounder. A feed compounder makes a total diet for a farmer to feed to his animals and often also provides the advice on how to raise the animals in the best way. I was really motivated to work together with my colleagues, veterinarians and, of course, the farmers to figure out how to keep the animals healthy and antibiotic-free. Now there are three major things that need to happen for antibiotic-free production. Let me walk you through the playbook. To start — and it sounds very obvious — that our hygiene is the place to start. Better cleaning of the stable and the drinking-water lines making it harder for the disease to come in and spread across the stable. That's all very important, but the part I was personally most interested in was better feeding for the animals, better nutrition. Feeding a well-balanced diet is important. Think about it this way: when you yourself do not eat enough fiber, you do not feel well. Part of the food you consume is not digested by yourself but fermented in your large intestine by bacteria. So you're feeding those microbes with part of your diet. Initially, most young animals were fed low-fiber, high-starch and protein, very finely ground and highly digestible diets. Like being yourself on a diet of hamburger buns, rice, waffles and protein bars. We changed this to a lower-protein, higher-fiber, coarser type of diet. Like being on a diet of whole grains, salad with meat or beans. This shifted the bacterial flora in the animals' guts to the more beneficial ones and reduced the chance that pathogens would flourish. You might be surprised but not only diet composition, also diet structure plays a role. Simply the fact that the same diet is coarser will lead to a better-developed digestive tract, and thus, a healthier animal. But the best part was that farmers started to buy this actually, too. Unlike some other parts of the world, Western European farmers mainly still make their independent buying decisions: who to buy the feed from and sell their animals to. So what you're actually selling in the end reflects the actual local need of these farmers. For example, the protein content in piglet diets in countries that are much more vigilant in reducing antibiotics, like, for example, Germany and the Netherlands, were already 10 to 15 percent lower than in a country like the UK, which was slower to pick this up. But, like with better hygiene, better nutrition helps but will not totally prevent you from becoming sick. So more is needed. And that's why we turned to the microbiome. Making the water with the feed more acidic helps to create an environment that benefits the more beneficial bacteria and inhibits the pathogens. Like fermented food, whether it's yogurt, sauerkraut or salami, they'll all spoil less quickly, too. Now, with modern techniques, like the ones based on DNA testing, we can see that there are many more different microorganisms present. And this ecosystem, which we call the microbiome, is much more complex. Turns out there are about eight times more microorganisms in your gut as tissue cells in your body. And for animals, the impact is no less. So if we want to work without antibiotics in animal production, we have to make the animals much more robust. So that when a disease strikes, the animals are much more resilient. And this three-pronged nutribiosis approach involving the host, nutrition and the microbiome is the way to do it. Now the practice of raising animals on an antibiotic-containing or antibiotic-use-provoking diet is a bit cheaper at farm level. But in the end, we are talking about a few percent at the consumer level. That's actually quite affordable for the middle- and high-income part of the world population. And a very small price to pay when our own health or our loved ones' health is at stake. So what do you think, what direction do we take? Do we allow antimicrobial resistance to become our biggest killer, at huge financial and a special personal cost? Or do we, besides reducing human antibiotic consumption, truly start embracing antibiotic-free animal production? For me, the choice is very obvious. But to make this happen, we have to set reduction targets and make sure that they're followed all around the world. Because farmers compete with each other. And at a country level, trading block or the global market, costs are very important. And also, we have to be realistic. Farmers need to have the possibilities to invest more in better management and better feed in order to achieve this reduction. And besides legal limits, the market can play a role, by offering antibiotic-reduced or antibiotic-free products. And with growing consumer awareness, these market forces will increase in power. Now everything I've been talking about seems to be great for us. But what about the animals? Now, guess what, their lives get better, too. Better health, less stress, happier life. So now you know. We have the knowledge how to produce meat, eggs and milk without or with very low amounts of antibiotics, and I'll argue it's a small price to pay to avoid a future in which bacterial infections again become our biggest killer. Thank you. (Applause)

The secret weapon that let dinosaurs take over the planet

{0: 'Comparative anatomist and paleontologist Emma Schachner wants to know everything about the anatomy and evolution of reptiles and bird lungs: how they became so complex, why they have so many secondary functions and what role they played in their diversification and success.'}

TEDxLSU

We've all heard about how the dinosaurs died. The story I'm going to tell you happened over 200 million years before the dinosaurs went extinct. This story starts at the very beginning, when dinosaurs were just getting their start. One of the biggest mysteries in evolutionary biology is why dinosaurs were so successful. What led to their global dominance for so many years? When people think about why dinosaurs were so amazing, they usually think about the biggest or the smallest dinosaur, or who was the fastest, or who had the most feathers, the most ridiculous armor, spikes or teeth. But perhaps the answer had to do with their internal anatomy — a secret weapon, so to speak. My colleagues and I, we think it was their lungs. I am both a paleontologist and a comparative anatomist, and I am interested in understanding how the specialized dinosaur lung helped them take over the planet. So we are going to jump back over 200 million years to the Triassic period. The environment was extremely harsh, there were no flowering plants, so this means that there was no grass. So imagine a landscape filled with all pine trees and ferns. At the same time, there were small lizards, mammals, insects, and there were also carnivorous and herbivorous reptiles — all competing for the same resources. Critical to this story is that oxygen levels have been estimated to have been as low as 15 percent, compared to today's 21 percent. So it would have been crucial for dinosaurs to be able to breathe in this low-oxygen environment, not only to survive but to thrive and to diversify. So, how do we know what dinosaur lungs were even like, since all that remains of a dinosaur generally is its fossilized skeleton? The method that we use is called "extant phylogenetic bracketing." This is a fancy way of saying that we study the anatomy — specifically in this case, the lungs and skeleton — of the living descendants of dinosaurs on the evolutionary tree. So we would look at the anatomy of birds, who are the direct descendants of dinosaurs, and we'd look at the anatomy of crocodilians, who are their closest living relatives, and then we would look at the anatomy of lizards and turtles, who we can think of like their cousins. And then we apply these anatomical data to the fossil record, and then we can use that to reconstruct the lungs of dinosaurs. And in this specific instance, the skeleton of dinosaurs most closely resembles that of modern birds. So, because dinosaurs were competing with early mammals during this time period, it's important to understand the basic blueprint of the mammalian lung. Also, to reintroduce you to lungs in general, we will use my dog Mila of Troy, the face that launched a thousand treats, as our model. (Laughter) This story takes place inside of a chest cavity. So I want you to visualize the ribcage of a dog. Think about how the spinal vertebral column is completely horizontal to the ground. This is how the spinal vertebral column is going to be in all of the animals that we'll be talking about, whether they walked on two legs or four legs. Now I want you to climb inside of the imaginary ribcage and look up. This is our thoracic ceiling. This is where the top surface of the lungs comes into direct contact with the ribs and vertebrae. This interface is where our story takes place. Now I want you to visualize the lungs of a dog. On the outside, it's like a giant inflatable bag where all parts of the bag expand during inhalation and contract during exhalation. Inside of the bag, there's a series of branching tubes, and these tubes are called the bronchial tree. These tubes deliver the inhaled oxygen to, ultimately, the alveolus. They cross over a thin membrane into the bloodstream by diffusion. Now, this part is critical. The entire mammalian lung is mobile. That means it's moving during the entire respiratory process, so that thin membrane, the blood-gas barrier, cannot be too thin or it will break. Now, remember the blood-gas barrier, because we will be returning to this. So, you're still with me? Because we're going to start birds and it gets crazy, so hold on to your butts. (Laughter) The bird is completely different from the mammal. And we are going to be using birds as our model to reconstruct the lungs of dinosaurs. So in the bird, air passes through the lung, but the lung does not expand or contract. The lung is immobilized, it has the texture of a dense sponge and it's inflexible and locked into place on the top and sides by the ribcage and on the bottom by a horizontal membrane. It is then unidirectionally ventilated by a series of flexible, bag-like structures that branch off of the bronchial tree, beyond the lung itself, and these are called air sacs. Now, this entire extremely delicate setup is locked into place by a series of forked ribs all along the thoracic ceiling. Also, in many species of birds, extensions arise from the lung and the air sacs, they invade the skeletal tissues — usually the vertebrae, sometimes the ribs — and they lock the respiratory system into place. And this is called "vertebral pneumaticity." The forked ribs and the vertebral pneumaticity are two clues that we can hunt for in the fossil record, because these two skeletal traits would indicate that regions of the respiratory system of dinosaurs are immobilized. This anchoring of the respiratory system facilitated the evolution of the thinning of the blood-gas barrier, that thin membrane over which oxygen was diffusing into the bloodstream. The immobility permits this because a thin barrier is a weak barrier, and the weak barrier would rupture if it was actively being ventilated like a mammalian lung. So why do we care about this? Why does this even matter? Oxygen more easily diffuses across a thin membrane, and a thin membrane is one way of enhancing respiration under low-oxygen conditions — low-oxygen conditions like that of the Triassic period. So, if dinosaurs did indeed have this type of lung, they'd be better equipped to breathe than all other animals, including mammals. So do you remember the extant phylogenetic bracket method where we take the anatomy of modern animals, and we apply that to the fossil record? So, clue number one was the forked ribs of modern birds. Well, we find that in pretty much the majority of dinosaurs. So that means that the top surface of the lungs of dinosaurs would be locked into place, just like modern birds. Clue number two is vertebral pneumaticity. We find this in sauropod dinosaurs and theropod dinosaurs, which is the group that contains predatory dinosaurs and gave rise to modern birds. And while we don't find evidence of fossilized lung tissue in dinosaurs, vertebral pneumaticity gives us evidence of what the lung was doing during the life of these animals. Lung tissue or air sac tissue was invading the vertebrae, hollowing them out just like a modern bird, and locking regions of the respiratory system into place, immobilizing them. The forked ribs and the vertebral pneumaticity together were creating an immobilized, rigid framework that locked the respiratory system into place that permitted the evolution of that superthin, superdelicate blood-gas barrier that we see today in modern birds. Evidence of this straightjacketed lung in dinosaurs means that they had the capability to evolve a lung that would have been able to breathe under the hypoxic, or low-oxygen, atmosphere of the Triassic period. This rigid skeletal setup in dinosaurs would have given them a significant adaptive advantage over other animals, particularly mammals, whose flexible lung couldn't have adapted to the hypoxic, or low-oxygen, atmosphere of the Triassic. This anatomy may have been the secret weapon of dinosaurs that gave them that advantage over other animals. And this gives us an excellent launchpad to start testing the hypotheses of dinosaurian diversification. This is the story of the dinosaurs' beginning, and it's just the beginning of the story of our research into this subject. Thank you. (Applause)

The mysterious life and death of Rasputin

TED-Ed

On a cold winter night in 1916, Felix Yusupov anxiously prepared to pick up his dinner guest. If all went as planned, his guest would be dead by morning, though four others had already tried and failed to finish him off. The Russian monarchy was on the brink of collapse, and to Yusupov and his fellow aristocrats, the holy man they’d invited to dinner was the single cause of it all. But who was he, and how could a single monk be to blame for the fate of an empire? Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin began his life in Siberia, born in 1869 to a peasant family. He might have lived a life of obscurity in his small village, if not for his conversion to the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1890s. Inspired by the humbled monks that wandered endlessly from holy site to holy site, he spent years on pilgrimages across Russia. On his travels, strangers were captivated by Rasputin’s magnetic presence. Some even believed he had mystical gifts of prediction and healing. Despite Rasputin’s heavy drinking, petty theft, and promiscuity, his reputation as a monk quickly spread beyond Siberia and attracted both laypeople and powerful Orthodox clergymen. When he finally reached the capital, St. Petersburg, Rasputin used his charisma and connections to win favor with the imperial family’s spiritual advisor. In November 1905, Rasputin was finally introduced to Russian Tsar Nicholas II. Nicholas and his wife Alexandra devoutly believed in the Orthodox Church, as well as in mysticism and supernatural powers, and this Siberian holy man had them transfixed. It was a particularly tumultuous period for Russia and their family. The monarchy was barely clinging to control after the Revolution of 1905. Their political struggles were only intensified by personal turmoil: Alexei, the heir to the throne, had a life-threatening blood disease called hemophilia. When Alexei suffered a severe medical crisis in 1912, Rasputin advised his parents to reject treatment from doctors. Alexei’s health improved, cementing the royal family’s belief that Rasputin had magical healing powers, and guaranteeing his privileged place on the royal court. Today, we know that the doctors had prescribed aspirin, a drug that worsens hemophilia. After this incident, Rasputin made a prophecy: if he died, or the royal family deserted him, both their son and their crown would soon be gone. Outside the royal family, people had mixed views on Rasputin. On one hand, peasants regarded him as one of their own, amplifying their often-unheard voice to the monarchy. But nobles and clergymen came to despise his presence. Rasputin never ceased his scandalous behavior, and they were skeptical of his so-called powers and thought he was corrupting the royal family. By the end of World War I, they were convinced the only way to maintain order was to eliminate this sham of a holy man. With this conviction, Yusupov began to plot Rasputin’s assassination. Though the exact details remain mysterious, our best guess at how it all unfolded comes from Yusupov’s memoirs. He served Rasputin a number of pastries, believing they contained cyanide. But unbeknownst to Yusupov, one of his co-conspirators had a change of heart, and substituted the poison with a harmless substance. To Yusupov’s shock, Rasputin ate them without ill effect. In desperation, he shot Rasputin at point-blank range. But Rasputin recovered, punched his attacker, and fled. Yusupov and his accomplices pursued him, finally killing Rasputin with a bullet to the forehead and dumping his body in the Malaya Nevka river. But far from stabilizing the monarchy’s authority, Rasputin’s death enraged the peasantry. Just as Rasputin prophesied, his murder was swiftly followed by that of the royal family. Whether the downfall of the Russian monarchy was a product of the monk’s curse, or the result of political tensions decades in the making, well, we may never know.

What a digital government looks like

{0: 'Anna Piperal is a branding expert and digital enthusiast who strives to spread the idea of a "zero-bureaucracy" government ecosystem.'}

TEDSummit 2019

Almost 30 years ago, my country was facing the need to rebuild everything from scratch. After years of Soviet occupation, Estonia regained its independence, but we were left with nothing. No infrastructure, no administration, no legal code. Organizational chaos. Out of necessity, the state leaders back then had to make some daring choices. The ones that our country could afford. There was a lot of experimentation and uncertainty but also a bit of luck involved, particularly in the fact that we could count on a number of brilliant visionaries, cryptographers and engineers. I was just a kid back then. Today, we are called the most digital society on earth. I'm from Estonia, and we've been declaring taxes online since 2001. We have been using digital identity and signature since 2002. We've been voting online since 2005. And for today, pretty much the whole range of the public services that you can imagine: education, police, justice, starting a company, applying for benefits, looking at your health record or challenging a parking ticket — that's everything that is done online. In fact, it's much easier to tell you what are the three things we cannot yet do online. We have to show up to pick up our ID documents, get married or divorced, or sell real estate. That's pretty much it. So, that's why don't freak out when I tell you that every year I can't wait to start doing my tax declaration. (Laughter) Because all I have to do is sit on my couch with a mobile phone, swipe a few pages with prefilled data on income and deductions and hit submit. After three minutes, I'm looking at the tax return amount. It actually feels like a quite rewarding experience. No tax advisors, no collecting receipts, no doing the math. And have I mentioned that I have not visited a state office for almost seven years? Indeed, one of the features of the modern life that has no reason to exist anymore, considering technological possibilities of today, is the labyrinth of bureaucracy. We've almost got rid of it completely in Estonia, in an effort coordinated by the government that has also digitized itself. For instance, cabinet of ministers' work in e-Cabinet is absolutely paperless. The central idea behind this development is transformation of the state role and digitalization of trust. Think about it. In most countries, people don't trust their governments. And the governments don't trust them back. And all the complicated paper-based formal procedures are supposed to solve that problem. Except that they don't. They just make life more complicated. I believe Estonian experience is showing that technology can be the remedy for getting the trust back, while creating an efficient, user-centric service delivery system that actively responds to citizens' needs. We did not do it by digitizing bureaucracy as it is. But by rather agreeing on a few strong, common principles, redesigning rules and procedures, getting rid of unnecessary data collection and task duplication, and becoming open and transparent. Let me give you a glimpse into some of the key e-Estonia design principles today. First, it is essential to guarantee privacy and confidentiality of data and information. This is achieved through a strong digital identity that is issued by the state and compatible with everything. In fact, every Estonian has one. The identity is doubled with a strong digital signature that is accepted, used and legally binding both in Estonia and the European Union. When the system can properly and securely identify who is using it, after logging in, it will provide access to the personal data of the citizen and all the public services within one tool, and allow to authorize anything by signing digitally. A second principle, and one of the most transformative, is called "Once only." It means that the state cannot ask for the same data more than once, nor can store it in more than one place. For instance, if you've already provided your birth or marital certificate to the population registry, this is the only place where this data is going to be held. And no other institution will be ever asking for it again. Once only is a very powerful rule, as it defines the whole structure of the data collection in a country, what information is collected and who is responsible for maintaining it, making sure we avoid centralization of data, duplication of data, and guarantee that it's actually up to date. This distributed approach also avoids the problem of the single point of failure. But since the data cannot be replicated, or collected more than once, it means that the design has to keep in mind secure and robust access to that information at all times, so the public institution can offer a service. This is exactly the role of the data exchange platform called the X-Road that has been in use since 2001. Just like a highway, it connects public sector databases and registries, local municipalities and businesses, organizing a real-time, secure and regulated data exchange, saving an auditable trace after each move. Here's a screenshot of a live feed showing all the requests performed on the X-Road and all the services that it actually facilitates. And this is the real picture of all the connections between public and private sector databases. As you can see, there is no central database whatsoever. Confidentiality and privacy are definitely very important. But in the digital world, reliability and integrity of information is just critical for operations. For instance, if someone changes your medical health record, let's say allergies, without you or your doctor knowing, treatment could be deadly. That's why in a digital society, a system like an Estonian one, when there's almost no paper originals, there's almost only digital originals, integrity of data, data exchange rules, software components and log files is paramount. We use a form of blockchain that we invented back in 2007, way before blockchain even became a thing, to check and guarantee the integrity of data in real time. Blockchain is our auditor and a promise that no access to the data or data manipulation remains unrecorded. Data ownership is another key principle in the design of the system. Aren't you worried by the fact that governments, tech companies and other businesses around the world claim data they've collected about you is theirs, generally refuse to give access to that information, and often fail to prove how it was used or shared with third parties? I don't know, for me it seems like a quite disturbing situation. The Estonian system is based on the principle that an individual is the owner of the data collected about him, thus has an absolute right to know what information is collected and who has been accessing it. Every time a policeman, a doctor or any state officer is accessing personal information of the citizens online, first they only get to access it after logging in to the information they're authorized to see to do their job. And secondly, every time they're making requests, this is saved in a log file. This detailed log file is part of the state public services and allows real transparency, making sure no privacy violation will remain unnoticed to the citizen. Now, of course, this is only a simplified summary of all the design principles that e-Estonia is built on. And now, government is building up to get ready for use of artificial intelligence and building a whole new generation of public services — proactive services that would activate seamlessly based on different life situations that people might be in, such as childbirth, unemployment or starting a business. Now, of course, running a digital society with no paper backup can be an issue, right? Even though we trust our systems to be solid, but one can never be too cautious as we experienced back in 2007, when the first cyberincident happened, and it literally blocked part of our networks, making access to the services impossible for hours. We survived. But this event put cybersecurity at the very top of agenda, both in terms of strengthening the platform and backing it up. So how do you back up a country-wide system in a small state where everything is super close? Well for instance, you can export a copy of the data outside the country territory to an extraterritorial space of an embassy. Today, we have those data embassies that are holding the most critical digital assets of Estonia, guaranteeing continuity of operations, protection of our data, and most importantly, our sovereignty. Even in case of a physical attack on our territory. Some of you might be thinking by now: Where are the downsides? Well, going all digital is administratively, and let's be honest, financially more efficient. Interfacing primarily with computer systems might create an impression that the human factor, elected politicians and participating in democratic processes is somehow less important. And there are also some people who feel threatened by pervasive technology that might make their skills obsolete. So all in all, unfortunately, running a country on a digital platform has not saved us from political power struggles and polarization in the society, as we have seen in the last elections. Well, until there are humans involved. One last question. If everything is location-independent and I can access all of the services from anywhere in the world, why cannot others tap into some of these services, even if they don't reside within Estonian borders? Five years ago, we launched a governmental start-up called e-Residency program that for today joins tens of thousands of people. These are businessmen and women from 136 different countries, who establish their businesses digitally, who do their banking online, and who run their companies virtually over e-Estonia platform, within European Union legal framework, using an e-identity card similar to mine and all of that from anywhere in the world. The Estonian system is location-independent and user-centric. It prioritizes inclusiveness, openness and reliability. It puts security and transparency at its center. And the data into the hands of the rightful owner, the person they refer to. Don't take my word for it. Try it. Thank you. (Applause)

Can you solve the dragon jousting riddle?

TED-Ed

After centuries of war, the world’s kingdoms have come to an agreement. Every five years, teams representing the elves, goblins, and treefolk will compete in a grand tournament of dragon jousting. Every team will face each of the others once. The kingdom whose team wins the most matches will rule all of Center-Realm until the next tournament. To prevent any outside meddling, the games are to be conducted in absolute secret except for a group of wizards who will make sure nobody uses enchantments, hexes, or spells to cheat. You’ve been given the extremely important job of recording the scores for the first inaugural tournament. But the opening celebrations get a bit out of control, and when you wake up, you realize the games are already underway. Fortunately, no one has noticed your absence so far. However, you need to get up to speed quickly; if your boss, the head tournament official, finds out you’ve been sleeping on the job, you’ll lose your head. After weighing your options, you decide to offer your life’s savings to one of the regulation wizards in return for the information, giving him your blank scorecard to fill out. But before he can finish, your boss walks into the tent. You barely manage to hide the scorecard in time, and the wizard excuses himself. Your boss chuckles. “Hope you didn’t believe anything Gorbak’s been saying— he’s been cursed to tell only lies, even in writing. Anyway, can you believe how low-scoring the tournament’s been? Every team has played at least once, yet not a single match with a combined score of more than five hits! Anyhow, I’ll be back in a minute to review your scorecard.” You laugh along, and when he leaves you look at the partially completed card, now knowing every single number on it is wrong. You’ve only got one chance to save yourself, so what’s the real score of each match? Pause now to figure it out for yourself. The incredible thing about this riddle is that you can reach the solution despite an almost complete lack of correct information. And that’s possible because knowing that something is false is meaningful information in its own right. The first key is to realize that no team will play more than two matches, since there are only two other teams. So if the elves didn’t actually play one match, and the goblins didn’t actually play two, the truth must be that elves played two and goblins played one. For the elves to have played two matches, they must’ve faced each of the other teams once. And since goblins have only played one match so far— against the elves— that means the match between goblins and treefolk has not occurred yet. We know it’s false that the treefolk tied zero matches, which means their bout against the elves must’ve tied. We also know that the elves won at least one match, and since they tied against the treefolk, they must have beaten the goblins. But can we figure out the actual scores? Let’s start with the elf-treefolk tie. Because no more than five total hits were scored, the final tally must’ve been 0-0, 1-1, or 2-2. But the treefolk must’ve scored some hits, and it’s false that they only had one hit scored against them. The only option that leaves is 2-2. In the match between elves and goblins, the goblins must’ve scored at least one hit. And the elf score must be 2 or more for them to have won the match. This leaves only a few possibilities that add up to 5 or less. The elves couldn’t have scored three, so that eliminates these two. And their total hits scored across both matches can’t add up to six, so this one’s out too. So the score must’ve been 2-1. With one match remaining, you’ve managed to save your job— and your neck. Gorbak the wizard may have lied, but your deductive skills quickly evened the score.

A swarm of mini drones makes ... magic!

{0: 'Using technology and an array of special effects, Marco Tempest develops immersive environments that allow viewers to viscerally experience the magic of technology.'}

TEDSummit 2019

So, I have a background in technology and magic. And magicians are interesting. Their illusions accomplish what technology cannot. But what happens when the technology of the day seems almost magical? What happens when you can do this? (Music) Now, 100 years ago, that would have been the magic of levitation. Is it possible to create illusions in a world where technology makes anything possible? Jump! Now, if you know how the trick is done, where is the illusion? But still, our imagination is more powerful than our reasoning, and it's easy to attribute personality to machines. These are quadcopters. But they are more than mechanical flying machines. They analyze the environment around them and react to everything I do. At once, algorithms allow these autonomous machines to fly in close formation, aware of each other and aware of me — mathematics that can be mistaken for intelligence, and intelligence for personality. Anthropomorphism: that's the illusion, an illusion created by technology and embroidered by our imagination to become an intelligent flying robot, a machine that appears to be alive. (Music plays "Close Encounters of the Third Kind") (Quadcopters make tones) I think they say, "Hello." Hey guys! Come on. And time to land. And that's it. Thank you. (Applause) OK, guys, time to go home. Everybody in here. Come on, everybody, quickly, quickly. No pushing, everybody can fit. There you go, a little bit to the left, a little bit to the right. Come on, everybody, everybody, and ... good job! (Cheers) Thank you. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause)

Climate change will displace millions. Here's how we prepare

{0: 'A Louisiana native with a deep connection to things that burrow in the mud, Colette Pichon Battle fights to advance human rights for communities on the frontline of the struggle against climate change.'}

TEDWomen 2019

It was about two years after Hurricane Katrina that I first saw the Louisiana flood maps. These flood maps are used to show land loss in the past and land loss that is to come. On this particular day, at a community meeting, these maps were used to explain how a 30-foot tidal surge that accompanied Hurricane Katrina could flood communities like mine in south Louisiana and communities across the Mississippi and Alabama coast. It turns out that the land we were losing was our buffer from the sea. I volunteered to interact with the graphics on the wall, and in an instant my life changed for the second time in two years. The graphic showed massive land loss in south Louisiana and an encroaching sea, but more specifically, the graphic showed the disappearance of my community and many other communities before the end of the century. I wasn't alone at the front of the room. I was standing there with other members of south Louisiana's communities — black, Native, poor. We thought we were just bound by temporary disaster recovery, but we found that we were now bound by the impossible task of ensuring that our communities would not be erased by sea level rise due to climate change. Friends, neighbors, family, my community: I just assumed it would always be there. Land, trees, marsh, bayous: I just assumed that it would be there as it had been for thousands of years. I was wrong. To understand what was happening to my community, I had to talk to other communities around the globe. I started in south Louisiana with the United Houma Nation. I talked to youth advocates in Shishmaref, Alaska. I talked to fisherwomen in coastal Vietnam, justice fighters in Fiji, new generations of leaders in the ancient cultures of the Torres Straits. Communities that had been here for thousands of years were suffering the same fate, and we were all contemplating how we would survive the next 50. By the end of the next century, it's predicted that more than 180 million people will be displaced due to climate change, and in south Louisiana, those who can afford to do so are already moving. They're moving because south Louisiana is losing land at one of the fastest rates on the planet. Disappearance is what my bayou community has in common with other coastal communities. Erasure is what communities around the globe are fighting as we get real about the impacts of climate change. I've spent the last 14 years advocating on behalf of communities that have been directly impacted by the climate crisis. These communities are fighting discrimination within climate disaster recovery, and they're also trying to balance mass displacement of people with an influx of others who see opportunity in starting anew. Since 2005, people have been called "refugees" when they leave when they're displaced by climate disaster, even when they don't cross international borders. These terms, these misused terms, that are meant to identify the other, the victim, the person who is not supposed to be here, these terms are barriers to economic recovery, to social integration and to the healing required from the climate crisis and climate trauma. Words matter. It also matters how we treat people who are crossing borders. We should care about how people who are crossing borders today to seek refuge and safety are being treated, if for no other reason than it might be you or someone you love who needs to exercise their human right to migrate in the nearby future. We must start preparing for global migration today. It's a reality now. Our cities and our communities are not prepared. In fact, our economic system and our social systems are only prepared to make profit off of people who migrate. This will cause rounds of climate gentrification, and it will also penalize the movement of people, usually through exploited labor and usually through criminalization. Climate gentrification that happens in anticipation of sea level rise is what we're seeing in places like Miami, where communities that were kept from the waterfront are now being priced out of the high ground where they were placed originally as people move away from the coast. These folks are being moved, forced to relocate away from the social and economic systems that they need to survive. Climate gentrification also happens in the aftermath of climate disaster. When massive amounts of people leave a location for an indefinite amount of time, we see others come in. We also see climate gentrification happen when damaged homes are now "green built," but now have a higher value, generally outside of the reach of black and brown and poor people who want to return home. The price difference in rents or the ownership of a house is the difference between being able to practice your right, your human right to return home as a community, or be forced to resettle somewhere else less climate resilient, less expensive and alone. The climate crisis is a much larger conversation than reducing CO2 emissions, and it is a much different conversation than just extreme weather. We're facing a shift in every aspect of our global reality. And climate migration is just one small part, but it's going to have ripple effects in both coastal cities and cities in the interior. So what do we do? I have a few ideas. (Laughter) First, we must reframe our understanding of the problem. Climate change is not the problem. Climate change is the most horrible symptom of an economic system that has been built for a few to extract every precious value out of this planet and its people, from our natural resources to the fruits of our human labor. This system has created this crisis. (Applause) We must have the courage to admit we've taken too much. We cannot close our eyes to the fact that the entire world is paying a price for the privilege and comfort of just a few people on the planet. It's time for us to make society-wide changes to a system that incentivizes consumption to the point of global imbalance. Our social, political and economic systems of extraction must be transformed into systems that regenerate the earth and advance human liberty globally. It is arrogance to think that technology will save us. It is ego to think that we can continue this unjust and extractive approach to living on this planet and survive. (Applause) To survive this next phase of our human existence, we will need to restructure our social and economic systems to develop our collective resilience. The social restructuring must be towards restoration and repair of the earth and the communities that have been extracted from, criminalized and targeted for generations. These are the frontlines. This is where we start. We must establish a new social attitude to see migration as a benefit, a necessity for our global survival, not as a threat to our individual privilege. Collective resilience means developing cities that can receive people and provide housing, food, water, health care and the freedom from overpolicing for everyone, no matter who they are, no matter where they're from. What would it mean if we started to plan for climate migration now? Sprawling cities or declining cities could see this as an opportunity to rebuild a social infrastructure rooted in justice and fairness. We could actually put money into public hospitals and help them prepare for what is to come through climate migration, including the trauma that comes with loss and relocation. We can invest more of our time in justice, but it cannot be for temporary gain, it cannot be to help budget shortfalls, it has to be for long-term change and it has to be to advance justice. It's already possible, y'all. After Hurricane Katrina, universities and high schools around the US took in students to help them finish their semester or their year without missing a beat. Those students are now productive assets in our community, and this is what our communities, our businesses and our institutions need to get ready for now. The time is now. So as we reframe the problem in a more truthful way and we restructure our social systems in a more just way, all that will be left is for us to reindigenize ourselves and to conjure a power of the most ancient kind. This necessarily means that we must learn to follow — not tokenize, not exotify, not dismiss — the leadership and the traditional knowledge of a particular local place. It means that we must commit to standards of ecological equity and climate justice and human rights as the basis, a base standard, a starting point, for where our new society is to go. All of this requires us to recognize a power greater than ourselves and a life longer than the ones we will live. It requires us to believe in the things that we are privileged enough not to have to see. We must honor the rights of nature. We must advance human rights for all. We must transform from a disposable, individual society into one that sees our collective, long-term humanity, or else we will not make it. We must see that even the best of us are entangled in an unjust system, and we must acknowledge that the only way you're going to survive is for us to figure out how to reach a shared liberation together. The good news is we come from powerful people. We come from those who have, in one way or another, survived so far to be us here today. This is reason enough to fight. And take it from your south Louisiana friend, those hardest fights are the ones to celebrate. Let's choose to make this next phase of our planetary existence beautiful, and while we're at it, let's make it just and fair for everyone. We can do this, y'all. We can do this, because we must. We must, or else we lose our planet and we lose ourselves. The work starts here. The work starts together. This is my offering. Thank you for receiving it. Merci. (Applause)

The Artists

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

TED-Ed

Dawn and the train are both breaking when Ethic and Hedge arrive in the woods. The adventurers have recovered the first artifact— the Node of Power— and have come to the 198forest in search of the second. Here they’re welcomed by the director of the colony, Octavia. She established this treehouse sanctuary after the robots freed everyone from having to work. It was meant to be a haven where people could follow their passions, take up crafts, and find fulfillment. Which they did… at first. Some years ago everyone forgot the point. They abandoned arts and crafts and instead just painted and exhibited pictures of themselves over, and over, and over. The location of the second artifact is no secret; it’s in a tower, guarded by a garrison of bots, a bottomless ravine, and who knows what other traps. As soon as the tower went up with the node inside, human communication across the land went dark. Octavia’s been after it for years, but try as she might, the defenses thwart her. In order to even get to the tower, the team will need a distraction. Octavia has an idea: stir up the people through some well-intentioned vandalism. The residents’ paintings are all squares that come in different sizes, all an odd number of pixels across. Helper-bots pick up the finished portraits and hang them in public places for everyone to admire. There’s a slim margin of time when Hedge can access the paintings. If he were to deface each one with an X, the people would blame the helper-bots, creating just the distraction the team needs. If only it were so easy. Hedge can’t just paint an X— his painting processor requires very specific instructions. Treating the paintings as square grids, he can fill in one pixel, or little square, at a time. He can move forwards and make 90 degree turns over the canvas, but can’t move diagonally. How does Ethic program Hedge to paint an X over each portrait? Pause now to figure it out for yourself. Here’s a hint. Try drawing a square grid like this, and simulating Hedge’s path over it. What patterns can you find to guide him? Pause now to figure it out for yourself. The challenge here is to craft a set of instructions that will work for any square grid. Fortunately, one of the strengths of programming is the flexibility to solve not just one problem, but a whole class of them all at once. It often helps to start with one case, and work towards the general. Let’s say we had this square. Hedge can measure the length of its sides and store that number as a variable. Now, what we need is a plan for how Hedge will paint an X, pixel by pixel. There’s more than one right answer for how to do this; let’s look at two. First, what if Hedge went row by row, like a typewriter? If it’s a 9 pixel by 9 pixel painting, in the first row he’d paint, skip 7, and then paint again. In the second row he’d skip the first, paint, skip 5, and paint. And so on. The pattern here is that for each row the pixels skipped at the beginning go up by one, and the pixels skipped in the middle go down by 2. Things get more complicated when Hedge reaches the center. Here there’s a row with just one pixel painted. Then the whole thing reverses— the number of pixels skipped goes down by one each time on the left, and up by two each time in the middle. Instructing Hedge to do this with a series of loops will work and is a perfectly fine solution. The main drawback is that this requires quite a bit of logic— knowing what to do in the middle, when to reverse the process, and exactly how to reverse it. So how might we approach this so that the logic remains consistent from start to finish? The key insight is to look at a grid as a series of concentric squares. Each square follows the same pattern— painted pixels in the corners, and unaltered pixels in between. So if we can figure out a way to paint one nested square, transition to the next, and repeat, we can paint them all. Painting the outermost one is easy. Start in a corner and paint that pixel. If we call the length of the painting n, fly forward n minus 1 spaces. Paint another pixel, and turn right. Now do the whole thing again… and again. Now move forward one less space, turn right, fly forward once, and Hedge will be in the next concentric square and ready to repeat the whole process. Each square is n minus 2 pixels smaller than the last in length and width, and we can follow this spiral pattern all the way to the center with a loop and a variable that tracks how far Hedge should fly. Is one of these methods better than the other? It really depends on what you value. The strength of the spiral is the simplicity of finding a pattern and reusing the same logic from start to finish. The advantage of the typewriter approach is that it’s a more generalized solution, meaning it can be adapted much more simply to fill in any pattern. For Ethic’s sake, either will do just fine. So here’s what happens. Hedge rapidly defaces all of the portraits. And within moments cries of anguish break out all over the forest. The garrison guarding the tower abandon their posts to calm the agitated people, and Ethic, Hedge, and Octavia slip through— and nearly slip into the depths of the gorge standing between them and the tower.

Why "biofabrication" is the next industrial revolution

{0: 'TED Fellow Suzanne Lee is a fashion designer turned biofabrication pioneer who is nurturing a global community of innovators growing materials.'}

TEDSummit 2019

I started life as a fashion designer, working closely with textile designers and fabric suppliers. But today, I can no longer see or talk to my new collaborators, because they're in the soil beneath our feet, on the shelves of our supermarkets and in the beer I'm going to drink when I finish this talk. I'm talking about microbes and designing with life. Fifteen years ago, I completely changed both what I worked with and how I worked after a revelatory collaboration with a biologist. Our project gave me a different perspective on life, introducing a whole new world of possibility around how we can design and make things. I discovered a radical manufacturing proposition: biofabrication. Literally, fabricating with biology. What does that mean? Well, instead of processing plants, animals or oil to make consumer materials, we might grow materials directly with living organisms. In what many are terming "the Fourth Industrial Revolution," we're thinking about the new factories as being living cells. Bacteria, algae, fungi, yeast: our latest design tools include those of biotechnology. My own journey in biofabrication started with a project called "Biocouture." The provocation was that instead of growing a plant, like cotton, in a field over several months, we could use microbes to grow a similar cellulose material in a lab in a few days. Using a certain species of bacteria in a nutrient-rich liquid, we fermented threads of cellulose that self-organized into a sheet of fabric. I dried the fabric I had grown and cut and sewed it into a range of garments, shoes and bags. In other words, in one lab we grew materials and turned them into a range of products in a matter of days. And this is in contrast to currents methods of fabric production, where a plant is grown, just the cotton part is harvested, processed into a yarn, woven into a fabric and then potentially shipped across oceans before being cut and sewn into a garment. All of that can take months. So these prototypes indicated a field offering significant resource efficiencies. From reducing the water, energy and chemistry needed in the production of a material, through to generating zero waste, we grew fabrics to finished form — if you like, "biological additive manufacture." Through biofabrication, I had replaced many intensive man-made steps with one biological step. And as I engaged with this living system, it transformed my design thinking. Here was biology, with no intervention from me other than designing initial conditions for growth, efficiently producing a useful, sustainable material. So now I can't help but see all materials through the lens of biofabrication. In fact, there's a growing global community of innovators rethinking materials with biology. Multiple companies are now growing mushroom materials, but not literally mushrooms — using mycelium, which is the root system of fungi, to bind together agricultural byproducts. It's a process that's been described as "nature's glue." A common way to do this is to take a 3-D mold, fill it with a waste crop like corn stalks or hemp, add water, wait a few days for the mycelium to grow throughout, remove the mold, and you're left with a grown 3-D form. Incredibly, we can grow all kinds of structures using living organisms, from foams that can replace plastics in footwear, to leather-like materials without animals. Furniture, flooring — all are currently being prototyped. Fungi are able to grow materials that are naturally fire retardant, without any chemicals. They're naturally hydrophobic, meaning they won't absorb water. They have higher melt temperatures than plastics. Polystyrene can take thousands of years to degrade. Mushroom packaging materials can be naturally composted in your back garden in as little as 30 days. Living organisms are transforming waste into cost-competitive, performance-matching materials that can start to replace plastics and other CO2-emitting materials. And once we start growing materials with living organisms, it starts to make previous methods of manufacture seem illogical. Take the humble house brick. The cement industry generates around eight percent of global CO2 emissions. That's more than all the planes and ships each year. The cement process requires materials to be fired in a kiln at over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Compare this to bioMASON. They use a soil microbe to transform loose aggregates, like sand or crushed stone, into a biofabricated, or biocement, brick. Their process happens at room temperature, in just a couple of days. Think: hydroponics for bricks. An irrigation system feeds nutrient-rich water to trays of bricks that have been inoculated with bacteria. The bacteria produce crystals that form around each grain of sand, locking together all the loose particles to form a solid brick. We can now grow construction materials in the elegant way nature does, just like a coral reef. And these biofabricated bricks are nearly three times stronger than a concrete block. And in stark contrast to traditional cement production, they store more carbon than they make. So if we could replace the 1.2 trillion fired bricks that are made each year with biofabricated bricks, we could reduce CO2 emissions by 800 million tons every year. (Applause) Beyond growing materials with living organisms, we're even starting to design products that encourage their growth. And this comes from the realization that the very thing we've been trying to marginalize — life — might actually be our greatest collaborator. To that end, we've been exploring all the ways that we can grow healthy microbes in our own ecosystems. A great example of this is architects who are imagining the skin of a building to function like the bark of a tree. But not as a cosmetic green layer. They're designing architectural barks as hosts for evolving ecologies. These surface structures are designed to invite life in. And if we applied the same energy we currently do suppressing forms of life towards cultivating life, we'd turn the negative image of the urban jungle into one that literally embodies a thriving, living ecosystem. By actively encouraging surface interactions with healthy microbes, we could improve passive climate control, stormwater management and even reduce CO2 emissions by lowering the energy used to heat or cool our buildings. We're just beginning to realize the potential of nature-based technologies. I'm excited that we're starting to design and biofabricate a new material world. It's one that moves away from the exploitation of nonrenewable resources to working with the original, renewable life. Instead of designing out life, we're designing with it and for it. Packaging, fashion, footwear, furniture, construction — biofabricated products can be grown close to centers of demand, with local resources, less land, energy, and even harnessing industrial waste streams. It used to be that the tools of biotechnology were the preserve of powerful, multinational chemical and biotech companies. In the last century, we expected material innovation to come from the likes of DuPont, Dow, BASF. But this 21st-century material revolution is being led by start-ups with small teams and limited capital. And by the way, not all their founders have science degrees. They include artists, architects and designers. Over a billion dollars has already been invested in start-ups biofabricating consumer products. I don't think we have a choice but to biofabricate our future. From the jacket you're wearing to the chair you're sitting in to the home you live in, your designed material world shouldn't compromise your health or that of our planet. If materials can't be recycled or naturally composted at home, we should reject them. I'm committed to making this future a reality by shining a light on all the amazing work being done today and by facilitating more interactions between designers, scientists, investors and brands. Because we need a material revolution, and we need it now. Thank you. (Applause)

How guest worker visas could transform the US immigration system

{0: 'David J. Bier is an expert on visa reform, border security and interior enforcement.'}

TED Salon Border Stories

By October 2018, Juan Carlos Rivera could no longer afford to live in his home in Copan, Honduras. As the "Dallas Morning News" reported, a gang was taking 10 percent of his earnings from his barber shop. His wife was assaulted going to her pre-K teaching job. And they were concerned about the safety of their young daughter. What could they do? Run away? Seek asylum in another country? They didn't want to do that. They just wanted to live in their country safely. But their options were limited. So that month, Juan Carlos moved his family to a safer location while he joined a group of migrants on the long and perilous journey from Central America to a job a family member said was open for him in the United States. By now we're all familiar with what awaited them at the US-Mexico border. The harsher and harsher penalties doled out to those crossing there. The criminal prosecutions for crossing illegally. The inhumane detention. And most terribly, separation of families. I'm here to tell you that not only is this treatment wrong, it's unnecessary. This belief that the only way to maintain order is with inhumane means is inaccurate. And in fact, the opposite is true. Only a humane system will create order at the border. When safe, orderly, legal travel to the United States is available, very few people choose travel that is unsafe, disorderly or illegal. Now, I appreciate the idea that legal immigration could just resolve the border crisis might sound a bit fanciful. But here is the good news: We have done this before. I've been working on immigration for years at the Cato Institute and other think tanks in Washington DC and as the senior policy adviser for a republican member of Congress, negotiating bipartisan immigration reform. And I've seen firsthand how America has implemented a system of humane order at the border for Mexico. It's called a guest worker program. And here's the even better news. We can replicate this success for Central America. Of course, some people will still need to seek asylum at the border. But to understand how successful this could be for immigrants like Juan Carlos, understand that until recently, nearly every immigrant arrested by Border Patrol was Mexican. In 1986, each Border Patrol agent arrested 510 Mexicans. Well over one per day. By 2019, this number was just eight. That's one every 43 days. It is a 98 percent reduction. So where have all the Mexicans gone? The most significant change is that the US began issuing hundreds of thousands of guest worker visas to Mexicans, so that they can come legally. José Vásquez Cabrera was among the first Mexican guest workers to take advantage of this visa expansion. He told "The New York Times" that before his visa he'd made terrifying illegal border crossings, braving near deadly heat and the treachery of the landscape. One time, a snake killed a member of his group. Thousands of other Mexicans also didn't make it, dying of dehydration in the deserts or drowning in the Rio Grande. Millions more were chased down and arrested. Guest worker visas have nearly ended this inhumane chaos. As Vásquez Cabrera put it, "I no longer have to risk my life to support my family. And when I'm here, I don't have to live in hiding." Guest worker visas actually reduced the number of illegal crossings more than the number of visas issued. Jose Bacilio, another Mexican guest worker, explained why to the "Washington Post" in April. He said, even though he hadn't received a visa this year, he wouldn't risk all of his future chances by crossing illegally. This likely helps explain why from 1996 to 2019 for every guest worker admitted legally from Mexico, there was a decline in two arrests of Mexicans crossing illegally. Now, it's true, Mexican guest workers do some really tough jobs. Picking fruit, cleaning crabs, landscaping in a 100-degree heat. And some critics maintain that guest worker visas are not actually humane and that the workers are just abused slaves. But Vásquez Cabrera thought a guest worker visa was liberating. Not enslavement. And he, like nearly all other guest workers, chose the legal path over the illegal one, repeatedly. The expansion of guest worker visas to Mexicans has been among the most significant humane changes in US immigration policy ever. And that humane change imposed order on chaos. So where does this leave Central Americans, like Juan Carlos? Well, Central Americans received just three percent of the guest worker visas issued in 2019, even as their share of border arrests has risen to 74 percent. The US issued just one guest worker visa to a Central American for every 78 who crossed the border illegally in 2019. So if they can't get their papers at home, many take their chances, coming up through Mexico to claim asylum at the border or cross illegally, even if, like Juan Carlos, they prefer to come to work. The US can do better. It needs to create new guest worker visas specifically for Central Americans. This would create an incentive for US businesses to seek out and hire Central Americans, paying for their flights to the United States, and diverting them from the illegal, dangerous trek north. Central Americans could build flourishing lives at home, without the need to seek asylum at the border or cross illegally, freeing up an overwhelmed system. Some people might say that letting the workers go back and forth will never work in Central America where violence is so high. But again, it worked in Mexico, even as Mexico's murder rate more than tripled over the last decade, to a level higher than much of Central America. And it would work for Juan Carlos, who said, despite the threats he only wants to live in the United States temporarily, to make enough money to sustain his family in their new home. He even suggested that a guest worker program would be one of the best things to help Hondurans like him. Cintia, a 29-year-old single mother of three from Honduras, seems to agree. She told the "Wall Street Journal" that she came for a job to support her kids and her mom. Surveys of Central Americans traveling through Mexico, by the College of the Northern Border in Mexico, confirm that Juan and Cintia are the norm. Most, not all, but most do come for jobs, even if, like the Riveras, they may also face some real threats at home. How much would a low-wage job help a Honduran, like Juan or Cintia? Hondurans like them make as much in one month in the United States as they do in an entire year working in Honduras. A few years' work in the United States can propel a Central American into its upper middle class where safety is easier to come by. What Central Americans lack is not the desire to work. Not the desire to contribute to the US economy, to contribute to the lives of Americans. What Central Americans lack is a legal alternative to asylum. To be able to do so legally. Of course, a new guest worker program will not resolve 100 percent of this complex phenomenon. Many asylum seekers will still need to seek safety at the US border. But with the flows reduced, we can more easily work out ways to deal with them humanely. But ultimately, no single policy has proven to do more to create an immigration system that is both humane and orderly than to let the workers come legally. Thank you. (Applause)

The perks of being a pirate

{0: 'Tom Nash engages audiences about self-reflection and realization, encouraging people to take a fresh look at their human experience.'}

TEDxSydney

Often when I'm out in public, a child will stare at me. And if the child is particularly brave, they'll approach me and ask: "Are you a pirate?" (Laughter) To which I then need to respond, once again, "Yes." (Laughter) I mean, let's be honest: I've got two hooks, prosthetic legs and a penchant for hard liquor. (Laughter) All I need is an eye-patch and a parrot, and I'm basically there. (Laughter) But I like being a pirate. I find many advantages to having a disability, and I'm not just talking about the money I save on gloves ... (Laughter) or the fantastically legitimate excuse for never having to master chopsticks. (Laughter) I'm talking about real advantages I feel I've gained, having gone through physical adversity. When I was 19, I contracted a disease that resulted in the loss of both my arms at the elbows, both my legs below the knee, and left enough scars on my face to elicit jealousy in Freddy Krueger. (Laughter) Now, I may never be able to communicate in sign language, but my increased resilience and general ability to problem-solve has been heightened by being forced to think laterally to overcome problems that most people aren't faced with. One of the first lessons that I learned immediately followed the painful and arduous task of learning how to walk again, but it went on to pay dividends for the rest of my life. It happened when I attempted to step up a curb. Now as rudimentary as this action sounds to most of you, stepping up a curb is somewhat of a challenge for those of us without ankle movement. So I tried stepping up the curb the way I'd always known how, front on, for days on end, with no success, until it became obvious that the time and effort I was investing into this endeavor was clearly disproportionate to the benefit of its outcome. (Laughter) So, I decided to inspect the problem from a different angle. If I couldn't use an ankle joint to achieve the range of motion that I required to mount the curb, I would have to use a different joint, like my hip. So I turned my body perpendicular to the curb and placed my foot up sideways, and I was able to step up immediately. Within five minutes, no staircase was safe from my advances. (Laughter) That very day, I climbed a staircase of three flights, which I was quite impressed with as well, except I realized that I didn't know how to get back down again. (Laughter) That was a long weekend. (Laughter) Now, in my past life as an able-bodied person, I'd been a guitarist. I was alright as a player, but I'd never really taken it further. I'd never really started a band or played live all that much. Nonetheless, music was a great passion of mine, and when I lost my arms, the idea that it may no longer be a part of my life critically challenged my will to keep living. However, the thought that emerged immediately after being discharged from hospital was: "If Ray Charles can play the piano while blind as a bat, let's get to work on a solution for this guitar problem." So, consulting with an engineer, I designed a slide system that would hook into my left hook, and I devised another pick-holder system that would clip into my right hook. Now, if this worked, I would be able to play the guitar open tuned on my lap, like a slide. So after weeks of testing and alterations, I finally had the accessories back to play the guitar again, and I was right back where I was before losing my hands — being issued with noise complaints from my neighbors, obviously. (Laughter) But this time, I took it further. I started a band with my friends. We wrote songs and recorded them. We even played gigs to real people. Not as many as this. (Laughter) But even though it was a just a tiny step, it was a giant leap from what I'd achieved when I was all in one piece. Now while relearning every action that one has ever cultivated might seem like a significant undertaking — and believe me, it very much was, in the short term — it was nonetheless having a positive effect on the way that I approached everything else in my life. Not only did it transform my ability to problem-solve, but I also felt I became more pragmatic, less sensitive to hindrances, in some cases, more patient, and magically transformed people's abilities to offer me their seats on public transport. (Laughter) Trivial setbacks began to pale in comparison to challenges I'd previously overcome, and this allowed me to take a calm and measured approach to these challenges, keeping them in perspective and often even finding new and improved ways to overcome them. The benefit of not dwelling on the negative and just getting on with the task at hand became self-evident. It even encouraged me to pursue some more fulfilling career paths that may otherwise have been inadvisable. And who would have thought that an appropriate job for me might involve the meticulous operation of electronic equipment to curate dance music to people in inaccessible places under the influence of alcohol. (Laughter) Not I. So in a competitive industry where DJs have been relentlessly honing their craft, desperate to attain gigs, sending demos to clubs, my best friend and I took a different approach, and we started our own club night, and we employed ourselves as the DJs. (Laughter) Suddenly, we had a headline slot. (Laughter) Now, when we started that club night, I could not DJ. The first time I ever got behind the decks was on our opening night, in front of hundreds of people. I'd only just learned where the play button was. (Laughter) But, being previously faced with so many ultimatums, one's forced to be astute in adapting to new situations. That club night went on to become the longest-running weekly club night in Sydney, and we as DJs went on to play Australia's biggest music festivals. So eventually, I either learned quickly, or the standards of clubs have gone really downhill. (Laughter) Coming close to death can be an educational experience. It's certainly true that one's priorities receive somewhat of a realignment immediately afterwards. And it's also true that some of those priorities are met with an increased sense of urgency. But another, more salient realization that comes to light is the triviality of our own self-importance and self-consciousness. To truly understand the extent to which your self-consciousness prohibits you from engaging in opportunities should lead everyone to take risks they otherwise wouldn't. We're merely a blip on the time line of the universe, right? Act accordingly. Now the ideas that I'm presenting today were imbued upon me through some otherwise unfortunate circumstances, granted, but they're lying dormant in the lives of anyone who's willing to exploit them. If we all understand that we all have unique weaknesses, and if we're honest about what they are, we can learn how to best take advantage of them, whether they be mounting a curb or fear of presenting sales reports or the inability to sufficiently manage one's finances — looking at that guy — (Laughter) there lies the ability to learn, to adapt, and even the ability to rewire one's instinctual response to challenges. Adversity is good, and it has the potential to make you stronger. And, at the very least, you can scare the hell out of kids if you look like a pirate. Thanks. (Applause and cheers)

How supply chain transparency can help the planet

{0: 'Markus Mutz is creating a new method of supply chain tracking that could dramatically change the way we think about our next meal -- and everything else we consume.'}

TED@BCG Mumbai

In almost all aspects of our lives we have perfect information available instantaneously. My phone can tell me everything about my finances, where precisely I am on a map and the best way to my next destination, all with a click of a button. But this availability of information and transparency almost completely disappears when it comes to consumer products. If you go to the seafood counter at your local supermarket, you can probably choose between several different types of fish. But chances are, they won't be able to tell you who caught the fish, where precisely it was caught, whether it is sustainable to catch it there and how it got transported. And that holds true for almost everything we buy. Every can of soup, every piece of meat, every T-shirt. We as humans, right now, are destroying the only thing we really need to survive: our planet. And most of the horrible problems that we're facing today, like climate change and modern slavery in supply chains, come down to decisions. Human decisions to produce something one way and not another. And that's how we, as consumers, end up making decisions that harm the planet or our fellow humans. By choosing the wrong products. But I refuse to believe that anybody here in this room, or frankly, anybody on this planet, really wants to buy a product that harms the planet or our fellow humans if given the choice. But you see, choice is a loaded word. Choice means there's another option. Choice means you can afford that option. But choice also means you have enough information to make an informed decision. And that information nowadays simply just doesn't exist. Or at least it's really, really hard to access. But I think this is about to change. Because we can use technology to solve this information problem. And many of the specific technologies that we need to do that have become better and cheaper over the recent years, and are now ready to be used at scale. So, over the past two years, my team and I have been working with one of the world's largest conservation organizations, WWF, and we've founded a company called OpenSC, where SC stands for supply chain. And we believe that by using technology we can help to create transparency and traceability in supply chains, and through that, help to completely revolutionize the way that we buy and also produce products as humans. Now, some of this is going to sound a little bit like science fiction, but it's already happening. Let me explain. So, in order to solve this information problem, we need to do three things: verify, trace and share. Verify specific sustainability and ethical production claims in a data-based and automated way. Then trace those individual physical products throughout their supply chains, and finally, share that information with consumers in a way that truly gives them a choice and lets them make consumption decisions that are more aligned with their values. I'm going to use a real product and a supply chain where we've made all of this a reality already: a Patagonian toothfish, or Chilean sea bass, as it's called in the US. Number one, verify. Verify how something is produced. But not just by saying, "Trust me, this is good, trust me, we've done all the right things," but by producing evidence for that individual physical product, and the way it was produced. By producing evidence for a specific sustainability or ethical production claim. So for example, in the case of the fish, has this fish been caught in an area where there's enough of them, so that it's sustainable to catch it there and not in a marine protected area? So what we're doing here is we're taking almost real-time GPS data from the ship — the ship that's fishing — and that tells us where the ship is and where it's going at what speed. And we can then combine that with other types of data, like, for example, how deep the sea floor is. And combining all of this information, our machine-learning algorithms can then verify, in an automated way, whether the ship is only fishing where it's supposed to, or not. And as sensors become cheaper, we can put them in more places. And that means we can capture more data, and combining that with advancements in data science, it means that we can now verify specific sustainability and ethical production claims in an automated, real-time and ongoing manner. And that really lays the basis for this information revolution. So, number two, trace. Trace those individual physical products, so that we can truly say that the claim that we've verified about a certain product actually belongs to that individual product that we as consumers have right in front of us. Because without that level of traceability, all that we've really verified in the first place is that somebody, somewhere, at some point caught a fish in a sustainable way, or didn't harm the employee when asking them to produce a T-shirt, or didn't use pesticides when growing a vegetable that didn't actually need it. Only if I give a product an identity from the start and then trace it throughout the whole supply chain, can this claim and the value that's been created by producing it in the right way truly stay with it. Now, I've talked about cheaper sensors. There are many other technological developments that make all of this much more possible today than every before. For example, the falling costs of tags. You give a product a name, a serial number, an identity, the tag is its passport. What you can see here is a toothfish being caught. This is what's called a longline fishery, so the fish are coming up onto the boat on individual hooks. And as soon as the fish is on board, it is killed, and then after that, we insert a small tag into the fish's flesh. And in that tag, there is an RFID chip with a unique serial number, and that tag follows the fish throughout the whole supply chain and makes it really easy to sense its presence at any port, on any truck or in any processing plant. But consumers can't really read RFID tags. And so, when it comes to filleting and packaging the fish, we read the RFID tag and then remove it. And then we add a unique QR code to the packaging of the fish. And that QR code then points back to the same information that we've verified about the fish in the first place. And so, depending on the type of product that we're working with, we may use QR codes, bar codes, RFID tags or other tag technologies. But there are also technologies that are at the brink of large-scale breakthrough that make tags themselves obsolete. Like, for example, analyzing a product for trace elements that can then tell you quite accurately where it is actually from. Then there's blockchain. A decentralized technology can act as a catalyst for this revolution. Because it can help mitigate some of the trust issues that are inherent to giving people information and then asking them to change their consumption behavior because of that information. And so, we use blockchain technology where it adds value to what we're doing. But importantly, we don't let the limitations that this technology still has today, like, for example, with regards to scaling, we don't let that stand in our way. And that brings us to the third point. Share. How to share the information that we've verified and tracked about where a product is from, how it was produced and how it got to where it is? How to share this information is really different from product to product. And different from where you buy it. You behave differently in those situations. You are stressed and time-poor in the supermarket. Or with short attention span over dinner, because your date is so cute. Or you are critical and inquisitive when researching for a larger purchase online. And so for our fish, we've developed a digital experience that works when buying the fish in a freezer in a fish specialty store and that gives you all of the information about the fish and its journey. But we also worked with a restaurant and developed a different digital experience that only summarizes the key facts about the fish and its journey, and works better in a dinner setting and, hopefully, there doesn't annoy your date too much. Now, that brings us full circle. We've verified that the fish was caught in an area where it's sustainable to do so. We've then traced it throughout the entire supply chain to maintain its identity and all the information that's attached to it. And then, we've shared that information with consumers in a way that gives them a choice and lets them make consumption decisions that are more in line with their values. Now, for this fish example, this is already rolled out at scale. This season, the entire fleet of the world's largest toothfish fishing company, Austral Fisheries, is tagging every single fish that they catch and that ends up in their premium branded "Glacier 51" product. And you can already buy this fish. And with it, you can have all of the information I talked about today, and much more, attached to each individual fish or portion of the fish that you may buy. But this is not a fish or seafood thing. We're working on many, many different commodities and products and their supply chains across the globe. From dairy to fruit and vegetables, to nonfood products made out of wood. As a consumer, all of this may sound like a huge burden, because you don't have time to look at all of this information every time you buy something. And I don't expect you to, because you'll have help with that. In the future, we'll leave the decision of which specific product to buy increasingly up to machines. An algorithm will know enough about you to make those decisions for you, so you don't have to. And maybe it will even do a better job at it. In a recent study, 85 percent of those buying a product through a virtual assistant said that they, on occasion, actually went with the top product recommendation of that virtual assistant, rather than the specific product or brand that they set out to buy in the first place. You just say you need toilet paper, it's then an algorithm that decides which brand, price point or whether you go with recycled or not. Well, nowadays this is usually based on what you bought in the past, or whoever pays the most to the company behind the virtual assistant. But why shouldn't that be also based on your values? Knowing that you want to buy planet-friendly and knowing whether and how much you're willing and able to pay for that. Now, that will make it easy and seamless, but still based on granular effects and data to choose the right products. Not by necessarily doing it yourself but by asking an algorithm that knows how much you care about this planet. Not by necessarily doing it yourself but by asking an algorithm that is never time-poor or distracted, or with short attention span because of the cute date, and that knows how much you care about this planet and the people living on it, by asking that algorithm to look at all of that information for you and to decide for you. If we have reliable and trustworthy information like that and the right systems that make use of it, consumers will support those who are doing the right thing by producing products in a sustainable and ethical way. They will support them every time by choosing their goods over others. And that means that good producers and processors and retailers will get rewarded. And bad actors will be forced to adjust their practices or get out of business. And we need that. If we want to continue to live together on this beautiful planet, we really need it. Thank you. (Applause)

A path to security for the world's deadliest countries

{0: 'Rachel Kleinfeld advises governments, philanthropists and activists on how democracies can make major social change -- even in distressed circumstances.'}

TEDSummit 2019

Picture your dream vacation. Maybe you're dying to go to Rio for Carnival. Or you really just want to hang out on a Mexican beach. Or maybe you're going to join me in New Orleans for Jazz Fest. Now, I know it's less pleasant, but picture, for a moment, one of the most violent places on earth. Did anyone think of the same place? Brazil is the most violent country in the world today. More people have been dying there over the last three years than in Syria. And in Mexico, more people have died over the last 15 years than in Iraq or Afghanistan. In New Orleans, more people per capita are dying than in war-torn Somalia. The fact is, war only results in about 18 percent of violent deaths worldwide. Today, you are more likely to die violently if you live in a middle-income democracy with high levels of income inequality and serious political polarization. The United States has four of the 50 most violent cities on earth. Now, this is a fundamental alteration in the nature of violence, historically. But it's also an opportunity. Because while few people can do much to end war, violence in our democracies is our problem. And while regular voters are a big part of that problem, we're also key to the solution. Now, I work at a think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where I advise governments on what to do about violence, but the dirty secret is, most policymakers haven't figured out these changes to violence today. They still believe that the worst violence happens in countries at war or places that are too poor, too weak, to fight violence and control crime. And that had been my assumption too. But if you look at a map of the most violent places on earth, you see something strange. Some of them are at war, and a few are truly failed states. The violence in these places is horrific, but they happen to have small populations, so it actually affects few people. Then there's South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela. These places are not poor. Maybe they're weak. My research assistant and I mapped places based on how well they delivered on World Bank projects and whether they could get public services to their people, and if you did well on both of those, if you could get sanitation and electricity to your people and deliver vaccines, you were in the upper right-hand quadrant. And then we overlaid that with a map of places where journalists were being murdered. Some were happening in weak states, but an awful lot of journalists were being killed in places plenty capable of protecting them. I traveled to every settled continent on earth, comparing places that had faced massive violence and recovered and those that hadn't, and I kept seeing the same pattern. I came to call it "privilege violence," because it happened in highly unequal democracies, where a small group of people wanted to hold on to inordinate power and privilege. And if they didn't think they could get those policies past the voters, sometimes they would turn to violent groups for help. Drug cartels would finance their campaigns. Organized criminals would help them get out the vote. Gangs would suppress the vote. And in exchange, they'd be given free reign, and violence would grow. Take Venezuela. It's the most violent country in the world today, if you look at deaths per capita. Twenty years ago, the current regime gained power in legitimate elections, but they didn't want to risk losing it, and so they turned to gangs, called "colectivos," for help. The gangs were told to get out the vote for the government and force people to vote for the regime in some neighborhoods and keep opposition voters away from the polls in others, and, in exchange, they'd be given control. But if criminals have control, then police and courts can't do their jobs. So the second stage in privilege violence is that courts and police are weakened, and politicians politicize budgets, hiring, firing, so that they and the violent groups that they collude with stay out of jail. Now, pretty soon, good cops leave, and many that remain become brutal. They start off, usually, with rough justice. They kill a drug dealer that they think would be let off by the corrupt courts. But over time, the worst of them realize that there will be no repercussions from the politicians they're in bed with, and they go into business for themselves. In Venezuela, nearly one in three murders is by the security services. Now, the poor are hit hardest by violence all over the world, but they're hardly going to turn to such predatory cops for help. So they tend to form vigilante groups. But arm a bunch of 18-year-old boys, and pretty soon, they devolve into gangs over time. Other gangs come in, mafias come in, and they offer to protect people from the other criminals and from the police. Unlike the state, the criminals often try to buy legitimacy. They give charity. They solve disputes. Sometimes, they even build subsidized housing. The last stage of privilege violence happens when regular people start committing a significant portion of the murder. Bar fights and neighborhood arguments turn deadly when violence has become normal and repercussions have evaporated. To outsiders, the culture looks depraved, as if something is deeply wrong with those people. But any country can become this violent when the government is, by turns, absent and predatory. Actually, that's not quite true — it takes one more step for this level of violence to reign. It takes mainstream society to ignore the problem. You'd think that would be impossible, that violence at this level would be unbearable, but it's actually quite bearable to people like you and me. That's because, in every society in the world, even the most violent, violence is highly concentrated. It happens to people on the wrong side of town, people who are poor, often darker, often from groups that are marginalized, groups that mainstream society can separate ourselves from. Violence is so concentrated that we're shocked when the pattern deviates. In Washington, DC, in 2001, a young white college-educated intern went missing after a hike in Northwest DC, and her case was in the papers nearly every day. On the other side of town, a black man had been killed every other day that year. Most of those cases never made the papers even once. Middle class society buys their way out of violence. We live in better neighborhoods. Some people buy private security. And we also tell ourselves a story. We tell ourselves that most of the people who are killed are probably involved in crime themselves. By believing that somehow some people deserve to be murdered, otherwise good people allow ourselves to live in places where life chances are so deeply skewed. We allow ourselves. Because, after all, what else can you do? Well, it turns out, quite a lot. Because violence today is not largely the result of war but is because of rotten politics in our democracies, regular voters are the greatest force for change. Consider the transformation of Bogotá. In 1994, Colombia's incoming president was caught taking millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the Cali drug cartel, and the capital was overrun with gangs and paramilitary groups. But fed-up voters overcame really rabid partisanship, and they delivered nearly two-thirds of the vote to an independent candidate, enough to really overcome business as usual. On Mayor Mockus's first day in office, the police barely bothered to even brief him on homicide, and when he asked why, they just shrugged and said, "It's just criminals killing criminals." The corrupt city council wanted to give police even more impunity for brutality. It's a really common tactic that's used worldwide when politicians want to posture as tough on crime but don't actually want to change the status quo. And research shows it backfires all over the world. If you throw a lot of low-level offenders into jails, usually already overcrowded jails, they learn from each other and they harden. They start to control the prisons, and from there, the streets. Instead, Mockus insisted that police begin investigating every death. He fought the right-wing city council, and he abandoned SWAT-style police tactics. And he fought the left-wing unions and fired thousands of predatory cops. Honest police were finally free to do their jobs. Mockus then challenged citizens. He asked the middle class to stop opting out of their city, to follow traffic laws and otherwise behave as if they shared the same community of fate. He asked the poor to uphold social norms against violence, often at immense personal risk. And he asked the wealthy to give 10 percent more in taxes, voluntarily. Sixty-three thousand people did. And at the end of the decade that spanned Mayor Mockus's two terms in office, homicide in Bogotá was down 70 percent. Audience: Whoo! (Applause) People in places with the most violence, whether it's Colombia or the United States, can make the biggest difference. The most important thing we can do is abandon the notion that some lives are just worth less than others, that someone deserves to be raped or murdered, because after all, they did something, they stole or they did something to land themselves in prison where that kind of thing happens. This devaluing of human life, a devaluing we barely admit even to ourselves, is what allows the whole downward spiral to begin. It's what allows a bullet shot in a gang war in Rio to lodge in the head of a two-year-old girl climbing on a jungle gym nearby. And it's what allows a SWAT team hunting for a meth dealer in Georgia to throw a flash bang grenade into the crib of a little boy, exploding near his face and maiming him for life. The fact is, most violence everywhere happens to people on the wrong side of town at the wrong time, and some of those people are from communities that we consider quite different. Some of them are people who have done horrible things. But reducing violence begins with privileging every human life, both because it's right and because only by prizing each life as worthy of at least due process, can we create societies in which the lives of innocents are safe. Second, recognize that today, inequality within our countries is a vastly greater cause of violence than war between countries. Now, inequality leads to violence for a whole host of reasons, but one of them is that it lets us separate ourselves from what's happening on the other side of town. Those of us who are middle-class or wealthy, who are benefiting from these systems, have to change them at immense cost to ourselves. We have to pay enough taxes and then demand that our governments put good teachers in other kids' schools and well-trained police to protect other peoples' neighborhoods. But, of course, that's not going to do any good if the government is stealing the money or fueling the violence, and so we also need better politicians with better incentives. The fact is, we actually know a lot about what it takes to reduce violence. It's policies like putting more cops in the few places where most violence occurs. But they don't fit easily into the boxes of the Left or the Right, and so you need really honest politicians who are willing to buck knee-jerk partisanship and implement solutions. And if we want good politicians to run, we need to start respecting politicians. There's also a lot we can do to fight privilege violence in other countries. The most violent regimes tend to be fueled by drugs, and then they launder the profits through financial systems in New York and London, through real-estate transactions, and through high-end resorts. If you use drugs, know your supply chain top to bottom, or admit the amount of pain you're willing to cause others for your own pleasure. Meanwhile, I would love to see one of those tourist sites team up with investigative journalists and create a little tiny icon — right next to the one for free WiFi and if a place has a swimming pool, there could be a little tiny gun for "likely criminal money-laundering front." (Laughter) (Applause) But until then, if you're booking a place in a dangerous country, whether that's Jamaica or New Orleans, do a little web research, see if you can see any criminal ties. And, to make that easier, support legislation that makes our financial systems more transparent — things like banning anonymous company ownership. Now, this all probably sounds pretty quixotic, kind of like recycling your cans, just a tiny drop in the ocean of a gigantic problem, but that's actually a misconception. Homicide has been falling for centuries. Battle deaths have been dropping for decades. In places where people have demanded change, violent death has fallen, from Colombia to New York City, where homicide is down 85 percent since 1990. The fact is, violence will always be with us, but it's not a constant. It has been falling for centuries, and it could fall further faster. Could it drop by 25 percent in the next quarter century, a third? Many of us actually think it could. I think of all the kids who'd grow up with their dads, all the families that get their sisters back, their brothers. All it needs is one small push. It needs us to care. Thank you. (Applause)

Big Data

{0: 'Tim Smith is a physicist and Group Leader of CERN’s Collaboration and Information Services, which runs audio visual, conferencing, digital library, ePublishing, video conference and webcast services for the CERN user community.'}

TED-Ed

Big data is an elusive concept. It represents an amount of digital information, which is uncomfortable to store, transport, or analyze. Big data is so voluminous that it overwhelms the technologies of the day and challenges us to create the next generation of data storage tools and techniques. So, big data isn't new. In fact, physicists at CERN have been rangling with the challenge of their ever-expanding big data for decades. Fifty years ago, CERN's data could be stored in a single computer. OK, so it wasn't your usual computer, this was a mainframe computer that filled an entire building. To analyze the data, physicists from around the world traveled to CERN to connect to the enormous machine. In the 1970's, our ever-growing big data was distributed across different sets of computers, which mushroomed at CERN. Each set was joined together in dedicated, homegrown networks. But physicists collaborated without regard for the boundaries between sets, hence needed to access data on all of these. So, we bridged the independent networks together in our own CERNET. In the 1980's, islands of similar networks speaking different dialects sprung up all over Europe and the States, making remote access possible but torturous. To make it easy for our physicists across the world to access the ever-expanding big data stored at CERN without traveling, the networks needed to be talking with the same language. We adopted the fledgling internet working standard from the States, followed by the rest of Europe, and we established the principal link at CERN between Europe and the States in 1989, and the truly global internet took off! Physicists could easily then access the terabytes of big data remotely from around the world, generate results, and write papers in their home institutes. Then, they wanted to share their findings with all their colleagues. To make this information sharing easy, we created the web in the early 1990's. Physicists no longer needed to know where the information was stored in order to find it and access it on the web, an idea which caught on across the world and has transformed the way we communicate in our daily lives. During the early 2000's, the continued growth of our big data outstripped our capability to analyze it at CERN, despite having buildings full of computers. We had to start distributing the petabytes of data to our collaborating partners in order to employ local computing and storage at hundreds of different institutes. In order to orchestrate these interconnected resources with their diverse technologies, we developed a computing grid, enabling the seamless sharing of computing resources around the globe. This relies on trust relationships and mutual exchange. But this grid model could not be transferred out of our community so easily, where not everyone has resources to share nor could companies be expected to have the same level of trust. Instead, an alternative, more business-like approach for accessing on-demand resources has been flourishing recently, called cloud computing, which other communities are now exploiting to analyzing their big data. It might seem paradoxical for a place like CERN, a lab focused on the study of the unimaginably small building blocks of matter, to be the source of something as big as big data. But the way we study the fundamental particles, as well as the forces by which they interact, involves creating them fleetingly, colliding protons in our accelerators and capturing a trace of them as they zoom off near light speed. To see those traces, our detector, with 150 million sensors, acts like a really massive 3-D camera, taking a picture of each collision event - that's up to 14 millions times per second. That makes a lot of data. But if big data has been around for so long, why do we suddenly keep hearing about it now? Well, as the old metaphor explains, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and this is no longer just science that is exploiting this. The fact that we can derive more knowledge by joining related information together and spotting correlations can inform and enrich numerous aspects of everyday life, either in real time, such as traffic or financial conditions, in short-term evolutions, such as medical or meteorological, or in predictive situations, such as business, crime, or disease trends. Virtually every field is turning to gathering big data, with mobile sensor networks spanning the globe, cameras on the ground and in the air, archives storing information published on the web, and loggers capturing the activities of Internet citizens the world over. The challenge is on to invent new tools and techniques to mine these vast stores, to inform decision making, to improve medical diagnosis, and otherwise to answer needs and desires of tomorrow's society in ways that are unimagined today.

What happens when you have a concussion?

TED-Ed

Each year in the United States, players of sports and recreational activities receive between 2.5 and 4 million concussions. How dangerous are all those concussions? The answer is complicated, and lies in how the brain responds when something strikes it. The brain is made of soft fatty tissue, with a consistency something like jello. Inside its protective membranes and the skull's hard casing, this delicate organ is usually well-shielded. But a sudden jolt can make the brain shift and bump against the skull's hard interior, and unlike jello, the brain's tissue isn't uniform. It's made of a vast network of 90 billion neurons, which relay signals through their long axons to communicate throughout the brain and control our bodies. This spindly structure makes them very fragile so that when impacted, neurons will stretch and even tear. That not only disrupts their ability to communicate but as destroyed axons begin to degenerate, they also release toxins causing the death of other neurons, too. This combination of events causes a concussion. The damage can manifest in many different ways including blackout, headache, blurry vision, balance problems, altered mood and behavior, problems with memory, thinking, and sleeping, and the onset of anxiety and depression. Every brain is different, which explains why people's experiences of concussions vary so widely. Luckily, the majority of concussions fully heal and symptoms disappear within a matter of days or weeks. Lots of rest and a gradual return to activity allows the brain to heal itself. On the subject of rest, many people have heard that you're not supposed to sleep shortly after receiving a concussion because you might slip into a coma. That's a myth. So long as doctors aren't concerned there may also be a more severe brain injury, like a brain bleed, there's no documented problem with going to sleep after a concussion. Sometimes, victims of concussion can experience something called post-concussion syndrome, or PCS. People with PCS may experience constant headaches, learning difficulties, and behavioral symptoms that even affect their personal relationships for months or years after the injury. Trying to play through a concussion, even for only a few minutes, or returning to sports too soon after a concussion, makes it more likely to develop PCS. In some cases, a concussion can be hard to diagnose because the symptoms unfold slowly over time. That's often true of subconcussive impacts which result from lower impact jolts to the head than those that cause concussions. This category of injury doesn't cause noticable symptoms right away, but can lead to severe degenerative brain diseases over time if it happens repeatedly. Take soccer players, who are known for repeatedly heading soccer balls. Using a technique called Diffusion Tensor Imaging, we're beginning to find out what effect that has on the brain. This method allows scientists to find large axon bundles and see how milder blows might alter them structurally. In 2013, researchers using this technique discovered that athletes who had headed the ball most, about 1,800 times a year, had damaged the structural integrity of their axon bundles. The damage was similar to how a rope will fail when the individual fibers start to fray. Those players also performed worse on short-term memory tests, so even though no one suffered full-blown concussions, these subconcussive hits added up to measurable damage over time. In fact, researchers know that an overload of subconcussive hits is linked to a degenerative brain disease known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE. People with CTE suffer from changes in their mood and behavior that begin appearing in their 30s or 40s followed by problems with thinking and memory that can, in some cases, even result in dementia. The culprit is a protein called tau. Usually, tau proteins support tiny tubes inside our axons called microtubules. It's thought that repeated subconcussive hits damage the microtubules, causing the tau proteins to dislodge and clump together. The clumps disrupt transport and communication along the neuron and drive the breakdown of connections within the brain. Once the tau proteins start clumping together, they cause more clumps to form and continue to spread throughout the brain, even after head impacts have stopped. The data show that at least among football players, between 50 and 80% of concussions go unreported and untreated. Sometimes that's because it's hard to tell a concussion has occurred in the first place. But it's also often due to pressure or a desire to keep going despite the fact that something's wrong. This doesn't just undermine recovery. It's also dangerous. Our brains aren't invincible. They still need us to shield them from harm and help them undo damage once it's been done.

How memories form and how we lose them

TED-Ed

Think back to a really vivid memory. Got it? Okay, now try to remember what you had for lunch three weeks ago. That second memory probably isn't as strong, but why not? Why do we remember some things, and not others? And why do memories eventually fade? Let's look at how memories form in the first place. When you experience something, like dialing a phone number, the experience is converted into a pulse of electrical energy that zips along a network of neurons. Information first lands in short term memory, where it's available from anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. It's then transferred to long-term memory through areas such as the hippocampus, and finally to several storage regions across the brain. Neurons throughout the brain communicate at dedicated sites called synapses using specialized neurotransmitters. If two neurons communicate repeatedly, a remarkable thing happens: the efficiency of communication between them increases. This process, called long term potentiation, is considered to be a mechanism by which memories are stored long-term, but how do some memories get lost? Age is one factor. As we get older, synapses begin to falter and weaken, affecting how easily we can retrieve memories. Scientists have several theories about what's behind this deterioration, from actual brain shrinkage, the hippocampus loses 5% of its neurons every decade for a total loss of 20% by the time you're 80 years old to the drop in the production of neurotransmitters, like acetylcholine, which is vital to learning and memory. These changes seem to affect how people retrieve stored information. Age also affects our memory-making abilities. Memories are encoded most strongly when we're paying attention, when we're deeply engaged, and when information is meaningful to us. Mental and physical health problems, which tend to increase as we age, interfere with our ability to pay attention, and thus act as memory thieves. Another leading cause of memory problems is chronic stress. When we're constantly overloaded with work and personal responsibilites, our bodies are on hyperalert. This response has evolved from the physiological mechanism designed to make sure we can survive in a crisis. Stress chemicals help mobilize energy and increase alertness. However, with chronic stress our bodies become flooded with these chemicals, resulting in a loss of brain cells and an inability to form new ones, which affects our ability to retain new information. Depression is another culprit. People who are depressed are 40% more likely to develop memory problems. Low levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter connected to arousal, may make depressed individuals less attentive to new information. Dwelling on sad events in the past, another symptom of depression, makes it difficult to pay attention to the present, affecting the ability to store short-term memories. Isolation, which is tied to depression, is another memory thief. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that older people with high levels of social integration had a slower rate of memory decline over a six-year period. The exact reason remains unclear, but experts suspect that social interaction gives our brain a mental workout. Just like muscle strength, we have to use our brain or risk losing it. But don't despair. There are several steps you can take to aid your brain in preserving your memories. Make sure you keep physically active. Increased blood flow to the brain is helpful. And eat well. Your brain needs all the right nutrients to keep functioning correctly. And finally, give your brain a workout. Exposing your brain to challenges, like learning a new language, is one of the best defenses for keeping your memories intact.

How playing sports benefits your body... and your brain

TED-Ed

The victory of the underdog over the favored team. The last minute penalty shot that wins the tournament. The high-energy training montages. Many people love to glorify victory on the playing field, cheer for favorite teams, and play sports. But here's a question: Should we be so obsessed with sports? Is playing sports actually as good for us as we make it out to be, or just a fun and entertaining pastime? What does science have to say? First of all, it's well accepted that exercise is good for our bodies and minds, and that's definitely true. Exercising, especially when we're young, has all sorts of health benefits, like strengthening our bones, clearing out bad cholesterol from our arteries, and decreasing the risk of stroke, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Our brains also release a number of chemicals when we workout, including endorphins. These natural hormones, which control pain and pleasure responses in the cental nervous system, can lead to feelings of euphoria, or, what's often called, a runner's high. Increased endorphins and consistent physical activity in general can sharpen your focus and improve your mood and memory. So does that mean we get just as much benefit going to the gym five days a week as we would joining a team and competing? Well, here's where it gets interesting: because it turns out that if you can find a sport and a team you like, studies show that there are all sorts of benefits that go beyond the physical and mental benefits of exercise alone. Some of the most significant are psychological benefits, both in the short and long term. Some of those come from the communal experience of being on a team, for instance, learning to trust and depend on others, to accept help, to give help, and to work together towards a common goal. In addition, commitment to a team and doing something fun can also make it easier to establish a regular habit of exercise. School sport participation has also been shown to reduce the risk of suffering from depression for up to four years. Meanwhile, your self-esteem and confidence can get a big boost. There are a few reasons for that. One is found in training. Just by working and working at skills, especially with a good coach, you reinforce a growth mindset within yourself. That's when you say, "Even if I can't do something today, I can improve myself through practice and achieve it eventually." That mindset is useful in all walks of life. And then there's learning through failure, one of the most transformative, long-term benefits of playing sports. The experience of coming to terms with defeat can build the resilience and self-awareness necessary to manage academic, social, and physical hurdles. So even if your team isn't winning all the time, or at all, there's a real benefit to your experience. Now, not everyone will enjoy every sport. Perhaps one team is too competitive, or not competitive enough. It can also take time to find a sport that plays to your strengths. That's completely okay. But if you spend some time looking, you'll be able to find a sport that fits your individual needs, and if you do, there are so many benefits. You'll be a part of a supportive community, you'll be building your confidence, you'll be exercising your body, and you'll be nurturing your mind, not to mention having fun.

How do hard drives work?

TED-Ed

Imagine an airplane flying one millimeter above the ground and circling the Earth once every 25 seconds while counting every blade of grass. Shrink all that down so that it fits in the palm of your hand, and you'd have something equivalent to a modern hard drive, an object that can likely hold more information than your local library. So how does it store so much information in such a small space? At the heart of every hard drive is a stack of high-speed spinning discs with a recording head flying over each surface. Each disc is coated with a film of microscopic magnetised metal grains, and your data doesn't live there in a form you can recognize. Instead, it is recorded as a magnetic pattern formed by groups of those tiny grains. In each group, also known as a bit, all of the grains have their magnetization's aligned in one of two possible states, which correspond to zeroes and ones. Data is written onto the disc by converting strings of bits into electrical current fed through an electromagnet. This magnet generates a field strong enough to change the direction of the metal grain's magnetization. Once this information is written onto the disc, the drive uses a magnetic reader to turn it back into a useful form, much like a phonograph needle translates a record's grooves into music. But how can you get so much information out of just zeroes and ones? Well, by putting lots of them together. For example, a letter is represented in one byte, or eight bits, and your average photo takes up several megabytes, each of which is 8 million bits. Because each bit must be written onto a physical area of the disc, we're always seeking to increase the disc's areal density, or how many bits can be squeezed into one square inch. The areal density of a modern hard drive is about 600 gigabits per square inch, 300 million times greater than that of IBM's first hard drive from 1957. This amazing advance in storage capacity wasn't just a matter of making everything smaller, but involved multiple innovations. A technique called the thin film lithography process allowed engineers to shrink the reader and writer. And despite its size, the reader became more sensitive by taking advantage of new discoveries in magnetic and quantum properties of matter. Bits could also be packed closer together thanks to mathematical algorithms that filter out noise from magnetic interference, and find the most likely bit sequences from each chunk of read-back signal. And thermal expansion control of the head, enabled by placing a heater under the magnetic writer, allowed it to fly less than five nanometers above the disc's surface, about the width of two strands of DNA. For the past several decades, the exponential growth in computer storage capacity and processing power has followed a pattern known as Moore's Law, which, in 1975, predicted that information density would double every two years. But at around 100 gigabits per square inch, shrinking the magnetic grains further or cramming them closer together posed a new risk called the superparamagnetic effect. When a magnetic grain volume is too small, its magnetization is easily disturbed by heat energy and can cause bits to switch unintentionally, leading to data loss. Scientists resolved this limitation in a remarkably simple way: by changing the direction of recording from longitudinal to perpendicular, allowing areal density to approach one terabit per square inch. Recently, the potential limit has been increased yet again through heat assisted magnetic recording. This uses an even more thermally stable recording medium, whose magnetic resistance is momentarily reduced by heating up a particular spot with a laser and allowing data to be written. And while those drives are currently in the prototype stage, scientists already have the next potential trick up their sleeves: bit-patterned media, where bit locations are arranged in separate, nano-sized structures, potentially allowing for areal densities of twenty terabits per square inch or more. So it's thanks to the combined efforts of generations of engineers, material scientists, and quantum physicists that this tool of incredible power and precision can spin in the palm of your hand.

How statistics can be misleading

TED-Ed

Statistics are persuasive. So much so that people, organizations, and whole countries base some of their most important decisions on organized data. But there's a problem with that. Any set of statistics might have something lurking inside it, something that can turn the results completely upside down. For example, imagine you need to choose between two hospitals for an elderly relative's surgery. Out of each hospital's last 1000 patient's, 900 survived at Hospital A, while only 800 survived at Hospital B. So it looks like Hospital A is the better choice. But before you make your decision, remember that not all patients arrive at the hospital with the same level of health. And if we divide each hospital's last 1000 patients into those who arrived in good health and those who arrived in poor health, the picture starts to look very different. Hospital A had only 100 patients who arrived in poor health, of which 30 survived. But Hospital B had 400, and they were able to save 210. So Hospital B is the better choice for patients who arrive at hospital in poor health, with a survival rate of 52.5%. And what if your relative's health is good when she arrives at the hospital? Strangely enough, Hospital B is still the better choice, with a survival rate of over 98%. So how can Hospital A have a better overall survival rate if Hospital B has better survival rates for patients in each of the two groups? What we've stumbled upon is a case of Simpson's paradox, where the same set of data can appear to show opposite trends depending on how it's grouped. This often occurs when aggregated data hides a conditional variable, sometimes known as a lurking variable, which is a hidden additional factor that significantly influences results. Here, the hidden factor is the relative proportion of patients who arrive in good or poor health. Simpson's paradox isn't just a hypothetical scenario. It pops up from time to time in the real world, sometimes in important contexts. One study in the UK appeared to show that smokers had a higher survival rate than nonsmokers over a twenty-year time period. That is, until dividing the participants by age group showed that the nonsmokers were significantly older on average, and thus, more likely to die during the trial period, precisely because they were living longer in general. Here, the age groups are the lurking variable, and are vital to correctly interpret the data. In another example, an analysis of Florida's death penalty cases seemed to reveal no racial disparity in sentencing between black and white defendants convicted of murder. But dividing the cases by the race of the victim told a different story. In either situation, black defendants were more likely to be sentenced to death. The slightly higher overall sentencing rate for white defendants was due to the fact that cases with white victims were more likely to elicit a death sentence than cases where the victim was black, and most murders occurred between people of the same race. So how do we avoid falling for the paradox? Unfortunately, there's no one-size-fits-all answer. Data can be grouped and divided in any number of ways, and overall numbers may sometimes give a more accurate picture than data divided into misleading or arbitrary categories. All we can do is carefully study the actual situations the statistics describe and consider whether lurking variables may be present. Otherwise, we leave ourselves vulnerable to those who would use data to manipulate others and promote their own agendas.

How many universes are there?

{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.'}

TED-Ed

(Music) Sometimes when I'm on a long plane flight, I gaze out at all those mountains and deserts and try to get my head around how vast our Earth is. And then I remember that there's an object we see every day that would literally fit one million Earths inside it. The sun seems impossibly big, but in the great scheme of things, it's a pinprick, one of about 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which you can see on a clear night as a pale, white mist stretched across the sky. And it gets worse. There are maybe 100 billion galaxies detectable by our telescopes, so if each star was the size of a single grain of sand, just the Milky Way has enough stars to fill a 30 foot by 30 foot stretch of beach three feet deep with sand. And the entire Earth doesn't have enough beaches to represent the stars in the overall universe. Such a beach would continue for literally hundreds of millions of miles. Holy Stephen Hawking, that is a lot of stars. But he and other physicists now believe in a reality that is unimaginably bigger still. I mean, first of all, the 100 billion galaxies within range of our telescopes are probably a minuscule fraction of the total. Space itself is expanding at an accelerating pace. The vast majority of the galaxies are separating from us so fast that light from them may never reach us. Still, our physical reality here on Earth is intimately connected to those distant, invisible galaxies. We can think of them as part of our universe. They make up a single, giant edifice, obeying the same physical laws and all made from the same types of atoms, electrons, protons, quarks, neutrinos that make up you and me. However, recent theories in physics, including one called string theory, are now telling us there could be countless other universes, built on different types of particles, with different properties, obeying different laws. Most of these universes could never support life, and might flash in and out of existence in a nanosecond, but nonetheless, combined they make up a vast multiverse of possible universes. in up to 11 dimensions, featuring wonders beyond our wildest imagination. And the leading version of string theory predicts a multiverse made of up to 10 to the 500 universes. That's a one followed by 500 zeroes, a number so vast that if every atom in our observable universe had its own universe and all of the atoms in all of those universes each had their own universe, and you repeated that for two more cycles, you'd still be at a tiny fraction of the total — namely, one trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillionth. But even that number is minuscule compared to another number: infinity. Some physicists think the space-time continuum is literally infinite, and that it contains an infinite number of so-called pocket universes with varying properties. How's your brain doing? But quantum theory adds a whole new wrinkle. I mean, the theory's been proven true beyond all doubt, but interpreting it is baffling. And some physicists think you can only un-baffle it if you imagine that huge numbers of parallel universes are being spawned every moment, and many of these universes would actually be very like the world we're in, would include multiple copies of you. In one such universe, you'd graduate with honors and marry the person of your dreams. In another, not so much. There are still some scientists who would say, hogwash. The only meaningful answer to the question of how many universes there are is one, only one universe. And a few philosophers and mystics might argue that even our own universe is an illusion. So, as you can see, right now there is no agreement on this question, not even close. All we know is, the answer is somewhere between zero and infinity. Well, I guess we know one other thing: This is a pretty cool time to be studying physics. We just might be undergoing the biggest paradigm shift in knowledge that humanity has ever seen.

How to manage your time more effectively (according to machines)

TED-Ed

In the summer of 1997, NASA's Pathfinder spacecraft landed on the surface of Mars, and began transmitting incredible, iconic images back to Earth. But several days in, something went terribly wrong. The transmissions stopped. Pathfinder was, in effect, procrastinating: keeping itself fully occupied but failing to do its most important work. What was going on? There was a bug, it turned out, in its scheduler. Every operating system has something called the scheduler that tells the CPU how long to work on each task before switching, and what to switch to. Done right, computers move so fluidly between their various responsibilities, they give the illusion of doing everything simultaneously. But we all know what happens when things go wrong. This should give us, if nothing else, some measure of consolation. Even computers get overwhelmed sometimes. Maybe learning about the computer science of scheduling can give us some ideas about our own human struggles with time. One of the first insights is that all the time you spend prioritizing your work is time you aren't spending doing it. For instance, let's say when you check your inbox, you scan all the messages, choosing which is the most important. Once you've dealt with that one, you repeat. Seems sensible, but there's a problem here. This is what's known as a quadratic-time algorithm. With an inbox that's twice as full, these passes will take twice as long and you'll need to do twice as many of them! This means four times the work. The programmers of the operating system Linux encountered a similar problem in 2003. Linux would rank every single one of its tasks in order of importance, and sometimes spent more time ranking tasks than doing them. The programmers’ counterintuitive solution was to replace this full ranking with a limited number of priority “buckets.” The system was less precise about what to do next but more than made up for it by spending more time making progress. So with your emails, insisting on always doing the very most important thing first could lead to a meltdown. Waking up to an inbox three times fuller than normal could take nine times longer to clear. You’d be better off replying in chronological order, or even at random! Surprisingly, sometimes giving up on doing things in the perfect order may be the key to getting them done. Another insight that emerges from computer scheduling has to do with one of the most prevalent features of modern life: interruptions. When a computer goes from one task to another, it has to do what's called a context switch, bookmarking its place in one task, moving old data out of its memory and new data in. Each of these actions comes at a cost. The insight here is that there’s a fundamental tradeoff between productivity and responsiveness. Getting serious work done means minimizing context switches. But being responsive means reacting anytime something comes up. These two principles are fundamentally in tension. Recognizing this tension allows us to decide where we want to strike that balance. The obvious solution is to minimize interruptions. The less obvious one is to group them. If no notification or email requires a response more urgently than once an hour, say, then that’s exactly how often you should check them. No more. In computer science, this idea goes by the name of interrupt coalescing. Rather than dealing with things as they come up – Oh, the mouse was moved? A key was pressed? More of that file downloaded? – the system groups these interruptions together based on how long they can afford to wait. In 2013, interrupt coalescing triggered a massive improvement in laptop battery life. This is because deferring interruptions lets a system check everything at once, then quickly re-enter a low-power state. As with computers, so it is with us. Perhaps adopting a similar approach might allow us users to reclaim our own attention, and give us back one of the things that feels so rare in modern life: rest.

Mating frenzies, sperm hoards, and brood raids: the life of a fire ant queen

TED-Ed

It’s June, just after a heavy rainfall, and the sky is filling with creatures we wouldn’t normally expect to find there. At first glance, this might be a disturbing sight. But for the lucky males and females of Solenopsis invicta, otherwise known as fire ants, it’s a day of romance. This is the nuptial flight, when thousands of reproduction-capable male and female ants, called alates, take wing for the first and last time. But even for successful males who manage to avoid winged predators, this mating frenzy will prove lethal. And for a successfully mated female, her work is only beginning. Having secured a lifetime supply of sperm from her departed mate, our new queen must now single-handedly start an entire colony. Descending to the ground, she searches for a suitable spot to build her nest. Ideally, she can find somewhere with loose, easy-to-dig soil— like farmland already disturbed by human activity. Once she finds the perfect spot, she breaks off her wings— creating the stubs that establish her royal status. Then, she starts digging a descending tunnel ending in a chamber. Here the queen begins laying her eggs, about ten per day, and the first larvae hatch within a week. Over the next three weeks, the new queen relies on a separate batch of unfertilized eggs to nourish both herself and her brood, losing half her body weight in the process. Thankfully, after about 20 days, these larvae grow into the first generation of workers, ready to forage for food and sustain their shrunken queen. Her daughters will have to work quickly though— returning their mother to good health is urgent. In the surrounding area, dozens of neighboring queens are building their own ant armies. These colonies have peacefully coexisted so far, but once workers appear, a phenomenon known as brood-raiding begins. Workers from nests up to several meters away begin to steal offspring from our queen. Our colony retaliates, but new waves of raiders from even further away overwhelm the workers. Within hours, the raiders have taken our queen’s entire brood supply to the largest nearby nest— and the queen’s surviving daughters abandon her. Chasing her last chance of survival, the queen follows the raiding trail to the winning nest. She fends off other losing queens and the defending nest’s workers, fighting her way to the top of the brood pile. Her daughters help their mother succeed where other queens fail— defeating the reigning monarch, and usurping the brood pile. Eventually, all the remaining challengers fail, until only one queen— and one brood pile— remains. Now presiding over several hundred workers in the neighborhood’s largest nest, our victorious queen begins aiding her colony in its primary goal: reproduction. For the next several years, the colony only produces sterile workers. But once their population exceeds about 23,000, it changes course. From now on, every spring, the colony will produce fertile alate males and females. The colony spawns these larger ants throughout the early summer, and returns to worker production in the fall. After heavy rainfalls, these alates take to the skies, and spread their queen’s genes up to a couple hundred meters downwind. But to contribute to this annual mating frenzy, the colony must continue to thrive as one massive super-organism. Every day, younger ants feed the queen and tend to the brood, while older workers forage for food and defend the nest. When intruders strike, these older warriors fend them off using poisonous venom. After rainfalls, the colony comes together, using the wet dirt to expand their nest. And when a disastrous flood drowns their home, the sisters band together into a massive living raft— carrying their queen to safety. But no matter how resilient, the life of a colony must come to an end. After about 8 years, our queen runs out of sperm and can no longer replace dying workers. The nest’s population dwindles, and eventually, they’re taken over by a neighboring colony. Our queen’s reign is over, but her genetic legacy lives on.

How to use rhetoric to get what you want

TED-Ed

How do you get what you want using just your words? Aristotle set out to answer exactly that question over 2,000 years ago with the Treatise on Rhetoric. Rhetoric, according to Aristotle, is the art of seeing the available means of persuasion. And today we apply it to any form of communication. Aristotle focused on oration, though, and he described three types of persuasive speech. Forensic, or judicial, rhetoric establishes facts and judgements about the past, similar to detectives at a crime scene. Epideictic, or demonstrative, rhetoric makes a proclamation about the present situation, as in wedding speeches. But the way to accomplish change is through deliberative rhetoric, or symbouleutikon. Rather than the past or the present, deliberative rhetoric focuses on the future. It's the rhetoric of politicians debating a new law by imagining what effect it might have, like when Ronald Regan warned that the introduction of Medicare would lead to a socialist future spent telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. But it's also the rhetoric of activists urging change, such as Martin Luther King Jr's dream that his children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. In both cases, the speaker's present their audience with a possible future and try to enlist their help in avoiding or achieving it. But what makes for good deliberative rhetoric, besides the future tense? According to Aristotle, there are three persuasive appeals: ethos, logos, and pathos. Ethos is how you convince an audience of your credibility. Winston Churchill began his 1941 address to the U.S. Congress by declaring, "I have been in full harmony all my life with the tides which have flowed on both sides of the Atlantic against privilege and monopoly," thus highlighting his virtue as someone committed to democracy. Much earlier, in his defense of the poet Archias, Roman consul Cicero appealed to his own practical wisdom and expertise as a politician: "Drawn from my study of the liberal sciences and from that careful training to which I admit that at no part of my life I have ever been disinclined." And finally, you can demonstrate disinterest, or that you're not motivated by personal gain. Logos is the use of logic and reason. This method can employ rhetorical devices such as analogies, examples, and citations of research or statistics. But it's not just facts and figures. It's also the structure and content of the speech itself. The point is to use factual knowledge to convince the audience, as in Sojourner Truth's argument for women's rights: "I have as much muscle as any man and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed and can any man do more than that?" Unfortunately, speakers can also manipulate people with false information that the audience thinks is true, such as the debunked but still widely believed claim that vaccines cause autism. And finally, pathos appeals to emotion, and in our age of mass media, it's often the most effective mode. Pathos is neither inherently good nor bad, but it may be irrational and unpredictable. It can just as easily rally people for peace as incite them to war. Most advertising, from beauty products that promise to relieve our physical insecurities to cars that make us feel powerful, relies on pathos. Aristotle's rhetorical appeals still remain powerful tools today, but deciding which of them to use is a matter of knowing your audience and purpose, as well as the right place and time. And perhaps just as important is being able to notice when these same methods of persuasion are being used on you.

Why are drug prices so high? Investigating the outdated US patent system

{0: 'Priti Krishtel wants to reinvent the patent system. A lawyer and veteran of the global access to medicines movement, she is exposing how the failures of the patent system are affecting all of us -- and how we can fix it.'}

TEDWomen 2019

For my husband, it was love at first sight. (Laughter) Here's what happened. Years ago, Rudy, who I had strictly put in the friend zone at the time, came over to my house and met my dad, a pharmaceutical scientist who had just retired after bringing a drug to market. My dad said, "Ah, you probably wouldn't have heard of it. It's for IPF, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis." Rudy paused for a long time, and then he said, "That's the disease that took my father's life 15 years ago." Rudy says that this is the moment he fell in love. (Laughter) With my father. (Laughter) Even though it was too late for my dad to save his, he felt that destiny had delivered us this full-circle moment. In my family, we have a special love for my father's inventions. And in particular, we have a reverence for his patents. We have framed patents on the wall in our house. And there's a recognition in our family that everything I've been able to do — college, law school, health justice work — all of it is because America enabled my father to fulfill his potential as an inventor. (Applause) Last year, I met the director of the US Patent Office for the first time, and I sent my family a selfie from that office in Virginia. (Laughter) I got so many emojis back, you would have thought I had met Beyoncé. (Laughter) But truth be told, I was actually there to talk about a problem — how our outdated patent system is fueling the high cost of medicines and costing lives. Today, over two billion people live without access to medicines. And against this global crisis, drug prices are skyrocketing, including in wealthier countries. Thirty-four million Americans have lost a family member or a friend in the last five years, not because the treatment didn't exist, but because they couldn't afford it. Rising drug costs are pushing families into homelessness, seniors into bankruptcy and parents to crowdfunding treatment for their critically ill children. There are many reasons for this crisis, but one is the outdated patent system that America tries to export to the rest of the world. The original intention behind the patent system was to motivate people to invent by rewarding them with a time-limited monopoly. But today, that intention has been distorted beyond recognition. Corporations have teams of lawyers and lobbyists whose sole job is to extend patent protection as long as possible. And they've kept the patent office busy. It took 155 years for the US Patent Office to issue its first five million patents. It took just 27 years for it to issue the next five million. We haven't gotten drastically more inventive. Corporations have gotten drastically better at gaming the system. Drug patents have exploded — between 2006 and 2016, they doubled. But consider this: The vast majority of medicines associated with new drug patents are not new. Nearly eight out of 10 are for existing ones, like insulin or aspirin. My organization, a team of lawyers and scientists, recently conducted an investigation into the 12 best-selling drugs in America. We found that, on average, there are 125 patents filed on each medicine. Often for things we've known how to do for decades, like putting two pills into one. The higher a patent wall a company builds, the longer they hold on to their monopoly. And with no one to compete with, they can set prices at whim. And because these are medicines and not designer watches, we have no choice but to pay. The patent wall is a strategy to block competition. Not for the 14 years maximum that America's founders originally envisioned, or the 20 years allowed by law today, but for 40 years or more. Meanwhile, prices on these drugs have continued to increase — 68 percent since 2012. That's seven times the rate of inflation. And people are struggling or even dying, because they can't afford the meds. Now I want to be really clear about something. This isn't about making the pharmaceutical industry the bad guy. What I'm talking about today is whether the system we created to promote progress is actually working as intended. Sure, the pharmaceutical companies are gaming the system, but they're gaming it because they can. Because we have failed to adapt this system to meet today's realities. The government is handing out one of the most prized rewards in business — the opportunity to create a product that is protected from competition — and asking for less and less in return on our behalf. Imagine awarding 100 Pulitzer Prizes to one author for the same book. (Murmurs) It doesn't have to be this way. We can create a modern patent system to meet the needs of a 21st-century society. And to do that, we need to reimagine the patent system to serve the public, not just corporations. So how do we do it? Five reforms. First, we need to stop handing out so many patents. Back under the Kennedy administration, in an effort to curb rising drug costs, a congressman from Tennessee proposed an idea. He said, "If you want to tweak a drug, and you want to get another patent on it, the modified version has to be significantly better, therapeutically, for patients." Because of intense lobbying, this idea never saw the light of day. But a reimagined patent system would resurrect and evolve this simple, yet elegant proposition. That to get a patent, you have to invent something substantially better than what's already out there. This shouldn't be controversial. As a society, we reserve the big rewards for the big ideas. We don't give Michelin stars to chefs who just tweak a recipe — we give them to chefs who change how we think about food. And yet, we hand out patents worth billions of dollars for minor changes. It's time to raise the bar. Second, we need to change the financial incentives of the Patent Office. Right now, the revenue of the Patent Office is directly linked to the number of patents that it grants. That's like private prisons getting paid more to hold more people — it naturally leads to more incarceration, not less. The same is true for patents. Third, we need more public participation. Right now, the patent system is like a black box. It's a two-way conversation between the patent office and industry. You and I aren't invited to that party. But imagine if instead, the Patent Office became a dynamic center for citizen learning and ingenuity, staffed not just by technical experts and bureaucrats, but also by great public-health storytellers with a passion for science. Regular citizens could get accessible information about complex technologies like artificial intelligence or gene editing, enabling us to participate in the policy conversations that directly impact our health and lives. Fourth, we need to get the right to go to court. Right now in America, after a patent is granted, the public has no legal standing. Only those with a commercial interest, usually other drug companies, have that right. But I've witnessed firsthand how lives can be saved when everyday citizens have the right to go to court. Back in 2006 in India, my organization worked with patient advocates to challenge, legally, unjust HIV drug patents, at a time when so many people were dying, because medicines were priced out of reach. We were able to bring down the prices of medicines by up to 87 percent. (Applause) On just three drugs, we were able to save health systems half a billion dollars. Now, cases like these can save millions of lives and billions of dollars. Imagine if Americans had the right to go to court, too. And lastly, we need stronger oversight. We need an independent unit that can serve as a public advocate, regularly monitoring the activities of the Patent Office and reporting to Congress. If a unit like this had existed, it would have caught, for example, the Silicon Valley company Theranos before it got so many patents for blood testing and landed an evaluation of nine billion dollars, when in reality, there was no invention there at all. This kind of accountability is going to become increasingly urgent. In the age of 23andMe, important questions are being asked about whether companies can patent and sell our genetic information and our patient data. We need to be part of those conversations before it's too late. Our information is being used to create the new therapies. And when that moment of diagnosis comes for me and my family, or for you and yours, are we going to have to crowdfund to save the lives of those we love? That's not the world I want to live in. It's not the world I want for my two-year-old son. My dad is growing older now, and he is still as quietly brilliant and morally directed as ever. Sometimes people ask us whether things get heated between us: the patent-holding scientist and his patent-reforming lawyer daughter. It's such a profound misunderstanding of what's at stake, because this is not about scientists versus activists, or invention versus protection. This is about people, our quest to invent and our right to live. My dad and I understand that our ingenuity and our dignity go hand in hand. We are on the same side. It is time to reimagine a patent system that reflects that knowing. Thank you. (Applause)

Why do we dream?

TED-Ed

In the third millenium BCE, Mesopotamian kings recorded and interpreted their dreams on wax tablets. A thousand years later, Ancient Egyptians wrote a dream book listing over a hundred common dreams and their meanings. And in the years since, we haven't paused in our quest to understand why we dream. So, after a great deal of scientific research, technological advancement, and persistence, we still don't have any definite answers, but we have some interesting theories. We dream to fulfill our wishes. In the early 1900s, Sigmund Freud proposed that while all of our dreams, including our nightmares, are a collection of images from our daily conscious lives, they also have symbolic meanings, which relate to the fulfillment of our subconscious wishes. Freud theorized that everything we remember when we wake up from a dream is a symbolic representation of our unconscious primitive thoughts, urges, and desires. Freud believed that by analyzing those remembered elements, the unconscious content would be revealed to our conscious mind, and psychological issues stemming from its repression could be addressed and resolved. We dream to remember. To increase performance on certain mental tasks, sleep is good, but dreaming while sleeping is better. In 2010, researchers found that subjects were much better at getting through a complex 3-D maze if they had napped and dreamed of the maze prior to their second attempt. In fact, they were up to ten times better at it than those who only thought of the maze while awake between attempts, and those who napped but did not dream about the maze. Researchers theorize that certain memory processes can happen only when we are asleep, and our dreams are a signal that these processes are taking place. We dream to forget. There are about 10,000 trillion neural connections within the architecture of your brain. They are created by everything you think and everything you do. A 1983 neurobiological theory of dreaming, called reverse learning, holds that while sleeping, and mainly during REM sleep cycles, your neocortex reviews these neural connections and dumps the unnecessary ones. Without this unlearning process, which results in your dreams, your brain could be overrun by useless connections and parasitic thoughts could disrupt the necessary thinking you need to do while you're awake. We dream to keep our brains working. The continual activation theory proposes that your dreams result from your brain's need to constantly consolidate and create long-term memories in order to function properly. So when external input falls below a certain level, like when you're asleep, your brain automatically triggers the generation of data from its memory storages, which appear to you in the form of the thoughts and feelings you experience in your dreams. In other words, your dreams might be a random screen saver your brain turns on so it doesn't completely shut down. We dream to rehearse. Dreams involving dangerous and threatening situations are very common, and the primitive instinct rehearsal theory holds that the content of a dream is significant to its purpose. Whether it's an anxiety-filled night of being chased through the woods by a bear or fighting off a ninja in a dark alley, these dreams allow you to practice your fight or flight instincts and keep them sharp and dependable in case you'll need them in real life. But it doesn't always have to be unpleasant. For instance, dreams about your attractive neighbor could actually give your reproductive instinct some practice, too. We dream to heal. Stress neurotransmitters in the brain are much less active during the REM stage of sleep, even during dreams of traumatic experiences, leading some researchers to theorize that one purpose of dreaming is to take the edge off painful experiences to allow for psychological healing. Reviewing traumatic events in your dreams with less mental stress may grant you a clearer perspective and enhanced ability to process them in psychologically healthy ways. People with certain mood disorders and PTSD often have difficulty sleeping, leading some scientists to believe that lack of dreaming may be a contributing factor to their illnesses. We dream to solve problems. Unconstrained by reality and the rules of conventional logic, in your dreams, your mind can create limitless scenarios to help you grasp problems and formulate solutions that you may not consider while awake. John Steinbeck called it the committee of sleep, and research has demonstrated the effectiveness of dreaming on problem solving. It's also how renowned chemist August Kekule discovered the structure of the benzene molecule, and it's the reason that sometimes the best solution for a problem is to sleep on it. And those are just a few of the more prominent theories. As technology increases our capability for understanding the brain, it's possible that one day we will discover the definitive reason for them. But until that time arrives, we'll just have to keep on dreaming.

Why can't we talk about periods?

{0: 'Jen Gunter is on a mission to correct the misinformation and disinformation that infects online medical resources.'}

TEDWomen 2019

When I was a teen, I had terrible periods. I had crippling cramps, I leaked blood onto my clothes and onto my bed sheets, and I had period diarrhea. And I had to miss school one to two days a month, and I remember sitting on the couch with my heating pads, thinking, "What's up with this?" When I ate food, I didn't leak saliva from my salivary glands. When I went for a walk, I didn't leak fluid from my knees, "joint fluid." Why was menstruation so different? I wanted answers to these questions but there was no one for me to ask. My mother knew nothing about menstruation except that it was dirty and shameful and I shouldn't talk about it. I asked girlfriends and everybody spoke in euphemisms. And finally, when I got the courage to go to the doctor and talk about my heavy periods, I was told to eat liver. (Laughter) And when I went to the drug store to buy my menstrual products, my 48-pack of super maxi pads, back in the day when they were the size of a tissue box, each pad — (Laughter) You know what I'm talking about. You have no idea how far absorbent technology has come. (Laughter) I used to have to buy my menstrual products in the feminine hygiene aisle. And I remember standing there, thinking, "Well, why don't I buy toilet paper in the anal hygiene aisle?" (Laughter) Like, what's up with that? Why can't we talk about periods? And it's not about the blood, as Freud would have you say, because if it were, there would be an ear, nose and throat surgeon up here right now, talking about the taboos of nose bleeds, right? And it's not even about periods, because otherwise, when we got rid of our toxic, shameful periods when we became menopausal, we'd be elevated to a higher social status. (Laughter) (Applause) It's just a patriarchal society is invested in oppressing women, and at different points in our lives, different things are used. And menstruation is used during what we in medicine call the reproductive years. It's been around since pretty much the beginning of time, many cultures thought that women could spoil crops or milk, or wilt flowers. And then when religion came along, purity myths only made that worse. And medicine wasn't any help. In the 1920s and '30s there was the idea that women elaborated something called a menotoxin. We could wilt flowers just by walking by. (Laughter) And that's what happens when there's no diversity, right. Because there was no woman to put her hand up and go, "Well, actually, that doesn't happen." And when you can't talk about what's happening to your body, how do you break these myths? Because you don't even need to be a doctor to say that periods aren't toxic. If they were, why would an embryo implant in a toxic swill? And if we all had this secret menotoxin, we could be laying waste to crops and spoiling milk. (Laughter) Why would we have not used our X-Women powers to get the vote sooner? (Laughter) (Applause) Even now, when I tweet about period diarrhea, as one does, (Laughter) I mention that it affects 28 percent of women. And every single time, someone approaches me and says, "I thought I was the only one." That's how effective that culture of shame is, that women can't even share their experiences. So I began to think, "Well, what if everybody knew about periods like a gynecologist? Wouldn't that be great?" Then you would all know what I know, you'd know that menstruation is a pretty unique phenomenon among mammals. Most mammals have estrus. Humans, some primates, some bats, the elephant shrew and the spiny mouse menstruate. And with menstruation what happens is the brain triggers the ovary to start producing an egg. Estrogen is released and it starts to build up the lining of the uterus, cell upon cell, like bricks. And what happens if you build a brick wall too high without mortar? Well, it's unstable. So what happens when you ovulate? You release a hormone called progesterone, which is progestational, it gets the uterus ready. It acts like a mortar and it holds those bricks together. It also causes some changes to make the lining more hospitable for implantation. If there's no pregnancy, (Whoosh) lining comes out, there's bleeding from the blood vessels and that's the period. And I always find this point really interesting. Because with estrus, the final signaling to get the lining of the uterus ready actually comes from the embryo. But with menstruation, that choice comes from the ovary. It's as if choice is coded in to our reproductive tracts. (Cheering and applause) OK, so now we know why the blood is there. And it's a pretty significant amount. It's 30 to 90 milliliters of blood, which is one to three ounces, and it can be more, and I know it seems like it's more a lot of the times. I know. So why do we have so much blood? And why doesn't it just stay there till the next cycle, right? Like, you didn't get pregnant, so why can't it hang around? Well imagine if each month it got thicker and thicker and thicker, right, like, imagine what tsunami period that would be. (Laughter) We can't reabsorb it, because it's too much. And it's too much because we need a thick uterine lining for a very specific reason. Pregnancy exerts a significant biological toll on our bodies. There is maternal mortality, there is the toll of breastfeeding and there is the toll of raising a child until it is independent. And evolution — (Laughter) That goes on longer for some of us than others. (Laughter) But evolution knows about risk-benefit ratio. And so evolution wants to maximize the chance of a beneficial outcome. And how do you maximize the chance of a beneficial outcome? You try to get the highest quality embryos. And how do you get the highest quality embryos? You make them work for it. You give them an obstacle course. So over the millennia that we have evolved, it's been a little bit like an arms race in the uterus, the lining getting thicker and thicker and thicker, and the embryo getting more invasive until we reach this détente with the lining of the uterus that we have. So we have this thick uterine lining and now it's got to come out, and how do you stop bleeding? Well, you stop a nose bleed by pinching it, if you cut your leg, you put pressure on it. We stop bleeding with pressure. When we menstruate, the lining of the uterus releases substances that are made into chemicals called prostaglandins and other inflammatory mediators. And they make the uterus cramp down, they make it squeeze on those blood vessels to stop the bleeding. They might also change blood flow to the uterus and also cause inflammation and that makes pain worse. And so you say, "OK, how much pressure is generated?" And from studies where some incredible women have volunteered to have pressure catheters put in their uterus that they wear their whole menstrual cycle — God bless them, because we wouldn't have this knowledge without, and it's very important knowledge, because the pressure that's generated in the uterus during menstruation is 120 millimeters of mercury. "Well what's that," you say. Well, it's the amount of pressure that's generated during the second stage of labor when you're pushing. (Audience gasps) Right. Which, for those of you who haven't had an unmedicated delivery, that's what it's like when the blood pressure cuff is not quite as tight as it was at the beginning, but it's still pretty tight, and you wish it would stop. So that kind of makes it different, right? If you start thinking about the pain of menstruation, we wouldn't say if someone needed to miss school because they were in the second stage of labor and pushing, we wouldn't call them weak. We'd be like, "Oh my God, you made it that far," right? (Laughter) And we wouldn't deny pain control to women who have typical pain of labor, right? So it's important for us to call this pain "typical" instead of "normal," because when we say it's normal, it's easier to dismiss. As opposed to saying it's typical, and we should address it. And we do have some ways to address menstrual pain. One way is with something called a TENS unit, which you can wear under your clothes and it sends an electrical impulse to the nerves and muscles and no one really knows how it works, but we think it might be the gate theory of pain, which is counterirritation. It's the same reason why, if you hurt yourself, you rub it. Vibration travels faster to your brain than pain does. We also have medications called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications. And what they do is they block the release of prostaglandins. They can reduce menstrual pain for 80 percent of women. They also reduce the volume of blood by 30 to 40 percent and they can help with period diarrhea. And we also have hormonal contraception, which gives us a thinner lining of the uterus, so there's less prostaglandins produced and with less blood, there's less need for cramping. Now, if those treatments fail you — and it's important to use that word choice, because we never fail the treatment, the treatment fails us. If that treatment fails you, you could be amongst the people who have a resistance to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories. We don't quite understand, but there are some complex mechanisms why those medications just don't work for some women. It's also possible that you could have another reason for painful periods. You could have a condition called endometriosis, where the lining of the uterus is growing in the pelvic cavity, causing inflammation and scar tissue and adhesions. And there may be other mechanisms we don't quite understand yet, because it's a possibility that pain thresholds could be different due to very complex biological mechanisms. But we're only going to find that out by talking about it. It shouldn't be an act of feminism to know how your body works. It shouldn't — (Applause) It shouldn't be an act of feminism to ask for help when you're suffering. The era of menstrual taboos is over. (Cheers and applause) The only curse here is the ability to convince half the population that the very biological machinery that perpetuates the species, that gives everything that we have, is somehow dirty or toxic. And I'm not going to stand for it. (Applause) And the way we break that curse? It's knowledge. Thank you. (Cheers and applause)

How designing brand-new enzymes could change the world

{0: 'Adam Garske loves enzymes and thinks you should, too. He engineers enzymes for use in industrial applications, ranging from laundry detergents to animal nutrition.'}

TED@DuPont

Growing up in central Wisconsin, I spent a lot of time outside. In the spring, I'd smell the heady fragrance of lilacs. In the summer, I loved the electric glow of fireflies as they would zip around on muggy nights. In the fall, the bogs were brimming with the bright red of cranberries. Even winter had its charms, with the Christmassy bouquet emanating from pine trees. For me, nature has always been a source of wonder and inspiration. As I went on to graduate school in chemistry, and in later years, I came to better understand the natural world in molecular detail. All the things that I just mentioned, from the scents of lilacs and pines to the bright red of cranberries and the glow of fireflies, have at least one thing in common: they're manufactured by enzymes. As I said, I grew up in Wisconsin, so of course, I like cheese and the Green Bay Packers. But let's talk about cheese for a minute. For at least the last 7,000 years, humans have extracted a mixture of enzymes from the stomachs of cows and sheep and goats and added it to milk. This causes the milk to curdle — it's part of the cheese-making process. The key enzyme in this mixture is called chymosin. I want to show you how that works. Right here, I've got two tubes, and I'm going to add chymosin to one of these. Just a second here. Now my son Anthony, who is eight years old, was very interested in helping me figure out a demo for the TED Talk, and so we were in the kitchen, we were slicing up pineapples, extracting enzymes from red potatoes and doing all kinds of demos in the kitchen. And in the end, though, we thought the chymosin demo was pretty cool. And so what's happening here is the chymosin is swimming around in the milk, and it's binding to a protein there called casein. What it does then is it clips the casein — it's like a molecular scissors. It's that clipping action that causes the milk to curdle. So here we are in the kitchen, working on this. OK. So let me give this a quick zip. And then we'll set these to the side and let these simmer for a minute. OK. If DNA is the blueprint of life, enzymes are the laborers that carry out its instructions. An enzyme is a protein that's a catalyst, it speeds up or accelerates a chemical reaction, just as the chymosin over here is accelerating the curdling of the milk. But it's not just about cheese. While enzymes do play an important role in the foods that we eat, they also are involved in everything from the health of an infant to attacking the biggest environmental challenges we have today. The basic building blocks of enzymes are called amino acids. There are 20 common amino acids, and we typically designate them with single-letter abbreviations, so it's really an alphabet of amino acids. In an enzyme, these amino acids are strung together, like pearls on a necklace. And it's really the identity of the amino acids, which letters are in that necklace, and in what order they are, what they spell out, that gives an enzyme its unique properties and differentiates it from other enzymes. Now, this string of amino acids, this necklace, folds up into a higher-order structure. And if you were to zoom in at the molecular level and take a look at chymosin, which is the enzyme working over here, you would see it looks like this. It's all these strands and loops and helices and twists and turns, and it has to be in just this conformation to work properly. Nowadays, we can make enzymes in microbes, and that can be like a bacteria or a yeast, for example. And the way we do this is we get a piece of DNA that codes for an enzyme that we're interested in, we insert that into the microbe, and we let the microbe use its own machinery, its own wherewithal, to produce that enzyme for us. So if you wanted chymosin, you wouldn't need a calf, nowadays — you could get this from a microbe. And what's even cooler, I think, is we can now dial in completely custom DNA sequences to make whatever enzymes we want, stuff that's not out there in nature. And, to me, what's really the fun part is trying to design an enzyme for a new application, arranging the atoms just so. The act of taking an enzyme from nature and playing with those amino acids, tinkering with those letters, putting some letters in, taking some letters out, maybe rearranging them a little bit, is a little bit like finding a book and editing a few chapters or changing the ending. In 2018, the Nobel prize in chemistry was given for the development of this approach, which is known as directed evolution. Nowadays, we can harness the powers of directed evolution to design enzymes for custom purposes, and one of these is designing enzymes for doing applications in new areas, like laundry. So just as enzymes in your body can help you to break down the food that you eat, enzymes in your laundry detergent can help you to break down the stains on your clothes. It turns out that about 90 percent of the energy that goes into doing the wash is from water heating. And that's for good reason — the warmer water helps to get your clothes clean. But what if you were able to do the wash in cold water instead? You certainly would save some money, and in addition to that, according to some calculations done by Procter and Gamble, if all households in the US were to do the laundry in cold water, we would save the emissions of 32 metric tons of CO2 each year. That's a lot, that's about the equivalent of the carbon dioxide emitted by 6.3 million cars. So, how would we go about designing an enzyme to realize these changes? Enzymes didn't evolve to clean dirty laundry, much less in cold water. But we can go to nature, and we can find a starting point. We can find an enzyme that has some starting activity, some clay that we can work with. So this is an example of such an enzyme, right here on the screen. And we can start playing with those amino acids, as I said, putting some letters in, taking some letters out, rearranging those. And in doing so, we can generate thousands of enzymes. And we can take those enzymes, and we can test them in little plates like this. So this plate that I'm holding in my hands contains 96 wells, and in each well is a piece of fabric with a stain on it. And we can measure how well each of these enzymes are able to remove the stains from the pieces of fabric, and in that way see how well it's working. And we can do this using robotics, like you'll see in just a second on the screen. OK, so we do this, and it turns out that some of the enzymes are sort of in the ballpark of the starting enzyme. That's nothing to write home about. Some are worse, so we get rid of those. And then some are better. Those improved ones become our version 1.0s. Those are the enzymes that we want to carry forward, and we can repeat this cycle again and again. And it's the repetition of this cycle that lets us come up with a new enzyme, something that can do what we want. And after several cycles of this, we did come up with something new. So you can go to the supermarket today, and you can buy a laundry detergent that lets you do the wash in cold water because of enzymes like this here. And I want to show you how this one works too. So I've got two more tubes here, and these are both milk again. And let me show you, I've got one that I'm going to add this enzyme to and one that I'm going to add some water to. And that's the control, so nothing should happen in that tube. You might find it curious that I'm doing this with milk. But the reason that I'm doing this is because milk is just loaded with proteins, and it's very easy to see this enzyme working in a protein solution, because it's a master protein chopper, that's its job. So let me get this in here. And you know, as I said, it's a master protein chopper and what you can do is you can extrapolate what it's doing in this milk to what it would be doing in your laundry. So this is kind of a way to visualize what would be happening. OK, so those both went in. And I'm going to give this a quick zip as well. OK, so we'll let these sit over here with the chymosin sample, so I'm going to come back to those toward the end. Well, what's on the horizon for enzyme design? Certainly, it will get it faster — there are now approaches for evolving enzymes that allow researchers to go through far more samples than I just showed you. And in addition to tinkering with natural enzymes, like we've been talking about, some scientists are now trying to design enzymes from scratch, using machine learning, an approach from artificial intelligence, to inform their enzyme designs. Still others are adding unnatural amino acids to the mix. We talked about the 20 natural amino acids, the common amino acids, before — they're adding unnatural amino acids to make enzymes with properties unlike those that could be found in nature. That's a pretty neat area. How will designed enzymes affect you in years to come? Well, I want to focus on two areas: human health and the environment. Some pharmaceutical companies now have teams that are dedicated to designing enzymes to make drugs more efficiently and with fewer toxic catalysts. For example, Januvia, which is a medication to treat type 2 diabetes, is made partially with enzymes. The number of drugs made with enzymes is sure to grow in the future. In another area, there are certain disorders in which a single enzyme in a person's body doesn't work properly. An example of this is called phenylketonuria, or PKU for short. People with PKU are unable to properly metabolize or digest phenylalanine, which is one of the 20 common amino acids that we've been talking about. The consequence of ingesting phenylalanine for people with PKU is that they are subject to permanent intellectual disabilities, so it's a scary thing to have. Now, those of you with kids — do you guys have kids, here, which ones have kids? A lot of you. So may be familiar with PKUs, because all infants in the US are required to be tested for PKU. I remember when Anthony, my son, had his heel pricked to test for it. The big challenge with this is: What do you eat? Phenylalanine is in so many foods, it's incredibly hard to avoid. Now, Anthony has a nut allergy, and I thought that was tough, but PKU's on another level of toughness. However, new enzymes may soon enable PKU patients to eat whatever they want. Recently, the FDA approved an enzyme designed to treat PKU. This is big news for patients, and it's actually very big news for the field of enzyme-replacement therapy more generally, because there are other targets out there where this would be a good approach. So that was a little bit about health. Now I'm going to move to the environment. When I read about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — by the way, that's, like, this huge island of plastic, somewhere between California and Hawaii — and about microplastics pretty much everywhere, it's upsetting. Plastics aren't going away anytime soon. But enzymes may help us in this area as well. Recently, bacteria producing plastic-degrading enzymes were discovered. Efforts are already underway to design improved versions of these enzymes. At the same time, there are enzymes that have been discovered and that are being optimized to make non-petroleum-derived biodegradable plastics. Enzymes may also offer some help in capturing greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Now, there is no doubt, these are major challenges, and none of them are easy. But our ability to harness enzymes may help us to tackle these in the future, so I think that's another area to be looking forward. So now I'm going to get back to the demo — this is the fun part. So we'll start with the chymosin samples. So let me get these over here. And you can see here, this is the one that got the water, so nothing should happen to this milk. This is the one that got the chymosin. So you can see that it totally clarified up here. There's all this curdled stuff, that's cheese, we just made cheese in the last few minutes. So this is that reaction that people have been doing for thousands and thousands of years. I'm thinking about doing this one at our next Kids to Work Day demo but they can be a tough crowd, so we'll see. (Laughter) And then the other one I want to look at is this one. So this is the enzyme for doing your laundry. And you can see that it's different than the one that has the water added. It's kind of clarifying, and that's just what you want for an enzyme in your laundry, because you want to be able to have an enzyme that can be a protein chowhound, just chew them up, because you're going to get different protein stains on your clothes, like chocolate milk or grass stains, for example, and something like this is going to help you get them off. And this is also going to be the thing that allows you to do the wash in cold water, reduce your carbon footprint and save you some money. Well, we've come a long way, considering this 7,000-year journey from enzymes in cheese making to the present day and enzyme design. We're really at a creative crossroads, and with enzymes, can edit what nature wrote or write our own stories with amino acids. So next time you're outdoors on a muggy night and you see a firefly, I hope you think of enzymes. They're doing amazing things for us today. And by design, they could be doing even more amazing things tomorrow. Thank you. (Applause)

What was so special about Viking ships?

TED-Ed

The Vikings came from the rugged, inhospitable north known today as Scandinavia. As the Roman Empire flourished further south, Scandinavians had small settlements, no central government, and no coinage. Yet by the 11th century, the Vikings had spread far from Scandinavia, gaining control of trade routes throughout Europe, conquering kingdoms as far as Africa, and even building outposts in North America. The secret to their success was their ships. The formidable Viking longship had its origins in the humble dugout canoe, or log boat. For millennia, the inhabitants of Scandinavia had used these canoes for transportation. Dense forests and tall mountains made overland travel difficult, but long coastlines and numerous rivers, lakes, and fjords provided a viable alternative. The first canoes were simply hollowed out logs rowed with paddles. Over time, they added planks to the log boat base using the clinker, or "lapstrake," technique, meaning the planks overlapped and were fastened to each other along their edges. As the Roman Empire expanded north, some Scandinavians served in their new neighbors’ armies— and brought home Roman maritime technology. The Mediterranean cultures at the heart of the Roman Empire had large warships that controlled the sea, and cargo ships that transported goods along the waterways. These ships were powered by sail and oars and relied on a strong skeleton of internal timbers fastened to the outer planks with copper, iron, and wood nails. At first, Scandinavians incorporated this new technology by replacing their loose paddles with anchored oars. This change hugely improved the crew’s efficiency, but also required stronger ships. So boat builders began to use iron nails for fasteners rather than sewing. They abandoned the log boat base for a keel plank, and the boats became higher and more seaworthy. But these early ships retained the concept of the original log boat: their strength depended on the outer shell of wood, not internal frames and beams. They were built as shells— thin-walled but strong, and much lighter than the Roman ships. Competing chieftains quickly refined the new ships to be even more efficient. The lighter the boat, the more versatile it would be and the less investment of resources it would require— an essential advantage in a decentralized culture without large supplies of people. These ships still had no sails— sails were costly, and for now the rowed ships could meet their needs. That changed after the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century. Western Europe took a heavy economic blow, leveling the playing field a bit for the Scandinavians. As the region revived, new and vigorous trade routes extended into and through Scandinavia. The wealth that flowed along these routes helped create a new, more prosperous and powerful class of Scandinavians, whose members competed constantly with each other over trade routes and territory. By the 8th century, a sailing ship began to make sense: it could go further, faster, in search of newly available plunder. With the addition of sails, the already light and speedy ships became nearly unbeatable. The Viking ship was born. Viking longships could soon carry as many as 100 Vikings to battle. Fleets of them could land on open beaches, penetrate deep into river systems, and be moved over land if need be. When not at war, the vessels were used to transport goods and make trade journeys. There were smaller versions for fishing and local excursions, and larger adaptations for open sea voyages capable of carrying tens of tons of cargo. Thanks to their inventiveness in the face of difficult terrain and weak economies, the Vikings sailed west, settled the North Atlantic and explored the North American coast centuries before any other Europeans would set foot there.

Are indoor vertical farms the future of agriculture?

{0: 'Stuart Oda is an indoor urban farmer with a passion for innovation and sustainability. His goal: democratize access to fresh and nutritious food by democratizing the means and knowledge of production.'}

TED Salon Brightline Initiative

So if you live on planet Earth and you're one of seven billion people that eats food every day, I need you to pay attention, because over the next three decades, we will need to address one of the most critical global challenges of our generation. And I'm not talking about climate change. I'm talking about food and agriculture. In 2050, our global population is projected to reach 9.8 billion, with 68 percent of us living in urban city centers. In order to feed this massive population, we will need to increase our agricultural output by 70 percent over current levels. Just to put this number into perspective, we will need to grow more food in the next 35 to 40 years than the previous 10,000 years combined. Put simply, not only is our global population becoming bigger, but it's also getting denser, and we will need to grow significantly more food using significantly less land and resources. Complicating our current efforts to address these major demographic shifts are the challenges facing the agricultural industry today. Globally, one third of all the food that we produce is wasted, acquitting to 1.6 billion tons of food that spoiled on the way to the market or expired in our refrigerators or were simply thrown out by supermarkets and restaurants at the end of the day. Every single year, up to 600 million people will get sick eating contaminated food, highlighting the challenge that we have of maintaining global food safety. And, maybe unsurprisingly, the agricultural industry is the single largest consumer of fresh water, accounting for 70 percent of global usage. Now, you'll be relieved to know that the agricultural industry and that the global movement by universities, companies and NGOs is putting together comprehensive research and developing novel technology to address all of these issues. And many have been doing it for decades. But one of the more recent innovations in food production being deployed in industrial parks in North America, in the urban city centers of Asia, and even in the arid deserts of the Middle East is controlled environment agriculture. Controlled environment agriculture is actually just a fancy way of saying weather- or climate-proof farming, and many of these farms grow food three-dimensionally in vertical racks, as opposed to the two dimensions of conventional farms. And so this type of food production is also referred to as indoor vertical farming. I've been involved in the indoor vertical farming space for the past five and a half years, developing technology to make this type of food production more efficient and affordable. This picture was taken outside of a decommissioned shipping container that we converted into an indoor farm and then launched into the heart and the heat of Dubai. Indoor vertical farming is a relatively recent phenomena, commercially speaking, and the reason for this is that consumers care more about food safety and where their food comes from, and also, the necessary technology to make this possible is more readily available and lower cost, and the overall cost of food production globally is actually increasing, making this type of food production more competitive. So if you want to build an indoor vertical farm, you will need to replace some of the conventional elements of farming with artificial substitutes, starting with sunlight. In indoor vertical farms, natural sunlight is replaced with artificial lighting like LEDs. While there are many different types of LEDs being used, the one that we decided to install here is called "full spectrum LEDs," which was optimized for the type of vegetables that we were growing. Also, in order to maximize production for a given space, indoor vertical farms also utilize and install racking systems to grow vegetables vertically, and some of the biggest facilities stack their production 14 to 16 floors high. Now most of these farms are hydroponic or aeroponic systems, which means that instead of using soil, they use a substitute material like polyurethane sponges, biodegradable peat moss and even use inorganic materials like perlite and clay pellets. Another unique aspects about these farms is that they use a precise nutrient formula that is circulated and recycled throughout the facility, and this is pumped directly to the vegetables' root zone to promote plant growth. And lastly, these farms use a sophisticated monitoring and automation system to significantly increase productivity, efficiency and consistency, and these tools also provide the added benefit of producing food that is more traceable and safe. Some of the obvious benefits of growing food in this way is that you have year-round vegetable production, you have consistent quality and you have predictable output. Some of the other major benefits include significant resource use efficiencies, particularly water. For every kilogram of vegetables grown in this way, hundreds of liters of water is conserved compared to conventional farming methods. And with the water savings come similar savings in the use of fertilizer. One of the highest-yielding farms grows over 350 times more food per square meter than a conventional farm. And weatherproofing means complete control of incoming contaminants and pests, completely eliminating the need for the use of chemical pesticides. And not to be mistaken, these farms can produce enormous amounts of food, with one of the biggest facilities producing 30,000 heads of vegetables a day. However, as with any new technology or innovation, there are some drawbacks. As you would imagine, growing food in this way can be incredibly energy-intensive. Also, these farms can only produce a small variety of vegetables commercially and the overall cost of the production still is quite high. And in order to address these issues, some of the biggest and most sophisticated farms are making significant investments, starting with energy efficiency. In order to reduce the high energy usage, there are efforts to develop higher-efficiency LEDs, to develop lasers optimized for plant growth and using even fiber-optic cables like these to channel sunlight directly into an indoor vertical farm during the day to reduce the need for artificial lighting. Also, to reduce the labor costs associated with hiring a more sophisticated, more urban and also more high-skilled labor force, robotics in automation is used extensively in large-scale facilities. And you can never really be too resource-efficient. Building indoor vertical farms in and around urban city centers can help to shorten the agricultural supply chain and also help to maintain the nutritional content in vegetables. Also, there are food deserts in many countries that have little to no access to nutritious vegetables, and as this industry matures, it will become possible to provide more equitable access to high-quality, highly nutritious vegetables in even the most underprivileged of communities. And finally, and this is really exciting for me personally, indoor vertical farming can actually be integrated seamlessly into the cityscape to help repurpose idle, underutilized and unused urban infrastructure. In fact, this is already happening today. Ride-sharing services have taken hundreds of thousands of cars off the road and they have significantly reduced the need for parking. This is a farm that we installed in central Beijing in an underutilized underground parking structure to grow vegetables for the nearby hotels. Underutilized infrastructure is not simply limited to large-scale civil engineering projects, and they can also include smaller spaces like idle restaurant corners. This is an example of a farm that we installed directly into the partition of a hotel entrance in order to grow fresh herbs and microgreens on-site for the chefs. Honestly, if you look around, you will find underutilized space everywhere, under, around and inside of urban developments. This is a farm that we installed into an empty office corner to grow fresh vegetables for the employees in nearby cafes. I get to be a part of all these cool projects and working in the agricultural industry to improve access and affordability to fresh and nutritious produce, hopefully soon by anyone anywhere, has been the greatest joy and also the most humbling and intellectually challenging thing I've ever done. And now that I've convinced you that agriculture can be quite sexy, you'll be surprised and shocked to know that I still have trouble fully articulating how and why I decided to work, and continue to work, in the agricultural industry. But a couple of years ago, I found a rather unique answer hiding in plain sight. You see, I read an article about how your name, particularly your last name, can have a strong influence on everything from your personality to your professional career. This is my Japanese last name: Oda. And the characters translate literally into "small farm." (Laughter) Thank you. (Applause)

A personal health coach for those living with chronic diseases

{0: 'Priscilla Pemu is a medical doctor who specializes in the care of adults with complex medical problems, focusing on the in-patient.'}

TED Residency

When I first became a doctor in Benin City, Nigeria, some 30-odd years ago, I was drawn to help people live full lives. But often, I found myself feeling impotent. Here I was, a brand-new doctor with all these skills, but I couldn't cure my patients who had chronic diseases — illnesses like heart disease, asthma, diabetes — and needed more than just handing them a prescription or providing grief counseling in the office to get the job done. Fast-forward 15 years later: I'm in Atlanta, Georgia; it's a different world, but it was déjà vu all over again. As doctors, we see our patients who have chronic illnesses in an episodic way. In between, the patients have to learn how to make a lot of decisions for themselves. I'll give you examples. If you have medications you're supposed to take every day, what do you do when you're sick? Are you still supposed to take it? How do you recognize a complication when it happens? How do you recognize a side effect when it happens? What do you do with it? In addition to all of this, they're dealing with the inevitable loneliness, isolation and anxiety that people who have chronic illnesses deal with. In the US alone, six in 10 adults have a chronic illness. That's 125 million people. A recent report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation showed that health habits account for 50 percent of the health outcomes that people experience, while medical care only accounts for 20 percent. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control says that if we could eliminate smoking, physical inactivity and poor nutrition, that we can prevent 80 percent of heart disease, 80 percent of type 2 diabetes and 40 percent of cancer. But we also know that changing health behaviors is very difficult. So we asked the question: What if we could create a resource that could motivate people to change health behavior? The truth is, there are a lot of these resources out there that help people acquire these so-called self-management skills. But many a time, they're not easily accessible or relatable, particularly to individuals within minority and underserved communities, who face bias in addition to barriers like language and culture and inadequate health insurance coverage. And so in the last 12 years, my colleagues and I at Morehouse School of Medicine have created a technology-based application to assist with chronic illness care. It's freely available on the web and as an app. And what we do is get people to track variables — blood pressure, blood sugar — and then report it back to them in a color-coded format. So green would indicate a healthy range, and red would indicate a problem that needs something done about it. We link these stats to a curriculum. The curriculum helps the individual learn about their health condition, whatever the chronic illness is. They also work with a health coach to learn self-management skills, skills that'll help them prevent complications of their illness. In order for the coach to be successful, they have to be able to gain the trust of the individual that they're working with. We tested this application in clinics, where the health coaches were medical assistants, and in a large urban church, where the health coaches were volunteers from the health ministry. A year later, a third of the participants were able to acquire three new self-management skills and maintain them to the extent that it was able to improve their blood pressures, their blood sugar and their exercise. Now, what was simple yet fascinating to us was that the group from the church did just as well or even better than the group that were under purely medical care. And we wanted to learn why that was. So we looked a little further into the research — 400 hours of recorded conversation — and what we learned was that the coaches from the church did have more time to spend with the patients, they had access to the patients' families, and so they could figure out what people needed and provide those resources for them. My team and I call this "culturally congruent coaching." To illustrate this concept of culturally congruent coaching, I want to tell you about one of our patients. I'll call her Ms. Bertha. So Ms. Bertha is an 83-year-old lady with diabetes and hypertension. She was assigned to Anne, her health coach in the church. Anne also happened to be a family friend to Ms. Bertha for many years, and they were fellow congregants. Anne observed after the first few visits that even though Ms. Bertha faithfully recorded her stats, they were all showing up as red. So she probed a little deeper to try to understand what was going on with Ms. Bertha, and Ms. Bertha gave her the real-real. (Laughter) She told her that there were times when her medications made her feel weird, and she wouldn't take them the way they were prescribed, because she thought it was due to the medicines but she didn't tell her doctor that. She also skipped out on some doctor appointments for a variety of reasons, but one of them was she wasn't doing better and she didn't want to make her doctor mad, so she just didn't go. So Anne talked to Ms. Bertha and asked her to bring her daughter in for the next visit, which she did. And at that visit, Anne was able to print out a log of all these stats that Ms. Bertha had been collecting, gave them to her and encouraged them to go see the doctor together, which they did. With that information, the doctor was able to make changes to Ms. Bertha's treatment. Within three months, Ms. Bertha's numbers were all in the green. No one was more excited or surprised than Ms. Bertha herself. Now, Anne was successful as a health coach because she cared enough to go below the surface and probe Ms. Bertha's deep culture and was able to reach her at that level. She knew how to listen, and she knew how to ask the right questions to get to what was needed. We all have deep unconscious rules that drive the way we make our health decisions. That's our culture. The relationship and the conversation between Anne and Ms. Bertha illustrates what's possible when we have conversations with our patients, our friends and our neighbors on a deep cultural level. And personally, I'm beyond excited to think that with this simple concept of culturally congruent coaching, we could change the lives of 125 million Americans and many others across the world that are living with chronic diseases. Thank you. (Applause)

The unpaid work that GDP ignores -- and why it really counts

{0: 'Marilyn Waring advocates for a public policy database that recognizes all unpaid work -- and the preservation of ecosystems -- instead of relying on GDP.'}

TEDxChristchurch

(In Maori: My mountain is Taupiri.) (Waikato is my river.) (My name is Marilyn.) (Hello.) As you've heard, when I was very young, I was elected to the New Zealand Parliament. And at that age, you learn mostly by listening to others' stories. I remember a woman who'd been injured in a farm accident, and it was coming up to shearing time on the farm, and she had to be replaced by a shepherd, by a rousie in the woolshed, and of course there was still someone needed to manage the household and to prepare the food for the shearing gangs. And her mother came to help with that. But the family got no compensation for the mother, because that's what mothers and family members are supposed to do. One year, a company called Gold Mines New Zealand applied for a prospecting license on our beautiful Mt. Pirongia. It is a mountain full of extraordinary ecosystems, of verdant, virgin native forests. It produced oxygen, it was a carbon sink, it was a home for endangered species and for pollinating species in the farmland around. And the mining company put up this great economic prospectus that was about how much money could be made from mining our mountain, about all the growth and development that would show in New Zealand's budgetary forecasts, and we were just left with the language of all that we valued about our mountain. Fortunately, we stopped. And then I remembered a woman who had three children under five who was caring for her elderly parents, and nobody seemed to think that at some stage she might actually need some assistance with childcare, because she wasn't in the paid workforce. And there began to be a pattern in all of these stories I was being told. And I started to ask enough questions to try and track to the core of this pattern of values that was part of all of these stories. And I found it in an economic formula called the "gross domestic product," or the GDP. Most of you will have heard of it. Many of you won't have any idea what it actually means. The rules were drawn up by Western-educated men in 1953. They established a boundary of production in drawing up these rules. What they were keen to measure was everything that involved a market transaction. So on one side of the boundary, everything where there was a market exchange was counted. It doesn't matter whether the exchange is legal or illegal. Market exchange in the illegal trade in armaments, [munitions], drugs, endangered species, trafficking of people — all of this is great for growth and it all counts. On the other side of the boundary of production, there was this extraordinary phrase in the rules that the work done by the people they called "nonprimary producers" was "of little or no value." So I thought, let's see how many nonprimary producers we have here today. So in the last week or so, how many of you have transported members of your household or their goods without payment? How many of you have done a bit of cleaning, a bit of vacuuming, a bit of sweeping, a bit of tidying up the kitchen? Yeah? How about going shopping for members of the household? Preparing food? Cleaning up afterwards? Laundry? Ironing? (Laughter) Well, as far as economics is concerned, you were at leisure. (Laughter) (Applause and cheers) Now, how about the women who have been pregnant and who have had children? Yes. Now, I really hate to tell you this, because it might well have been hard labor, but at that moment, you were unproductive. (Laughter) And some of you may have breastfed your infant. Now, in the New Zealand national accounts — that's what the figures are called, that's where we get the GDP — in the New Zealand national accounts, the milk of buffalo, goats, sheep and cows is of value but not human breast milk. (Laughter) It is the very best food on the planet. It is the very best investment that we can make in the future health and education of that child. It doesn't count at all. All of those activities are on the wrong side of the production boundary. And something that's very important to know about this accounting framework: they call it "accounts," but there's no debit side. We just keep market exchanges going, and it's all good for growth. We're in Christchurch, where people have lived through a devastating natural disaster and recovered. And ever since that time, New Zealand has been told our growth figures are great, because we're rebuilding Christchurch. Nothing was ever lost from the national accounting framework because of the loss of lives, the loss of land, the loss of buildings, the loss of special spaces. Now, it might also be becoming obvious to you that this boundary of production works in terms of our environment. When we're mining it, when we're deforesting, when we're deleting our environment, when we're fishing out our marine resources, legal or illegal, as long as market is exchanged, it's all good for growth. To leave our natural environment alone, to sustain it, to protect it, is apparently worth nothing. Now, how and what can we do about this? Well, I wrote first about it 30 years ago. Then in 2008, after the global financial crisis, President Sarkozy of France asked three men who had all won Nobel Prizes in Economics — Sen, Fitoussi and Stiglitz — to discover what I'd written about 30 years ago. (Laughter) (Applause) "Relying on per capita GDP, relying on these growth figures," they said, "doesn't appear to be the best way to proceed to make public policy." And I totally agree with them. (Laughter) One of the things that you notice about these rules — they are revised; 1968 they were revised, 1993, 2008 — is that the revisions are mostly done by statisticians, and the statisticians do know what is wrong with the data, but hardly any of the economists ever stop to ask that same question. So, in 2019, the GDP is in even worse shape. You see, to measure GDP, you have to assume that some kind of production or service delivery or consumption occurs inside a nation-state, and you know where that is. But trillions of dollars are circling the globe in mini-part from our Googles, our Facebooks, our Twitters, siphoned through a number of tax shelters, so that when we click on our computer and go to download some software, we don't know where it was produced, and frankly, no one knows where we are as we're consuming it, either. These tax-free havens distort the GDP to such an extent that about three years ago, Europe looked askance at Ireland and said, "We don't think you're reporting correctly," and in the next year, their GDP went up 35 percent. Now, all that work that you're doing when you were at leisure and unproductive, we can measure this, and we can measure this in time use surveys. When we look at the amount of time that's taken in the unpaid sector, what we find is that in almost every country where I've ever seen the data, it is the single largest sector of the nation's economy. In the last three years, for example, the UK statistician has declared that all of that unpaid work is the equivalent of all manufacturing and all retailing in the UK. In Australia, the single largest sector of Australia's economy is unpaid childcare, and the second-largest sector is all the rest of the unpaid work, before banking and insurance and financial intermediation services clock in at the largest part of the market sector. Just last year, the Premier of the Victoria state of Australia declared that half of that state's GDP was, in fact, the value of all the unpaid work. Now, as a policy maker, you cannot make good policy if the single largest sector of your nation's economy is not visible. You can't presume to know where the needs are. You can't locate time poverty. You can't address the most critical issues of need. So what can go in the place of GDP? Well, GDP has got many other problems, OK? We don't behave in a way that assists GDP. Large numbers of people around the planet are now using household assets — their cars, their homes, themselves — for Uber, for Airbnb. And no, we're not supposed to use assets from the unpaid sector to make money in the market sector. This is confusing! (Laughter) And very difficult to measure. So economists don't want to know what's wrong with their most important GDP, and I think they've got so many problems, they can just move off to a quiet corner and continue to publish that and not come anywhere near the rest of us with this talk of capitals and natural assets and other ways in which to colonize the rest of our lives. I think time use is the most important indicator going forward. Every one of us has exactly the same amount of it. If there are going to be critical issues as we move forward, we need a solid database, because whatever we change away from the GDP, we're going to be stuck with it for about 50 years, and we need something that's solid and immutable and that everybody understands, because if I put time use data in front of you, you'll immediately start nodding. You'll immediately start recognizing what it means. And, honestly, if I put the GDP data in front of you, a lot of you would prefer to leave for morning tea. (Laughter) We also need to be looking at the quality of our environment. As every year goes past, we get much better at measuring the devastation of it, of measuring how little we protect anymore. And yet, with climate change, we don't all have to be scientists to see, to feel, to know what is happening to our beautiful planet. We need, in this country, the paramountcy of what we can learn from kaitiakitanga, from whanaungatanaga, from what Maori, who have been here for centuries, can teach us. When you're in parliament, and you're not in an economist's frame of mind, you make decisions across a range of data. You look at the trade-offs. You think deeply about implications way beyond whether or not GDP is up or down. Economists want to turn everything into a monetary exchange, even time use data, so that they can carry on trying to decide whether GDP is up or down. That's not a great way to go. And others have said to me, "Marilyn, why don't you just work on a system that includes all the unpaid work and the pregnancy and the birth and the lactation in the GDP?" There's a very important moral and ethical answer to that, and it is that I do not want the most valuable things on earth, the things I treasure, sitting in an accounting framework that thinks that war is great for growth. (Applause and cheers) So from now on, whenever you listen to the news, you're not going to go blank when they say GDP. You're going to think, "I know what they're talking about, and it's not good." (Laughter) I know that there are alternatives, and I'm going to spend my time correcting people, talking to them about this value base and talking to them about what the alternatives can be, because humankind and our planet need another way. Thank you. (Applause and cheers)

Does photographing a moment steal the experience from you?

{0: 'Erin Sullivan believes that the magic in this world can be communicated through images that blend art and science.'}

TED Salon Brightline Initiative

What is the most beautiful place you have ever been? And when you were there, did you take a picture of it? Here's a place that tops that list for me. This is Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park in Utah at sunrise. It's the traditional homeland of the Pueblo, Ute, Paiute and Navajo people, and when you are there, it is absolutely stunning. The sunrise illuminates the bottom of the arch orange, and then behind it you see the buttes and clouds and cliffs. But what you might not see from my photo here is the 30 people behind me who were also taking photos. And these are just the committed people, the sunrise people, right? So when you think about that, there must be hundreds if not thousands of photos of Mesa Arch taken every week. I've been sharing my photography on Instagram for years, and it started to become really interesting and funny, even, just how many similar photos of the same places I started to see online. And I was participating in it. So this made me wonder: Why are we taking photos in the first place? Sometimes, I visit a popular landmark — this one is Horseshoe Bend in Arizona — and I see all the people with their phones and cameras out who snap a photo, just to turn and get back in the car or walk back to the trailhead. And sometimes it seems like we are missing the point of going to this place to experience it for ourselves or to see it with our own eyes. When I'm behind the camera, I notice the smallest details: the layers of light in the mountains as the light fades at the end of the day; the shapes that nature so expertly makes, abstract and yet completely perfect. I could go on and on here musing about the intricacies of this planet and the way that it makes me feel. Photographing the beauty and complexity of this world for me is like making a portrait of someone that I love. And when I make a photograph, I have to think about what I want it to say. I have to ask myself what I want it to feel like. When you're communicating through an image, every creative choice matters. Sometimes, I plan to share my images, and other times, I take them just for myself. I currently host a video series on the future of the outdoors, and for one of the episodes we wanted to explore the relationship between photography and outdoor spaces. I learned about the research of Kristin Diehl and her colleagues at USC, who studied photo-taking's effect on enjoyment levels. They found that when we're behind the camera, when we're the ones taking the picture, we enjoy our experiences more, not less. But it wasn't true all the time. If the person took the photo solely with the intention of sharing it, there was no increase in enjoyment, because they didn't do it for themselves. So this points to an important distinction: photography can enhance your experience if it's done intentionally. The intention piece is what matters. As a photographer, I've really had to check myself on this. When does it help me to have my camera out, and when do I just need to put it away? On a trip to Alaska, I had the opportunity to photograph Alaskan brown bears. I was on a boat with four other photographers, and we were all having our minds blown at the same time in such close proximity to these animals. It's an emotional experience. Being eye to eye with these bears gave me a feeling of connection that transcends words, and having my camera with me in this case enhanced that. We were all creating independently but also all completely in the moment, both with nature and with each other. I so clearly remember capturing the water droplets and the motion as the bears swam and the cute cubs following their mothers. That group and I will have that experience together and these images to look back on time and time again, and photography is what enabled us to share this in the first place. Other times, I choose to leave the camera behind, and I think that choice ultimately improves both my experience and my work. I recently flew to the South Pacific island of Tonga to swim with humpback whales. I noticed myself feeling pressure and a certain obligation to take the camera with me, when sometimes I just wanted the pure experience itself. And the experience is seriously amazing. You're talking about being in the water with a curious baby animal the size of a station wagon while you are surrounded by particles that float around you like glitter, and the mom swims gracefully below you. There were times, obviously, when I did take my camera with me, and those were really amazing to capture as well. But the setup is pretty big. It's like this big box. This is what it looks like. And so this is between me and the whales, and at times that feels like a block between you and reality. Is there a difference when it's just your phone? Last year, I went to Uluru in Central Australia, which is this massive rock that towers over the desert. This is sacred land to Anangu, who are the Aboriginal people from this area and the traditional owners of the land. There are particular spots in Uluru that you cannot photograph professionally, because they are culturally sensitive, equivalent to sacred scripture to Anangu. So because of this, most of my photographs are from either far away, like this one, or from specific angles in the park. You could say that some of the most interesting and beautiful visuals in Uluru are located in these sensitive areas, but the request not to photograph them is an explicit and direct invitation to learn more about the land, its importance and its people. Isn't that what we should be doing anyway? So my visit to Uluru quickly became not about me but about connecting with the place. Ironically and unsurprisingly, I have found that presence and connection also happens to make for more compelling images. We can probably all point to social media as being a good place to share the images from our travels and from our lives. We not only share pieces of the world that we have seen but also parts of our day-to-day experiences. And if we're applying intentionality to the photos we take, then hopefully we're sharing intentionally too. For me, allowing people to see pieces of my story and my perspective online has reminded me that I'm not alone. It's helped me build support and community to do the same for others. Let me be clear: I am not trying to discourage you from taking photos. Even if thousands of people have been to whatever exact location and taken whatever exact photo, I encourage you to get out and create too. The world needs every voice and perspective, and yours is included. But what I'm trying to show you is that the phone or camera doesn't have to stay out all the time. What I'm trying to encourage you to do is to put it away, just for a moment — a moment for you. So let's go back to Mesa Arch, the way that the rock glows orange and the lovely layers of blue in the background. What if the next time you were somewhere amazing, you couldn't bring your camera or phone? What if you were not allowed to take any pictures at all? Would it feel like a limitation? Or would it feel like a relief? So what can we do? Well, the next time you feel the impulse to take out your camera or phone, or, in my case, once you realize you have already pulled it out — (Laughter) First: stop. Pause. Take a deep breath. Look around. What do you notice? Are you experiencing this moment with someone else? Remember that this moment only comes once. Photography can be part of a beautiful experience. Just don't let it be a block between you and reality. Be intentional, and don't lose a beautiful, irreplaceable memory, because you were too focused on getting the shot. Thank you. (Applause)

Why is cotton in everything?

TED-Ed

Centuries ago, the Inca developed ingenuous suits of armor that could flex with the blows of sharp spears and maces, protecting warriors from even the fiercest physical attacks. These hardy structures were made not from iron or steel, but rather something unexpectedly soft: cotton. These thickly woven, layered quilts of cotton could distribute the energy from a blow across a large surface area, shielding warriors without restricting their mobility. These seemingly contradictory features— strength and flexibility, softness and durability— have their roots in the intricate biology of the nearly invisible cotton fiber. These fibers begin life deep within a cotton flower, on the surface of a seed. As many as 16,000 fibers will festoon a single seed, bulging from the seed’s surface like miniature water balloons. Each cotton fiber, no matter how large it grows, is made of just one cell. That cell has multiple layers of cell wall. After a few days, the sides of the first layer, called the primary cell wall, stiffen, pushing cell growth in one direction and causing the fiber to elongate. The fiber elongates quickly for about 16 days. Then it begins the next stage: strengthening the cell wall. It does this by making more of the carbohydrate cellulose. Cellulose will make up 34% of the cell wall at this stage and swiftly increases. This new growth also reinforces the cell wall by going against the grain of the existing wall. The strengthened wall is more rigid, restricting further growth. That means if the fiber remodels its walls too early, it will be short, and ultimately make rough, weak fabrics. But if cell wall strengthening begins too late, the wall won’t be sturdy enough— producing fibers that are too weak to hold fabrics together well. In ideal growing conditions— with the right temperature, water, fertilizer, pest control, and light— a cotton fiber can grow up to 3.6 centimeters long with only a 25 micrometer width. Long, fine fibers can wrap around one another better than shorter, less fine fibers, which means those long, fine fibers make stronger threads that hang together better as fabric. Cotton with these qualities has diverse uses— from soft textiles to the U.S. dollar bill, which is 75% cotton. The next crucial stage of the cotton fiber’s growth begins as it thickens its secondary cell wall by depositing large quantities of cellulose into the secondary layer. Cellulose goes on to make up over 90% of the fiber’s weight. The more cellulose that gets deposited, the denser that secondary layer becomes— and this determines the strength of the final fiber. This stage is essential for developing long-lasting material for the likes of, say, a t-shirt. The garment’s capacity to withstand years of washing and wear is largely determined by the density of that secondary cell wall. On the other hand, its softness is strongly influenced by the length of the fiber, established with the remodeling of the primary wall layer. Finally, after about 50 days, the fiber is fully grown. The living matter within the cell dies off, leaving behind only the cellulose. The dried cotton seed pod, or boll, that surrounds the fibers cracks open, unveiling a burst of several thousand fiber cells in a fluffy mass. The thread-like fibers we see— thinner than a human hair— are the remains of those dense, dried out walls of cellulose. Tens of thousands of these fibers spun into yarn will go on to make everything from fabric, to coffee filters, diapers, and fishing nets. And with the help of modern science, cotton might soon be softer, stronger, and more resilient than ever as researchers investigate how to optimize its growth based on nutrients, weather conditions, and genetics.

What ocean microbes reveal about the changing climate

{0: 'Angelicque White investigates changes happening in the ocean through the very smallest lens.'}

TED@NAS

I'm a biological oceanographer. I have the absolute privilege of studying microbial lives in the Pacific Ocean. So we'll talk about microbes in a minute, but I first want to give you a sense of place, a sense of scale. The Pacific Ocean is our largest, deepest ocean basin. It covers 60 million square miles. If you took all the continents and you put them together in a little Pangaea 2.0, they'd fit snug inside the Pacific, with room to spare. It's a massive ecosystem, from the blues of the open ocean to the green of the continental margins. In this place, I get to study the base of the food web: plankton. Now, in my research, and really in the field of microbial oceanography as a whole, there's a theme that has emerged, and that theme is "change." These microbial ecosystems are changing in real and measurable ways, and it is not that hard to see it. Oceans cover 70 percent of our planet, so ocean change is planetary change, and it all starts with microbes. Now, I have two vignettes to share with you, and these are meant to be love stories to microbes. But I'll be honest that there's an aspect of it that's just a total bummer, and, beware, focus on the love. Right? That's where I'm coming from. So the first thing to know is that the forests of the sea are microbial. And what I mean by that is that, by and large, plants in the open ocean are microscopic, and they are much more abundant than we realize. So I'm going to show you some mug shots of these organisms that I've collected over the years. These are the lowest rungs of the ocean food web. These are tiny plants and animals that come in a variety of shapes and sizes and colors and metabolisms. There are hundreds of thousands in a single milliliter of seawater. You are definitely swimming with them when you're in the ocean. They produce oxygen, they consume CO2, and they form the base of the food web on which every other form of ocean life is reliant. Now, I've spent about 500 days of my scientific life at sea, and a lot more in front of a computer or in the lab, so I feel compelled to tell you some of their stories. Let's start in the Pacific Northwest. This place is green. It is beautiful. These are blooms of phytoplankton that you can see from space along the West Coast of the United States. It's an incredibly productive ecosystem. This is where you go to salmon fish, halibut fish, whale watch. It's a beautiful part of our country. And here, for 10 years, among other things, I studied the uplifting topic of harmful algal blooms. These are blooms of toxin-producing phytoplankton that can contaminate food webs and accumulate in shellfish and fish that are harvested for human consumption. We were trying to understand why they bloom, where they bloom, when they bloom, so we could manage these harvests and protect human health. Now, the problem is the ocean's a moving target and, much like some people in our lives, toxicity varies among the plankton. (Laughter) Alright? So, to get around these challenges, we combined satellite remote sensing with drones and gliders, regular sampling of the surf zone and a lot of time at sea in small boats off the Oregon coast. And I don't know if many of you have had the opportunity to do that, but it is not easy. [Even oceanographers get seasick] Here's some poor students. (Laughter) I've hidden their faces to protect their identities. (Laughter) This is a challenging place. So this is hard-won data I'm about to talk about, OK? (Laughter) So by combining all of our data with our collaborators, we had 20-year time series of toxins and phytoplankton cell counts. And that allowed us to understand the patterns of these blooms and to build models to predict them. And what we found was that the risk of harmful algal blooms was tightly linked to aspects of climate. Now when I say "climate," I don't mean weather day-to-day, I mean long-term changes. These oscillations that you may have heard of — the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, El Niño — they usually bring warm, dry winters to this region, but they also reduce the strength of the California Current, which runs from the north to the south along the Pacific Northwest, and they warm the coastal ocean. These are the reds you're seeing in this plot, warm anomalies, strong positive indices of the PDO. And when we have these changes in circulation and changes in temperature, the risk of harmful algal blooms is increased, but also salmon recruitment has decreased, and we see intrusions of invasive species like green crab. So these are ecological and economic impacts of climate. Now, if our models are right, the frequency and severity of these events are only going to get worse, right along with these warm anomalies. And, to illustrate that, 2014 was probably one of the worst harmful algal blooms in Oregon history. It was also the hottest year in the modern climate record at that time, that is until 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018. In fact, the five hottest years in the modern climate record have been the last five. That bodes really well for harmful algal blooms and poorly for ecosystem health. Now, you may not care about shellfish, but these changes impact economically important fisheries, like crab and salmon, and they can impact the health of marine mammals like whales. And that might matter a little bit more. That might resonate. So, there's your doomsday tale for the margins of the Pacific. Actually, these are really resilient ecosystems. They can absolutely bounce back if we give them a chance. The point is not to ignore the changes that we're seeing, which brings me to my second vignette. I have since moved to the most remote island chain on our planet, the Hawaiian Islands, where I'm the new lead of a program called the Hawaiian Ocean Time-series. And this is a program that for 31 years has made this monthly pilgrimage to a spot called Station ALOHA. It's in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in the center of this vast, swirling system of currents that we call the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. It's our largest ocean ecosystem. It's four times the size of the Amazon rain forest. It is warm, in a good way. It is blue water, it's absolutely the type of place you want to dive in and swim. You cannot do that off of research boats, because, you know, sharks. Google it. (Laughter) This is a beautiful place. And here, since October of 1988, generations of researchers have made these monthly pilgrimages. We study the biology, the chemistry, the physics of the open ocean. We've measured the temperature from the surface to the seafloor. We've tracked the currents, traced the waves. People have discovered new organisms here. People have created vast genomic libraries that have revolutionized what we think about the diversity of marine microorganisms. It's not just a place of discovery, but the important part about time series are that they provide us a sense of history, a sense of context. And in 30 years of data, it's allowed us to separate the seasonal change and see the emergence of humanity's fingerprints on the natural world. There's another iconic time series in Hawaii, and that is the Keeling Curve. I hope you have all seen this. This time series has documented the rapid increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's not just the number, it's the rate of increase. The rate of carbon dioxide increase in our atmosphere is unprecedented for our planet. And that has consequences for our oceans. In fact, oceans absorb about 90 percent of the heat that's generated by greenhouse gas emissions and about 40 percent of the carbon dioxide. And we have been able to measure that at Station ALOHA. Each one of these dots is a cruise. It represents people's lives over 30 years trying to make these measurements, and it took 30 years to be able to see this. CO2 rises in the atmosphere, CO2 rises in the ocean. That's the red line. A consequence of that is a fundamental change in the chemistry of seawater, a decline in pH — pH is on a log scale, here's your blue line. So we've seen a 30 percent decline in pH in the surface ocean in this time series. Now that has impacts for organisms that need to feed, build shells, that changes growth rates, metabolic interactions, and it doesn't just impact plankton — it impacts ecosystems as large as coral reefs. Now one of the things we've been able to show in this time series is this is just skimming the surface. Increases in CO2 and a decline in pH are measured over the top 500 meters of the water column. I really find that to be profound. This is genuinely one of the most remote places on our planet, and we've impacted the top 500 meters of the water column. Now, these two things — harmful algal blooms, ocean acidification — that's not all, of course. You've heard of the rest: sea-level rise, eutrophication, melting of the polar ice caps, expansion of oxygen minimum zones, pollution, loss of biodiversity, overfishing. It's hard for me to get a grad student — you can see this pitch is a difficult one, right? (Laughter) (Sighs) Again, I think these systems, these microbial ecosystems, are immensely resilient. We just cannot go too far down this path. I personally believe that sustained observation of our oceans and our planet is the moral imperative for our generation of scientists. We are bearing witness to the changes that are being inflicted upon our natural communities, and by doing so, it provides us the opportunity to adapt and enact global change, if we're willing. So the solutions to these problems are multitiered. It involves a portfolio of solutions, local change, but all the way up to voting for people who will protect our environment on a global scale. (Applause) Let's bring it back to the love. (Laughter) Microbes matter. These organisms are small, abundant, ancient, and they are critical to sustaining our population and our planet. Yet we are on track to double our carbon dioxide emissions in the next 50 years, so the analogy that I use for that is like we are eating like we're still in our 20s, assuming there will be no consequences — but I'm a woman in her 40s, I know there are consequences for my fuel consumption. Right? (Laughter) These oceans are very much alive. These ecosystems have not collapsed. Well, except for the Arctic, we can talk about that. (Laughter) But the sustained observations that I've shared with you today, the work of generations of scientists, are pointing us to take better care of our oceans and to nurture the microbes that sustain us. And on that note, I want to end with a quote from one of my heroes, Jane Lubchenco. And this slide is appropriate. Jane has said that the oceans are not too big to fail, nor are they too big to fix, but the oceans are too big to ignore. Thank you. (Applause)

How bones make blood

TED-Ed

At any given moment, trillions of cells are traveling through your blood vessels, sometimes circling the body in just one minute. Each of these cells has its origins deep in your bones. Bones might seem rock-solid, but they’re actually quite porous inside. Large and small blood vessels enter through these holes. And inside most of the large bones of your skeleton is a hollow core filled with soft bone marrow. Marrow contains fat and other supportive tissue, but its most essential elements are blood stem cells. These stem cells are constantly dividing. They can differentiate into red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets, and send about hundreds of billions of new blood cells into circulation every day. These new cells enter the bloodstream through holes in small capillaries in the marrow. Through the capillaries, they reach larger blood vessels and exit the bone. If there’s a problem with your blood, there’s a good chance it can be traced back to the bone marrow. Blood cancers often begin with genetic mutations in the stem cells. The stem cells themselves are not cancerous, but these mutations can interfere with the process of differentiation and result in malignant blood cells. So for patients with advanced blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma, the best chance for a cure is often an allogeneic bone marrow transplant, which replaces the patient’s bone marrow with a donor’s. Here’s how it works. First, blood stem cells are extracted from the donor. Most commonly, blood stem cells are filtered out of the donor’s bloodstream by circulating the blood through a machine that separates it into different components. In other cases, the marrow is extracted directly from a bone in the hip, the iliac crest, with a needle. Meanwhile, the recipient prepares for the transplant. High doses of chemotherapy or radiation kill the patient’s existing marrow, destroying both malignant cells and blood stem cells. This also weakens the immune system, making it less likely to attack the transplanted cells. Then the donor cells are infused into the patient’s body through a central line. They initially circulate in the recipient’s peripheral bloodstream, but molecules on the stem cells, called chemokines, act as homing devices and quickly traffic them back to the marrow. Over the course of a few weeks, they begin to multiply and start producing new, healthy blood cells. Just a small population of blood stem cells can regenerate a whole body’s worth of healthy marrow. A bone marrow transplant can also lead to something called graft-versus-tumor activity, when new immune cells generated by the donated marrow can wipe out cancer cells the recipient’s original immune system couldn’t. This phenomenon can help eradicate stubborn blood cancers. But bone marrow transplants also come with risks, including graft-versus-host disease. It happens when the immune system generated by the donor cells attacks the patient’s organs. This life-threatening condition occurs in about 30–50% of patients who receive donor cells from anyone other than an identical twin, particularly when the stem cells are collected from the blood as opposed to the bone marrow. Patients may take immunosuppressant medications or certain immune cells may be removed from the donated sample in order to reduce the risk of graft-versus-host disease. But even if a patient avoids graft-versus-host disease, their immune system may reject the donor cells. So it’s crucial to find the best match possible in the first place. Key regions of the genetic code determine how the immune system identifies foreign cells. If these regions are similar in the donor and the recipient, the recipient’s immune system is more likely to accept the donor cells. Because these genes are inherited, the best matches are often siblings. But many patients who need a bone marrow transplant don’t have a matched family member. Those patients turn to donor registries of volunteers willing to offer their bone marrow. All it takes to be on the registry is a cheek swab to test for a genetic match. And in many cases, the donation itself isn’t much more complicated than giving blood. It’s a way to save someone’s life with a resource that’s completely renewable.

How the magic of kindness helped me survive the Holocaust

{0: 'Werner Reich travels around the world to speak about his life story and the importance of taking care of each other.'}

TEDxMidAtlantic

In the rather delightful book "The Little Prince," there is a quotation, which says "It's only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible." And while the author wrote these words sitting in a comfortable chair, somewhere in the United States, I learned this very same lesson miles away in a filthy, dirty barrack in an extermination camp in Poland. It isn't the value or the size of a gift that truly matters, it is how you hold it in your heart. When I was six years old, my mother, my father, my sister and myself left Jew-hating Germany, and we went to Yugoslavia. And we were in Yugoslavia for seven happy years, and then Germany invaded Yugoslavia and we suddenly were persecuted again, and I had to go into hiding. And I was hiding for roughly two years with a couple who had worked for the resistance movement. And I developed films, and I made enlargements. One day, when I was 15 years old, I was arrested by the gestapo and beaten up, and, for two months, dragged through various prisons, and eventually, I ended up in a 150-year-old fortress in Czechoslovakia, which the Nazis had converted into a concentration camp. I was there for 10 months. I laid railroad tracks, I exterminated vermin, I made baskets, and after 10 months, about 2,000 of us were loaded into cattle cars, the doors were closed, and we were shipped east. For three days, we traveled like that, and when we were unloaded, we were smelling of urine and of feces, and we found ourselves in the Auschwitz extermination camp. A camp that, by that time, had murdered already over one million people and sent them through the chimney into the sky. We arrived, we were stripped of all of our properties, whatever we had, and were given striped uniforms, were given a tattoo on our arms, and we also were given the message that we would be there for exactly six months. And after that, we would leave the camp. Through the chimney. We were assigned to different barracks. And the barracks were filled with wooden bunks, six people on each level, three people sleeping in one direction and three in the other direction, so whichever way you slept, you always had a pair of feet in your face. The man next to me was an extremely nice gentleman, and he introduced himself as Mr. Herbert Levine. Mr. Levine was kind and polite to me. One day, when I came back from a work assignment, I climbed up, I was at the top level of the three-tier bunk, and there was Mr. Levine with a deck of cards. And he was shuffling these cards. And I couldn't understand it, you know, having a deck of cards in Auschwitz was like finding a gorilla in your bathroom. (Laughter) You know, "What is he doing there?" And then Mr. Levine turned to me and offered me the deck, and said, "Pick a card." So I picked a card, and he performed a card trick for me. He performed a miracle. And I'd never seen a card trick before, and the man who performed it was sitting right there. And then Mr. Levine did the unthinkable. He actually explained the trick to me. And the words got burned into my brain. And I remembered every single word, and from that day on, I practiced that trick every day. Although I didn't have any cards. I just kept on practicing. About three weeks later, the entire camp, with the exception of a couple hundred of us, were sent to the gas chambers. I was sent to another camp where I worked in the stables, and then, in January 1945, when the Russians advanced, 60,000 of us were sent on a death march. And we walked for three days, on and off, and in the middle of the winter, and by the time we arrived at a railroad siding, out of the 60,000 people, 15,000 had died. And the rest of us were loaded into open railroad cars, and for four days, shipped all the way from Poland down to Austria. And we found ourselves in a death camp, in a concentration camp called Mauthausen, which again was built like a fortress. And at that point, the SS abandoned us, and there was no food there, and there were thousands and thousands of bodies there. I slept for three days next to a dead man, just to get his ration of a tablespoon of moldy bread. And two days before the end of the war, May 5, we were liberated by American forces. At that time, I was 17 years old, and I weighed 64 pounds. And I hitchhiked back to Yugoslavia. And when I came back to Yugoslavia, there was communism there, there was no family there and there were no friends there. I stayed there for two years, and after two years, I managed to escape to England. And when I came to England, I couldn't speak English, I had no education, I had no skills. I started working, and about a year after I arrived in England, I bought myself a deck of cards. And for the very first time, I actually performed the trick that was shown to me in Auschwitz on top of a bunk bed. And it worked. It worked beautifully. And I showed it to some friends of mine, and they loved it. And I went to a magic store, and I bought some magic tricks, and I showed them to my friends, and I bought some more magic tricks and I showed it to them. And then I bought some magic books, and I bought some more magic books. There's a very, very thin line between a hobby and insanity. (Laughter) Anyway, I got married, and I came to the United States, and one of the first jobs that I had demanded from me to speak to small groups of people. And I managed it, I was very good at it. And then, 25 years ago, I retired. And I started speaking in schools. And the only reason why I could speak in schools is because a very friendly man showed a rather scared kid a card trick in a concentration camp. This man who showed it to me, Mr. Levine, had been a professional magician. He worked in Germany, and when he came to Auschwitz, the SS knew who he was, so they gave him some cards, they gave him a piece of string, they gave him some dice, and he performed for them. And then he also taught some of them. He survived the war, but his wife and his son died. He came to the United States and performed in various venues, but I never met him again. But the trick that he showed me stayed with me and enabled me to go around schools and try to make this world just a little bit better. So if you ever know somebody who needs help, if you know somebody who is scared, be kind to them. Give them advice, give them a hug, teach them a card trick. Whatever you are going to do, it's going to be hope for them. And if you do it at the right time, it will enter their heart, and it will be with them wherever they go, forever. Thank you. (Applause)

Licking bees and pulping trees: The reign of a wasp queen

TED-Ed

As the April sun rises on a pile of firewood, something royal stirs inside. This wasp queen is one of thousands who mated in late autumn and hibernated through the winter. Now she emerges into the spring air to begin her reign. Most of her sisters weren’t so lucky. While hibernating in compost piles and underground burrows, many sleeping queens were eaten by spiders. Warm winters caused by climate change led other queens to emerge early, only to find there was no available food. And some queens that survived the winter fell victim to the threats of spring, such as carnivorous plants, birds, and manmade pesticides. Our queen is the lone survivor of her old hive, and now, she must become the foundress of a new one. But first, breakfast. The queen heads for a citrus grove full of honeybee hives. The bees can be dangerous if provoked, but right now they’re paralyzed by the morning cold. Their hairy bodies are dripping with sugar water from an earlier feeding, and the resourceful queen licks them for a morning snack. Newly energized, our queen searches for a safe nesting area. This tree hollow, safe from rain, wind, and predators, is ideal. She chews the surrounding wood and plant fibers to make a paper-like pulp. Then she builds around 50 brood cells that comprise the beginning of her nest. Using sperm stored from last fall, the queen lays a fertilized egg into each cell, producing as many as 12 in 20 minutes. Within a week, these will hatch into female larva. But until then, the queen must hunt down smaller insects to feed her brood, all while expanding the hive, laying eggs, and defending against intruders. Fortunately, our queen is well prepared. Unlike bees, wasps can sting as many times as they need to. With such a busy schedule, the queen barely has time to feed herself. Luckily, she doesn’t have to. When she feeds an insect to her grubs, they digest the bug into a sugary substance that sustains their mother. By the end of July, these first larva have matured into adult workers, ready to take on foraging, building, and defense. The queen can now lay eggs full-time, sustaining herself on her worker’s spoils and their unfertilized eggs. Although each worker only lives for roughly 3 weeks, the queen’s continuous egg-laying swells their ranks. In just one summer, the nest reaches the size of a basketball, supporting thousands of workers. Such a large population needs to eat, and the nearby garden provides a veritable buffet. As the swarm descends, alarmed humans try to swat them. They even fight back with pesticides that purposefully poison wasps, and inadvertently impact a wide-range of local wildlife. But the wasps are actually vital to this ecosystem. Sitting at the top of the local invertebrate food chain, these insects keep spiders, mites, and centipedes, in check. Wasps consume crop-eating insects, making them particularly helpful for farms and gardens. They even pollinate fruits and vegetables, and help winemakers by biting into their grapes and jump-starting fermentation. This feast continues until autumn, when the foundress changes course. She begins grooming some eggs into a new generation of queens, while also laying unfertilized eggs that will mature into reproductive males called drones. This new crop of queens and males requires more food. But with summer over, the usual sources run dry, and the foraging wasps start taking more aggressive risks. By September, the hive’s organization deteriorates. Hungry workers no longer clean the nest and various scavengers move in. Just when it seems the hive can no longer sustain itself, the fertile queens and their drones depart in a massive swarm. As the days grow colder, the workers starve, and our queen reaches the end of her lifespan. But above, a swarm of reproductive wasps has successfully mated. The males die off shortly after, but the newly fertilized queens are ready to find shelter for their long sleep. And this woodpile looks like the perfect place to spend the winter.

A new type of medicine, custom-made with tiny proteins

{0: 'TED Fellow Christopher Bahl uses computational protein design -- building never-before-seen-in-nature proteins with the aid of computers -- to develop new medicines for use in combating infectious diseases.'}

TED2019

I'm a protein designer. And I'd like to discuss a new type of medicine. It's made from a molecule called a constrained peptide. There are only a few constrained peptide drugs available today, but there are a lot that will hit the market in the coming decade. Let's explore what these new medicines are made of, how they're different and what's causing this incoming tidal wave of new and exciting medicines. Constrained peptides are very small proteins. They've got extra chemical bonds that constrain the shape of the molecule, and this makes them incredibly stable as well as highly potent. They're naturally occurring, our bodies actually produce a few of these that help us to combat bacterial, fungal and viral infections. And animals like snakes and scorpions use constrained peptides in their venom. Drugs that are made of protein are called biologic drugs. So this includes constrained peptides, as well as medicines like insulin or antibody drugs like Humira or Enbrel. And in general, biologics are great, because they avoid several ways that drugs can cause side effects. First, protein. It's a totally natural, nontoxic material in our bodies. Our cells produce tens of thousands of different proteins, and basically, all of our food has protein in it. And second, sometimes drugs interact with molecules in your body that you don't want them to. Compared to small molecule drugs, and by this I mean regular drugs, like aspirin, biologics are quite large. Molecules interact when they adopt shapes that fit together perfectly. Much like a lock and key. Well, a larger key has more grooves, so it's more likely to fit into a single lock. But most biologics also have a flaw. They're fragile. So they're usually administered by injection, because our stomach acid would destroy the medicine if we tried to swallow it. Constrained peptides are the opposite. They're really durable, like regular drugs. So it's possible to administer them using pills, inhalers, ointments. This is what makes constrained peptides so desirable for drug development. They combine some of the best features of small-molecule and biologic drugs into one. But unfortunately, it's incredibly difficult to reengineer the constrained peptides that we find in nature to become new drugs. So this is where I come in. Creating a new drug is a lot like crafting a key to fit a particular lock. We need to get the shape just right. But if we change the shape of a constrained peptide by too much, those extra chemical bonds are unable to form and the whole molecule falls apart. So we needed to figure out how to gain control over their shape. I was part of a collaborative scientific effort that spanned a dozen institutions across three continents that came together and solved this problem. We took a radically different approach from previous efforts. Instead of making changes to the constrained peptides that we find in nature, we figured out how to build new ones totally from scratch. To help us do this, we developed freely available open-source peptide-design software that anyone can use to do this, too. To test our method out, we generated a series of constrained peptides that have a wide variety of different shapes. Many of these had never been seen in nature before. Then we went into the laboratory and produced these peptides. Next, we determined their molecular structures, using experiments. When we compared our designed models with the real molecular structures, we found that our software can position individual atoms with an accuracy that's at the limit of what's possible to measure. Three years ago, this couldn't be done. But today, we have the ability to create designer peptides with shapes that are custom-tailored for drug development. So where is this technology taking us? Well, recently, my colleagues and I designed constrained peptides that neutralize influenza virus, protect against botulism poisoning and block cancer cells from growing. Some of these new drugs have been tested in preclinical trials with laboratory animals. And so far, they're all safe and highly effective. Constrained peptide design is a cutting-edge technology, and the drug development pipeline is slow and cautious. So we're still three to five years out from human trials. But during that time, more constrained peptide drugs are going to be entering the drug development pipeline. And ultimately, I believe that designed peptide drugs are going to enable us all to break free from the constraints of our diseases. Thank you. (Applause)

How virtual reality turns students into scientists

{0: 'Jessica Ochoa Hendrix builds award-winning educational games and experiences for K-12 learners.'}

TED Residency

How did you discover your passion or find your career? Were you exposed to it? Or was it trial and error? As child rights advocate Marian Wright Edelman said, "You can't be what you can't see." Fortunately, we now live in a time when emerging technologies may help us to solve this problem. For the past two years, I've been developing an extended reality program that enables middle school students from across the country to take on the role of a marine biologist — even if they've never seen the ocean. As one seventh grader who recently completed our program said, "I could see myself as a scientist, because I enjoyed this game." This feedback really excited me, because too few students do see themselves as scientists. A 2014 study showed that 57 percent of eighth- and ninth-grade students said, "Science isn't me." Coincidentally, also in 2014, I met Mandë Holford, a marine biochemist, and Lindsay Portnoy, an educational psychologist. The three of us shared a passion for getting students excited by and comfortable with science. We thought about how we could give children the most realistic experience of a scientific career. We discussed the research; it showed that students felt comfortable taking risks when playing games. So the three of us started an educational games company to bring science to life. Virtual reality seemed like a low-cost way of increasing access. In addition, academic research has shown that virtual reality may lead to increases in learning retention. This was perfect for us, as we wanted to be in schools so that we could reach the most number of students possible, particularly students who have been underrepresented in science. So, with funding from the National Science Foundation, we began developing our extended reality program that combined virtual reality with personalized digital journaling. We worked with teachers while developing it to ensure that it would fit seamlessly into existing curricula and empower teachers to use cutting-edge technology in their classroom. We designed the virtual reality for Google Cardboard, which requires only a smartphone and a 10 dollar VR viewer made of cardboard. With this inexpensive headset, students are transported to an underwater expedition. Students use their digital journal to write down their notes, to answer questions, to construct models and to develop hypotheses. Students then go to the virtual world to test their hypotheses and see if they're accurate, much as scientists go to the field in their careers. When students return to their digital journal, they share their observations, claims, reasoning and evidence. The students' written answers and virtual interactions are all updated live in an educator assessment dashboard, so that teachers can follow their progress and support them as needed. To give you a better sense, I'm going to show you a little bit of what students see. This is the virtual reality when they're underwater observing the flora and fauna. This is the digital journal where they're constructing their models based on this abiotic data to show what they expect to see. Here, they're supporting that with qualitative statements. And this is the educator dashboard that shows progress and enables [teachers] to see the students' answers as they go. When we were creating BioDive, again, we really wanted to focus on access, so we designed it to require only one phone for every four students. We also knew how collaborative science work is, so we constructed the experience to only be solved through collaborative teamwork, as each student is an expert in a different geographic location. Given that these children's brains are still developing, we limited each experience to last a maximum of two minutes. And finally, because we know the importance of repeated exposure for internalizing knowledge, we constructed BioDive to take place over five class periods. We started piloting BioDive in 2017 in 20 schools in New York and New Jersey. We wanted to see students as they were using this new technology. In 2019, now, we are now piloting in 26 states. What we have heard from teachers who have taught our program: "It was a nice way to show ocean dynamics without the luxury of actually being there since we are in Ohio." (Laughter) "It's pretty mind-blowing." "The students were totally engaged." But what really gives us hope is what we're hearing from students. "I liked how it felt like I was there." "It's interactive and a fun way to learn." "It really gave me realistic examples of how these organisms appear." "I could see myself as a scientist because it seems really fun." Our feedback wasn't always so positive. When we began developing, we started off by asking students what they liked, what they didn't like and what they found confusing. Eventually we began asking what they wished they could do. Their feedback gave us concrete items to build in to be sure that we were including student voices in what we were designing. Overall, what we have learned is that this is the beginning of a new platform for giving students both voice and ownership in deciding how they want to have impact in their careers. We focused on science, because we know we need scientists to help us solve our current and future challenges. But virtual reality could support students in any area. How could we support students in exploring all of their desires with these eye-opening experiences and chances to learn from primary sources? Could we create VR for inexpensive headsets that lets them be immersed in oral literature or in critical moments of human history? Extended reality has the potential to change the trajectory of our children's lives and lead them to careers they never imagined by giving them the chance to see what they can be. Thank you. (Applause)

How humans and AI can work together to create better businesses

{0: "BCG's Sylvain Duranton thinks that only human input can save us from a high-tech bureaucracy."}

TED@BCG Mumbai

Let me share a paradox. For the last 10 years, many companies have been trying to become less bureaucratic, to have fewer central rules and procedures, more autonomy for their local teams to be more agile. And now they are pushing artificial intelligence, AI, unaware that cool technology might make them more bureaucratic than ever. Why? Because AI operates just like bureaucracies. The essence of bureaucracy is to favor rules and procedures over human judgment. And AI decides solely based on rules. Many rules inferred from past data but only rules. And if human judgment is not kept in the loop, AI will bring a terrifying form of new bureaucracy — I call it "algocracy" — where AI will take more and more critical decisions by the rules outside of any human control. Is there a real risk? Yes. I'm leading a team of 800 AI specialists. We have deployed over 100 customized AI solutions for large companies around the world. And I see too many corporate executives behaving like bureaucrats from the past. They want to take costly, old-fashioned humans out of the loop and rely only upon AI to take decisions. I call this the "human-zero mindset." And why is it so tempting? Because the other route, "Human plus AI," is long, costly and difficult. Business teams, tech teams, data-science teams have to iterate for months to craft exactly how humans and AI can best work together. Long, costly and difficult. But the reward is huge. A recent survey from BCG and MIT shows that 18 percent of companies in the world are pioneering AI, making money with it. Those companies focus 80 percent of their AI initiatives on effectiveness and growth, taking better decisions — not replacing humans with AI to save costs. Why is it important to keep humans in the loop? Simply because, left alone, AI can do very dumb things. Sometimes with no consequences, like in this tweet. "Dear Amazon, I bought a toilet seat. Necessity, not desire. I do not collect them, I'm not a toilet-seat addict. No matter how temptingly you email me, I am not going to think, 'Oh, go on, then, one more toilet seat, I'll treat myself.' " (Laughter) Sometimes, with more consequence, like in this other tweet. "Had the same situation with my mother's burial urn." (Laughter) "For months after her death, I got messages from Amazon, saying, 'If you liked that ...' " (Laughter) Sometimes with worse consequences. Take an AI engine rejecting a student application for university. Why? Because it has "learned," on past data, characteristics of students that will pass and fail. Some are obvious, like GPAs. But if, in the past, all students from a given postal code have failed, it is very likely that AI will make this a rule and will reject every student with this postal code, not giving anyone the opportunity to prove the rule wrong. And no one can check all the rules, because advanced AI is constantly learning. And if humans are kept out of the room, there comes the algocratic nightmare. Who is accountable for rejecting the student? No one, AI did. Is it fair? Yes. The same set of objective rules has been applied to everyone. Could we reconsider for this bright kid with the wrong postal code? No, algos don't change their mind. We have a choice here. Carry on with algocracy or decide to go to "Human plus AI." And to do this, we need to stop thinking tech first, and we need to start applying the secret formula. To deploy "Human plus AI," 10 percent of the effort is to code algos; 20 percent to build tech around the algos, collecting data, building UI, integrating into legacy systems; But 70 percent, the bulk of the effort, is about weaving together AI with people and processes to maximize real outcome. AI fails when cutting short on the 70 percent. The price tag for that can be small, wasting many, many millions of dollars on useless technology. Anyone cares? Or real tragedies: 346 casualties in the recent crashes of two B-737 aircrafts when pilots could not interact properly with a computerized command system. For a successful 70 percent, the first step is to make sure that algos are coded by data scientists and domain experts together. Take health care for example. One of our teams worked on a new drug with a slight problem. When taking their first dose, some patients, very few, have heart attacks. So, all patients, when taking their first dose, have to spend one day in hospital, for monitoring, just in case. Our objective was to identify patients who were at zero risk of heart attacks, who could skip the day in hospital. We used AI to analyze data from clinical trials, to correlate ECG signal, blood composition, biomarkers, with the risk of heart attack. In one month, our model could flag 62 percent of patients at zero risk. They could skip the day in hospital. Would you be comfortable staying at home for your first dose if the algo said so? (Laughter) Doctors were not. What if we had false negatives, meaning people who are told by AI they can stay at home, and die? (Laughter) There started our 70 percent. We worked with a team of doctors to check the medical logic of each variable in our model. For instance, we were using the concentration of a liver enzyme as a predictor, for which the medical logic was not obvious. The statistical signal was quite strong. But what if it was a bias in our sample? That predictor was taken out of the model. We also took out predictors for which experts told us they cannot be rigorously measured by doctors in real life. After four months, we had a model and a medical protocol. They both got approved my medical authorities in the US last spring, resulting in far less stress for half of the patients and better quality of life. And an expected upside on sales over 100 million for that drug. Seventy percent weaving AI with team and processes also means building powerful interfaces for humans and AI to solve the most difficult problems together. Once, we got challenged by a fashion retailer. "We have the best buyers in the world. Could you build an AI engine that would beat them at forecasting sales? At telling how many high-end, light-green, men XL shirts we need to buy for next year? At predicting better what will sell or not than our designers." Our team trained a model in a few weeks, on past sales data, and the competition was organized with human buyers. Result? AI wins, reducing forecasting errors by 25 percent. Human-zero champions could have tried to implement this initial model and create a fight with all human buyers. Have fun. But we knew that human buyers had insights on fashion trends that could not be found in past data. There started our 70 percent. We went for a second test, where human buyers were reviewing quantities suggested by AI and could correct them if needed. Result? Humans using AI ... lose. Seventy-five percent of the corrections made by a human were reducing accuracy. Was it time to get rid of human buyers? No. It was time to recreate a model where humans would not try to guess when AI is wrong, but where AI would take real input from human buyers. We fully rebuilt the model and went away from our initial interface, which was, more or less, "Hey, human! This is what I forecast, correct whatever you want," and moved to a much richer one, more like, "Hey, humans! I don't know the trends for next year. Could you share with me your top creative bets?" "Hey, humans! Could you help me quantify those few big items? I cannot find any good comparables in the past for them." Result? "Human plus AI" wins, reducing forecast errors by 50 percent. It took one year to finalize the tool. Long, costly and difficult. But profits and benefits were in excess of 100 million of savings per year for that retailer. Seventy percent on very sensitive topics also means human have to decide what is right or wrong and define rules for what AI can do or not, like setting caps on prices to prevent pricing engines [from charging] outrageously high prices to uneducated customers who would accept them. Only humans can define those boundaries — there is no way AI can find them in past data. Some situations are in the gray zone. We worked with a health insurer. He developed an AI engine to identify, among his clients, people who are just about to go to hospital to sell them premium services. And the problem is, some prospects were called by the commercial team while they did not know yet they would have to go to hospital very soon. You are the CEO of this company. Do you stop that program? Not an easy question. And to tackle this question, some companies are building teams, defining ethical rules and standards to help business and tech teams set limits between personalization and manipulation, customization of offers and discrimination, targeting and intrusion. I am convinced that in every company, applying AI where it really matters has massive payback. Business leaders need to be bold and select a few topics, and for each of them, mobilize 10, 20, 30 people from their best teams — tech, AI, data science, ethics — and go through the full 10-, 20-, 70-percent cycle of "Human plus AI," if they want to land AI effectively in their teams and processes. There is no other way. Citizens in developed economies already fear algocracy. Seven thousand were interviewed in a recent survey. More than 75 percent expressed real concerns on the impact of AI on the workforce, on privacy, on the risk of a dehumanized society. Pushing algocracy creates a real risk of severe backlash against AI within companies or in society at large. "Human plus AI" is our only option to bring the benefits of AI to the real world. And in the end, winning organizations will invest in human knowledge, not just AI and data. Recruiting, training, rewarding human experts. Data is said to be the new oil, but believe me, human knowledge will make the difference, because it is the only derrick available to pump the oil hidden in the data. Thank you. (Applause)

The city of walls: Constantinople

TED-Ed

The most important walls in western history aren't even in the West. They surround the modern city of Istanbul, Constantinople as the Romans called it. And for a thousand years, the fate of Europe depended on them. Constantinople was designed to be the center of the world. When the frontiers of the Roman Empire began to crumble in the 4th Century, the capital was moved to the cultured, wealthy, and still stable East. There, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, the hub of the major trade routes of the ancient world, the Emperor Constantine built his city. This was the city of libraries and universities, 20 times the size of London or Paris at the time. It contained the priceless knowledge of the classical world which was fading in the West. To protect this masterpiece from its many enemies, Constantine's successors built the finest defensive fortifications ever made. The first line of protection was a moat 60 feet wide and 22 feet deep, stretching all four miles from coast to coast. Pipes from inside the city could fill it at the first sight of the enemy, and a short wall protected archers who could fire at the soaked soldiers trying to swim across. Those who were lucky enough to clear the moat had to contend with an unceasing barrage from the 27 foot outer wall above. Arrows, spears, or far worse, Greek fire — an ancient form of napalm that would ignite on contact and couldn't be extinguished by water — would rain down on them. Squads of Roman defenders would carry portable flame throwers, spraying anyone trying to climb out of the moat. The terrified victims would leap back, only to find that they still burned underwater. At times, the Romans would also mount siphons onto the ramparts, and launch clay pots full of Greek fire from catapults at an invading army. The front lines would turn into an inferno, making it appear as if the earth itself was on fire. If, by some miracle, the outer wall was compromised, attackers would be faced with the final defense: the great inner wall. These walls were wide enough to have four men ride side by side, allowing troops to be rushed wherever they were needed. Attilla the Hun, destroyer of civilizations, who named himself the Scourge of God, took one look at them and turned around. The Avars battled the walls uselessly til their catapults ran out of rocks. The Turks tried to tunnel under them, but found the foundations too solid. The Arabs tried to starve the city into submission, but ran out of food themselves and had to resort to cannibalism. It took the guns of the modern world to finally bring them down. In 1453, the Turks brought their super weapon: a monster cannon that could fire a 15 hundred pound stone ball over a mile. Together with more than a hundred smaller guns, they kept up a steady bombardment day and night. A section of the old walls collapsed, but even in their death throes they proved formidable. The rubble absorbed the shock of the cannonballs better than the solid wall. It took a month and a half of continuous blasting to finally open a breach. The last Roman Emperor, Constantine the 11th, drew his sword and jumped into the gap to stop the onrushing horde, disappearing into legend. The city was taken, and the Roman Empire finally disappeared. But those broken walls had one last gift. As the survivors fled the doomed city, they brought with them their precious books and their ancient traditions. They traveled west to Italy, reintroduced the Greek language and learning to western Europe, and ignited the Renaissance. Thanks to Constantinople's walls, that pile of brick and marble that guarded them for so long, we still have our classical past.

Parasitic worms hold back human progress. Here's how we can end them

{0: 'Ellen Agler is passionate about improving the health and well-being of the most vulnerable members of our human family.'}

TED2019

These are worms. Not the kind of worms you find crawling in the dirt. These are parasitic roundworms. They live inside a human being's intestines. Each of these worms can grow up to 12 inches long, and there are 200 of them in this jar for a reason, because that is the number you might typically find in the belly of a single infected child. Worm infections have been around for thousands of years. They have influenced the outcomes of wars, and they have long stymied human health. Roundworm, hookworm, whipworm, schistosomiasis: infections from these species cause pain and discomfort. They steal nutrients and zap energy. They stunt both physical and cognitive growth. In most cases, these worms may not be fatal, but paradoxically, that's part of the problem. It means that many countries simply have not been able to prioritize their treatment. There's a social cost to that: children without access to deworming treatments have lower rates of school attendance. Adults who grow up without deworming medicine are less productive and have lower lifelong earnings. What intestinal worms do, really, is limit potential. Currently, there are 1.7 billion people in the world still at risk for worms. Six hundred million of them are in Africa. For every dollar invested in worm control and prevention, African countries see up to 42 dollars return in economic benefits. The good news is that deworming treatment is extremely easy. One to three pills given once or twice a year is enough to take a child from 200 worms to zero and to protect them from infection going forward. In communities where there's a high prevalence of worms, treatment can be done right at school. This process is extremely simple and fast. In Ethiopia, for example, this is done for 20 million children in a matter of weeks. The world has come a long way on getting deworming medicines to the people who need them, and African governments want to gain more traction. It's now time to match their ambition. The END Fund will work with governments to create a plan that drastically reduces the burden of disease caused by worms. They’ll work together to ensure prevention and treatment programs can serve everyone. The END Fund has an audacious idea: they believe we are the generation to end sickness from worm infections forever. The key is not simply to build new programs from scratch, but to amplify the efforts of the programs that are already taking shape. By examining the problem of how worms transmit disease, the END Fund has identified five key areas where they can drive improvement. Number one: lower the cost of treatment. Many pharmaceutical companies offer deworming medicines for free, so the END Fund works with the right partners to coordinate their delivery. They will continue to secure drug donations for additional at-risk populations. They can now do it for less than 25 cents per child per year. Number two: focus on prevention. The END Fund calls in the right partners to educate communities on sanitation and hygiene in order to change behaviors around things like hand-washing and latrine use, ensuring people are not continually reinfected. Number three: invest in innovation. The END Fund has contributed to deworming by introducing innovative techniques that effectively target and treat people. They will test new delivery methods, target the environments where parasites thrive and influence behavior change. Number four: monitor and evaluate. The END Fund collects detailed data on all programs on a regular basis to help them get better and better over time. Number five: increase local ownership. At all stages of the process, the END Fund works with government and local stakeholders to encourage cofinancing commitments that support deworming efforts. They also worked with African philanthropists and corporate leaders to partner on these efforts. There's an incredible opportunity to work together to create a new system for disease elimination for the next decade and beyond. Part of the money the END Fund needs will go directly toward delivering deworming treatments to communities that need it and part will go towards facilitating the handover of programs to local ownership. Together, these efforts will create prevention and treatment programs that are sustainable far into the future. If this plan gets fully funded for the next six years, tens of millions of people will receive deworming treatment. With that, countries will be interrupting the cycle of disease transmission at all levels, and most importantly, people will experience significant improvements in their mental, physical and social health. Just imagine the potential that will be gained when people can stop worrying about these and can put their energy into things like these. (Students' overlapping voices) (Clapping and singing) (Cheering)

One is one... or is it?

TED-Ed

Which is correct: "A dozen eggs is?" Or "A dozen eggs are?" I remember being in elementary school, and my teachers making a big deal about the unit. And I never really got that, until one day, I was in the grocery store, and I wanted to buy an apple, but I couldn't buy one apple. I had to buy a whole bag of apples. So I did. I bought one bag of apples, I took it home, I took one apple out of the bag, and I cut it up. And then I ate one slice. One bag, one apple, one slice. Which of these is the real "one"? Well, they all are of course, and that's what my elementary teachers were trying to tell me. Because this is the important idea behind whole number place value, decimal place value and fractions. Our whole number system depends on being able to change what we count as "one". Our whole number system depends on being able to change units. There are two ways to change units. We can compose, and we can partition. When we compose units, we take a bunch of things, we put them together to make a bigger thing, like a dozen eggs. We take 12 eggs, put them together to make a group, and we call that group a dozen. A dozen eggs is a composed unit. Other examples of composed units include a deck of cards, a pair of shoes, a jazz quartet and of course, Barbie and Ken make a couple. But think about a loaf of bread. That's not a composed unit, because we don't get a bunch of slices from a bunch of different bakeries and put them together to make a loaf. No, we start with a loaf of bread and we cut it into smaller pieces called slices, so each slice of bread is a partitioned unit. Other examples of partitioned units include a square of a chocolate bar, a section of an orange and a slice of pizza. The important thing about units is that once we've made a new unit, we can treat it just like we did the old unit. We can compose composed units, and we can partition partitioned units. Think about toaster pastries. They come in packs of two, and then those packs get put together in sets of four to make a box. So when I buy one box of toaster pastries, am I buying one thing, four things, or eight things? It depends on the unit. One box, four packs, eight pastries. And when I share a slice of pizza with a friend, we have to cut "it" into two smaller pieces. So a box of toaster pastries is composed of composed units, and when I split a slice of pizza, I'm partitioning a partitioned unit. But what does that have to do with math? In math, everything is certain. Two plus two equals four, and one is just one. But that's not really right. One isn't always one. Here's why: we start counting at one, and we count up to nine: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and then we get to 10, and in order to write 10, we write a one and a zero. That one means that we have one group, and the zero helps us remember that it means one group, not one thing. But 10, just like one, just like a dozen eggs, just like an egg, 10 is a unit. And 10 tens make 100. So when I think about 100, it's like the box of toaster pastries. Is 100 one thing, 10 things or 100 things? And that depends on what "one" is, it depends on what the unit is. So think about all the times in math when you write the number one. No matter what place that one is in, no matter how many things that one represents, one is.

The Chasm

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

TED-Ed

Ethic, Hedge, and Octavia stand on the edge of a bottomless ravine. It’s the only thing between them and the tower that houses the second of three powerful artifacts. They’ve got a brief window of time to get across before the guards return. With Hedge’s fuel gauge on empty he won’t be able to fly Ethic across, so the only option is to make a bridge. Fortunately, the floating stacks of stones nearby are bridge components— invented by Octavia herself— called hover-blocks. Activate a pile with a burst of energy, and they’ll self-assemble to span the ravine as Ethic walks across. But there is, of course, a catch. The hover-blocks are only stable when they’re perfectly palindromic. Meaning they have to form a sequence that’s the same when viewed forwards and backwards. The stacks start in random orders, but will always put themselves into a palindromic configuration if they can. If they get to a point where a palindrome isn’t possible, the bridge will collapse, and whoever’s on it will fall into the ravine. Let’s look at an example. This stack would make itself stable. First the A blocks hold themselves in place. Then the B’s. And finally the C would nestle right between the B’s. However, suppose there was one more A. First two A blocks form up, then two B’s, but now the remaining C and A have nowhere to go, so the whole thing falls apart. The Node of Power enables Hedge to energize a single stack of blocks. What instructions can Ethic give Hedge to allow him to efficiently find and power a stable palindromic stack? Pause now to figure it out for yourself. Examples of palindromes include ANNA, RACECAR, and MADAM IM ADAM. Counting the number of times a given letter appears in a palindrome will reveal a helpful pattern. Pause now to figure it out for yourself. Let’s first look at a naïve solution to this problem. A naïve solution is a simple, brute-force approach that isn’t optimized— but will get the job done. Naïve solutions are helpful ways to analyze problems, and work as stepping stones to better solutions. In this case, a naïve solution is to approach a pile of blocks, try all the arrangements, and see if one is a palindrome by reading it forward and then backwards. The problem with this approach is that it would take a tremendous amount of time. If Hedge tried one combination every second, a stack of just 10 different blocks would take him 42 days to exhaust. That’s because the total time is a function of the factorial of the number of blocks there are. 10 blocks have over 3 million combinations. What this naïve solution shows is that we need a much faster way to tell whether a pile of blocks can form a palindrome. To start, it may be intuitively clear that a pile of all different blocks will never form one. Why? The first and last blocks can’t be the same if there are no repeats. So when can a given sequence become a palindrome? One way to figure that out is to analyze a few existing palindromes. In ANNA, there are 2 A’s and 2 N’s. RACECAR has 2 R’s, 2 A’s, 2 C’s, and 1 E. And MADAM IM ADAM has 4 M’s, 4 A’s, 2 D’s, and 1 I. The pattern here is that most of the letters occur an even number of times, and there’s at most 1 that occurs just once. Is that it? What if RACECAR had 3 E’s instead of 1? We could tack the new E’s onto the ends and still get a palindrome, so 3 is ok. But make that 3 E’s and 3 C’s, and there’s nowhere for the last C to go. So the most generalized insight is that at most one letter can appear an odd number of times, but the rest have to be even. Hedge can count the letters in each stack and organize them into a dictionary, which is a tidy way of storing information. A loop could then go through and count how many times odd numbers appear. If there are less than 2 odd characters, the stack can be made into a palindrome. This approach is much, much faster than the naïve solution. Instead of factorial time, it takes linear time. That’s where the time increases in proportion to the number of blocks there are. Now write a loop for Hedge to approach the piles individually, and stop when he finds a good one, and you’ll be ready to go. Here’s what happens: Hedge is fast, but there are so many piles it takes a long time. Too long. Ethic and Hedge are safe. But Octavia is not so lucky.

Insults by Shakespeare

{0: 'Ms. April Gudenrath is from the US, currently residing in Korea in order to teach English literature to high school students at TCIS. Her teaching experience stretches back 15 years in US public and private schools. She is titled a TED-ED educator have published sveral rticles and books about technological pedgogy in the classroom. In addition, she is an international consultant on the blended classroom K-20. Outside of her work, she is a mother of two college students. In her previous school, as she underwent the tragedy of 11 student suicides, she was compelled to help her students by asking "Why?" and wants to address the importance of vulnerability in our lives. \n\n'}

TED-Ed

Why do we cringe when we hear "Shakespeare?" If you ask me, it's usually because of his words. All those thines and thous and therefores and wherefore-art-thous can be more than a little annoying. But you have to wonder, why is he so popular? Why have his plays been made and remade more than any other playwright? It's because of his words. Back in the late 1500s and early 1600s, that was the best tool that a person had, and there was a lot to talk about. However, most of it was pretty depressing. You know, with the Black Plague and all. Shakespeare does use a lot of words. One of his most impressive accomplishments is his use of insults. They would unify the entire audience; and no matter where you sat, you could laugh at what was going on onstage. Words, specifically dialogue in a drama setting, are used for many different reasons: to set the mood of the scene, to give some more atmosphere to the setting, and to develop relationships between characters. Insults do this in a very short and sharp way. Let's first go to "Hamlet." Right before this dialogue, Polonius is the father of Ophelia, who is in love with Prince Hamlet. King Claudius is trying to figure out why Prince Hamlet is acting so crazy since the king married Prince Hamlet's mother. Polonius offers to use his daughter to get information from Prince Hamlet. Then we go into Act II Scene 2. Polonius: "Do you know me, my lord?" Hamlet: "Excellent well. You're a fishmonger." Polonius: "Not I, my lord." Hamlet: "Then I would you were so honest a man." Now, even if you did not know what "fishmonger" meant, you can use some contextual clues. One: Polonius reacted in a negative way, so it must be bad. Two: Fish smell bad, so it must be bad. And three: "monger" just doesn't sound like a good word. So from not even knowing the meaning, you're beginning to construct some characterization of the relationship between Hamlet and Polonius, which was not good. But if you dig some more, "fishmonger" means a broker of some type, and in this setting, would mean like a pimp, like Polonius is brokering out his daughter for money, which he is doing for the king's favor. This allows you to see that Hamlet is not as crazy as he's claiming to be, and intensifies the animosity between these two characters. Want another example? "Romeo and Juliet" has some of the best insults of any of Shakespeare's plays. It's a play about two gangs, and the star-crossed lovers that take their own lives. Well, with any fisticuffs you know that there is some serious smack talk going on. And you are not disappointed. In Act I Scene 1, right from the get-go we are shown the level of distrust and hatred the members of the two families, the Capulets and Montagues, meet. Gregory: "I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list." Sampson: "Nay, as they dare, I will bite my thumb at them, which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it." Enter Abraham and Balthasar. Abraham: "Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" Sampson: "I do bite my thumb, sir." Abraham: "Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" Okay, so how does this development help us understand mood or character? Well, let's break it down to the insult. Biting your thumb today may not seem like a big deal, but Sampson says it is an insult to them. If they take it so, it must have been one. This begins to show us the level of animosity between even the men who work for the two Houses. And you normally would not do anything to someone unless you wanted to provoke them into a fight, which is exactly what's about to happen. Looking deeper, biting your thumb in the time in which the play was written is like giving someone the finger today. A pretty strong feeling comes with that, so we now are beginning to feel the tension in the scene. Later on in the scene, Tybalt, from the House of the Capulets, lays a good one on Benvolio from the House of the Montagues. Tybalt: "What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn thee, Benvolio, and look upon thy death." Benvolio: "I do but keep the peace; put up thy sword, or manage it to part these men with me." Tybalt: "What, drawn and talk of peace! I hate the word, as I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee. Have at thee, coward!" Okay, heartless hinds. We know that once again, it's not a good thing. Both families hate each other, and this is just adding fuel to the fire. But just how bad is this stinger? A heartless hind is a coward, and calling someone that in front of his own men, and the rival family, means there's going to be a fight. Tybalt basically calls out Benvolio, and in order to keep his honor, Benvolio has to fight. This dialogue gives us a good look at the characterization between these two characters. Tybalt thinks that the Montagues are nothing but cowardly dogs, and has no respect for them. Once again, adding dramatic tension to the scene. Okay, now here's a spoiler alert. Tybalt's hotheadedness and severe hatred of the Montagues is what we literature people call his hamartia, or what causes his downfall. Oh, yes. He goes down at the hands of Romeo. So when you're looking at Shakespeare, stop and look at the words, because they really are trying to tell you something.

How to speed up chemical reactions (and get a date)

TED-Ed

Meet our chemist, Harriet. She has a chemical reaction that needs to occur more quickly. A chemist has some processes at her disposal that can help her speed up her reaction, and she knows of five ways. And to remember them, she thinks back to her days as a high school student, and the day she got a date for the dance. Harriet was in high school, studying between classes. She had lost track of time and was going to be late to class. Unbeknownst to her, Harold, who was just around the corner, was running late, too. They both sprinted to class and, as it happened, sprinted directly into one another. Now, this was no small collision. They ran squarely into one another in such a way that he knocked the books right out of her hand. "I'm sorry," he said. "Let me help you with your books." He kindly helped her re-collect her belongings, and politely offered to walk her to class. And you'll never guess who went together to the dance later that year. Yup, those two. So as we can see from this example, the key to getting a date for the dance is to collide with someone and knock the books out of their hands. Now, you're probably already aware that not all collisions lead to dates for the dance, thankfully. The collisions must have two important characteristics: One, correct orientation that allows books to be knocked from one's hands; and two, enough energy to knock the books out. Shortly after this incident, Harriet decided to tell me, her chemistry teacher, all about it. I noticed some interesting parallels between her story and chemical reaction rates, which happened to be what she was studying in the hallway the day of the collision. Together, we decided to set out on two missions. Harriet wanted to help all chemistry students and chemists remember how to speed up the rate of chemical reactions and I, being the nice guy that I am, decided to make it my mission to help create educational environments in which more book-dropping collisions can take place to increase future chemists' chances of getting a date for the dance. In order to facilitate this improved dance-date-getting process, I propose five changes to all schools that parallel Harriet's five ways to increase chemical reaction rates. First, I propose that we shrink the size of the hallways. This will make it more difficult to safely navigate the hallways and will cause more collisions than in larger hallways. And by increasing the number of collisions, we increase the likelihood that some of those collisions will have the correct alignment and enough energy to create a date to the dance. Now, chemically speaking, this is equivalent to lowering the volume of a reaction vessel or a reaction mixture. In doing so, the individual particles are closer together, and more collisions will occur. More collisions means a greater likelihood that collisions with the appropriate energy and configuration will happen. Second, I propose increasing the overall population of the school. More students equals more collisions. By increasing the number of particles available for collision, we create an environment where more collisions can take place. Third, we must reduce the time allowed between classes — heck, let's just cut it in half. In doing so, students will need to move more quickly to get from one class to the next. This increase in velocity will help make sure collisions have the appropriate amount of energy necessary to ensure book-dropping. This is analogous to increasing the temperature of the reaction mixture. Higher temperature means particles are moving faster. Faster-moving particles means more energy, and a greater likelihood of the reaction-causing collision. Fourth, students must stop traveling in packs. By traveling in packs, the students on the outside of the pack insulate those in the middle from undergoing any collisions. By splitting up, each student has more area exposed that is available for a collision from a passing student. When particles travel in packs, the surface area is very small, and only the outside particles can collide. However, by breaking up the clumps into individual particles, the total surface area is increased, and each particle has an exposed surface that can react. Fifth and finally, we hire a matchmaker. Is this colliding and book-dropping too violent? Is there an easier way to get a date that requires less initial energy? Then a matchmaker will help with this. The matchmaker makes it easier for a couple to get together, by coordinating the match. Our matchmaker is like a catalyst. Chemical catalysts function by lowering the activation energy — in other words, by lowering the energy required to start a reaction. They do this by bringing two particles together and orienting them correctly in space so that the two can meet at the correct configuration and allow a reaction to take place. So, to sum up: if a future chemist wants a date for the dance, he must collide with another person and knock the books out of their hands. And if a chemist wants to make a chemical reaction occur, the particles must collide in the correct orientation with an appropriate amount of energy. And both of these processes can be accelerated, using the five methods I've described.

Calculating the odds of intelligent alien life

{0: "SETI's Jill Tarter has devoted her career to hunting for signs of sentient beings elsewhere. Winner of the 2009 TED Prize, almost all aspects of her field have been affected by her work."}

TED-Ed

(Music) The basic question is, does life exist beyond Earth? Scientists who are called astrobiologists are trying to find that out right now. Most astrobiologists are trying to figure out if there's microbial life on Mars, or in the ocean under the frozen surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, or in the liquid hydrocarbon lakes that we've found on Saturn's moon Titan. But one group of astrobiologists works on SETI. SETI is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and SETI researchers are trying to detect some evidence that intelligent creatures elsewhere have used technology to build a transmitter of some sort. But how likely is it that they will manage to find a signal? There are certainly no guarantees when it comes to SETI, but something called the Drake equation, named after Frank Drake, can help us organize our thinking about what might be required for successful detection. If you've dealt with equations before, then you probably expect that there will be a solution to the equation, a right answer. The Drake equation, however, is different, because there are so many unknowns. It has no right answer. As we learn more about our universe and our place within it, some of the unknowns get better known, and we can estimate an answer a bit better. But there won't be a definite answer to the Drake equation until SETI succeeds or something else proves that Earthlings are the only intelligent species in our portion of the cosmos. In the meantime, it is really useful to consider the unknowns. The Drake equation attempts to estimate the number of technological civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy — we call that N — with whom we could make contact, and it's usually written as: N equals R-star multiplied by f-sub-p multiplied by n-sub-e multiplied by f-sub-l multiplied by f-sub-i multiplied by f-sub-c and lastly, multiplied by capital L. All those factors multiplied together help to estimate the number of technological civilizations that we might be able to detect right now. R-star is the rate at which stars have been born in the Milky Way Galaxy over the last few billion years, so it's a number that is stars per year. Our galaxy is 10 billion years old, and early in its history stars formed at a different rate. All of the f-factors are fractions. Each one must be less than or equal to one. F-sub-p is the fraction of stars that have planets. N-sub-e is the average number of habitable planets in any planetary system. F-sub-l is the fraction of planets on which life actually begins and f-sub-i is the fraction of all those life forms that develop intelligence. F-sub-c is the fraction of intelligent life that develops a civilization that decides to use some sort of transmitting technology. And finally, L — the longevity factor. On average, how many years do those transmitters continue to operate? Astronomers are now almost able to tell us what the product of the first three terms is. We're now finding exoplanets almost everywhere. The fractions dealing with life and intelligence and technological civilizations are ones that many, many experts ponder, but nobody knows for sure. So far, we only know of one place in the universe where life exists, and that's right here on Earth. In the next couple of decades, as we explore Mars and Europa and Titan, the discovery of any kind of life there will mean that life will be abundant in the Milky Way. Because if life originated twice within this one Solar System, it means it was easy, and given similar conditions elsewhere, life will happen. So the number two is a very important number here. Scientists, including SETI researchers, often tend to make very crude estimates and acknowledge that there are very large uncertainties in these estimates, in order to make progress. We think we know that R-star and n-sub-e are both numbers that are closer to 10 than, say, to one, and all the f-factors are less than one. Some of them may be much less than one. But of all these unknowns, the biggest unknown is L, so perhaps the most useful version of the Drake equation is simply to say that N is approximately equal to L. The information in this equation is very clear. Unless L is large, N will be small. But, you know, you can also turn that around. If SETI succeeds in detecting a signal in the near future, after examining only a small portion of the stars in the Milky Way, then we learn that L, on average, must be large. Otherwise, we couldn't have succeeded so easily. A physicist named Philip Morrison summarizes by saying that SETI is the archaeology of the future. By this, he meant that because the speed of light is finite, any signals detected from distant technologies will be telling us about their past by the time they reach us. But because L must be large for a successful detection, we also learn about our future, particularly that we can have a long future. We've developed technologies that can send signals into space and humans to the moon, but we've also developed technologies that can destroy the environment, that can wage war with weapons and biological terrorism. In the future, will our technology help stabilize our planet and our population, leading to a very long lifetime for us? Or will we destroy our world and its inhabitants after only a brief appearance on the cosmic stage? I encourage you to consider the unknowns in this equation. Why don't you make your own estimates for these unknowns, and see what you come up with for N? Compare that with the estimates made by Frank Drake, Carl Sagan, other scientists or your neighbors. Remember, there's no right answer. Not yet.

How big is a mole? (Not the animal, the other one.)

TED-Ed

OK, today we're going to talk about the mole. Now, I know what you're thinking: "I know what a mole is, it's a small furry creature that digs holes in the ground and destroys gardens." And some of you might be thinking that it's a growth on your aunt's face with hairs sticking out of it. Well, in this case, a mole is a concept that we use in chemistry to count molecules, atoms, just about anything extremely small. Have you ever wondered how many atoms there are in the universe? Or in your body? Or even in a grain of sand? Scientists have wanted to answer that question, but how do you count something as small as an atom? Well, in 1811, someone had an idea that if you had equal volumes of gases, at the same temperature and pressure, they would contain an equal number of particles. His name was Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro. I wonder how long it took him to sign autographs. Unfortunately for Avogadro, most scientists didn't accept the idea of the atom, and there was no way to prove he was right. There was no clear difference between atoms and molecules. Most scientists looked at Avogadro's work as purely hypothetical, and didn't give it much thought. But it turned out he was right! By late 1860, Avogadro was proven correct, and his work helped lay the foundation for the atomic theory. Unfortunately, Avogadro died in 1856. Now the thing is that the amount of particles in even small samples is tremendous. For example, If you have a balloon of any gas at zero degrees Celcius, and at a pressure of one atmosphere, then you have precisely six hundred and two sextillion gas particles. That is, you have six with 23 zeros after it particles of gas in the container. Or in scientific notation, 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd particles. This example is a little misleading, because gases take up a lot of space due to the high kinetic energy of the gas particles, and it leaves you thinking atoms are bigger than they really are. Instead, think of water molecules. If you pour 18.01 grams of water into a glass, which is 18.01 milliliters, which is like three and a half teaspoons of water, you'll have 602 sextillion molecules of water. Since Lorenzo Romano - uh, never mind - Avogadro was the first one to come up with this idea, scientists named the number 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd after him. It is simply known as Avogadros's number. Now, back to the mole. Not that mole. This mole. Yep, this number has a second name. The mole. Chemists use the term mole to refer to the quantities that are at the magnitude of 602 sextillion. This is known as a molar quantity. Atoms and molecules are so small, that chemists have bundled them into groups called moles. Moles are hard for students to understand because they have a hard time picturing the size of a mole, or of 602 sextillion. It's just too big to wrap our brains around. Remember our 18.01 milliliters of water? Well, that's a mole of water. But how much is that? Exactly what does 602 sextillion look like? Maybe this'll help. Exchange the water particles for donuts. If you had a mole of donuts, they would cover the entire earth to a depth of eight kilometers, which is about five miles. You really need a lot of coffee for that. If you had a mole of basketballs, you could create a new planet the size of the earth. If you received a mole of pennies on the day you were born and spent a million dollars a second until the day you died at the age of 100, you would still have more than 99.99% of your money in the bank. OK. Now we sort of have an idea how large the mole is. So how do we use it? You might be surprised to know that chemists use it the same way you use pounds to buy grapes, deli meat, or eggs. When you go to the grocery store, you don't go to the deli counter and ask for 43 slices of salami, you buy your salami by the pound. When you buy your eggs, you buy a dozen eggs. When we hear the word dozen, we probably think of the number 12. We also know that a pair is two, a baker's dozen is 13, a gross is 144, and a ream of paper is - anybody? A ream is 500. Well, a mole is really the same thing. For a chemist, a mole conjures up the number 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd, not a fuzzy little animal. The only difference is that the other quantities are more familiar to us. So there you have it - the story of the mole, Avogadro, basketballs, and how to buy salami at the grocery store.

The art of the metaphor

TED-Ed

When we talk, sometimes we say things directly. "I'm going to the store, I'll be back in five minutes." Other times though, we talk in a way that conjures up a small scene. "It's raining cats and dogs out," we say, or "I was waiting for the other shoe to drop." Metaphors are a way to talk about one thing by describing something else. That may seem roundabout, but it's not. Seeing and hearing and tasting are how we know anything first. The philosopher William James described the world of newborn infants as a "buzzing and blooming confusion." Abstract ideas are pale things compared to those first bees and blossoms. Metaphors think with the imagination and the senses. The hot chili peppers in them explode in the mouth and the mind. They're also precise. We don't really stop to think about a raindrop the size of an actual cat or dog, but as soon as I do, I realize that I'm quite certain the dog has to be a small one — a cocker spaniel, or a dachshund — and not a golden Lab or Newfoundland. I think a beagle might be about right. A metaphor isn't true or untrue in any ordinary sense. Metaphors are art, not science, but they can still feel right or wrong. A metaphor that isn't good leaves you confused. You know what it means to feel like a square wheel, but not what it's like to be tired as a whale. There's a paradox to metaphors. They almost always say things that aren't true. If you say, "there's an elephant in the room," there isn't an actual one, looking for the peanut dish on the table. Metaphors get under your skin by ghosting right past the logical mind. Plus, we're used to thinking in images. Every night we dream impossible things. And when we wake up, that way of thinking's still in us. We take off our dream shoes, and button ourselves into our lives. Some metaphors include the words "like" or "as." "Sweet as honey," "strong as a tree." Those are called similes. A simile is a metaphor that admits it's making a comparison. Similes tend to make you think. Metaphors let you feel things directly. Take Shakespeare's famous metaphor, "All the world's a stage." "The world is like a stage" just seems thinner, and more boring. Metaphors can also live in verbs. Emily Dickinson begins a poem, "I saw no way — the heavens were stitched —" and we know instantly what it would feel like if the sky were a fabric sewn shut. They can live in adjectives, too. "Still waters run deep," we say of someone quiet and thoughtful. And the deep matters as much as the stillness and the water do. One of the clearest places to find good metaphors is in poems. Take this haiku by the 18th-century Japanese poet Issa. "On a branch floating downriver, a cricket singing." The first way to meet a metaphor is just to see the world through its eyes: an insect sings from a branch passing by in the middle of the river. Even as you see that though, some part of you recognizes in the image a small portrait of what it's like to live in this world of change and time, our human fate is to vanish, as surely as that small cricket will, and still, we do what it does. We live, we sing. Sometimes a poem takes a metaphor and extends it, building on one idea in many ways. Here's the beginning of Langston Hughes' famous poem "Mother to Son." "Well, son, I'll tell you. Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor." Langston Hughes is making a metaphor that compares a hard life to a wrecked house you still have to live in. Those splinters and tacks feel real, they hurt your own feet and your own heart, but the mother is describing her life here, not her actual house. And hunger, and cold, exhausting work and poverty are what's also inside those splinters. Metaphors aren't always about our human lives and feelings. The Chicago poet Carl Sandburg wrote, "The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches, and then moves on." The comparison here is simple. Fog is being described as a cat. But a good metaphor isn't a puzzle, or a way to convey hidden meanings, it's a way to let you feel and know something differently. No one who's heard this poem forgets it. You see fog, and there's a small grey cat nearby. Metaphors give words a way to go beyond their own meaning. They're handles on the door of what we can know, and of what we can imagine. Each door leads to some new house, and some new world that only that one handle can open. What's amazing is this: by making a handle, you can make a world.

Sex determination: More complicated than you thought

{0: 'Aaron Reedy teaches at Thomas Kelly High School in Chicago, where he uses innovative projects to connect his classroom to the wider world of science.'}

TED-Ed

My wife is pregnant right now with our first child, and when people see her with her big baby bump, the first question people ask, almost without fail, is, "Is it a boy or is it a girl?" Now, there are some assumptions behind that question that we take for granted because of our familiarity with our own human biology. For human babies, we take it for granted that there's a 50/50 chance of either answer, boy or girl. But why is it that way? Well, the answer depends on the sex determination system that has evolved for our species. You see, for most mammals, the sex of a baby is determined genetically with the XY chromosome system. Mammals have a pair of sex chromosomes, one passed down from mom, and one from dad. A pair of X's gives us a girl, and an X and a Y together gives us a boy. Since females only have X's to pass on in their egg cells, and males can give either an X or a Y in their sperm cells, the sex is determined by the father and the chance of producing a male or a female is 50/50. This system has worked well for mammals, but throughout the tree of life, we can see other systems that have worked just as well for other animals. There are other groups of animals that also have genetic sex determination, but their systems can be pretty different from ours. Birds and some reptiles have their sex genetically determined, but instead of the sex being determined by dad, their sex is determined by mom. In those groups, a pair of Z sex chromosomes produces a male, so these males only have Z's to give. However, in these animals, one Z and one W chromosome together, as a pair, produces a female. In this system, the chance of a male or a female is still 50/50, it just depends on whether mom puts a Z or a W into her egg. Certain groups have taken genetic sex determination in completely other directions. Ants, for example, have one of the most interesting systems for determining sex, and because of it, if you are a male ant, you do not have a father. In an ant colony, there are dramatic divisions of labor. There are soldiers that defend the colony, there are workers that collect food, clean the nest and care for the young, and there's a queen and a small group of male reproductives. Now, the queen will mate and then store sperm from the males. And this is where the system gets really interesting. If the queen uses the stored sperm to fertilize an egg, then that egg will grow up to become female. However, if she lays an egg without fertilizing it, then that egg will still grow up to be an ant, but it will always be a male. So you see, it's impossible for male ants to have fathers. And male ants live their life like this, with only one copy of every gene, much like a walking sex cell. This system is called a haplodiploid system, and we see it not only in ants, but also in other highly social insects like bees and wasps. Since our own sex is determined by genes, and we do know of these other animals that have their sex determined by genes, it's easy to assume that for all animals the sex of their babies still must be determined by genetics. However, for some animals, the question of whether it will be a boy or a girl has nothing to do with genes at all, and it can depend on something like the weather. These are animals like alligators and most turtles. In these animals, the sex of an embryo in a developing egg is determined by the temperature. In these species, the sex of the baby is not yet determined when the egg is laid, and it remains undetermined until sometime in the middle of the overall development period, when a critical time is reached. And during this time, the sex is completely determined by temperature in the nest. In painted turtles, for example, warm temperatures above the critical temperature will produce females within the eggs, and cool temperatures will produce a male. I'm not sure who came up with this mnemonic, but you can remember that when it comes to painted turtles, they are all hot chicks and cool dudes. For some tropical fish, the question of will it be a boy or will it be a girl isn't settled until even later in life. You see, clownfish all start out their lives as males, However, as they mature, they become female. They also spend their lives in small groups with a strict dominance hierarchy where only the most dominant male and female reproduce. And amazingly, if the dominant female in the group dies, the largest and most dominant male will then quickly become female and take her place, and all of the other males will move up one rank in the hierarchy. In another very different ocean animal, the green spoonworm, the sex of the babies is determined by a completely different aspect of the environment. For this species, it is simply a matter of where a larva happens to randomly fall on the sea floor. If a larva lands on the open sea floor, then it will become a female. But if it lands on top of a female, then it will become a male. So for some species, the question of boy or girl is answered by genetics. For others, it's answered by the environment. And for others still, they don't even bother with the question at all. Take whiptail lizards, for example. For those desert lizards, the answer is easy. It's a girl. It's always a girl. They are a nearly all-female species, and although they still lay eggs, these eggs hatch out female clones of themselves. So will it be a girl or will it be a boy? Throughout the entire animal kingdom, it does really all depend on the system of sex determination. For humans, that system is a genetic XY system. And for me and my wife, we found out it's going to be a baby boy. (Kiss)

Why can't we see evidence of alien life?

{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.'}

TED-Ed

Somewhere out there in that vast universe, there must surely be countless other planets teeming with life, but why don't we see any evidence of it? Well, this is the famous question asked by Enrico Fermi in 1950: "Where is everybody?" Conspiracy theorists claim that UFOs are visiting all the time and the reports are just being covered up, but honestly, they aren't very convincing. But that leaves a real riddle. In the past year, the Kepler space observatory has found hundreds of planets just around nearby stars, and if you extrapolate that data, it looks like there could be half a trillion planets just in our own galaxy. If any one in 10,000 has conditions that might support a form of life, that's still 50 million possible life-harboring planets right here in the Milky Way. So here's the riddle. Our Earth didn't form until about 9 billion years after the Big Bang. Countless other planets in our galaxy should have formed earlier and given life a chance to get underway billions or certainly many millions of years earlier than happened on Earth. If just a few of them had spawned intelligent life and started creating technologies, those technologies would have had millions of years to grow in complexity and power. On Earth, we've seen how dramatically technology can accelerate in just 100 years. In millions of years, an intelligent alien civilization could easily have spread out across the galaxy, perhaps creating giant energy-harvesting artifacts, or fleets of colonizing spaceships, or glorious works of art that fill the night sky. At the very least, you'd think they'd be revealing their presence, deliberately or otherwise, through electromagnetic signals of one kind or another. And yet we see no convincing evidence of any of it. Why? Well, there are numerous possible answers, some of them quite dark. Maybe a single, superintelligent civilization has indeed taken over the galaxy, and has imposed strict radio silence because it's paranoid of any potential competitors. It's just sitting there ready to obliterate anything that becomes a threat. Or maybe they're not that intelligent. Or perhaps, the evolution of an intelligence capable of creating sophisticated technology is far rarer than we've assumed. After all, it's only happened once on Earth in 4 billion years. Maybe even that was incredibly lucky. Maybe we are the first such civilization in our galaxy. Or, perhaps, civilization carries with it the seeds of its own destruction through the inability to control the technologies it creates. But there are numerous more hopeful answers. For a start, we're not looking that hard, and we're spending a pitiful amount of money on it. Only a tiny fraction of the stars in our galaxy have really been looked at closely for signs of interesting signals. And perhaps, we're not looking the right way. Maybe as civilizations develop, they quickly discover communication technologies far more sophisticated and useful than electromagnetic waves. Maybe all the action takes place inside the mysterious recently discovered dark matter, or dark energy, that appear to account for most of the universe's mass. Or maybe we're looking at the wrong scale. Perhaps intelligent civilizations come to realize that life is ultimately just complex patterns of information interacting with each other in a beautiful way, and that can happen more efficiently at a small scale. So just as on Earth, clunky stereo systems have shrunk to beautiful, tiny iPods, maybe intelligent life itself, in order to reduce its footprint on the environment, has turned itself microscopic, so the Solar System might be teeming with aliens, and we're just not noticing them. Maybe the very ideas in our heads are a form of alien life. Well, okay, that's a crazy thought. The aliens made me say it. But it is cool that ideas do seem to have a life all of their own, and that they outlive their creators. Maybe biological life is just a passing phase. Well, within the next 15 years, we could start seeing real spectroscopic information from promising nearby planets that will reveal just how life-friendly they might be. And meanwhile SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, is now releasing its data to the public so that millions of citizen scientists, maybe including you, can bring the power of the crowd to join the search. And here on Earth, amazing experiments are being done to try to create life from scratch, life that might be very different from the DNA forms we know. All of this will help us understand whether the universe is teeming with life or, whether indeed, it's just us. Either answer, in its own way, is awe-inspiring, because even if we are alone, the fact that we think and dream, and ask these questions might yet turn out to be one of the most important facts about the universe. And I have one more piece of good news for you. The quest for knowledge and understanding never gets dull. It doesn't. It's actually the opposite. The more you know, the more amazing the world seems. And it's the crazy possibilities, the unanswered questions, that pull us forward. So, stay curious.

Dictators hate political cartoons -- so I keep drawing them

{0: "An award-winning satirist, Venezuelan cartoonist Rayma Suprani's life's work is speaking truth to power -- even when being outspoken comes at a steep price."}

TEDWomen 2019

[This talk is delivered in Spanish with consecutive English translation] (Rayma Suprani: Speaks Spanish) Cloe Shasha: When I was a little girl, I used to draw on all the walls of my house. (RS: Speaks Spanish) CS: Until one day, my mother got angry and told me, "You can only draw on one wall. Don't draw on any others." (Laughter) (Speaks Spanish) That was the first time I experienced an act of totalitarian censorship. (Laughter) (Speaks Spanish) But a lack of freedom stimulates creativity and empowers it. (Speaks Spanish) Many years have passed since my childhood, but throughout my formal studies, I found myself drawing in the margins of my notebooks instead of paying attention to my professors. I studied journalism in college with the intention of expanding my communication and writing skills, but the only thing that I felt connected to in life was drawing. (Speaks Spanish) I was born in a democracy, in a country called Venezuela, which is now a dictatorship. (Speaks Spanish) For 19 years, I was the daily cartoonist for "El Universal," one of the biggest newspapers in Venezuela. I really enjoyed translating political and cultural current events into drawings. (Speaks Spanish) In the year 2014, I got fired from my job at the newspaper over a cartoon that I drew alluding to the health care system in Venezuela. I drew a flat line of a heartbeat monitor, but I intentionally drew the heartbeat line in a way that resembled the signature of Hugo Chavez, the former president of Venezuela. (Laughter) (Speaks Spanish) All of this happened after the newspaper was bought by an unknown company, and some of us suspect that it was the Venezuelan government who was behind that deal. (Speaks Spanish) My work as a cartoonist became more and more of a nuisance for the dictatorship. They have no tolerance for any freedom of expression or free thinking. (Speaks Spanish) After I got fired, I started to feel unsafe in my own country. I received anonymous calls and death threats. I was mocked publicly on national television. I was eventually forced out of Venezuela, and I now live in Miami, Florida, where I am free to be my own editor for my work. (Speaks Spanish) A political cartoon is a barometer of freedom in a country. That's why dictators hate cartoonists and try to eradicate everything that involves humor as a mirror for social and political issues. (Speaks Spanish) A cartoon involves a delicate balance of ideas and drawings that reveal a hidden truth. (Speaks Spanish) And a good cartoon is one that conveys a plot of a full-length movie in a single frame. (Speaks Spanish) A cartoon needs to communicate the core of a story with its precision. And when it succeeds, its message can have the effect of inoculating people with a dose of skepticism. (Speaks Spanish) Cartoons are drawn from observation and analysis. They are inspired by muses of mythology, as well as classical, modern and paleolithic tales. (Laughter) When we are told that a modern-day emperor is wearing new clothes, cartoons reveal that the emperor just might still be naked. (Speaks Spanish) At one point in my career, I drew pigs and compared them with politicians and national guards who were responsible for stopping peaceful student demonstrations. One day, when I got back to my office, I had a letter on my desk. (Speaks Spanish) The letter was from the Venezuelan Swine Federation. (Laughter) (Speaks Spanish) The letter said, "Please do not compare an animal as wonderful as a pig with politicians. (Laughter) Pigs are very friendly and noble, they can be a great mascot, they make good pets and they provide sustenance to us in the form of pork." (Speaks Spanish) I think they were absolutely right. I didn't draw any more pigs, but I did keep drawing politicians. (Laughter) (Speaks Spanish) A cartoon travels on an information highway, which seems like it has multiple lanes, but in reality, all of these lanes lead to a binary response of either positivity or rage. "I like it" or "I don't like it." Those are the only responses that govern democratic thinking on the internet. (Speaks Spanish) We have lost the space for nuanced debate, we have no time, so we simply respond with approval or disdain, and we let algorithms take over. (Speaks Spanish) But a cartoon is born from a space of deep, nuanced thinking. Creating a good cartoon involves repeated failures, draft after draft. And a cartoonist must shed their own taboos to spark a conversation, rather than a confrontation, through their work. (Speaks Spanish) In the year 2013, President Chavez died, and I had to think about what to draw as the cartoon of the day at "El Universal." I was personally happy that he had passed away, because I thought that the end of his power would potentially bring our country closer to freedom and better times. (Speaks Spanish) But there were many other people who were mourning the death of Chavez, so there was a divided sentiment in Venezuela. Some were celebrating, and others were crying at the loss of their leader. (Speaks Spanish) I felt stuck, I really didn't know what to draw in this historic moment. And I knew that I couldn't allow my happiness to seep into my work, that I should take the higher road and respect people's grief. So what could I draw? (Speaks Spanish) I spent many hours drafting and throwing out papers. My editor called me and said everything was late for that day's newspaper and asked me when I'd be done. It was in the middle of the night that the idea came to me. And we then published a cartoon that represented a historical moment in time. (Speaks Spanish) A fallen king chess piece in red. (Speaks Spanish) A good cartoon has a lot of power. It can generate action and reaction. That's why a cartoonist must exercise their power responsibly, showcasing the truth and drawing without the fear of consequences. (Speaks Spanish) Having an opinion has a cost, and in some countries, that cost is high. (Speaks Spanish) In Venezuela, many young people have been killed for protesting peacefully. There are men and women who are stuck behind bars as political prisoners. So over the years, I've drawn the faces of imprisoned women, because I don't want them to be forgotten by the community. (Speaks Spanish) This year at an event called El Foro Penal, which is a criminal forum where a group of lawyers do pro bono work for Venezuelan political prisoners, a young woman approached me and she said, "I was imprisoned, and then you drew my face and my story. It's because of that drawing that people knew who I was. Your cartoon helped me survive my days in prison. Thank you." (Speaks Spanish) This was a moment that meant a lot to me, because I had found a way to collaborate with the memories of my country and its people. (Speaks Spanish) Last year, I started making drawings about immigration. I drew my own world, my fears, my suitcase, my roots and everything that I had to leave behind in Venezuela. I also drew my joy in the face of this new opportunity as an immigrant in the United States. (Speaks Spanish) From there, I worked on a series of drawings that represented the experience and psychology of immigration. (Speaks Spanish) Being an immigrant is like moving to another planet. At first, you don't understand anything about your new world. There are new codes, a new language and unfamiliar tools you need to learn how to use in order to adapt to your new life. (Speaks Spanish) Being an immigrant is the closest thing to being an astronaut who landed on the moon. (Speaks Spanish) Over time, that series of drawings became a traveling exhibition, called "I, Immigrant." And the exhibition traveled to multiple cities, including Miami, Houston, Madrid, Barcelona, and we're hoping for more places. (Speaks Spanish) The show has become a meeting space for the diaspora, for people to gather and recognize their shared experiences of suffering that come with immigration. (Speaks Spanish) What I want these drawings to convey is that an immigrant is not a criminal. An immigrant is a person whose life has been broken. A person who has very likely been separated from their family under inhumane conditions. Who has been forced to leave their country in search of a better life. (Speaks Spanish) A drawing can be a synthesis of a place, a universe, a country or a society. It can also represent the inner workings of someone's mind. For me, drawing cartoons is a form of resistance. (Speaks Spanish) A cartoon is like a Rosetta stone. If we throw it into outer space, a future alien would be able to know with certainty that in the past, we once had a civilized world with free thinking. (Speaks Spanish) That one wall that my mother gave me the freedom to draw on feels infinite. And it's for that reason that I am still drawing. Thank you very much. (Cheers and applause)

The real story of Rosa Parks -- and why we need to confront myths about black history

{0: 'David Ikard explains why the whitewashing of black history should be a major concern for us all, even self-identified white liberals. \r\n\r\n'}

TEDxNashville

I am the proud father of two beautiful children, Elijah, 15, and Octavia, 12. When Elijah was in the fourth grade, he came to me, came home from school bubbling over with excitement about what he had learned that day about African-American history. Now, I'm an African-American and cultural studies professor, and so, as you can imagine, African-American culture is kind of serious around my home. So I was very proud that my son was excited about what he had learned that day in school. So I said, "What did you learn?" He said, "I learned about Rosa Parks." I said, "OK, what did you learn about Rosa Parks?" He said, "I learned that Rosa Parks was this frail, old black woman in the 1950s in Montgomery, Alabama. And she sat down on this bus, and she had tired feet, and when the bus driver told her to give up her seat to a white patron, she refused because she had tired feet. It had been a long day, and she was tired of oppression, and she didn't give up her seat. And she marched with Martin Luther King, and she believed in nonviolence." And I guess he must have looked at my face and saw that I was a little less than impressed by his ... um ... history lesson. And so he stopped, and he was like, "Dad, what's wrong? What did I get wrong?" I said, "Son, you didn't get anything wrong, but I think your teacher got a whole lot of things wrong." (Laughter) He said, "Well, what do you mean?" I said, "Rosa Parks was not tired. She was not old. And she certainly didn't have tired feet." He said, "What?" I said, "Yes! Rosa Parks was only 42 years old" — Yeah, you're shocked, right? Never heard that. "Rosa Parks was only 42 years old, she had only worked six hours that day, and she was a seamstress and her feet were just fine. (Laughter) The only thing that she was tired of was she was tired of inequality. She was tired of oppression." And my son said, "Well, why would my teacher tell me this thing? This is confusing for me." Because he loved his teacher, and she was a good teacher, a young-ish, 20-something white woman, really, really smart, pushed him, so I liked her as well. But he was confused. "Why would she tell me this?" he said. He said, "Dad, tell me more. Tell me more. Tell me more about Rosa Parks." And I said, "Son, I'll do you one better." He was like, "What?" I said, "I'm going to buy her autobiography, and I'm going to let you read it yourself." (Laughter) So as you can imagine, Elijah wasn't too excited about this new, lengthy homework assignment that his dad had just given him, but he took it in stride. And he came back after he had read it, and he was excited about what he had learned. He said, "Dad, not only was Rosa Parks not initially into nonviolence, but Rosa Parks's grandfather, who basically raised her and was light enough to pass as white, used to walk around town with his gun in his holster, and people knew if you messed with Mr. Parks's children or grandchildren, he would put a cap in your proverbial bottom." (Laughter) Right? He was not someone to mess with. And he said, "I also learned that Rosa Parks married a man in Raymond who was a lot like her grandfather." He would organize. He was a civil rights activist. He would organize events and sometimes the events would be at Rosa Parks's home. And one time Rosa Parks remarked that there were so many guns on the table, because they were prepared for somebody to come busting into the door that they were prepared for whatever was going to go down, that Rosa Parks said, "There were so many guns on the table that I forgot to even offer them coffee or food." This is who Rosa Parks was. And in fact, Rosa Parks, when she was sitting on that bus that day, waiting for those police officers to arrive and not knowing what was going to happen to her, she was not thinking about Martin Luther King, who she barely knew. She was not thinking about nonviolence or Gandhi. She was thinking about her grandfather, a gun-toting, take-no-mess grandfather. That's who Rosa Parks was thinking about. My son was mesmerized by Rosa Parks, and I was proud of him to see this excitement. But then I still had a problem. Because I still had to go his school and address the issue with his teacher, because I didn't want her to continue to teach the kids obviously false history. So I'm agonizing over this, primarily because I understand, as an African-American man, that whenever you talk to whites about racism or anything that's racially sensitive, there's usually going to be a challenge. This is what white sociologist Robin DiAngelo calls "white fragility." She argues that, in fact, because whites have so little experience being challenged about their white privilege that whenever even the most minute challenge is brought before them, they usually cry, get angry or run. (Laughter) And I have experienced them all. And so, when I was contemplating confronting his teacher, I wasn't happy about it, but I was like, this is a necessary evil of being a black parent trying to raise self-actualized black children. So I called Elijah to me and said, "Elijah, I'm going to set up an appointment with your teacher and try and correct this and maybe your principal. What do you think?" And Elijah said, "Dad, I have a better idea." And I said, "Really? What's your idea?" He said, "We have a public speaking assignment, and why don't I use that public speaking assignment to talk about debunking the myths of Rosa Parks?" And I was like, "Well, that is a good idea." So Elijah goes to school, he does his presentation, he comes back home, and I could see something positive happened. I said, "Well, what happened, son?" He said, "Well, later on in that day, the teacher pulled me aside, and she apologized to me for giving that misinformation." And then something else miraculous happened the next day. She actually taught a new lesson on Rosa Parks, filling in the gaps that she had left and correcting the mistakes that she made. And I was so, so proud of my son. But then I thought about it. And I got angry. And I got real angry. Why? Why would I get angry? Because my nine-year-old son had to educate his teacher about his history, had to educate his teacher about his own humanity. He's nine years old. He should be thinking about basketball or soccer or the latest movie. He should not be thinking about having to take the responsibility of educating his teacher, his students, about himself, about his history. That was a burden that I carried. That was a burden that my parents carried and generations before them carried. And now I was seeing my son take on that burden, too. You see, that's why Rosa Parks wrote her autobiography. Because during her lifetime, if you can imagine, you do this amazing thing, you're alive and you're talking about your civil rights activism, and a story emerges in which somebody is telling the world that you were old and you had tired feet and you just were an accidental activist, not that you had been activist by then for 20 years, not that the boycott had been planned for months, not that you were not even the first or the second or even the third woman to be arrested for doing that. You become an accidental activist, even in her own lifetime. So she wrote that autobiography to correct the record, because what she wanted to remind people of was that this is what it was like in the 1950s trying to be black in America and fight for your rights. During the year, a little over a year, that the boycott lasted, there were over four church bombings. Martin Luther King's house was bombed twice. Other civil rights leaders' houses were bombed in Birmingham. Rosa Parks's husband slept at night with a shotgun, because they would get constant death threats. In fact, Rosa Parks's mother lived with them, and sometimes she would stay on the phone for hours so that nobody would call in with death threats, because it was constant and persistent. In fact, there was so much tension, there was so much pressure, there was so much terrorism, that Rosa Parks and her husband, they lost their jobs, and they became unemployable and eventually had to leave and move out of the South. This is a civil rights reality that Rosa Parks wanted to make sure that people understood. So you say, "Well, David, what does that have to do with me? I'm a well-meaning person. I didn't own slaves. I'm not trying to whitewash history. I'm a good guy. I'm a good person." Let me tell you what it has to do with you, and I'll tell it to you by telling you a story about a professor of mine, a white professor, when I was in graduate school, who was a brilliant, brilliant individual. We'll call him "Fred." And Fred was writing this history of the civil rights movement, but he was writing specifically about a moment that happened to him in North Carolina when this white man shot this black man in cold blood in a wide-open space and was never convicted. And so it was this great book, and he called together a couple of his professor friends and he called me to read a draft of it before the final submission. And I was flattered that he called me; I was only a graduate student then. I was kind of feeling myself a little bit. I was like, "OK, yeah." I'm sitting around amongst intellectuals, and I read the draft of the book. And there was a moment in the book that struck me as being deeply problematic, and so I said, "Fred," as we were sitting around talking about this draft, I said, "Fred, I've got a real problem with this moment that you talk about your maid in your book." And I could see Fred get a little "tight," as we say. He said, "What do you mean? That's a great story. It happened just like I said." I said, "Mmm ... can I give you another scenario?" Now, what's the story? It was 1968. Martin Luther King had just been assassinated. His maid, "domestic" — we'll call her "Mabel," was in the kitchen. Little Fred is eight years old. Little Fred comes into the kitchen, and Mabel, who he has only seen as smiling and helpful and happy, is bent over the sink, and she's crying, and she's sobbing inconsolably. And little Fred comes over to her and says, "Mabel, what is wrong?" Mabel turns, and she says, "They killed him! They killed our leader. They killed Martin Luther King. He's dead! They are monsters." And little Fred says, "It'll be OK, Mabel. It'll be OK. It'll be OK." And she looked at him, and she says, "No, it's not going to be OK. Did you not hear what I just said? They killed Martin Luther King." And Fred, son of a preacher, looks up at Mabel, and he says, "But Mabel, didn't Jesus die on the cross for our sins? Wasn't that a good outcome? Maybe this will be a good outcome. Maybe the death of Martin Luther King will lead to a good outcome." And as Fred tells the story, he says that Mabel put her hand over her mouth, she reached down and she gave little Fred a hug, and then she reached into the icebox, and took out a couple Pepsis, gave him some Pepsis and sent him on his way to play with his siblings. And he said, "This was proof that even in the most harrowing times of race struggle that two people could come together across racial lines and find human commonality along the lines of love and affection." And I said, "Fred, that is some BS." (Laughter) (Applause) Fred was like, "But I don't understand, David. That's the story." I said, "Fred, let me ask you a question." I said, "You were in North Carolina in 1968. If Mabel would've went to her community — you were eight years old — what do you think the eight-year-old African-American children were calling her? Do you think they called her by her first name?" No, they called her "Miss Mabel," or they called her "Miss Johnson," or they called her "Auntie Johnson." They would have never dared call her by her first name, because that would have been the height of disrespect. And yet, you were calling her by her first name every single day that she worked, and you never thought about it." I said, "Let me ask you another question: Was Mabel married? Did she have children? What church did she go to? What was her favorite dessert?" Fred could not answer any of those questions. I said, "Fred, this story is not about Mabel. This story is about you." I said, "This story made you feel good, but this story is not about Mabel. The reality is, what probably happened was, Mabel was crying, which was not something she customarily did, so she was letting her guard down. And you came into the kitchen, and you caught her at a weak moment where she was letting her guard down. And see, because you thought of yourself as just like one of her children, you didn't recognize that you were in fact the child of her employer. And she'd found herself yelling at you. And then she caught herself, realizing that, 'If I'm yelling at him and he goes back and he tells his dad or he tells mom, I could lose my job.' And so she tempered herself, and she ended up — even though she needed consoling — she ended up consoling you and sending you on your way, perhaps so she could finish mourning in peace." And Fred was stunned. And he realized that he had actually misread that moment. And see, this is what they did to Rosa Parks. Because it's a lot easier to digest an old grandmother with tired feet who doesn't stand up because she wants to fight for inequality, but because her feet and her back are tired, and she's worked all day. See, old grandmothers are not scary. But young, radical black women who don't take any stuff from anybody are very scary, who stand up to power and are willing to die for that — those are not the kind of people that make us comfortable. So you say, "What do you want me to do, David? I don't know what to do." Well, what I would say to you is, there was a time in which, if you were Jewish, you were not white, if you were Italian, you were not white, if you were Irish, you were not white in this country. It took a while before the Irish, the Jews and the Italians became white. Right? There was a time in which you were "othered," when you were the people on the outside. Toni Morrison said, "If, in order for you to be tall, I have to be on my knees, you have a serious problem." She says, "White America has a serious, serious problem." To be honest, I don't know if race relations will improve in America. But I know that if they will improve, we have to take these challenges on head on. The future of my children depends on it. The future of my children's children depends on it. And, whether you know it or not, the future of your children and your children's children depends on it, too. Thank you. (Applause)

The life, legacy & assassination of an African revolutionary

TED-Ed

In 1972, Thomas Sankara was swept into a revolution for a country not his own. Hailing from the West African nation of Burkina Faso— then known as Upper Volta— the 22-year-old soldier had travelled to Madagascar to study at their military academy. But upon arriving, he found a nation in conflict. Local revolutionaries sought to wrest control of Madagascar from France’s lingering colonial rule. These protestors inspired Sankara to read works by socialist leaders like Karl Marx and seek wisdom from military strategy. When he returned to Upper Volta in 1973, Sankara was determined to free his country from its colonial legacy. Born in 1949, Sankara was raised in a relatively privileged household as the third of ten children. His parents wanted him to be a priest, but like many of his peers, Sankara saw the military as the perfect institution to rid Upper Volta of corruption. After returning from Madagascar, he became famous for his charisma and transparent oratorial style— but he was less popular with the reigning government. Led by President Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo, this administration came to power in the 3rd consecutive coup d’état in Upper Volta’s recent history. The administration’s policies were a far cry from the sweeping changes Sankara proposed, but, by 1981, Sankara’s popularity won out, earning him a role in Ouédraogo’s government. Nicknamed “Africa’s Che Guevara," Sankara rapidly rose through the ranks, and within two years, he was appointed Prime Minister. In his new role, he delivered rallying speeches to impoverished communities, women, and young people. He even tried to persuade other governments to form alliances based on their shared colonial legacy. But Ouédraogo and his advisors felt threatened by Sankara’s new position. They thought his communist beliefs would harm alliances with capitalist countries, and just months after becoming Prime Minister, Ouédraogo’s administration forced Sankara from the job and placed him on house arrest. Little did the President know this act would fuel Upper Volta’s 4th coup d’état in 17 years. Civilian protests ensued around the capital, and the government ground to a halt while Sankara tried to negotiate a peaceful transition. During this time, Blaise Compaoré, Sankara’s friend and fellow former soldier, foiled another coup that included an attempt on Sankara’s life. Eventually, Ouédraogo resigned without further violence, and on August 4, 1983, Thomas Sankara became the new President of Upper Volta. Finally in charge, Sankara launched an ambitious program for social and economic change. As one of his first agenda items, he renamed the country from its French colonial title "Upper Volta" to "Burkina Faso," which translates to “Land of Upright Men." Over the next four years he established a nation-wide literacy campaign, ordered the planting of over 10 million trees, and composed a new national anthem— all while cutting down inflated government employee salaries. But perhaps the most unique element of Sankara’s revolution was his dedication to gender equality. He cultivated a movement for women’s liberation, outlawing forced marriages, polygamy and genital mutilation. He was the first African leader to appoint women to key political positions and actively recruit them to the military. However, Sankara’s socialist policies were met with much resistance. Many students and elites believed his economic plans would alienate Burkina Faso from its capitalist peers. His crackdown on the misuse of public funds turned government officials against him as well. After four years, what began as an empowering revolution had isolated many influential Burkinabes. But Sankara was not ready to yield his power. He executed increasingly authoritarian actions, including banning trade unions and the free press. Eventually, his autocratic tendencies turned even his closest friends against him. On October 15, 1987, Sankara was conducting a meeting when a group of assailants swarmed his headquarters. Sankara was assassinated in the attack, and many believe the raid was ordered by his friend Blaise Compaoré. Though his legacy is complicated, many of Sankara’s policies have proven themselves to be ahead of their time. In the past decade, Burkinabe youth have celebrated Sankara’s political philosophy, and nearby countries like Ghana have even adopted Sankara’s economic models. On March 2, 2019 a statue of Sankara was erected in Burkina Faso’s capital, establishing his place as an icon of revolution for his country and throughout the world.

Tiny robots with giant potential

{0: "Paul McEuen's research explores the nanoscale world.", 1: 'Marc Miskin works on the design and fabrication of cell-sized robots.'}

TED@NAS

Mark Miskin: This is a rotifer. It's a microorganism about a hair's width in size. They live everywhere on earth — saltwater, freshwater, everywhere — and this one is out looking for food. I remember the first time I saw this thing, I was like eight years old and it completely blew me away. I mean, here is this incredible little creature, it's hunting, swimming, going about its life, but its whole universe fits within a drop of pond water. Paul McEuen: So this little rotifer shows us something really amazing. It says that you can build a machine that is functional, complex, smart, but all in a tiny little package, one so small that it's impossible to see it. Now, the engineer in me is just blown away by this thing, that anyone could make such a creature. But right behind that wonder, I have to admit, is a bit of envy. I mean, nature can do it. Why can't we? Why can't we build tiny robots? Well, I'm not the only one to have this idea. In fact, in the last, oh, few years, researchers around the world have taken up the task of trying to build robots that are so small that they can't be seen. And what we're going to tell you about today is an effort at Cornell University and now at the University of Pennsylvania to try to build tiny robots. OK, so that's the goal. But how do we do it? How do we go about building tiny robots? Well, Pablo Picasso, of all people, gives us our first clue. Picasso said — ["Good artists copy, great artists steal."] (Laughter) "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." (Laughter) OK. But steal from what? Well, believe it or not, most of the technology you need to build a tiny robot already exists. The semiconductor industry has been getting better and better at making tinier and tinier devices, so at this point they could put something like a million transistors into the size of a package that is occupied by, say, a single-celled paramecium. And it's not just electronics. They can also build little sensors, LEDs, whole communication packages that are too small to be seen. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to steal that technology. Here's a robot. (Laughter) Robot's got two parts, as it turns out. It's got a head, and it's got legs. [Steal these: Brains] (Laughter) We're going to call this a legless robot, which may sound exotic, but they're pretty cool all by themselves. In fact, most of you have a legless robot with you right now. Your smartphone is the world's most successful legless robot. In just 15 years, it has taken over the entire planet. And why not? It's such a beautiful little machine. It's incredibly intelligent, it's got great communication skills, and it's all in a package that you can hold in your hand. So we would like to be able to build something like this, only down at the cellular scale, the size of a paramecium. And here it is. This is our cell-sized smartphone. It even kind of looks like a smartphone, only it's about 10,000 times smaller. We call it an OWIC. [Optical Wireless Integrated Circuits] OK, we're not advertisers, all right? (Laughter) But it's pretty cool all by itself. In fact, this OWIC has a number of parts. So up near the top, there are these cool little solar cells that you shine light on the device and it wakes up a little circuit that's there in the middle. And that circuit can drive a little tiny LED that can blink at you and allows the OWIC to communicate with you. So unlike your cell phone, the OWIC communicates with light, sort of like a tiny firefly. Now, one thing that's pretty cool about these OWICs is we don't make them one at a time, soldering all the pieces together. We make them in massive parallel. For example, about a million of these OWICs can fit on a single four-inch wafer. And just like your phone has different apps, you can have different kinds of OWICs. There can be ones that, say, measure voltage, some that measure temperature, or just have a little light that can blink at you to tell you that it's there. So that's pretty cool, these tiny little devices. And I'd like to tell you about them in a little more detail. But first, I have to tell you about something else. I'm going to tell you a few things about pennies that you might not know. So this one is a little bit older penny. It's got a picture of the Lincoln Memorial on the back. But the first thing you might not know, that if you zoom in, you'll find in the center of this thing you can actually see Abraham Lincoln, just like in the real Lincoln Memorial not so far from here. What I'm sure you don't know, that if you zoom in even further — (Laughter) you'll see that there's actually an OWIC on Abe Lincoln's chest. (Laughter) But the cool thing is, you could stare at this all day long and you would never see it. It's invisible to the naked eye. These OWICs are so small, and we make them in such parallel fashion, that each OWIC costs actually less than a penny. In fact, the most expensive thing in this demo is that little sticker that says "OWIC." (Laughter) That cost about eight cents. (Laughter) Now, we're very excited about these things for all sorts of reasons. For example, we can use them as little tiny secure smart tags, more identifying than a fingerprint. We're actually putting them inside of other medical instruments to give other information, and even starting to think about putting them in the brain to listen to neurons one at a time. In fact, there's only one thing wrong with these OWICs: it's not a robot. It's just a head. (Laughter) And I think we'll all agree that half a robot really isn't a robot at all. Without the legs, we've got basically nothing. MM: OK, so you need the legs, too, if you want to build a robot. Now, here it turns out you can't just steal some preexisting technology. If you want legs for your tiny robot, you need actuators, parts that move. They have to satisfy a lot of different requirements. They need to be low voltage. They need to be low power, too. But most importantly, they have to be small. If you want to build a cell-sized robot, you need cell-sized legs. Now, nobody knows how to build that. There was no preexisting technology that meets all of those demands. To make our legs for our tiny robots, we had to make something new. So here's what we built. This is one of our actuators, and I'm applying a voltage to it. When I do, you can see the actuator respond by curling up. Now, this might not look like much, but if we were to put a red blood cell up on the screen, it'd be about that big, so these are unbelievably tiny curls. They're unbelievably small, and yet this device can just bend and unbend, no problem, nothing breaks. So how do we do it? Well, the actuator is made from a layer of platinum just a dozen atoms or so thick. Now it turns out, if you take platinum and put it in water and apply a voltage to it, atoms from the water will attach or remove themselves from the surface of the platinum, depending on how much voltage you use. This creates a force, and you can use that force for voltage-controlled actuation. The key here was to make everything ultrathin. Then your actuator is flexible enough to bend to these small sizes without breaking, and it can use the forces that come about from just attaching or removing a single layer of atoms. Now, we don't have to build these one at a time, either. In fact, just like the OWICs, we can build them massively in parallel as well. So here's a couple thousand or so actuators, and all I'm doing is applying a voltage, and they all wave, looking like nothing more than the legs of a future robot army. (Laughter) So now we've got the brains and we've got the brawn. We've got the smarts and the actuators. The OWICs are the brains. They give us sensors, they give us power supplies, and they give us a two-way communication system via light. The platinum layers are the muscle. They're what's going to move the robot around. Now we can take those two pieces, put them together and start to build our tiny, tiny robots. The first thing we wanted to build was something really simple. This robot walks around under user control. In the middle are some solar cells and some wiring attached to it. That's the OWIC. They're connected to a set of legs which have a platinum layer and these rigid panels that we put on top that tell the legs how to fold up, which shape they should take. The idea is that by shooting a laser at the different solar cells, you can choose which leg you want to move and make the robot walk around. Now, of course, we don't build those one at a time, either. We build them massively in parallel as well. We can build something like one million robots on a single four-inch wafer. So, for example, this image on the left, this is a chip, and this chip has something like 10,000 robots on it. Now, in our world, the macro world, this thing looks like it might be a new microprocessor or something. But if you take that chip and you put it under a microscope, what you're going to see are thousands and thousands of tiny robots. Now, these robots are still stuck down. They're still attached to the surface that we built them on. In order for them to walk around, we have to release them. We wanted to show you how we do that live, how we release the robot army, but the process involves highly dangerous chemicals, like, really nasty stuff, and we're like a mile from the White House right now? Yeah. They wouldn't let us do it. So — (Laughter) so we're going to show you a movie instead. (Laughs) What you're looking at here are the final stages of robot deployment. We're using chemicals to etch the substrate out from underneath the robots. When it dissolves, the robots are free to fold up into their final shapes. Now, you can see here, the yield's about 90 percent, so almost every one of those 10,000 robots we build, that's a robot that we can deploy and control later. And we can take those robots and we can put them places as well. So if you look at the movie on the left, that's some robots in water. I'm going to come along with a pipette, and I can vacuum them all up. Now when you inject the robots back out of that pipette, they're just fine. In fact, these robots are so small, they're small enough to pass through the thinnest hypodermic needle you can buy. Yeah, so if you wanted to, you could inject yourself full of robots. (Laughter) I think they're into it. (Laughter) On the right is a robot that we put in some pond water. I want you to wait for just one second. Ooop! You see that? That was no shark. That was a paramecium. So that's the world that these things live in. OK, so this is all well and good, but you might be wondering at this point, "Well, do they walk?" Right? That's what they're supposed to do. They better. So let's find out. So here's the robot and here are its solar cells in the middle. Those are those little rectangles. I want you to look at the solar cell closest to the top of the slide. See that little white dot? That's a laser spot. Now watch what happens when we start switching that laser between different solar cells on the robot. Off it goes! (Applause) Yeah! (Applause) Off goes the robot marching around the microworld. Now, one of the things that's cool about this movie is: I'm actually piloting the robot in this movie. In fact, for six months, my job was to shoot lasers at tiny cell-sized robots to pilot them around the microworld. This was actually my job. As far as I could tell, that is the coolest job in the world. (Laughter) It was just the feeling of total excitement, like you're doing the impossible. It's a feeling of wonder like that first time I looked through a microscope as a kid staring at that rotifer. Now, I'm a dad, I have a son of my own, and he's about three years old. But one day, he's going to look through a microscope like that one. And I often wonder: What is he going to see? Instead of just watching the microworld, we as humans can now build technology to shape it, to interact with it, to engineer it. In 30 years, when my son is my age, what will we do with that ability? Will microrobots live in our bloodstream, as common as bacteria? Will they live on our crops and get rid of pests? Will they tell us when we have infections, or will they fight cancer cell by cell? PM: And one cool part is, you're going to be able to participate in this revolution. Ten years or so from now, when you buy your new iPhone 15x Moto or whatever it's called — (Laughter) it may come with a little jar with a few thousand tiny robots in it that you can control by an app on your cell phone. So if you want to ride a paramecium, go for it. If you want to — I don't know — DJ the world's smallest robot dance party, make it happen. (Laughter) And I, for one, am very excited about that day coming. MM: Thank you. (Applause)

Do politics make us irrational?

TED-Ed

In 2013, a team of researchers held a math test. The exam was administered to over 1,100 American adults, and designed, in part, to test their ability to evaluate sets of data. Hidden among these math problems were two almost identical questions. Both problems used the same difficult data set, and each had one objectively correct answer. The first asked about the correlation between rashes and a new skin cream. The second asked about the correlation between crime rates and gun control legislation. Participants with strong math skills were much more likely to get the first question correct. But despite being mathematically identical, the results for the second question looked totally different. Here, math skills weren’t the best predictor of which participants answered correctly. Instead, another variable the researchers had been tracking came into play: political identity. Participants whose political beliefs aligned with a correct interpretation of the data were far more likely to answer the problem right. Even the study’s top mathematicians were 45% more likely to get the second question wrong when the correct answer challenged their political beliefs. What is it about politics that inspires this kind of illogical error? Can someone’s political identity actually affect their ability to process information? The answer lies in a cognitive phenomenon that has become increasingly visible in public life: partisanship. While it’s often invoked in the context of politics, partisanship is more broadly defined as a strong preference or bias towards any particular group or idea. Our political, ethnic, religious, and national identities are all different forms of partisanship. Of course, identifying with social groups is an essential and healthy part of human life. Our sense of self is defined not only by who we are as individuals, but also by the groups we belong to. As a result, we’re strongly motivated to defend our group identities, protecting both our sense of self and our social communities. But this becomes a problem when the group’s beliefs are at odds with reality. Imagine watching your favorite sports team commit a serious foul. You know that’s against the rules, but your fellow fans think it’s totally acceptable. The tension between these two incompatible thoughts is called cognitive dissonance, and most people are driven to resolve this uncomfortable state of limbo. You might start to blame the referee, complain that the other team started it, or even convince yourself there was no foul in the first place. In a case like this, people are often more motivated to maintain a positive relationship with their group than perceive the world accurately. This behavior is especially dangerous in politics. On an individual scale, allegiance to a party allows people to create a political identity and support policies they agree with. But partisan-based cognitive dissonance can lead people to reject evidence that’s inconsistent with the party line or discredits party leaders. And when entire groups of people revise the facts in service of partisan beliefs, it can lead to policies that aren’t grounded in truth or reason. This problem isn’t new— political identities have been around for centuries. But studies show that partisan polarization has increased dramatically in the last few decades. One theory explaining this increase is the trend towards clustering geographically in like-minded communities. Another is the growing tendency to rely on partisan news or social media bubbles. These often act like echo chambers, delivering news and ideas from people with similar views. Fortunately, cognitive scientists have uncovered some strategies for resisting this distortion filter. One is to remember that you’re probably more biased than you think. So when you encounter new information, make a deliberate effort to push through your initial intuition and evaluate it analytically. In your own groups, try to make fact-checking and questioning assumptions a valued part of the culture. Warning people that they might have been presented with misinformation can also help. And when you’re trying to persuade someone else, affirming their values and framing the issue in their language can help make people more receptive. We still have a long way to go before solving the problem of partisanship. But hopefully, these tools can help keep us better informed, and capable of making evidence-based decisions about our shared reality.

The health benefits of clowning around

{0: 'Polymath and former medical clown Matthew A. Wilson is a playful communicator helping companies improve employee and customer experiences.'}

TED Residency

I danced with Bella for the first time as Bei Mir Bistu Shein filled the room. And her blue eyes locked with mine. We took turns singing and forgetting the words. She led, I followed. A waltz step here, a shimmy here. (Rattle sound) (Laughter) Hands on our hearts, our foreheads touching, as we communicated through movement and music, making sense through nonsense. Bella is 83 and lives with dementia. The dance gives us a chance to find each other. How did I learn to dance with dementia? Because I'm not a dancer. And I'm not a doctor. But I've played one in the hospital. (Laughs) I'm a clown doctor. Or a medical clown. My tools are whoopee cushions, shakers (Shaker rattles) and a red nose. You know the old adage "laughter is the best medicine?" I hear that a lot. Now, at the same time, there are studies to support it, but right now, I'd like to take you behind the nose and go beyond the laughter and share a few things that I've seen skating through ICUs. In my Heelys. Size 11. Because I take medical clowning very, very seriously. (Deflating sound) (Laughter) (Deflating sound) (Deflating sound) (Laughter) My mentor was conducting clown rounds in the hospital when he was approached by a nurse. They needed to put a tube up the kid's nose. Kid didn't want to do it, so rather than hold the kid down, they asked my colleague if he could help. So the clown asked for a second tube and shoved it up his own nose. Kid of like this. Oh, please don't do this at home. (Laughter) Now, the kid saw this, grabbed his own tube and promptly stuck it up his own nose, kind of like this. (Applause) The clowns, the nurse and the patient discovered a creative solution for their situation together. And guess what, there's research to back this up. Randomized controlled trials in Israel and Italy show that medical clowns can be as effective as tranquilizers with no side effects. In 2004, I started conducting my own clown rounds at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. My colleague and I were invited to accompany a young six-year-old with the most adorable southern accent, to accompany him while he got his chemotherapy port flushed, a very uncomfortable and regular procedure. We joined him, his mom and the nurse in this tiny, closed curtain cubicle. Every medical clown encounter begins by obtaining consent from the patient. So we ask him if we can be there. He says, "Sure." We're often the one element that a child could control while they're in the hospital. So we start with a card trick, fan the deck so he can pick. But as soon as the nurse approaches with the needle to flush the port, he starts screaming and cussing like no six-year-old I'd ever heard in my life. So we say, "Hey, should we come back later?" He stops, mouth open, eyes wet with tears, face flushed pink with anger, and he smiles, "Oh no, you're fine, I want you to be here." OK. So we start playing a song, my colleague on recorder, me on whoopee cushion. The nurse approaches with the needle, and it happens again, this torrent of four-letter words. He went from playing and laughing to screaming and crying, back and forth until the procedure was complete. For the first time, I experienced this odd duality of joy and suffering. But not for the last time. See, when we're there, we're not there merely to distract or make anyone feel better per se. The medical clowns work moment by moment to create connections between the clowns, the nurse, the parent and the child. This provides a source of power or control for the child while supporting the staff with their work. I've spent over a decade bringing joy and delight to the bedsides of terminally ill children in the top hospitals in New York City. And you know what I've learned? Everyone's hurting. Staff, family, patients. The patient's in the hospital because they're hurting. The family's hurting as they navigate uncertainty, grief and the financial burdens of care. The staff is hurting, only it's more than burnout. More and more health care workers are reporting feeling overworked and overextended. Now, I'm not so naive as to suggest that the solution is to send in the clowns. (Laughter) But what if? What if the tools of medical clown arts practitioners from around the world permeated our entire health care system? In 2018, at the Healthcare Clowning International Meeting, they represented over 150 programs in 50 different countries. University of Haifa offers a formal undergraduate degree program in medical clowning. Argentina has passed laws requiring the presence of medical clowns in public hospitals at their largest province. And this work affects more than the patients. It makes things better for the whole health care team. One of my favorite games to play in the hospital is elevator music. I love elevators, because they're a place where paths cross, different worlds meet. It's intimate, uncomfortably quiet and just begging for a little playful disruption. The doors close and "The Girl from Ipanema" starts playing on Hammond organ, because I keep a portable speaker hidden in my pocket. So for those used to using the silent, sterile elevator, it's a moment of surprise. Folks have permission to acknowledge or not this disruption. The game grows with every stop, because as soon as the elevator stops, the music stops. New passengers get on, and the current passengers get to witness the new passengers — their surprise — as they hear the elevator music for the first time. You experience the shift of adults standing silently, strangers in an elevator, to attempting to suppress their mirth, to, "Is this a party or an elevator," filled with full-on laughter. Research conducted in Brazil, Australia, Canada and Germany confirm that the artistic interventions of medical clowns improve the work environment for the staff, beyond the elevator, and support their work administering care. Promising research in the US indicates that arts programing in the hospital can improve the work environment, leading to increased job satisfaction and better quality of care. My work has taught me how to actually be present. How to breathe in a room with a person in pain. How to connect and build trust, no matter the age, ability or illness. And how medical clowning is an excellent way of using the arts to put the care back in health care. Thanks. (Applause)

The science of friction -- and its surprising impact on our lives

{0: 'Jennifer Vail combines mechanical engineering and materials science to investigate interacting surfaces in relative motion.'}

TED@DuPont

I have to admit that it's a lot of fun when people ask me what I do for my job, because I tell them I literally rub things together. This sounds ridiculous, just rubbing things together. But it has a technical name: tribology. T-r-i-b-o-l-o-g-y, from the ancient Greek word "tribos," which means "to rub." It's a funny-sounding word you've probably never heard before, but I promise you, discovering it changes your experience with the physical world. Tribology has given me amazing projects. I've worked on materials that fly, and I've worked on dog food — a combination that doesn't sound like one person has any business doing in the span of just a couple years, until you start to view the world through a tribological lens. And I think you'll be surprised at how significant a little bit of tribology can be in alleviating some very large problems. Tribology is the study of friction, wear and lubrication. You have all experienced all three of these things. Remember the last time you tried to move a heavy object across the floor, and you could just feel something resisting you? That would be friction. Friction is the force that opposes motion. Wear is the loss or transfer of material. It's the reason you have to replace your favorite shoes, because eventually the soles disappear. Lubricants are used to reduce friction and wear. They loosen up those stubborn rusted bolts that just otherwise will not budge. But tribology is also defined as the science of interacting surfaces in relative motion. So, interacting surfaces in relative motion: there are a lot of those in the world. As you're sitting there right now, are you wiggling your foot at all or maybe shifting around in your seat? Because guess what? Tribology is happening. Even the smallest shift in your seat involves two surfaces moving relative to each other. And your tribological interaction for the shift will be different than the person next to you. This is because the clothes you're wearing change the friction between you and the seat. If you're wearing silk, it's a little easier to squirm around in the seat than if you're wearing wool. That's because the friction is lower for silk. If you're moving your ankle or wiggling your ankle at all, did it make a popping sound? You've had that, right? You get up, you move around, and some joint cracks or pops. Thank you for that sound, tribology. That sound can come from the fluid that lubricates your joints just moving around. You're essentially releasing gas bubbles in that fluid. That sound can also come from the tendons simply moving over each other. Pretty common in the ankle, so any of my fellow foot-wigglers out there may suddenly find themselves curious about the tribology of tendons. But how does one become a tribologist like me? It starts when you're a kid, of course. I was a ballerina growing up. I reached the level where I was dancing on my toes, or "en pointe." Now, when you're dancing en pointe, you're wearing those amazing shoes, but they can be slippery on the stage. The last thing you want to do when you're trying to dance on your toes is to slip and fall. So we had boxes of stuff called rosin. We would step into the rosin, put a light coating on our shoes. Rosin comes from tree sap and, in its powdered form, makes things less slippery. You learned real fast as a dancer how much was the right amount to put on your shoes, because if you didn't put enough on, you were probably going to slip due to the low friction between your shoe and the stage. Best case scenario, you're the clumsy ballerina on stage, but the worst case scenario would be an injury. Already, I was optimizing and manipulating friction. You see, I was destined to be a tribologist. (Laughter) But you were also a junior tribologist. When you used crayons or colored pencils, you knew that the harder you pressed, the darker the color. You also knew this meant you were going to have to sharpen that crayon or colored pencil more frequently, because it was wearing down faster. Now let's talk about those enticing shiny waxed floors that you just had to slide across. You knew if you put on a pair of socks, you were going to get a really good slide across that floor. Good luck trying to do that barefoot. Master manipulators of friction. All kids are tribologists. What about us as adults? At some point today, you brushed your teeth. I hope. (Laughter) This is tribology in action. The toothpaste and toothbrush are working to remove or wear the plaque from your teeth. For the record, my dad is a dentist. Never thought my career was going to circle back to the family business. But one day, we found ourselves speaking the same language when I was tasked with developing a test to investigate plaque removal. Sounded simple enough, until I started to look at it as a tribologist, and then it became incredibly complex. You have hard materials — those would be your teeth — soft materials like your gums, the toothpaste, the toothbrush. There's lubrication — the form of saliva and water — the dynamics of the person doing the brushing and more. I promise if we put diamonds in your toothpaste, you're going to remove that plaque. Probably going to remove your teeth as well. So there's a fine balance to be had between wearing the plaque away and not damaging your teeth and gums. We're brushing our teeth because we ate. Eating is another routine thing we all do. Seems simple enough. But it's another field of tribology, and it's not so simple. You have the food, which will break and wear while you're eating, and that food is interacting with your teeth, your tongue, your saliva, your throat. And all of those interactions are going to influence your experience of eating. I think you can all recall a moment where you tried something new and you just found yourself going, "Well, it tastes alright. I really don't like that texture." Tribologists are looking at lubricity, the coefficient of friction, as ways to connect mouth feel and texture to what you're experiencing, so that if we're changing the formulations of what we're eating and drinking so the sugar content or fat content are different, how does that change mouth feel? How do we quantify that? This is what tribologists are looking to solve. And while my colleagues were in one corner of this lab looking at the fat content of yogurt, I was in another corner studying dog food. That lab smelled really good, by the way, let me tell you. We all brush our teeth on a regular basis. How many of us brush our pets' teeth? Animals as adults commonly get periodontal disease, so we really should be brushing their teeth, and more pet owners are starting to do this. I know my best friend is really great at brushing her cat's teeth, somehow. Good luck trying to do that with my cat. So what pet food suppliers are trying to do is incorporate plaque removal in things like treats. If you have a dog, you may have observed that you give a dog a treat, and it magically seems to disappear after just one bite. So the added challenge here is: How do you remove plaque when you have one bite? I developed a benchtop test to study this problem, and to do so, I had to mimic the oral system of dogs: their teeth, plaque, saliva. And I used friction and wear measurements to study the effectiveness of that treat on removing plaque. If you're sitting there right now thinking about the last time you didn't brush your dog's teeth, you're very welcome. But what's the big deal with tribology? Let me give you one more example. No matter where you are right now, you got to this location somehow. Maybe you walked or rode your bike, but for most people in this room, you probably came in a car. Just think about all the tribological systems in a car. You have your personal interactions with the car, the car's interactions with the road and everything under the hood and in the drivetrain. Some routine maintenance is directly connected to tribology. You know how many miles your tires are recommended for using before you replace them. You regularly check the treads on those tires. You're actively monitoring the wear of your tires. Tribology is the study of wear and friction, and with tires, friction can be the difference between a safe arrival and a car accident. This is because the friction between your tires and the road will influence your acceleration, your deceleration and your stopping distance. As a driver, you instinctively already know how important friction is, because you know that when the roads are wet, they're more dangerous because they're slippery. This is because the water is reducing the friction between your tires and the road. You may recall that friction is the force that opposes motion, so water reducing that force means it's now easier for you to move, hence it's more slippery when the roads are wet. Something else to consider is that overcoming friction takes energy, so you're losing energy to friction. This is one way your tires can influence your fuel efficiency. And, in fact, did you know that about one-third of the fuel that you put into your internal combustion engine vehicle will be spent overcoming friction? One-third. Tribology research has helped us reduce friction and therefore increase fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. Holmberg and Erdemir have actually done some great studies showing the impact tribology research can have on reducing our energy consumption. And they found that, looking over the span of 20 years, we had the opportunity to reduce the energy consumption of passenger vehicles up to 60 percent. When you think about all the cars in the world, that's a lot of energy we can save. It's part of the nearly nine percent of our current global energy consumption that the authors identified tribology can help us save. That's a significant amount of energy. So when you look at the numbers, tribology can do some amazing things. My colleagues have identified up to 20 quads of energy we can save across the US alone. To put this in perspective: one quad of energy is roughly equivalent to 180 million barrels of oil, and tribology can help us save 20 times that. This is through new materials, new lubricants, novel component design, doing things like making wind turbines more efficient and reliable. This happened just by putting 31 people in a room who viewed the world through a tribology lens. Imagine the opportunities that will reveal themselves as more of us start to see tribology all around. My favorite projects right now are in aerospace applications. I love reducing wear and friction in these challenging environments. I can make materials and parts that will reduce the friction in moving components and engines so that they have less force opposing their motion. Less force to move means they require less power, so you can use a smaller actuator, which would weigh less, which saves fuel. I can also help make parts that last longer through lower wear. This will reduce material waste and also means we're manufacturing the parts less frequently, so we're saving energy in manufacturing. I encourage you to start seeing tribology in the world around you and to think about how you would improve those interacting surfaces you experience. Even the smallest improvements really add up. Tribology may be a funny-sounding word, but it has a huge impact on our world. Thank you. (Applause)

What if the poor were part of city planning?

{0: 'Smruti Jukur Johari works hand in hand with the urban poor to solve urban planning problems by applying unusual and innovative design solutions to dense, complex and neglected city landscapes.'}

TEDWomen 2019

What is our imagery of cities? When we imagine cities, we often imagine it to be something like this. But what if what you're looking at is just half a picture, but there is a city within the city. This part of the city is often seen as slums, squatters, informal, and people living here are called illegal, informal, criminals, beneficiaries, supplicants, etc. But in reality, these are poor people with no choices. Poverty is a vicious cycle. If born poor, it can take three or more generations to escape one. Many are forced in this cycle without choices, to live on pavements, along train tracks, in dumping grounds, along rivers, swamps and many such unlivable spaces, without clean water, toilets or housing. But these places are not unfamiliar to me, because since the age of six, I accompanied my father, a doctor, who treated patients in the slums of Bombay. Growing up, I would help him carry his bag of medicines after school lessons — I loved doing that. Wanting to do something about these habitats, I decided to become an architect. But quite early on, I realized that the beauty of architecture was only for the rich. So I decided to do urban planning and joined an NGO in India that works with the urban poor who organize themselves to access basic services, such as water, sanitation and housing, for the poor living in cities. Now I spent 10 years of my life in professional education, in learning, and then five years in unlearning it. Because I realized that all my training in architecture, design and planning failed ground realities. And this is where I learned the power of choice. I unlearned many things, but there are two myths about the poor that I would like to share that we live with. The first myth is a perception that migration of poor people into cities is a problem. Is migration really a choice? My mentor Sheela Patel asked to those who think of this as a problem, "Go ask your grandfather where he came from," she says. So what do poor people do when they migrate in cities? Let me share an example. This is the Mumbai International Airport. All that you see in blue are large informal settlements around it. Close to 75,000 people live here. So who are these people that work silently in hotels, restaurants, as laborers, babysitters, house helps and countless other jobs that we need for cities to function without a glitch? And where do they live? In most cities, they live in slums. So let us think again. Do we want poor people to stop migrating in our cities? What if they had a choice of not to? The second myth is my personal experience. It's this attitude that we professionals know better. We professionals love to make choices for others, especially for the poor. Let me share an experience. In a workshop that looked at designing 250 new houses for poor families from a slum nearby, there were different building materials that were presented, ranging from papier-mâché, cardboard, honeycomb, etc., simply because they were affordable. But there was this one idea that was of shipping containers. Now we immediately approved of it, because we thought it was sustainable, scalable, affordable. But during this presentation, a lady from the slum humbly spoke up. And she asked the presenter, "Would you choose to live in it?" (Laughter) "If not, then why did you think we would?" Now this was a personal unlearning moment for me, where I realized that poverty only changes affordability — it does not change aspirations. Now poor people have lived in temporary structures all their life. They go from wall to wall, moving from bricks to tin. They move from building from bamboo, tarpaulin sheets, plastic, to cardboard, to tin, to bricks and cement, just like the way we do. So somewhere here, we were forcing our choices on them. So should we force our choices on them, or should we broaden their choices? Now what if the opportunity to choose was given to people? These are women who lived on the pavements of a neighborhood in Mumbai. Now they faced constant evictions, and in response to it, they organized a women's network called Mahila Milan. Not only did they fight against evictions with those in power, saved money and bought land, but they also designed and helped construct their own houses. Well, these were illiterate women, so how did they do that? They used floor mats and saris to understand measurements. A sari is four meters in length and 1.5 meters in width. They used these simple day-to-day items to demonstrate house models. And even they made three options to choose from and invited all their fellow residents to come and have a look. (Laughter) And everybody loved this option that had a loft in it, simply because it did two things. One is that it accommodated larger families to sleep in. And two, it allowed home-based work, such as bangle-making, jewelry-designing, embroidery-stitching, packaging items, etc. Now they also decided to not have a toilet inside, but instead have it outside in the corridors, simply because it gave them more space and it was cheaper. Now, professionals could have never thought of something like that. A formal design would have necessitated to have a toilet inside. Now these are smaller examples — let me share some larger context: 881,000,000 people — that's about one sixth of this world, as we talk here — are living in slums and informal settlements. Almost every city in the global south has large slums in the size of townships. Kibera, in Nairobi, Dharavi, in Mumbai, Khayelitsha in South Africa, just a few. Now initially, they were all on waste and abandoned lands that cities were never interested in. As cities grew, poor people started building on these lands and brought value to this over time. And today, these lands have become real estate hot spots that everybody wants a piece of. So how do cities and those in power choose to deal with them? They demolish them and evict them and move them away from their cities and economies in order to build a new infrastructure. They move them into vertical housing, which in reality looks like this. Now when built in high densities, they lack natural light and ventilation, and it often leads to unhealthy conditions. Now, on one hand, poor people are not involved in the participation of design, and there is poor quality of construction. And on the other hand, they do not understand how to do maintenance, you know, keeping bills, keeping records, forming societies — this is always difficult for them. And being forced to move into this formal society, they end up looking like this in a few years. Because formalization is not a product, it's a process. Moving from informal to formal for poor people is a journey. It takes time to accept and adapt. And when that choice is not given, it becomes like this, which I'm afraid, in future, these would become the slums. Now instead of doing this, what if we accommodated poor people and gave them a choice to be a part of our cities and develop them where they are, giving them basic services, like in this picture? Now what happens if cities and governments could work together, if governments acknowledge poor people, and they could build it together? This is Mukuru. It's a large informal settlement in Nairobi. It's one of the largest settlements in Africa. It's home to 300,000 people living over 650 acres of land. To help us understand that scale, it's like squeezing the population of Pittsburgh into the New York Central Park. That's Mukuru. So to give us a glimpse, this is the condition of housing. And this is what it is in between them. So what is life in Mukuru like, just talking briefly? Five hundred and fifty people use one single water tap and pay nine times more than what anybody else in the city could pay, simply because there is no water infrastructure and water is sold. Many come back from work to find out that their houses do not exist, because they have either been bulldozed, or they have been burned down. So, tired of this situation, a local slum dwellers' federation called Muungano decided to do something about it. In four years, they organized 20,000 residents to collect data, map structures and put it together. And the plan was very simple — they only needed four things. They wanted clean water, toilets, decent roads and, most importantly, not to be evicted. So they presented this with the government of Nairobi. And for the first time in history ever, a city has agreed to do it. The city of Nairobi, the government of Kenya, declared Mukuru to be a special planning area, which means that people could come up with their own plan. People could decide to come up with their own norms and standards, because the standards that work for the formal citizens do not work in informal settings. So what does that mean, to give us an instance? If these are roads in Mukuru, you can see that there are houses along both sides of the road. Now in order to bring in a city bus, as per the standards, planners would have gone for a luxurious 25-meter-wide road. Now that would mean displacing [25] percent of the structures — that's a lot of people. So instead of doing that, we came up with a 12-meter-wide road, which had the structures intact and brought the city bus without compromising on much services. In another instance, let's talk about community toilets. You know, in high-density areas, where there is no scope for individual toilets, like the public toilets that we have here. So we would go for a male section and a female section. But imagine this situation. In the morning rush hours to the toilet, when everybody is in intense pressure to relieve themselves, and if you're standing in a queue of 50 people, and there is a child standing behind an adult, who wins? Children end up squatting outside. And that's why women decided to come up with a separate squatting area for children. Now, who could have thought of something like that? The idea here is that when poor people choose, they choose better. They choose what works for them. So choice is everything. And power decides choice. And we need those in power — politicians, leaders, governments, architects, planners, institutions, researchers — and all of us in our everyday lives to respect choices. Instead of choosing what is right for people, for the poor, let's acknowledge and empower their choices. And that is how we can build better and inclusive cities for tomorrow, completing the imagery of cities built by the choices of its own people. Thank you. (Applause)

How bees can keep the peace between elephants and humans

{0: 'Zoologist Dr. Lucy King helms the Human-Elephant Coexistence Program for the Kenyan research charity Save the Elephants.'}

TEDWomen 2019

Ever since I can remember, African elephants have filled me with a sense of complete awe. They are the largest land mammal alive today on planet Earth, weighing up to seven tons, standing three and a half meters tall at the shoulder. They can eat up to 400 kilos of food in a day, and they disperse vital plant seeds across thousands of kilometers during their 50-to-60-year life span. Central to their compassionate and complex society are the matriarchs. These female, strong leaders nurture the young and navigate their way through the challenges of the African bush to find food, water and security. Their societies are so complex, we're yet to still fully tease apart how they communicate, how they verbalize to each other, how their dialects work. And we don't really understand yet how they navigate the landscape, remembering the safest places to cross a river. I'm pretty sure that like me, most of you in this room have a similar positive emotional response to these most magnificent of all animals. It's really hard not to have watched a documentary, learned about their intelligence or, if you've been lucky, to see them for yourselves on safari in the wild. But I wonder how many of you have been truly, utterly terrified by them. I was lucky to be brought up in Southern Africa by two teacher parents who had long holidays but very short budgets. And so we used to take our old Ford Cortina Estate, and with my sister, we'd pile in the back, take our tents and go camping in the different game reserves in Southern Africa. It really was heaven for a young, budding zoologist like myself. But I remember even at that young age that I found the tall electric fences blocking off the game parks quite divisive. Sure, they were keeping elephants out of the communities, but they also kept communities out of their wild spaces. It really was quite a challenge to me at that young age. It was only when I moved to Kenya at the age of 14, when I got to connect to the vast, wild open spaces of East Africa. And it is here now that I feel truly, instinctively, really at home. I spent many, many happy years studying elephant behavior in a tent, in Samburu National Reserve, under the guideship of professor Fritz Vollrath and Iain Douglas-Hamilton, studying for my PhD and understanding the complexities of elephant societies. But now, in my role as head of the human-elephant coexistence program for Save the Elephants, we're seeing so much change happening so fast that it's urged a change in some of our research programs. No longer can we just sit and understand elephant societies or study just how to stop the ivory trade, which is horrific and still ongoing. We're having to change our resources more and more to look at this rising problem of human-elephant conflict, as people and pachyderms compete for space and resources. It was only as recently as the 1970s that we used to have 1.2 million elephants roaming across Africa. Today, we're edging closer to only having 400,000 left. And at the same time period, the human population has quadrupled, and the land is being fragmented at such a pace that it's really hard to keep up with. Too often, these migrating elephants end up stuck inside communities, looking for food and water but ending up breaking open water tanks, breaking pipes and, of course, breaking into food stores for food. It's really a huge challenge. Can you imagine the terror of an elephant literally ripping the roof off your mud hut in the middle of the night and having to hold your children away as the trunk reaches in, looking for food in the pitch dark? These elephants also trample and eat crops, and this is traditionally eroding away that tolerance that people used to have for elephants. And sadly, we're losing these animals by the day and, in some countries, by the hour — to not only ivory poaching but this rapid rise in human-elephant conflict as they compete for space and resources. It's a massive challenge. I mean, how do you keep seven-ton pachyderms, that often come in groups of 10 or 12, out of these very small rural farms when you're dealing with people who are living on the very edge of poverty? They don't have big budgets. How do you resolve this issue? Well, one issue is, you can just start to build electric fences, and this is happening across Africa, we're seeing this more and more. But they are dividing up areas and blocking corridors. And I'm telling you, these elephants don't think much of it either, particularly if they're blocking a really special water hole where they need water, or if there's a very attractive female on the other side. It doesn't take long to knock down one of these poles. And as soon as there's a gap in the fence, they go back, talk to their mates and suddenly they're all through, and now you have 12 elephants on the community side of the fence. And now you're really in trouble. People keep trying to come up with new designs for electric fences. Well, these elephants don't think much of those either. (Laughter) So rather than having these hard-line, straight, electric, really divisive migratory-blocking fences, there must be other ways to look at this challenge. I'm much more interested in holistic and natural methods to keep elephants and people apart where necessary. Simply talking to people, talking to rural pastoralists in northern Kenya who have so much knowledge about the bush, we discovered this story that they had that elephants would not feed on trees that had wild beehives in them. Now this was an interesting story. As the elephants were foraging on the tree, they would break branches and perhaps break open a wild beehive. And those bees would fly out of their natural nests and sting the elephants. Now if the elephants got stung, perhaps they would remember that this tree was dangerous and they wouldn't come back to that same site. It seems impossible that they could be stung through their thick skin — elephant skin is around two centimeters thick. But it seems that they sting them around the watery areas, around the eyes, behind the ears, in the mouth, up the trunk. You can imagine they would remember that very quickly. And it's not really one sting that they're scared of. African bees have a phenomenal ability: when they sting in one site, they release a pheromone that triggers the rest of the bees to come and sting the same site. So it's not one beesting that they're scared of — it's perhaps thousands of beestings, coming to sting in the same area — that they're afraid of. And of course, a good matriarch would always keep her young away from such a threat. Young calves have much thinner skins, and it's potential that they could be stung through their thinner skins. So for my PhD, I had this unusual challenge of trying to work out how African elephants and African bees would interact, when the theory was that they wouldn't interact at all. How was I going to study this? Well, what I did was I took the sound of disturbed African honey bees, and I played it back to elephants resting under trees through a wireless speaker system, so I could understand how they would react as if there were wild bees in the area. And it turns out that they react quite dramatically to the sound of African wild bees. Here we are, playing the bee sounds back to this amazing group of elephants. You can see the ears going up, going out, they're turning their heads from side to side, one elephant is flicking her trunk to try and smell. There's another elephant that kicks one of calves on the ground to tell it to get up as if there is a threat. And one elephant triggers a retreat, and soon the whole family of elephants are running after her across the savannah in a cloud of dust. (Sound of bees buzzing) (Sound of bees ends) Now I've done this experiment many, many times, and the elephants almost always flee. Not only do they run away, but they dust themselves as they're running, as if to knock bees out of the air. And we placed infrasonic microphones around the elephants as we did these experiments. And it turns out they're communicating to each other in infrasonic rumbles to warn each other of the threat of bees and to stay away from the area. So these behavioral discoveries really helped us understand how elephants would react should they hear or see bee sounds. This led me to invent a novel design for a beehive fence, which we are now building around small, one-to-two-acre farms on the most vulnerable frontline areas of Africa where humans and elephants are competing for space. These beehive fences are very, very simple. We use 12 beehives and 12 dummy hives to protect one acre of farmland. Now a dummy hive is simply a piece of plywood which we cut into squares, paint yellow and hang in between the hives. We're basically tricking the elephants into thinking there are more beehives than there really are. And of course, it literally halves the cost of the fence. So there's a hive and a dummy hive and a beehive and now dummy hive, every 10 meters around the outside boundary. They're held up by posts with a shade roof to protect the bees, and they're interconnected with a simple piece of plain wire, which goes all the way around, connecting the hives. So if an elephant tries to enter the farm, he will avoid the beehive at all cost, but he might try and push through between the hive and the dummy hive, causing all the beehives to swing as the wire hits his chest. And as we know from our research work, this will cause the elephants to flee and run away — and hopefully remember not to come back to that risky area. The bees swarm out of the hive, and they really scare the elephants away. These beehive fences we're studying using things like camera traps to help us understand how elephants are responding to them at night time, which is when most of the crop raiding occurs. And we found in our study farms that we're keeping up to 80 percent of elephants outside of the boundaries of these farms. And the bees and the beehive fences are also pollinating the fields. So we're having a great reduction both in elephant crop raids and a boost in yield through the pollination services that the bees are giving to the crops themselves. The strength of the beehive fences is really important — the colonies have to be very strong. So we're trying to help farmers grow pollinator-friendly crops to boost their hives, boost the strength of their bees and, of course, produce the most amazing honey. This honey is so valuable as an extra livelihood income for the farmers. It's a healthy alternative to sugar, and in our community, it's a very valuable present to give a mother-in-law, which makes it almost priceless. (Laughter) We now bottle up this honey, and we've called this wild beautiful honey Elephant-Friendly Honey. It is a fun name, but it also attracts attention to our project and helps people understand what we're trying to do to save elephants. We're working now with so many women in over 60 human-elephant conflict sites in 19 countries in Africa and Asia to build these beehive fences, working very, very closely with so many farmers but particularly now with women farmers, helping them to live better in harmony with elephants. One of the things we're trying to do is develop a toolbox of options to live in better harmony with these massive pachyderms. One of those issues is to try and get farmers, and women in particular, to think different about what they're planting inside their farms as well. So we're looking at planting crops that elephants don't particularly want to eat, like chillies, ginger, Moringa, sunflowers. And of course, the bees and the beehive fences love these crops too, because they have beautiful flowers. One of these plants is a spiky plant called sisal — you may know this here as jute. And this amazing plant can be stripped down and turned into a weaving product. We're working with these amazing women now who live daily with the challenges of elephants to use this plant to weave into baskets to provide an alternative income for them. We've just started construction only three weeks ago on a women's enterprise center where we're going to be working with these women not only as expert beekeepers but as amazing basket weavers; they're going to be processing chili oils, sunflower oils, making lip balms and honey, and we're somewhere on our way to helping these participating farmers live with better eco-generating projects that live and work better with living with elephants. So whether it's matriarchs or mothers or researchers like myself, I do see more women coming to the forefront now to think differently and more boldly about the challenges that we face. With more innovation, and perhaps with some more empathy towards each other, I do believe we can move from a state of conflict with elephants to true coexistence. Thank you. (Applause)

Everything changed when the fire crystal got stolen

TED-Ed

Someone has tripped the magical alarms in the Element Temple. By the time you and the other monks arrive on the scene, you know you have a disaster on your hands. Overnight, four young apprentices broke into the temple’s inner chamber to steal the sacred element crystals. But when the alarm went off they panicked, and each of them swallowed the crystal they held right before they were caught. With no idea how to control the crystals’ vast powers, they’ll soon transform into uncontrollable elemental spirits. Improbably enough, the old monk next to you has seen something similar happen before. He explains: “You must determine who ate which crystal and get each into the proper containment field before they transform. The elements compel their masters: those who ate the Earth and Water Crystals must speak the truth, while those who consumed Fire and Air must lie." The youths are too scared to confess their own transgressions. Instead, they fall to accusing each other. “Rikku took the Water crystal!” Sumi blurts out. Rikku interrupts angrily. “It was Bella, she stole the Fire crystal!” So Bella yells: “Jonah ate the Air crystal, I saw him!” Jonah looks up timidly and shakes his head. “I… I don’t know what happened, but Sumi doesn’t have the Earth crystal.” So who ate which crystal? Pause now to figure it out for yourself. There’s no getting around it— this will take some trial and error. But that’s not a bad thing. If we make a wrong guess, we’ll eventually reach a point where our conclusions contradict each other. That would allow us to confirm that our initial guess was wrong and work from there. This is a technique known as proof by contradiction. The trick is in being strategic about where we begin our guessing. Some assumptions might not lead to contradictions without making further assumptions. We want to pick one that creates the most constraints on its own, and thus gives us the most information when it turns out to be right or wrong. Take, for example, Sumi’s statement. If we assume she’s telling the truth, we’d know the identity of both truth tellers. Rikku would have the Water crystal, and since she’s not lying about him, Sumi would have Earth. So Bella would have the Fire crystal, as Rikku says. But then Bella would have to be lying about Jonah having the Air crystal. And yet that’s the only remaining option. This is a contradiction, and it tells us our initial assumption was wrong. So now we can go back to the start, but with the added knowledge that Sumi is lying. As a liar, Sumi must either have the Fire or Air crystal. That means Jonah was telling the truth about her, so he can’t have taken either of those. And that means Bella was lying about him, so she must also have either Fire or Air. Since Sumi was lying, Rikku can’t have taken the Water crystal— the only one left who could have it is Jonah. And because we’ve already identified the two liars, Rikku must have the Earth crystal. That means Bella has the Fire crystal and Sumi has Air. You manage to get them all in the proper containment fields just as the crystals’ magic begins to manifest. Compared with the difficult task of training these kids to control their new powers, figuring out who had which crystal was elementary.

3 things new parents should consider before going back to work

{0: 'Emily Oster has a history of rethinking conventional wisdom.'}

The Way We Work

When I was pregnant, I just got very frustrated. Don't eat deli meats, do this particular prenatal test. Why did you make that choice? Why didn't you make a different choice? I felt like I was being told to do things, and I never got the answer to why. [The Way We Work] Sometimes in the world of modern parenting you just can't seem to win. If I go back to work, I spend less time with my kid. What if they don't get the attention they need to adequately develop? If I stay home and give up my income stream, will I look back and regret my decision? There's a lot of conflicting advice out there about whether to stay home or go back to work, so trying to make a choice between the two can be confusing and emotional. You love your kids and want what's best for them, but how do you determine what best means when everyone has a different opinion? There are many variations of parents that a household can have, and I think more families should be asking the question of whether it makes sense for the male partner to stay home. But the truth is that in the current time, most of the discussions about stay-at-home parents focus on women in particular. And it's usually the women who say they feel that what they do during the day is going to determine at a deep level what kind of mom and person they are. That is a huge weight to put on yourself as a parent. And when you're met with the side-eye after telling someone you're going back to work or not, it can poke holes in your confidence. I decided to dig in and find out. Is it better to stay at home or go back to work? It's an emotional decision, yes, but as an economist I've learned that we can use data to help navigate through those emotional decisions and feel confident we're making the best decision for our family. Specifically there are three main factors you should consider before you decide. First, you need to think about how this decision will affect your family budget. Let's do some numbers. Say your total household income is 100,000 dollars, with you and your partner making 50,000 each. That means you bring home about 85,000 dollars after taxes. If both of you work and the family pays 1,500 dollars a month for childcare, your total disposable income would be 67,000 dollars a year. Are you with me so far? If you decide to stay home, your family makes less but you don't pay for childcare. Your disposable income goes down in this scenario, but not by as much as it would if you didn't factor in the childcare. It becomes more complicated if childcare is more expensive in your area. A full-time nanny can run 40, 50,000 dollars a year depending on where you live. If that's the case in your neighborhood, in the scenario I outlined, it would completely wipe out one parent's income, and you'd be better off financially with one parent staying home. Of course, this is only a short-term analysis. Childcare is less expensive sometimes when kids are in school, and you may make a higher income later, so you want to factor that in if you can. Once you've done the math, you'll know what's possible and you'll be able to make a more informed choice, which should feel empowering. Second, it's time to talk about what's best for your child. You may think this should be the core of your decision, but there's actually no right answer. According to studies from Europe and the US, the decision to go back to work or stay at home won't actually make or break your child's future success. Research shows that two parents working full-time has a similar effect on your child's future test scores and income to one parent working and one not. What seems to be most important is the environment your child is in during their spare time. As long as they're engaging in enriching activities; reading, practicing their motor skills, interacting with other kids, they're going to thrive whether or not you're at home. There is a bit of nuance in the data. For example, studies have found, that if both parents work, kids from poorer families are impacted positively, and kids from richer families are impacted less positively. So depending on your household configuration, the effects on your child could be a little positive, or a little negative, but the overall impact is negligible. Now I want to call out an exception: maternity leave. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that babies do better when their mothers take some maternity leave. The early days with your child can impact their development, so if you have paid leave, you should take it, and if you don't, maybe consider taking some unpaid leave for those first few months, if your budget allows. And finally, ask yourself, what do I want? While this may seem simple, it's the factor that feels most taboo to explore. In talking to parents I find that when a woman chooses to stay home, she often feels obligated to say she made this choice for her children's optimal development. Which, sure, can be part of the reason, but a perfectly acceptable answer is, "this is the lifestyle I prefer," or "this is what works for my family." The same goes for the working mother. Saying, "I like my job, and that's why I went back to work," is enough. If you want to go back to work, that's great. You're lucky to have a job that you love and you have every right to keep it once you become a parent. Be honest with yourself about what you'd like to do. If you're upfront about that, you're guaranteed to feel happier, which will allow you to be the best version of a parent you can be, and isn't that the whole point? There is no right and wrong when it comes to parenting. The best decision is the one that will make you — and your family — the happiest. Up to you to decide what's next. By acknowledging that the choice to stay home or not is just that, a choice, with factors pushing you in various directions, we can ditch the guilt and enjoy doing what feels best for our families.

How to know if it's time to change careers

{0: "Chieh Huang is cofounder and CEO of Boxed.com, a company that's disrupting the wholesale shopping club experience."}

The Way We Work

I was not one of those kids that knew exactly what they wanted to do when they were growing up. In the last 15 years of my career, I've been an English teacher, attorney, video game creator and now, a toilet paper salesman, selling millions of rolls of toilet paper a year. [The Way We Work] Life is about finding the intersection of what you really, really love with what you're really, really good at. As simple as it sounds, it's really not that easy to find. After a brief stint as an English teacher, I went to law school and ended up becoming an attorney at a big law firm here in New York City. Like most Americans, for the next two, three years, I was holding on to my job for dear life, working really late hours at a job that I thought maybe I was good at but certainly not one that I really loved. I then came upon the epiphany that it takes years if not tens of thousands of hours to get really good at something. I really didn't have a lot of time to waste. This talk isn't for those looking to quit their job because they don't like their boss or they had a long day at work. This is for those that are ready to make the completely scary leap into a brand-new career. So as you think about making a career change, here are a few tips I hope you consider and a few things I've picked up along the way. First, there's three things to think about before you're ready to move on. Number one: professional life is about learning. If you're not even interested in learning anymore, that's a huge red flag that there might not be a future for you in that industry. Number two: career changes are often gut-driven. If you constantly have sleepless nights where you're wide awake staring at the ceiling thinking, "Oh, man. I can't live with myself if I never try to make this change or if I don't even actually investigate it," then trust your gut. It might be time for that career change. On the flip side, one reason to not move on is short-term pain. If you don't like your boss or people at the office are grating on you, that's actually not a good reason to absolutely change your career, because when you do change a career, you generally have to start from the bottom, and you'll probably feel a lot of short-term pain, whether it's through a lack of salary or lack of a title. Pain at any job is inevitable. So now you're convinced that it's time to change your career. Then there's three things to do immediately. First: network, network, network. No one ever builds a career without a good mentor or a good support network. What I mean by networking is getting all the great advice that you can possibly get. Technology has made it so simple to reach out to new people to say, "Hey, I'm thinking about making a career change. Do you have just five minutes to chat with me?" That passion and that hunger and that ability to be a sponge really attracts awesome mentors and people willing to give you their time to give you some good advice. So go out there and meet new people. The second thing you need to do immediately is shore up your finances. The reality is, when you change your career, you'll either start with a job with a lower title or lower pay or maybe even no pay, especially if you're starting your own business. So going out there and making sure your finances are in order to make the transition less painful is really, really important. For me personally, as I made the transition from being an attorney over to a video game creator, I wanted to have at least six to 12 months of personal runway in the bank. Six to 12 months might not be the right number for you, but be honest with yourself on what that number should be. Number three, if you're not ready to make the full jump right at this moment, then get your side hustle on. Side hustles could be anything from volunteering with an organization that's in the new industry you want to go into, could be starting your business part-time on the weekends. It's a free way to get a taste to see if you really love something. So you're ready to make the move or maybe you already made the move. Here are three things you should think about doing, right now. One: do not — I repeat — do not burn bridges. You spent years building those bridges, why burn them now? The world is such a small place, especially with all these online platforms, that, believe me, you will see these people again and probably in the most inopportune times. Number two: take stock of what you've learned in your previous career or careers. Most likely, a lot of those things are really applicable to your new job and your new career, whether it's interacting with people, playing on a team or dealing with jerks and assholes. All those things are really universally applicable. You'll find jerks no matter what industry you're in; no one's immune to it, everyone's got to figure it out, and you probably know how to do it already. Lastly, when you start your new job, you're going to be nervous. But don't worry, take a deep breath, because this is what I want to tell you: you're part of a new team now, and everyone around you is rooting for your success, because your success is their success. So welcome to your new career.

Imaginative sculptures that explore how we perceive reality

{0: 'TED Fellow Alicia Eggert is an artist making words into sculptures, often in the form of flashing neon signs.'}

TEDSummit 2019

If you happened to be in the town of Lubec, Maine in July of 2016, you may have seen something a little curious on the horizon when you looked out across the bay. In the distance, on an otherwise uninhabited island, loomed large black letters that spelled the word "FOREVER." The sign was 15 feet tall and 50 feet wide, large enough so that on a clear day, you really could see "FOREVER," the word perfectly visible and legible in the distance. But on some days, a thick white fog would roll in off the ocean, erasing the word and the view altogether. And sometimes, like in this video, you could barely see "FOREVER" peeking out of the shifting fog, accompanied only by the rhythmic warning sounds of fog horns. (Sound of fog horn) (Sound of fog horn) It started out as a fairly simple idea, albeit a little strange, to put the word "FOREVER" in the landscape so it could appear and disappear in the fog. But it took over a year to plan and execute, and it required the help of so many people, like the lobster boat captain, who helped transport all of the materials to the island. And the volunteers, who helped carry thousands of pounds of wood and steel to the top of the hill through waist-high shrubs. And in the end, "FOREVER" only lasted for three weeks. (Laughter) So if you're wondering why I did it at all, as I often did during that process, it might help for you to know a little bit more about me and my upbringing. I grew up in an evangelical Christian family. And although I'm an atheist today, I've realized that my religious upbringing has played a really important role in shaping the person that I've become. In 1986, when I was five years old, my parents became missionaries to South Africa. And that was during the last few years of the apartheid, so we lived in an all-white neighborhood, and I attended an all-white public school, while my parents helped found a multiracial church in downtown Cape Town. Because I was so young, it was impossible for me to understand the magnitude of what was happening in South Africa at that time. I witnessed the racism and oppression of people of color I knew and loved on a daily basis, but because of my own skin color, there was no way I could fully comprehend it. But I had the privilege to experience, firsthand, one of the most influential social movements of the 20th century. And the thing that left a long-lasting impression on me was how the people I met in South Africa could envision a better future for themselves and their country. A future they really believed was possible. And then they worked together, relentlessly, for decades, until they achieved that extraordinary historic change. I was there to see Nelson Mandela released from prison, and I watched an entire country begin a major transformation. And that transformed me as a person. It instilled in me a sense of wonder and optimism and possibility that permeates everything I create. I make sculptures like "FOREVER" as a way of giving physical, tangible forms to language and time. Those powerful but invisible forces that shape the way we perceive and experience our realities. And in doing so, I try to give other people the opportunity to reflect on their own perception of reality and inspire them to wonder and imagine what else might be possible. I often use signs to do this, because of how simply and effectively they're able to grab our attention and communicate information. They often point out things we would otherwise overlook, like this sign on the side of the highway in Texas. [TEMPTATIONS] They can often signify things that we can't see at all, like the distance to our destination. Signs often help to orient us in the world [You are on an island] by telling us where we are now and what's happening in the present moment, but they can also help us zoom out, shift our perspective and get a glimpse of the bigger picture. Imagine, for example, you're walking down the street in Philadelphia. A city in the US that contains so much history, the birthplace of our constitution. But imagine you're walking down the street in an area that's undergoing a huge transformation due to gentrification. And as you walk down that street, you notice something flashing up above you. So you look up and you see this. A flashing neon sign that says "All the light you see is from the past," and then "All you see is past," before turning off completely for a brief moment. It asks you to stop and notice the history embedded in everything that you see. And it reminds you that because light takes time to travel across space, even from just across the street or across the room, everything you're seeing in the present moment is technically an image of the past. Signs influence the way we all navigate the world, which means they have the ability to create a collective experience or understanding. My time in South Africa taught me that when people are able to find common ground and work together towards a mutual goal, powerful things can happen and so much more becomes possible. And I want to create more opportunities for people to find that kind of common ground. I want people to feel the power of collaboration, sometimes quite literally. A few years ago, a friend of mine showed me how our bodies can safely conduct small amounts of electricity. And if you hold hands with another person, a small electrical current can pass through your held hands and become like a switch that can trigger something else to happen. So last year, I used that form of human connection to activate an inflatable sculpture. I put two sensors on a platform far enough apart so that one person can't make it work on their own. But when two or more people work together to complete that electrical circuit, the inflatable comes to life. And it begins to fill with air, and the longer people hold hands, the larger it becomes, expanding into the words "You are magic." (Music, birds chirping) I always love to see how each group of people finds a different way to bridge that physical and metaphorical divide. But as soon as they release their hands and break that connection, the words immediately begin to slouch and fall over and eventually return to a lifeless pile of fabric on the ground. (Applause) At this moment in time, I think we could all agree that the future feels pretty bleak and uncertain. But maybe the hope for a brighter, more sustainable, more equitable future depends first on our ability to imagine it. But after we imagine it, we actually have to believe it's possible. And then we have to find common ground with people we would maybe otherwise disagree with and work together towards that mutual goal. And if we do that, I believe we have the capacity for magic. So if you can humor me for one more minute, I'm going to ask everyone in this theater to hold hands. When was the last time you held hands with a stranger? (Laughter) And if you feel comfortable, go ahead and make that metaphorical gesture of reaching across the aisle. And after you've held hands with people on either side of you, if you feel comfortable, please close your eyes. Now take a minute to imagine what you want, what you want the future to look like. And give yourself permission to be at least a little bit idealistic. What do you want to see change or happen in your own life as an individual? What do you want to see change or happen for everyone, for the planet? Can you picture it? And can you start to see how, if we all worked together, it might actually be possible? Now open your eyes, and let's make it real. Thank you. (Applause)

The accident that changed the world

TED-Ed

London, 1928: a group of mold spores surf a breeze through a lab. They drift onto a petri dish, and when they land, they germinate a medical revolution. This lab belongs to Alexander Fleming, a Scottish scientist investigating the properties of infectious bacteria. At this time, Fleming is away on vacation. When he returns, he finds a colony of mold growing on a petri dish he’d forgotten to place in his incubator. And around this colony of mold is a zone completely and unexpectedly clear of bacteria. In studying this mysterious phenomenon, Fleming came to realize that the mold was secreting some kind of compound that was killing the bacteria. The mold was a species in the Penicillium genus, so Fleming dubbed the antibacterial compound “penicillin.” What Fleming stumbled upon was a microbial defense system. The penicillium mold constantly produces penicillin in order to defend itself from threats, such as nearby bacterial colonies that might consume its resources. Penicillin destroys many types of bacteria by disrupting synthesis of their cell walls. These walls get their strength from a thick, protective mesh of sugars and amino acids, that are constantly being broken down and rebuilt. Penicillin binds to one of the compounds that weaves this mesh together and prevents the wall from being reconstructed at a critical phase. Meanwhile, penicillin stimulates the release of highly reactive molecules that cause additional damage. Eventually, the cell’s structure breaks down completely. This two-pronged attack is lethal to a wide range of bacteria, whether in petri-dishes, our bodies, or elsewhere. It’s not, however, harmful to our own cells, because those don’t have cell walls. For a decade or so after Fleming’s discovery, penicillin remained a laboratory curiosity. But during World War II, researchers figured out how to isolate the active compound and grow the mold in larger quantities. They then went on to win the Nobel Prize for their work. Teams at Oxford and several American drug companies continued development, and within a few years it was commercially available. Penicillin and similar compounds quickly transformed the treatment of infections. For the time being, they remain some of the most important, life-saving antibiotics used in medicine. However, the more we use any antibiotic, the more bacteria evolve resistance to it. In the case of penicillin, some bacteria produce compounds that can break down the key structure that interferes with cell wall synthesis. As antibiotic use has increased, more and more bacteria have evolved this defense, making these antibiotics ineffective against a growing number of bacterial infections. This means it’s essential that doctors not overprescribe the drug. Meanwhile, 5 to 15% of patients in developed countries self-identify as allergic to penicillin, making it the most commonly reported drug allergy. However, the vast majority— over 90%— of people who think they’re allergic to penicillin actually are not. Why the misperception? Many patients acquire the allergy label as children, when a rash appears after they’re treated for an infection with penicillin or closely related drugs. The rash is often blamed on penicillin, while the more likely culprit is the original infection, or a reaction between the infection and the antibiotic. However, genuine penicillin allergies, where our immune systems mistake penicillin for an attacker, do occur rarely and can be very dangerous. So if you think you’re allergic but don’t know for sure, your best bet is to visit an allergist. They’ll complete an evaluation that’ll confirm whether or not you have the allergy. Even if you do have a penicillin allergy, your immune cells that react to the drug may lose their ability to recognize it. In fact, about 80% of people who are allergic to penicillin outgrow their allergy within ten years. This is great news for people who currently identify as allergic to penicillin; the drug may one day save their lives, as it has done for so many others.

5 ways to create stronger connections

{0: 'Robert Reffkin is on a mission to help everyone find their place in the world.'}

The Way We Work

So when was the last time that you wrote a handwritten note? It's probably been a while. [The Way We Work] Technology has changed the way we communicate. We send emails, not letters, text messages, not phone calls. We order delivery instead of cooking dinners in our kitchen. All in the name of efficiency. But here's the point. Technology has made it easier to communicate. But it hasn't made it easier to connect with other human beings. I've found that the secret to connecting in the high-tech, fast-paced world that we live in, is doing a few small things the old-fashioned way. Write a letter. I've written thousands of handwritten notes. Thanking people for advice, thanking them for an interview. It just puts that extra effort to show someone that you really care and that you're willing to go above and beyond. Some advice for writing a thank-you letter is to really make it clear to the person that you're writing to the impact that they have had on your life. Talk about something specific. Like "Thank you for the advice that you gave me. It's because of the advice you gave me, that I am now doing x." People are looking to make a difference. And so if you can show someone that they've really had an impact on the life that you're living, the life you're pursuing, it could have a huge impact. Pick up the phone and dial. We've hired thousands of employees. And I've personally called every single one of them to welcome them to the Compass family. I'm able to set the tone of really what I want the company to be. Where, you know, people go above and beyond to make people feel welcomed and to give people a sense of belonging. And sometimes I call people on their last day of work. When people leave, sometimes they're more transparent than they ever were when they were still at the company. And so it's a great opportunity to get feedback that is very hard to get otherwise. Ask interesting and meaningful questions when you get outside of the office. When I'm traveling the country, every night I'll have dinner with people in the company. And I like to ask questions like "What's your underlying motivation? What's something that's happened this week that meant a lot to you?" And when you go around the table, and people really open up and are able to engage, it sets a different tone. When people come back to the office, they can see each other and they know each other in a deeper way. Answer questions with honesty. You know how it feels when you go into an elevator and someone says, "How was your weekend?" It could've been the best weekend ever, you could've met the love of your life, and you would say, "Good, how was yours?" If you want to connect with people, then you have to open up. I'm not always that good at it, and I imagine most people aren't. But that's why being open stands out so much, because most people aren't. Turn the video on. I would always recommend a videoconference over a phone call. Because that's when you can see the real personality come out. When you're on video, you're forced to be present. It's almost a forcing mechanism to be in the moment. Nobody succeeds alone. The more you can take time to develop genuine, authentic relationships, the more you're going to be able to realize your dreams. You're going to be able to take big risks and know that there's a network of people to cheer you on and to support your efforts.

6 ways to improve your relationship with money

{0: 'Thasunda Duckett is the Chief Executive Officer of Chase Consumer Banking.'}

The Way We Work

When you think about money and your dreams and you're looking at your account, you're like, "My bank account does not align with my dreams." [The Way We Work] Financial health for a typical American household can be stressful. We know that 46 percent of all Americans would struggle coming up with 400 dollars in the event of an emergency. And 60 percent of all Americans will face that emergency within 12 months or less. When you ask the question, "What does money mean to you," most people will say things like, "I feel anxious." And so the insecurities come. The shame comes. I think we have a fraught relationship with money, because it comes with judgment. When you're not able to pay your bills on time, you can personalize that. I don't want anyone to think that I'm not smart. I don't want anyone to know that I am very insecure with money. I don't want anyone to know that I am super stressed out. So now let's change the narrative. [6 lessons on how to improve our relationship with money] [1: Talk about it.] You can't do it alone. And that's when your squad has to come in. It's taboo. We typically don't talk about our stresses when it comes to money. We need to come together as a group of friends, no judgment, no shame. Celebrate the fact that we've made a decision that we want to have a better relationship with money. That is worth applauding or snapping your fingers about. Once you've done that, then you get real. Nothing should be off-limits. Where does this relationship come from? Why am I spending all this money on things that don't align with my goals? What are your fears? What are your hopes? What are your dreams? But then we start to take action. What can we do this week? Or what can we do this month? [2: Understand what money is] Money is not the end-all be-all. It's the mechanism to accomplish whatever your goals are. It does not define you. It's just a mechanism to accomplish what matters to you most. [3: Identify what matters to you ... ] Ask yourself one fundamental question: what are you saving for? If you're saving for a car, if you're saving to pay down your debt, if you're saving for that rainy day fund, it will include short-term goals and it will include long-term goals. [4: ... and then really picture it.] Visualize what you're really trying to accomplish. A vision board is visual representation of what you're saving for. So if we break it down, go get a poster board. Get your markers, get your glitter. Take magazine pictures, cut it all out. Have that picture of that great trip. Have the picture of you paying down your student debt. The vision board sounds like, "Oh, how can that really help?" The point is your goals need to align with your behaviors, and the vision board is really a representation of where you wanna go and then how you live your life, and in the meantime are the steps to really get there. [5: It's not what you make, it's what you keep.] It's not about what you make, it's about what you keep. It's about understanding do I have the ability with what I'm making to take care of my basic needs? And if not, what adjustments do I need to make? And then we start to break it down and talk about the tools. We start to say, "Do we have our savings account, auto-save?" Set it and forget it, or every day, put a dollar a day. Whatever that rhythm is for you, the goal is the rhythm, not the amount. You can start slow. You can start small, but you have to start now. And then let me give you a trick, we all have impulses. Many times, because the phone is always with us, we start shopping. Go out to any site, shop up, put it in your cart. Just don't hit buy. Wait 24 hours, go back and ask yourself, "Do I really need it? What about these items map to my goal?" And if it's nothing, hit delete and you got your fix. [6: Be good to yourself.] It's also important to know that your self-worth is not determined by your net worth. This is something that we can do better about. You celebrate your wins. And when you make that misstep, no judgment, no shame. Just get back at it.

How to make faster decisions

{0: 'Patrick J. McGinnis is a venture capitalist, writer and speaker.'}

The Way We Work

You're probably familiar with FOMO. [This guy invented the term] That's short for "Fear Of Missing Out." It's that feeling you get when it seems everyone else is doing something better than what you're doing now. But there's another FO you need to know about, and it's far more dangerous. It's called FOBO, and it's short for "Fear Of a Better Option." [The Way We Work] We live in a world of overwhelming choice. Even decisions that used to be simple, like choosing a restaurant or making everyday purchases, are now fraught with overanalysis. Technology has only made the issue more pronounced. If you want to buy a pair of white shoelaces online, you have to sort through thousands of items and read through hundreds of reviews. That's an astounding amount of information to process to just buy two pieces of string that cost less than your morning latte. Chances are you've experienced FOBO when you've struggled to choose just one from a group of perfectly acceptable outcomes. It's a symptom of a culture which sees value in collecting and preserving as many options as possible. You might wonder why all of this is so bad. It seems counterintuitive. Shouldn't it be a privilege to have so many good options to choose from? The problem is, FOBO induces such severe analysis paralysis that it can negatively impact both your personal and professional life. When you can't make decisions with conviction, you waste precious time and energy. Luckily, there is a way to overcome FOBO. Here's a secret. With any decision you make, you first have to determine the stakes, as this will inform your decision-making strategy. When it comes down to it, you only really face three types of decisions in life: high stakes, low stakes and no stakes. Let's start with no-stakes decisions. These are the minor details of life, where there is almost never an incorrect answer, and in a few hours, you won't even remember making the decision. A good example of this is choosing what to watch on TV. With thousands of shows, it's easy to get overwhelmed, yet no matter what you pick, the consequences are basically nonexistent. So spending more than a few moments on FOBO is a massive waste of energy. You just need to move on. When it comes to no-stakes decisions, the key is to outsource them to the universe. For example, you can whittle down your choices to just two and then flip a coin. Or try my personal favorite — ask the watch. Assign each one of your choices to one half of your watch, then let the second hand tell you what you're going to do. Looks like I'll be having the fish. That brings us to low-stakes decisions. These have consequences, but none are earth-shattering, and there are plenty of acceptable outcomes. Many routine things at work, like purchasing a printer, booking a hotel or choosing between possible venues for an off-site are classically low-stakes in nature. Some thinking is required, but these aren't make-or-break deliberations, and you'll probably forget about them in a few weeks. Here, you can also outsource decision-making, but you want some critical thinking involved, as there are some stakes. This time, you'll outsource to a person. Set some basic criteria, select someone to present a recommendation, and then take their advice. Make sure to avoid the temptation to canvass. Your goal is to clear your plate, not to kick the can down the road. Now that you tackled low-stakes and no-stakes decisions, you've created the space and time you'll need to handle high-stakes decisions. These are things like "which house should I buy" or "which job should I accept." Since the stakes are high and there are long-term implications, you absolutely want to get it right. Before we get to work, let's establish a few basic principles to guide you through the process. First, think about what really matters to you, and set your criteria accordingly. Second, gather the relevant facts. Make sure you collect data about all of the options, so you can be confident that you're truly making an informed decision. And third, remember that FOBO, by nature, comes when you struggle to choose just one from a group of perfectly acceptable options. So no matter what you choose, you can rest assured that the downside is limited. Now that you've established some ground rules, the process can begin. Start by identifying a front-runner based on your intuition, then compare each of your options head-to-head with the front-runner, one-by-one. Each time, choose the better of the two based on the criteria, and discard the other one. Here's the trick to avoiding FOBO. When you eliminate an option, it's gone forever. If you keep returning to discarded options, you risk getting stuck. Now repeat this process until you get down to one final choice. If you follow this system, you will usually end up with a decision on your own. On the rare occasion that you get stuck, you will outsource the final decision to a small group of qualified people who you trust and who are equipped to provide you with guidance on this particular topic. Engage a group of five or less, ideally an odd number of people so that you have a built-in tiebreaker if you need it. Now that you've made your choice, one last challenge remains. You have to commit. I can't promise you that you'll ever truly know if you've made the perfect decision, but I can tell you this: a significant percentage of people in the world will never have to worry about FOBO. Unlike the billions of people who have few options, if any, due to war, poverty or illness, you have plentiful opportunities to live decisively. You may not get everything you want, but the mere fact you get to decide is powerful. In fact, it's a gift. Make the most of it.

The secret to giving great feedback

{0: 'LeeAnn Renninger is the founder of LifeLabs Learning, a company that trains managers and teams at innovative companies around the globe. Her specialty is in rapid skill acquisition -- the fastest way to learn a skill that matters most. '}

The Way We Work

If you look at a carpenter, they have a toolbox; a dentist, they have their drills. In our era and the type of work most of us are doing, the tool we most need is actually centered around being able to give and receive feedback well. [The Way We Work] Humans have been talking about feedback for centuries. In fact, Confucius, way back in 500 BC, talked about how important it is to be able to say difficult messages well. But to be honest, we're still pretty bad at it. In fact, a recent Gallup survey found that only 26 percent of employees strongly agree that the feedback they get actually improves their work. Those numbers are pretty dismal. So what's going on? The way that most people give their feedback actually isn't brain-friendly. People fall into one of two camps. Either they're of the camp that is very indirect and soft and the brain doesn't even recognize that feedback is being given or it's just simply confused, or they fall into the other camp of being too direct, and with that, it tips the other person into the land of being defensive. There's this part of the brain called the amygdala, and it's scanning at all times to figure out whether the message has a social threat attached to it. With that, we'll move forward to defensiveness, we'll move backwards in retreat, and what happens is the feedback giver then starts to disregulate as well. They add more ums and ahs and justifications, and the whole thing gets wonky really fast. It doesn't have to be this way. I and my team have spent many years going into different companies and asking who here is a great feedback giver. Anybody who's named again and again, we actually bring into our labs to see what they're doing differently. And what we find is that there's a four-part formula that you can use to say any difficult message well. OK, are you ready for it? Here we go. The first part of the formula is what we call the micro-yes. Great feedback givers begin their feedback by asking a question that is short but important. It lets the brain know that feedback is actually coming. It would be something, for example, like, "Do you have five minutes to talk about how that last conversation went" or "I have some ideas for how we can improve things. Can I share them with you?" This micro-yes question does two things for you. First of all, it's going to be a pacing tool. It lets the other person know that feedback is about to be given. And the second thing it does is it creates a moment of buy-in. I can say yes or no to that yes or no question. And with that, I get a feeling of autonomy. The second part of the feedback formula is going to be giving your data point. Here, you should name specifically what you saw or heard, and cut out any words that aren't objective. There's a concept we call blur words. A blur word is something that can mean different things to different people. Blur words are not specific. So for example, if I say "You shouldn't be so defensive" or "You could be more proactive." What we see great feedback givers doing differently is they'll convert their blur words into actual data points. So for example, instead of saying, "You aren't reliable," we would say, "You said you'd get that email to me by 11, and I still don't have it yet." Specificity is also important when it comes to positive feedback, and the reason for that is that we want to be able to specify exactly what we want the other person to increase or diminish. And if we stick with blur words, they actually won't have any clue particularly what to do going forward to keep repeating that behavior. The third part of the feedback formula is the impact statement. Here, you name exactly how that data point impacted you. So, for example, I might say, "Because I didn't get the message, I was blocked on my work and couldn't move forward" or "I really liked how you added those stories, because it helped me grasp the concepts faster." It gives you a sense of purpose and meaning and logic between the points, which is something the brain really craves. The fourth part of the feedback formula is a question. Great feedback givers wrap their feedback message with a question. They'll ask something like, "Well, how do you see it?" Or "This is what I'm thinking we should do, but what are your thoughts on it?" What it does is it creates commitment rather than just compliance. It makes the conversation no longer be a monologue, but rather becomes a joint problem-solving situation. But there's one last thing. Great feedback givers not only can say messages well, but also, they ask for feedback regularly. In fact, our research on perceived leadership shows that you shouldn't wait for feedback to be given to you — what we call push feedback — but rather, you should actively ask for feedback, what we call pulling feedback. Pulling feedback establishes you as a continual learner and puts the power in your hands. The most challenging situations are actually the ones that call for the most skillful feedback. But it doesn't have to be hard. Now that you know this four-part formula, you can mix and match it to make it work for any difficult conversation.

How burnout makes us less creative

{0: 'Rahaf Harfoush is a strategist, digital anthropologist and author who focuses on the intersections of emerging technology, innovation and digital culture.'}

The Way We Work

A few years ago, my obsession with productivity got so bad that I suffered an episode of burnout that scared the hell out of me. I'm talking insomnia, weight gain, hair loss — the works. I was so overworked that my brain literally couldn't come up with another idea. That indicated to me that my identity was linked with this idea of productivity. [The Way We Work] Do you feel guilty if you haven't been productive enough during the day? Do you spend hours reading productivity hacks, trying new frameworks and testing new apps to get even more done? I've tried them all — task apps, calendar apps, time-management apps, things that are meant to manage your day. We've been so obsessed with doing more that we've missed the most important thing. Many of these tools aren't helping. They're making things worse. OK, let's talk about productivity for a second. Historically, productivity as we know it today was used during the industrial revolution. It was a system that measured performance based on consistent output. You clocked into your shift and were responsible for creating X number of widgets on the assembly line. At the end of the day, it was pretty easy to see who worked hard and who hadn't. When we shifted to a knowledge economy, people suddenly had tasks that were much more abstract, things like writing, problem-solving or strategizing, tasks that weren't easy to measure. Companies struggled to figure out how to tell who was working and who wasn't, so they just adopted the old systems as best as they could, leading to things like the dreaded time sheet where everyone is under pressure to justify how they spend every second of their day. There's just one problem. These systems don't make a lot of sense for creative work. We still think of productivity as an endurance sport. You try to churn out as many blog posts or we cram our day full of meetings. But this model of constant output isn't conducive to creative thought. Today, knowledge workers are facing a big challenge. We're expected to be constantly productive and creative in equal measure. But it's actually almost impossible for our brains to continuously generate new ideas with no rest. In fact, downtime is a necessity for our brain to recover and to operate properly. Consider that according to a team of researchers from the University of Southern California, letting our minds wander is an essential mental state that helps us develop our identity, process social interactions, and it even influences our internal moral compass. Our need for a break flies in the face of our cultural narrative about hustling, in other words, the stories that we as a society tell each other about what success looks like and what it takes to get there. Stories like the American Dream, which is one of our most deeply rooted beliefs. This tells us that if we work hard, we'll be successful. But there's a flip side. If you aren't successful, it must mean that you're not working hard enough. And if you don't think you're doing enough, of course you're going to stay late, pull all-nighters and push yourself hard even when you know better. Productivity has wrapped itself up in our self-worth, so that it's almost impossible for us to allow ourselves to stop working. The average US employee only takes half of their allocated paid vacation leave, further proving that even if we have the option to take a break, we don't. To be clear, I don't think that productivity or trying to improve our performance is bad. I'm just saying that the current models we're using to measure our creative work don't make sense. We need systems that work with our creativity and not against it. [SO HOW DO WE FIX IT?] There is no quick fix for this problem. And I know, I know, that sucks. No one loves a good framework or a good acronym better than me. But the truth is everyone has their own narratives that they have to uncover. It wasn't until I started digging around my own beliefs around work that I began to unravel the root of my own work story, finally being able to let go of destructive behaviors and make positive, long-lasting changes. And the only way to do that is by asking yourself some hard questions. Does being busy make you feel valuable? Who do you hold up as an example of success? Where did your ideas of work ethic come from? How much of who you are is linked to what you do? Your creativity, it has its own rhythms. Our energy fluctuates daily, weekly, even seasonally. I know that I'm always more energetic at the beginning of the week than at the end, so I front-load my workweek to account for that fact. As a proud night owl, I free up my afternoons and evenings for creative work. And I know I'll get more writing done in the cozy winter months than during the summer. And that's the secret. Dismantling myths, challenging your old views, identifying your narratives — this is the real work that we need to be doing. We aren't machines, and I think it's time that we stopped working like one.

How to embrace emotions at work

{0: 'Liz Fosslien uses behavioral science to make work better.'}

The Way We Work

No matter how hard you might try, you can't just flip a switch when you step into the office and turn your emotions off. Feeling feelings is part of being human. [The Way We Work] A pervasive myth exists that emotions don't belong at work, and this often leads us to mistakenly equate professionalism with being stoic or even cold. But research shows that in the moments when our colleagues drop their glossy professional presentation, we're actually much more likely to believe what they're telling us. We feel connected to the people around us. We try harder, we perform better and we're just generally kinder. So it's about time that we learn how to embrace emotion at work. Now, that's not to say you should suddenly become a feelings fire hose. A line exists between sharing, which builds trust, and oversharing, which destroys it. If you suddenly let your feelings run wild at work and give people far more information than they bargained for, you make everyone around you uncomfortable and you also undermine yourself. You're more likely to be seen as weak or lacking self awareness, so, great to say you weren't feeling well last night — you don't need to go into every lurid detail about how you got reacquainted with your half-digested dinner. So there's a wide spectrum of emotional expression. On one hand, you have under-emoters, or people who have a hard time talking about their feelings, and on the other end are over-emoters, those who constantly share everything that's going on inside, and neither of these make for a healthy workplace. So what's the balance between these two extremes? It's something called selective vulnerability. Selective vulnerability is opening up while still prioritizing stability and psychological safety, both for you and for your colleagues. Luckily, anyone can learn to be selectively vulnerable, with practice. Here are four ways to get started. First, flag your feelings without becoming emotionally leaky. Bad moods are contagious, and even if you're not vocalizing what you're feeling, chances are your body language or your expressions are a dead giveaway. So if you are crossing your arms or hammering on your keyboard, your coworkers are going to know you're upset. And if you don't say anything, they might start to think it's about them and get worried. So if you are reacting to a non-work-related event, so traffic for example, just flag it. You don't need to go into detail. You can say something as simple as "I'm having a bad morning. It has nothing to do with you." Now if it's a work-related event that's causing you to feel strong emotions, that brings us to point number two. Try to understand the need behind your emotion, and then address that need. If you suddenly start to find everyone around you irritating, sit back and reflect on that. And it might be that you're irritable because you're anxious, and you're anxious because you're worried about hitting a looming deadline. And in that case, you can go back to your team to address that need and say something like, "I want to make sure I get everything done ahead of the deadline. Can you help me put together a realistic plan to do that?" If you're thinking of sharing, try and put yourself in the other person's shoes. So if what you're about to say would help you feel more supported and better understand the situation, then go ahead and share it. But if it gives you any kind of pause, you might want to leave it out. And finally, read the room and provide a path forward. If everyone on your team has been pulling long hours, and you notice that one of your colleagues seems particularly deflated or anxious, you can acknowledge that and show some empathy, but then try to give them something actionable that they could hold on to. And in this case, you could suggest that you go to your manager and ask that your weekly meeting be pushed back a day so you both have more time to work. You're showing you're invested in their success, but also that you care about their well-being. When we can be honest about what we feel, and freely suggest ideas, make mistakes and just not have to hide every piece of who we are, we're much more likely to stay at the company for a long time. We're also happier and more productive. So take a moment to reflect on the emotional expression that you bring to work each day. And if you are prone to oversharing, try editing. And if you're a little bit more reserved, look for moments when you can open up to your colleagues and be a bit vulnerable. And chances are, there will be a big difference in how people respond to you. And selective vulnerability might just become one of your most valuable tools.

How online marketplaces can help local economies, not hurt them

{0: "BCG's Amane Dannouni explores how technology impacts established business models and how digital enablers can unlock greater economic and social value."}

TED@BCG Mumbai

In February 2013, my wife and I moved to Singapore. Exactly at the same time, Uber has announced it started operations in the country. Now, my wife and I agree on a lot of things, but using Uber was definitely not one of them. While I was excited about the technology and how maybe we don't need to own cars anymore, she felt that every Uber car is here to steal jobs from taxi drivers. And Sarah was not the only one. As the Ubers, Airbnbs and Amazons of the world — what we call "online marketplaces" — as they started expanding their presence, we have heard, all of us, countless policymakers worried about how to deal with these new risks of job destruction, lower wages and tax leakage. We've also heard company leaders worried about aggressive competition from global platforms eating up their local businesses. And on the rational level, of course I understand. After all, this is basic supply and demand economics. If, in any market, you dramatically increase supply, you should expect prices, profitability and growth to go down for existing players. But in my personal experience, I've also seen the other side of the story. Where online marketplaces, like Gojek in Indonesia or Jumia in Africa, have helped their business ecosystems and the communities around them. The positive side I have seen demonstrated itself in a woman, a taxi driver in Egypt, that now had the opportunity to work without the harassment she faced in the taxi business. It demonstrated itself through a village in Kenya that got an economic boost, because the nearby beautiful but completely unknown lake is now becoming a national ecotourism spot. Online marketplaces will continue to grow. And they will transform the way we shop, the way we travel and the way we transact with each other. So we really need to understand where is the truth between those two stories. Should we expect more of the bright side or more of the dark and worrying side? And is there a way to get the first without getting the second? I believe there is. As a strategy consultant, I study businesses for a living. And as a mathematician at heart, I couldn't live with something and its opposite being equally true. So, I went back to fundamentals, and I asked the question: What do online marketplaces really do? What do they do? Well, at their core, they're doing something very simple. They match sellers and buyers. That's it. For drivers and passengers, you get Uber, Grab in Southeast Asia or DiDi in China. For matching merchants and consumers, you get Amazon, Alibaba or Jumia in Africa. And for housing, you get Airbnb; for fundraising, you get Kickstarter — the list goes on. What all these examples have in common is that they transition this basic functionality of matching sellers and buyers from the physical world to the digital world. And by doing so, they can find better matches, do it faster and ultimately, unlock more value for everyone. In fact, online marketplaces' core benefit is that they get us more from the same amount of effort. For example, if you're a taxi driver in San Francisco and you decide to work 10 hours per day, then you're actually having a paying passenger in your car for four hours out of the 10. If you take the same car and put it on a platform like Uber, you can have paying passengers for an additional one and a half hours. This is the same car becoming 40 percent more productive. And the same has been proven true for other online marketplaces. By design, they create more value for the economy. Now, we need to figure out who gets this additional value. You can give it to the drivers — more passengers, more income. You can give it to consumers, if you reduce prices. Or you can decide that the platform gets to keep all of it. What usually happens is that all three of them would somehow split it. But what about the rest of us? We can also be impacted without being on either sides of this business. If my neighbor decides to rent his apartment on Airbnb, and we have more people coming in and out of the building, more noise than usual, then I'm getting an unpleasant side effect of this productivity magic. This is what economists would call a "negative externality." The negative externality of Uber cars becoming more productive is taxi drivers seeing the value of their licenses drop by as much as 30 percent in New York, for example. This is the dark side. And this is what sparks street demonstrations and sometimes, sometimes, even violence. I profoundly believe this is avoidable. And it became clearer to me the more I have spent time in emerging markets. In fact, during my time in Singapore, I spent half of any given week traveling in the region, between Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and I became a user — actually, more of a fan — of online marketplaces that were not that well-known back then. But some of them made interesting strategic trade-offs that dramatically reduced their side effects, their externalities. Take Gojek, for example. They're basically Uber for motor bikes. They are one of the most liked online marketplaces in Indonesia, and this has a lot to do with the role they chose to play. Instead of picking a fight with every other transportation option out there, they choose to gradually integrate them within their own platform, so that without leaving the Gojek app, you can check the public transportation schedule and choose to take a bus for a long distance. Then, maybe, a motorbike or a traditional taxi that you can order and pay for from within the same app. If you look at Gojek today, nine out of 10 previous motor taxi drivers believe their quality of life has improved after joining the platform. And nine out of 10 consumers — nine out of 10 — believe that Gojek has a positive impact on society in general. Now, this level of trust is what allowed Gojek to grow into what is today a super online marketplace for everything from food to grocery even massages and laundry pickups. It all came from a deliberate trade-off to be an orchestrator of a bigger ecosystem where others also have their role to play, instead of a single winner, a hero, that takes for himself what would, at the end, be a smaller pie. Another interesting example is Jumia. Jumia is the equivalent of Amazon in Africa. But they don't generate the same level of fear in the small-business community. And one of the reasons for that is because they have decided to actively invest in African entrepreneurs, to grow them into the digital age. Now keep in mind, Jumia is operating in countries with some of the lowest digital literacy and digital connectivity scores in the world. Now they could have dealt with that the usual way, through lobbying for reforms — and they probably do that — but they have also built Jumia University, an e-learning platform where merchants can come and learn basic digital and business skills. We have studied online marketplaces in Africa last year. And during that study, we have met one of Jumia's merchants. His name is Jomo. He was fired from his job in 2014, and at that time, he decided he wanted to become his own boss. He wanted to be independent. He also wanted to never be fired again. So at that time, Jomo had no clue what a business is. So he needed to go through a series of trainings to learn how to select products, how to price them and how to promote them online. Today, Jomo has a 10-employee online business. And as of a few months ago, he just opened his very first brick-and-mortar shop in the suburbs of Nairobi. Now, through its university, Jumia has the potential of helping a huge number of Jomos. And we have estimated that together with other online marketplaces on the continent, they can generate three million additional jobs by 2025. And they would do that either directly, or through their impact on the wider community. And sometimes, taking that wider impact into consideration or forgetting about it can make or break a platform. To illustrate that, let's go back to Singapore. So, when we decided with my wife to leave the country last year, Uber decided to do the same. At the same time, again, we started to see that pattern, but maybe it's a coincidence. In reality, Uber lost the ride-hailing battle to a Malaysian-born start-up called Grab. Now, interestingly, my wife didn't have the same level of concerns with Grab, because when Grab started, it had a different name. It was called MyTeksi, and as the name suggests, it started as a platform for taxis. So when Grab started expanding the driver pool beyond taxis, it was seen as gradual and reasonable. They were also very careful while doing so. They thought of what kind of social safety net they should bring to all drivers. So they put in place special insurance packages and even financial education programs. Now, compare that with what happened in London, in New York, in Paris, where taxi drivers didn't feel that the platforms understood they had to pay 200,000 euros for their license — and mostly in loans. When you don't take that kind of social environmental information into account, you get strong reactions. I'm not trying to argue that the trade-offs by either Grab or Jumia or Gojek are risk-free. Did they slow down growth at some point, temporarily? Maybe. But look at them today. Gojek is worth 10 billion dollars. Jumia is one of only three unicorns in the whole of Africa. And Grab, well, they pushed out Uber out of the whole region of Southeast Asia. And I also think these trade-offs have nothing specific to emerging markets. Amazon or Uber or others can learn from them and adapt them to their own realities. In the long run, this doesn't need to be a zero-sum game. In the long run — and this is maybe the Asian side of me speaking — it pays to be patient. It pays to reconsider your goal and your priorities in the light of a much bigger equation that includes you and your users, of course, but also it includes regulators, policymakers, your communities. And I would argue, above all, it includes the very businesses you are meant to disrupt. Thank you. (Applause)

Epic Engineering: Building the Brooklyn Bridge

TED-Ed

In the mid-19th century, suspension bridges were collapsing all across Europe. Their industrial cables frayed during turbulent weather and snapped under the weight of their decks. So when a German-American engineer named John Roebling proposed building the largest and most expensive suspension bridge ever conceived over New York’s East River, city officials were understandably skeptical. But Manhattan was increasingly overcrowded, and commuters from Brooklyn clogged the river. In February of 1867, the government approved Roebling’s proposal. To avoid the failures of European bridges, Roebling designed a hybrid bridge model. From suspension bridges, he incorporated large cables supported by central pillars and anchored at each bank. This design was ideal for supporting long decks, which hung from smaller vertical cables. But Roebling’s model also drew from cable-stayed bridges. These shorter structures held up their decks with diagonal cables that ran directly to support towers. By adding these additional cables, Roebling improved the bridge’s stability, while also reducing the weight on its anchor cables. Similar designs had been used for some other bridges but the scope of Roebling’s plan here dwarfed them all. His new bridge’s deck spanned over 480 meters— 1.5 times longer than any previously built suspension bridge. Since standard hemp rope would tear under the deck’s 14,680 tons, his proposal called for over 5,600 kilometers of metal wire to create the bridge’s cables. To support all this weight, the towers would need to stand over 90 meters above sea level— making them the tallest structures in the Western Hemisphere. Roebling was confident his design would work, but while surveying the site in 1869, an incoming boat crushed his foot against the dock. Within a month, tetanus had claimed his life. Fortunately, John Roebling's son, Washington, was also a trained engineer and took over his father’s role. The following year, construction on the tower foundations finally began. This first step in construction was also the most challenging. Building on the rocky river bed involved the use of a largely untested technology: pneumatic caissons. Workers lowered these airtight wooden boxes into the river, where a system of pipes pumped pressurized air in and water out. Once established, air locks allowed workers to enter the chamber and excavate the river bottom. They placed layers of stone on top of the caisson as they dug. When it finally hit the bedrock, they filled it with concrete, becoming the tower’s permanent foundation. Working conditions in these caissons were dismal and dangerous. Lit only by candles and gas lamps, the chambers caught fire several times, forcing them to be evacuated and flooded. Even more dangerous was a mysterious ailment called "the bends." Today, we understand this as decompression sickness, but at the time, it appeared to be an unexplainable pain or dizziness that killed several workmen. In 1872, it nearly claimed the life of the chief engineer. Washington survived, but was left paralyzed and bedridden. Yet once again, the Roeblings proved indomitable. Washington’s wife Emily not only carried communications between her husband and the engineers, but soon took over day-to-day project management. Unfortunately, the bridge’s troubles were far from over. By 1877, construction was over budget and behind schedule. Worse still, it turned out the bridge’s cable contractor had been selling them faulty wires. This would have been a fatal flaw if not for the abundant failsafes in John Roebling’s design. After reinforcing the cables with additional wires, they suspended the deck piece by piece. It took 14 years, the modern equivalent of over 400 million dollars, and the life’s work of three different Roeblings, but when the Brooklyn Bridge finally opened on May 24, 1883, its splendor was undeniable. Today, the Brooklyn Bridge still stands atop its antique caissons, supporting the gothic towers and intersecting cables that frame a gateway to New York City.

How teachers can help students navigate trauma

{0: 'Lisa Godwin is an educator with the Onslow County School District of North Carolina. '}

TED Masterclass

Everyone has a story, and that story is filled with chapters that have made us who we are today. Those early chapters of that story sometimes are the ones that define us the most. The Center for Disease Control has estimated that over half of our nation's children have experienced at least one or two types of childhood trauma. That adversity can have lasting effects. When I began to have opportunities to speak and advocate for students and for teachers, I found myself uniquely positioned to be able to speak about childhood trauma. But I had to make a decision first. I had to decide, did I want to just share the bright and shiny parts of my life, you know, those ones that we put out on social media that make us all look perfect, or did I want to make myself vulnerable and become an open book? The choice became very clear. In order to make a difference in the life of a child, I had to become transparent. So I made the commitment to tell my personal story. And this story is filled with people that have loved me and taken care of me and grown me. And have helped me overcome and heal. And now it's time for me to help others do the same. When I first started school, I was the picture of normalcy. I was from a good family, I was always dressed nicely, had a smile on my face, I was prepared for school. But my life was anything but normal. By this time, I had already become a victim of sexual abuse. And it was still happening. My parents didn't know, and I had not told anyone else. When I started school, I felt like this was going to be my safe place. So I was excited. Imagine my dismay when I met my teacher, Mr. Randolph. Now Mr. Randolph was not my abuser. But Mr. Randolph was the epitome of everything that scared me the most in my life. I had already started these self-preservation techniques to where I took myself out of positions where I was going to be alone with a man. And here I was, as a student, I was going to be in a classroom with a man every day, for a year of school. I was scared; I didn't trust him. But you know what, Mr. Randolph would turn out to be my greatest advocate. But in the beginning, oh, I made sure he knew I did not like him. I was noncompliant; I was that kid that was disengaged. And I also made it really hard on my parents, too. I didn't want to go to school, so I fought them every morning, getting on the bus. At night, I couldn't sleep, because my anxiety was so high. So I was going into class exhausted. Which, exhausted children are cranky children, and they're not easy to teach, you know that. Mr. Randolph could have approached me with frustration, like so many teachers do with students like me. But not him. He approached me with empathy and with flexibility. I was so grateful for that. He saw this six-year-old was tired and weary. And so instead of making me go outside for recess, he would let me stay in and take naps, because he knew I needed rest. Instead of sitting at the teacher table at lunch, he would come and sit with the students at the student table. He would engage me and all my classmates in conversation. And I now look back and I know he had a purpose for that, he was listening, he was asking questions. He needed to find out what was going on. He built a relationship with me. He earned my trust. And slowly but surely, those walls that I had built around myself he started chipping away at, and I eventually realized he was one of the good guys. I know that he felt like he wasn't enough. Because he made the move to talk to my mom. And got my mom's permission to let me start seeing a school guidance counselor, Ms. McFadyen. I started seeing Ms. McFadyen once or twice a week for the next two years. It was a process. During that time period, I never disclosed to her the abuse, because it was a secret; I wasn't supposed to tell. But she connected the dots, I know she did, because everything that she did with me was to empower me and help me find my voice. She taught me how to use mental images to push through my fears. She taught me breathing techniques to help me get through those anxiety attacks that I would have so often. And she role-played with me. And she made sure that I could stand up for myself in situations. And the day came where I was in the room with my abuser and one other adult. And I told my truth. I told about the abuse. Immediately, my abuser began to deny, and the person I disclosed to, they just weren't equipped to handle the bombshell that I had just dropped on them. It was easier to believe the abuser rather than a child. So I was told never to speak of it again. I was made to feel like I had done something wrong, again. It was devastating. But you know what, something good came out of that day. My abuser knew that I was no longer going to be silent. The power shifted. And the abuse stopped. (Applause) But the shame and fear of it happening again remained. And it would remain with me for many, many years to come. Mr. Randolph and Ms. McFadyen, they helped me find my voice. They helped me find the light out. But you know what, there are so many kids that aren't as fortunate as me. And you have them in your classrooms. That is why it's so important for me to talk to you today, so you can be aware and you can start asking the questions that need to be asked and paying attention to these students, so you too can help them find their way. As a kindergarten teacher, I start my year off with my kids making box biographies. These are two of my students. And I encourage them to fill those boxes with things that tell me about them and about their life, what's important to you, you know? They decorate them, I mean, they really take time, they fill them with pictures of their families and of their pets, and then I let them present them to me and to the class. And during that time, I am an active listener. Because the things they say, the facial expressions that they give me, the things they don't say can become red flags for me and can help me figure out what their needs are. What is driving them to maybe have the behaviors that they're showing me in class. How can I be a better teacher by listening to their voices? I also make times to develop relationships with them, much like Mr. Randolph did with me. I sit with them at lunch, I have conversations with them at recess, I go to their games on the weekends, I go to their dance recitals. I become a part of their life. Because in order to really know a student, you've got to infuse yourself into their lives. Now I know some of you are middle school teachers and high school teachers, and you might think that those kids have already kind of developed, and you know, they're on autopilot at that point. But don't be deceived. Especially the kids that you think have it all together, because those are the ones that might need you the most. If you were to look at my yearbook, you would see me on about every page, because I was involved in everything. I even drove a school bus. (Laughs) So I was that kid that teachers thought was the overachiever, the popular person, the one that had it together. But guys, I was lost. I was lost, and I wanted someone to ask me, "Lisa, why are you here all the time, why are you throwing yourself into all these things?" Did they ever wonder, was I running away from someone, was I running away from something? Why did I not want to be in my community or in my home? Why did I want to be at school all the time? No one ever asked. Now don't get me wrong, all overachievers in your schools are not victims of abuse or trauma. But I just want you to take the time to be curious. Ask them why. You may find out that there is a reason behind it. You could be the reason that they move forward with their story. Be careful not to assume that you already know the ending to their story. Don't put a period where a semicolon should be. Keep that story going and help them know that even if something has happened traumatic to them, that their life is still worth telling. Their story is worth telling. Now in order to do that, I really feel like we have to embrace our own personal stories as educators. Many of you might be sitting there and thinking, "Yeah. That happened to me. But I'm not ready to share." And that's OK. The time will come when you will feel it inside your soul that it's time to turn your past pain into purpose for the future. These children are our future. I just encourage you to take it day by day. Talk to someone. Be willing and just open. My life story came full circle in the spring of 2018, where I was invited to speak to a group of beginning teachers and mentors. I shared my story, much like today with you, and afterwards I had a lady approach me. She had tears in her eyes and she quietly said, "Thank you. Thank you for sharing. I cannot wait to tell my dad everything that I heard today." She must have seen the perplexed look on my face, because she followed up by saying, "Mr. Randolph is my dad." Audience: Aww. Lisa Godwin: "And he often wonders: Did he make a difference? Today, I get to go home and tell him, 'You definitely made a difference.'" What a gift. What a gift. And that prompted me to reach out to Ms. McFadyen's daughter as well, and to share with her what an impact Ms. McFadyen had made. And I wanted her to know I have advocated for more funding for guidance counselors, for school social workers, for psychologists, for nurses, because they are so vital to the mental and physical health of our children. I'm thankful for Ms. McFadyen. (Applause) I once heard someone say, in order to find your way out of the darkness, you have to find the light. Today, I hope that you leave this place and you seek opportunities to be the light. For not only students but for adults in your classrooms, in your schools, in your communities. You have the gift to help someone navigate through their trauma and make their story worth telling. Thank you. (Applause)

What a nun can teach a scientist about ecology

{0: 'Driven by a fascination with the natural world, Victoria Gill believes we would all be happier if we knew the stories behind the organisms and materials we interact with every day.'}

TED@NAS

OK, I would like to introduce all of you beautiful, curious-minded people to my favorite animal in the world. This is the Peter Pan of the amphibian world. It's an axolotl. It's a type of salamander, but it never fully grows up and climbs out of the water like other salamanders do. And this little guy has X-Man-style powers, right? So if it loses any limb, it can just completely regenerate. It's amazing. And, I mean, look at it — it's got a face with a permanent smile. (Laughter) It's framed by feathery gills. It's just ... how could you not love that? This particular type of axolotl, a very close relative, is known as an achoque. It is equally as cute, and it lives in just one place in a lake in the north of Mexico. It's called Lake Pátzcuaro, and as you can see, it is stunningly beautiful. But unfortunately, it's been so overfished and so badly polluted that the achoque is dying out altogether. And this is something that's a scenario that's playing out all over the world. We're living through an extinction crisis, and species are particularly vulnerable when they're evolutionarily tailored to just one little niche or maybe one lake. But this is TED, right? So this is where I give you the big idea, the big solution. So how do you save one special weird species from going extinct? Well, the answer, at least my answer, isn't a grand technological intervention. It's actually really simple. It's that you find people who know all about this animal and you ask them and you listen to them and you work with them, if they're up for that. So I want to tell you about how I've seen that in science, and in conservation in particular, if scientists don't team up with local people who have really valuable knowledge but a practical wisdom that's not going to be published in any academic journal, they can really miss the point. Scientists and science as an enterprise can fall at the first hurdle if it rushes in knowing that it's the experts that know best. But when scientists shake off those academic constraints and really look to people who have a totally different but really important perspective on what they're trying to do, it can genuinely save the world, one wonderfully weird amphibian at a time. So, in the case of the achoque, these are the people you need on your team. (Laughter) These are the Sisters of the Immaculate Health. They are nuns who have a convent in Pátzcuaro, they live in Pátzcuaro, and they have a shared history with the achoque. And it is so mind-bogglingly wonderful that it drew me all the way there to make an audio documentary about them, and I even have the unflattering selfie to prove it. There is a room at the center of their convent, though, that looks like this. It's very strange. It's lined with all these tanks full of fresh water and hundreds of achoques. And that's because this creature, because of its regenerative abilities, it's believed has healing powers if you consume it. So the sisters actually make and sell a medicine using achoques. I bought a bottle of it. So this is it. It tastes a bit like honey, but the sisters reckon it is good for all kinds of particularly respiratory ailments. So I just want you to have a listen, if you will, to a clip of Sister Ofelia. (Audio) Sister Ofelia: (speaks in Spanish) (Audio) (Interpreter voice-over) Our convent was founded by Dominican nuns here in Pátzcuaro in 1747. Sometime after that, our sisters started to make the achoque syrup. We didn't discover the properties of the achoque. That was the original people from around here, since ancient times. But we then started to make the syrup, too. The locals knew that, and they came to offer us the animals. (Audio) Victoria Gill: I see. So the achoques are part of making that syrup. What does the syrup treat, and what is it for? (Audio) SO: (speaks in Spanish) (Audio) (Interpreter voice-over) It's good for coughs, asthma, bronchitis, the lungs and back pain. (Audio) VG: And so you've harnessed that power in a syrup, in a medicine. Can you tell me how it's made? You're shaking your head and smiling. (Laughter) VG: Yeah, they're not up for sharing the centuries-old secret recipe. (Laughter) But the decline in the achoque actually nearly put a halt to that medicine production altogether, which is why the sisters started this. It's the world's first achoque farm. All they wanted was a healthy, sustainable population so that they could continue to make that medicine, but what they created at the same time was a captive breeding program for a critically endangered species. And fast forward a few years, and these scientists that you can see in this picture from Chester Zoo all the way over the in UK, not far from where I live, and from Michoacana University in Morelia in Mexico have persuaded the sisters — it took years of careful diplomacy — to join them in a research partnership. So the nuns show the biologists how you rear perfectly healthy, very robust Pátzcuaro achoques, and the scientists have put some of their funding into tanks, filters and pumps in this strange, incongruous but amazing room. This is the kind of partnership that can save a species. But I don't think I see enough of this sort of thing, and I have been ludicrously lucky in my job. I've traveled to loads of places and just basically followed around brilliant people who are trying to use science to answer big questions and solve problems. I've hung out with scientists who have solved the mystery of the origin of the menopause by tracking killer whales off the north Pacific coast. And I've followed around scientists who've planted cameras in Antarctic penguin colonies, because they were looking to capture the impacts of climate change as it happens. But it's this team that really stuck with me, that really showed me the impact that these delicate but really important relationships can have. And I think the reason that it stuck with me as well is because it's not common. And one of the reasons it's not common is because our traditional approach of the hierarchical system of academic achievement doesn't exactly encourage the type of humility where scientists will look to nonscientists and really ask for their input. In fact, I think we have a bit of a tradition, especially in the West, of a kind of academically blinkered hubris that has kept science historically an enterprise for the elite. And I think although that's moved on, it continues to be its downfall on occasion. So here's my example from history and my takedown of a scientific hero. Sir Ernest Shackleton and his Trans-Antarctic Expedition more than a century ago, the celebrated ill-fated adventure. On his way there, Shackleton just didn't listen to the whalers in South Georgia. They knew that region, and they told him you won't get through the ice this year. It's too widespread, it's too far north, it's too dangerous. And look what happened. I mean, granted, that great adventure, that story of heroic leadership that we still tell, where he saved every single one of his men, we wouldn't be telling that story if he'd just hightailed it for home and taken their advice. But it cost him his ship, I would imagine quite a lot of cold injuries among the team, a good few cases of PTSD and Mrs. Chippy, the ship's cat, had to be shot because the team couldn't afford any extra food as they fought to survive. Now, that was all a very long time ago, but as I've prepared for this talk, I've revisited some of the stories that I have covered, where these really unusual collaborations made a real positive difference. So I spoke to former poachers whose knowledge of where they used to hunt illegally is now really important in conservation projects in those same places. And I spoke to an amazing artist whose own experience of mental health struggles has actually paved the way for him to take a role in designing and creating a new, really innovative and beautiful mental health ward in a hospital. Most recently, I worked here, in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, with a team of scientists that have been working there for decades. One of their experiments growing crops in that area has now turned into this. It's Chernobyl's first vodka. (Laughter) It's pretty good, too! I've tasted it. And this is actually, although it looks like a niche product, it's set to be the first consumer product to come out of the exclusion zone since the nuclear accident. And that's actually the result of years of conversation with local communities who still live on the periphery of that abandoned land and want to know when they can — and if they can — safely grow food and build businesses and rebuild their communities and their lives. This was a product of humility, of listening, and I saw that in spades when I visited Pátzcuaro. So I watched as a decades-experienced conservation biologist called Gerardo Garcia listened and watched super carefully as a nun in a full habit and wimple and latex gloves showed him how, if you tap an achoque on the head really gently, it'll open its mouth so you can quickly get a DNA swab with a Q-tip. (Laughter) When scientists team up with, look to and defer to people who have a really valuable perspective on what they're trying to do but a totally different outlook, something really special can happen. Now, there is a truly global and a very, very ambitious example of this called the International Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Now, that is not a snappy title, but stick with me. This organization includes more than 130 countries, and it's aiming to do nothing less than assess the state of the natural world across our entire planet. So it recently published this global assessment on the state of nature, and that could be the foundation for an international agreement where all of those nations could sign up to finally take action to tackle the biodiversity crisis that's happening on planet Earth right now. Now, I know from trying to communicate, trying to report on reports like this, on assessments like this for a broad audience, that these big international groups can seem so high-level as to be kind of out of reach and nebulous, but there's a group of human beings at the center of them, the report's authors, who have this formidable task of bringing together all of that biological and ecological information that paints a clear and accurate picture of the state of the natural world. And 10 years before this panel even set out to do that, to put that assessment together, they created what's called a "cultural concept framework." This is essentially a cultural concept translation dictionary for all of the different ways that we talk about the natural world. So it formally recognizes, for example, that "Mother Earth" and "nature" means the same thing. And what that means is that Indigenous and local knowledge can be brought into the same document and given the weight and merit that it deserves in that assessment of what state our natural environment is in. And that is absolutely critical, because an Inuit hunter might never publish in an academic journal, but I'll bet you she knows more about the changes to her home Arctic community because of climate change than a scientist who spent many years going to and from that region taking measurements. And collectively, Indigenous people are the caretakers of an estimated 25 percent of the entire global land surface, including some of the most biodiverse places on the planet. So imagine how much we're missing if we don't cross those cultural boundaries, or at least try to, when we're trying to figure out how the world works and how to protect it. Every single research proposal is a new opportunity to do exactly that. So what if, every time a research project was proposed, it had to include a suggestion of a person or a group of people — local farmers, Indigenous community leaders, nuns — that researchers wanted to bring into the fold, invite into their team and listen to? I just want to let Sister Ofelia give her view of why she is so particularly driven and dedicated to the survival of the achoque. (Audio) VG: Sister Ofelia, do you think that saving this species from extinction, is that part of your work for God? (Audio) SO: (speaks in Spanish) (Audio) (Interpreter voice-over) It's the responsibility of every human being not to harm those who live around us. That's all living things. We're all created not only just to survive but to be happy and to make others happy. All of us here are providing happiness by protecting this animal, and we're also making Him happy. (Audio) (Nuns singing) VG: I feel like I should sort of slink off and let the nuns sing me out, because it sounds so lovely. But did you hear that? "We're providing happiness." Now, that's not a protocol you'd ever see outlined in any formal research project proposal — (Laughter) but it's the impetus behind what's become the most successful breeding program in the world of an animal that was on the very brink of being wiped out. And isn't that just wonderful? Thank you. (Applause)

How Mendel's pea plants helped us understand genetics

TED-Ed

These days scientists know how you inherit characteristics from your parents. They're able to calculate probabilities of having a specific trait or getting a genetic disease according to the information from the parents and the family history. But how is this possible? To understand how traits pass from one living being to its descendants, we need to go back in time to the 19th century and a man named Gregor Mendel. Mendel was an Austrian monk and biologist who loved to work with plants. By breeding the pea plants he was growing in the monastery's garden, he discovered the principles that rule heredity. In one of most classic examples, Mendel combined a purebred yellow-seeded plant with a purebred green-seeded plant, and he got only yellow seeds. He called the yellow-colored trait the dominant one, because it was expressed in all the new seeds. Then he let the new yellow-seeded hybrid plants self-fertilize. And in this second generation, he got both yellow and green seeds, which meant the green trait had been hidden by the dominant yellow. He called this hidden trait the recessive trait. From those results, Mendel inferred that each trait depends on a pair of factors, one of them coming from the mother and the other from the father. Now we know that these factors are called alleles and represent the different variations of a gene. Depending on which type of allele Mendel found in each seed, we can have what we call a homozygous pea, where both alleles are identical, and what we call a heterozygous pea, when the two alleles are different. This combination of alleles is known as genotype and its result, being yellow or green, is called phenotype. To clearly visualize how alleles are distributed amongst descendants, we can a diagram called the Punnett square. You place the different alleles on both axes and then figure out the possible combinations. Let's look at Mendel's peas, for example. Let's write the dominant yellow allele as an uppercase "Y" and the recessive green allele as a lowercase "y." The uppercase Y always overpowers his lowercase friend, so the only time you get green babies is if you have lowercase Y's. In Mendel's first generation, the yellow homozygous pea mom will give each pea kid a yellow-dominant allele, and the green homozygous pea dad will give a green-recessive allele. So all the pea kids will be yellow heterozygous. Then, in the second generation, where the two heterozygous kids marry, their babies could have any of the three possible genotypes, showing the two possible phenotypes in a three-to-one proportion. But even peas have a lot of characteristics. For example, besides being yellow or green, peas may be round or wrinkled. So we could have all these possible combinations: round yellow peas, round green peas, wrinkled yellow peas, wrinkled green peas. To calculate the proportions for each genotype and phenotype, we can use a Punnett square too. Of course, this will make it a little more complex. And lots of things are more complicated than peas, like, say, people. These days, scientists know a lot more about genetics and heredity. And there are many other ways in which some characteristics are inherited. But, it all started with Mendel and his peas.

The genius of Mendeleev's periodic table

TED-Ed

The periodic table is instantly recognizable. It's not just in every chemistry lab worldwide, it's found on t-shirts, coffee mugs, and shower curtains. But the periodic table isn't just another trendy icon. It's a massive slab of human genius, up there with the Taj Mahal, the Mona Lisa, and the ice cream sandwich — and the table's creator, Dmitri Mendeleev, is a bonafide science hall-of-famer. But why? What's so great about him and his table? Is it because he made a comprehensive list of the known elements? Nah, you don't earn a spot in science Valhalla just for making a list. Besides, Mendeleev was far from the first person to do that. Is it because Mendeleev arranged elements with similar properties together? Not really, that had already been done too. So what was Mendeleev's genius? Let's look at one of the first versions of the periodic table from around 1870. Here we see elements designated by their two-letter symbols arranged in a table. Check out the entry of the third column, fifth row. There's a dash there. From that unassuming placeholder springs the raw brilliance of Mendeleev. That dash is science. By putting that dash there, Dmitri was making a bold statement. He said — and I'm paraphrasing here — Y'all haven't discovered this element yet. In the meantime, I'm going to give it a name. It's one step away from aluminum, so we'll call it eka-aluminum, "eka" being Sanskrit for one. Nobody's found eka-aluminum yet, so we don't know anything about it, right? Wrong! Based on where it's located, I can tell you all about it. First of all, an atom of eka-aluminum has an atomic weight of 68, about 68 times heavier than a hydrogen atom. When eka-aluminum is isolated, you'll see it's a solid metal at room temperature. It's shiny, it conducts heat really well, it can be flattened into a sheet, stretched into a wire, but its melting point is low. Like, freakishly low. Oh, and a cubic centimeter of it will weigh six grams. Mendeleev could predict all of these things simply from where the blank spot was, and his understanding of how the elements surrounding it behave. A few years after this prediction, a French guy named Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran discovered a new element in ore samples and named it gallium after Gaul, the historical name for France. Gallium is one step away from aluminum on the periodic table. It's eka-aluminum. So were Mendeleev's predictions right? Gallium's atomic weight is 69.72. A cubic centimeter of it weighs 5.9 grams. it's a solid metal at room temperature, but it melts at a paltry 30 degrees Celcius, 85 degrees Fahrenheit. It melts in your mouth and in your hand. Not only did Mendeleev completely nail gallium, he predicted other elements that were unknown at the time: scandium, germanium, rhenium. The element he called eka-manganese is now called technetium. Technetium is so rare it couldn't be isolated until it was synthesized in a cyclotron in 1937, almost 70 years after Dmitri predicted its existence, 30 years after he died. Dmitri died without a Nobel Prize in 1907, but he wound up receiving a much more exclusive honor. In 1955, scientists at UC Berkeley successfully created 17 atoms of a previously undiscovered element. This element filled an empty spot in the perodic table at number 101, and was officially named Mendelevium in 1963. There have been well over 800 Nobel Prize winners, but only 15 scientists have an element named after them. So the next time you stare at a periodic table, whether it's on the wall of a university classroom or on a five-dollar coffee mug, Dmitri Mendeleev, the architect of the periodic table, will be staring back.

How did English evolve?

TED-Ed

I am going to start with a challenge. I want you to imagine each of these two scenes in as much detail as you can. Scene number one: "They gave us a hearty welcome." Well, who are the people who are giving a hearty welcome? What are they wearing? What are they drinking? OK, scene two: "They gave us a cordial reception." How are these people standing? What expressions are on their faces? What are they wearing and drinking? Fix these pictures in your mind's eye and then jot down a sentence or two to describe them. We'll come back to them later. Now on to our story. In the year 400 C.E. the Celts in Britain were ruled by Romans. This had one benefit for the Celts: the Romans protected them from the barbarian Saxon tribes of Northern Europe. But then the Roman Empire began to crumble, and the Romans withdrew from Britain. With the Romans gone, the Germanic tribes, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians quickly sailed across the water, did away with the Celts, and formed kingdoms in the British Isles. For several centuries, these tribes lived in Britain, and their Germanic language, Anglo Saxon, became the common language, what we call Old English. Although modern English speakers may think Old English sounds like a different language, if you look and listen closely, you'll find many words that are recognizable. For example, here is what the Lord's Prayer looks like in Old English. At first glance, it may look unfamiliar, but update the spelling a bit, and you'll see many common English words. So the centuries passed with Britains happily speaking Old English, but in the 700's, a series of Viking invasions began, which continued until a treaty split the island in half. On one side were the Saxons. On the other side were the Danes who spoke a language called Old Norse. As Saxons fell in love with their cute Danish neighbors and marriages blurred the boundaries, Old Norse mixed with Old English, and many Old Norse words like freckle, leg, root, skin, and want are still a part of our language. 300 years later, in 1066, the Norman conquest brought war again to the British Isles. The Normans were Vikings who settled in France. They had abandoned the Viking language and culture in favor of a French lifestyle, but they still fought like Vikings. They placed a Norman king on the English throne and for three centuries, French was the language of the British royalty. Society in Britain came to have two levels: French-speaking aristocracy and Old English-speaking peasants. The French also brought many Roman Catholic clergymen with them who added Latin words to the mix. Old English adapted and grew as thousands of words flowed in, many having to do with government, law, and aristocracy. Words like council, marriage, sovereign, govern, damage, and parliament. As the language expanded, English speakers quickly realized what to do if they wanted to sound sophisticated: they would use words that had come from French or Latin. Anglo Saxon words seemed so plain like the Anglo Saxon peasants who spoke them. Let's go back to the two sentences you thought about earlier. When you pictured the hearty welcome, did you see an earthy scene with relatives hugging and talking loudly? Were they drinking beer? Were they wearing lumberjack shirts and jeans? And what about the cordial reception? I bet you pictured a far more classy and refined crowd. Blazers and skirts, wine and caviar. Why is this? How is it that phrases that are considered just about synonymous by the dictionary can evoke such different pictures and feelings? "Hearty" and "welcome" are both Saxon words. "Cordial" and "reception" come from French. The connotation of nobility and authority has persisted around words of French origin. And the connotation of peasantry, real people, salt of the Earth, has persisted around Saxon words. Even if you never heard this history before, the memory of it persists in the feelings evoked by the words you speak. On some level, it's a story you already knew because whether we realize it consciously or only subconsciously, our history lives in the words we speak and hear.

Three anti-social skills to improve your writing

TED-Ed

Dialogue gives a story color, makes it exciting and moves it forward. Romeo: O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? Juliet: What satisfaction canst thou have tonight? Romeo: The exchange of thy love's faithful vows for mine. Without dialogue: (cricket sounds) So what goes into writing effective dialogue? Well, there are social skills: making friends, solving conflicts, being pleasant and polite. We won't be using any of those today. Instead, we'll be working on — let's call them "anti-social skills." If you're a writer, you may already have a few of these. The first is eavesdropping. If you're riding a bus and hear an interesting conversation, you could write it all down. Of course, when you write fiction, you're not describing real people, you're making up characters. But sometimes the words you overhear can give you ideas. "I did not," says one person. "I saw you," the other replies. Who might be saying those words? Maybe it's two kids in a class, and the boy thinks the girl pushed him. Maybe it's a couple, but one of them is a vampire, and the woman vampire saw the man flirting with a zombie. Or maybe not. Maybe the characters are a teenager and his mother, and they're supposed to be vegetarians, but the mother saw him eating a burger. So let's say you've decided on some characters. This is anti-social skill number two: start pretending they're real. What are they like? Where are they from? What music do they listen to? Spend some time with them. If you're on a bus, think about what they might be doing if they were there too. Would they talk on the phone, listen to music, draw pictures, sleep? What we say depends on who we are. An older person might speak differently than a younger person. Someone from the south might speak differently than someone from the north. Once you know your characters, you can figure out how they talk. At this stage, it's helpful to use anti-social skill number three: muttering to yourself. When you speak your character's words, you can hear whether they sound natural, and fix them if necessary. Remember, most people are usually pretty informal when they speak. They use simple language and contractions. So, "Do not attempt to lie to me" sounds more natural as "Don't try to lie to me." Also keep it short. People tend to speak in short bursts, not lengthy speeches. And let the dialogue do the work. Ask yourself: do I really need that adverb? For instance, "'Your money or your life,' she said threateningly." Here, "threateningly" is redundant, so you can get rid of it. But if the words and the actions don't match, an adverb can be helpful. "'Your money or your life,' she said lovingly." So, to recap: First, eavesdrop. Next, pretend imaginary people are real. Finally, mutter to yourself, and write it all down. You already have everything you need. This is fictional dialogue, or "How to Hear Voices in Your Head."

How to defeat a dragon with math

TED-Ed

Once upon a time in the magical and very round Land of Pi, there lived six swashbuckling musketeers. There names were Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction. But each was known best by his or her mark: the two hands ready to catch a fly of Parentheses, the small and raised digits of Exponents, the mighty X of Multiplication, slash of Division, plus of Addition, and, well, you can guess the symbol by which little Subtraction was best known. The Land of Pi was not necessarily the most peaceful place, and that's why the numbers of the kingdom needed the musketeers. The Land of Pi had been ruled by the numbers as anarcho-syndicalist commune, each number with a vote, but, one powerful number from what we'll call the Imperial Senate, engineered a war between some robot things and the knights of the kingdom, and then installed himself as Supreme Emperor, and then Puff the Magic Digit Dragon ate him, and a princess or two, and, well, all the other numbers in the Land of Pi actually. It was kind of a big day. Anyway, the musketeers were called to action to save the Land of Pi from the voracious dragon. They rode towards him on their valiant steeds and attacked. First Multiplication, then Parentheses, but that didn't work. The dragon continued eating people. So Addition tried, but was thrown aside. Exponents leaped at the beast and was quickly squashed. Nothing was working. The musketeers huddled and formulated a plan. They would attack in sequence, but who should go first? They bickered for a while, the dragon ate a few more princesses, and then they finally agreed. They jumped into the first, smallest parentheses inside the great Puff the Digit Dragon. Parentheses pointed out where to work first and protected Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction while they diced and sliced. First here, then, move over there, then there. Look out! There's another set! Parentheses pointed and Exponents took the lead. Then, it was Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction, each in turn, always the same order. P-E-M-D-A-S When they finished that set, they went to another, and another, always working inside the parentheses in PEMDAS order. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! PEMDAS, there is another spot! Don't forget, there can be parentheses inside parentheses. There's one! And that tricky exponent. There we go! Finally, the PEMDAS Musketeers had whittled Puff down to his last fearsome roar. But, having vanquished Puff the Magic Digit Dragon, all the empire's numbers sprang again from this tiny little number one, and they all lived happily ever after. Except for the Emperor Number, which they threw into the mouth of an ancient nesting creature in the desert. The End.

How is power divided in the United States government?

TED-Ed

Have you ever wondered who has the authority to make laws or punish people who break them? When we think of power in the United States, we usually think of the President, but he does not act alone. In fact, he is only one piece of the power puzzle and for very good reason. When the American Revolution ended in 1783, the United States government was in a state of change. The founding fathers knew that they did not want to establish another country that was ruled by a king, so the discussions were centered on having a strong and fair national government that protected individual freedoms and did not abuse its power. When the new constitution was adopted in 1787, the structure of the infant government of the United States called for three separate branches, each with their own powers, and a system of checks and balances. This would ensure that no one branch would ever become too powerful because the other branches would always be able to check the power of the other two. These branches work together to run the country and set guidelines for us all to live by. The legislative branch is described in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution. Many people feel that the founding fathers put this branch in the document first because they thought it was the most important. The legislative branch is comprised of 100 U.S. Senators and 435 members in the U.S. House of Representatives. This is better known as the U.S. Congress. Making laws is the primary function of the legislative branch, but it is also responsible for approving federal judges and justices, passing the national budget, and declaring war. Each state gets two Senators and some number of Representatives, depending on how many people live in that state. The executive branch is described in Article 2 of the Constitution. The leaders of this branch of government are the President and Vice President, who are responsible for enforcing the laws that Congress sets forth. The President works closely with a group of advisors, known as the Cabinet. These appointed helpers assist the President in making important decisions within their area of expertise, such as defense, the treasury, and homeland security. The executive branch also appoints government officials, commands the armed forces, and meets with leaders of other nations. All that combined is a lot of work for a lot of people. In fact, the executive branch employs over 4 million people to get everything done. The third brand of the U.S. government is the judicial branch and is detailed in Article 3. This branch is comprised of all the courts in the land, from the federal district courts to the U.S. Supreme Court. These courts interpret our nation's laws and punish those who break them. The highest court, the Supreme Court, settles disputes among states, hears appeals from state and federal courts, and determines if federal laws are constitutional. There are nine justices on the Supreme Court, and, unlike any other job in our government, Supreme Court justices are appointed for life, or for as long as they want to stay. Our democracy depends on an informed citizenry, so it is our duty to know how it works and what authority each branch of government has over its citizens. Besides voting, chances are that some time in your life you'll be called upon to participate in your government, whether it is to serve on a jury, testify in court, or petition your Congress person to pass or defeat an idea for a law. By knowning the branches, who runs them, and how they work together, you can be involved, informed, and intelligent.

An antihero of one's own

TED-Ed

Literary critic Northrop Frye once observed that in our primitive days, our literary heroes were — well, nearly gods, and as civilization advanced, they came down the mountain of the gods, so to speak, and became more human, more flawed, less heroic. From the divine heroes like Hercules, down the mountain below the miraculous but mortal heroes such as Beowulf, the great leaders such as King Arthur, and the great but flawed heroes like Macbeth or Othello. Below even the unlikely but eventual heroes such as Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, or Hiccup, until we reach the bottom and meet the anti-hero. Contrary to the sound, the anti-hero is not the villain, not the antagonist. The anti-hero is actually the main character in some contemporary works of literature. Guy Montag in "Fahrenheit 451," Winston Smith in "1984," who unwittingly ends up challenging those in power — that is, those who abuse their power to brainwash the populace to believe that the ills of society have been eliminated. Ideally, those who challenge the establishment should be wise, confident, brave, physically strong, with a type of charisma that inpires followers. The anti-hero, however, at best demonstrates a few underdeveloped traits, at worst, is totally inept. The story of the anti-hero usually unfolds something like this. The anti-hero initially conforms, ignorantly accepting the established views, a typical, unquestioning, brainwashed member of society. The anti-hero struggles to conform, all the while starting to object, perhaps finding other outsiders with whom to voice his questions, and naïvely, unwisely, sharing those questions with an authority figure. The anti-hero openly challenges society, and tries to fight against the lies and tactics used to oppress the populace. This step, for the anti-hero, is seldom a matter of brave, wise and heroic opposition. Maybe the anti-hero fights and succeeds in destroying the oppressive government, with a lot of impossible luck. Perhaps he or she runs away, escapes to fight another day. All too often though, the anti-hero is killed, or brainwashed to return to conformity with the masses. No heroic triumph here, no brave individual standing up against impersonal institutions of a modern world, inspiring others to fight, or resourcefully outwitting and outgunning the massive army of the evil empire. Our storytelling ancestors calmed our fears of powerlessness by giving us Hercules and other heroes strong enough to fight off the demons and monsters that we suspected haunted the night beyond our campfires. But eventually, we realized the monsters did not lie out there, they reside inside of us. Beowulf's greatest enemy was mortality. Othello's, jealousy. Hiccup, self-doubt. And in the tales of the ineffectual anti-hero, in the stories of Guy Montag and Winston Smith, lie the warnings of contemporary storytellers playing on very primitive fears: that we are not strong enough to defeat the monsters. Only this time, not the monsters chased away by the campfire, but the very monsters who built the campfire in the first place.

How do cancer cells behave differently from healthy ones?

TED-Ed

We all start life as one single cell. Then that cell divides and we are two cells, then four, then eight. Cells form tissues, tissues form organs, organs form us. These cell divisions, by which we go from a single cell to 100 trillion cells, are called growth. And growth seems like a simple thing because when we think of it, we typically think of someone getting taller or, later in life, wider, but to cells, growth isn't simple. Cell division is an intricate chemical dance that's part individual, part community-driven. And in a neighborhood of 100 trillion cells, some times things go wrong. Maybe an individual cell's set of instructions, or DNA, gets a typo, what we call a mutation. Most of the time, the cell senses mistakes and shuts itself down, or the system detects a troublemaker and eliminates it. But, enough mutations can bypass the fail-safes, driving the cell to divide recklessly. That one rogue cell becomes two, then four, then eight. At every stage, the incorrect instructions are passed along to the cells' offspring. Weeks, months, or years after that one rogue cell transformed, you might see your doctor about a lump in your breast. Difficulty going to the bathroom could reveal a problem in your intestine, prostate, or bladder. Or, a routine blood test might count too many white cells or elevated liver enzymes. Your doctor delivers the bad news: it's cancer. From here your strategy will depend on where the cancer is and how far it's progressed. If the tumor is slow-growing and in one place, surgery might be all you need, if anything. If the tumor is fast-growing or invading nearby tissue, your doctor might recommend radiation or surgery followed by radiation. If the cancer has spread, or if it's inherently everywhere like a leukemia, your doctor will most likely recommend chemotherapy or a combination of radiation and chemo. Radiation and most forms of chemo work by physically shredding the cells' DNA or disrupting the copying machinery. But neither radiation nor chemotherapeutic drugs target only cancer cells. Radiation hits whatever you point it at, and your blood stream carries chemo-therapeutics all over your body. So, what happens when different cells get hit? Let's look at a healthy liver cell, a healthy hair cell, and a cancerous cell. The healthy liver cell divides only when it is stressed; the healthy hair cell divides frequently; and the cancer cell divides even more frequently and recklessly. When you take a chemotherapeutic drug, it will hit all of these cells. And remember that the drugs work typically by disrupting cell division. So, every time a cell divides, it opens itself up to attack, and that means the more frequently a cell divides, the more likely the drug is to kill it. So, remember that hair cell? It divides frequently and isn't a threat. And, there are other frequently dividing cells in your body like skin cells, gut cells, and blood cells. So the list of unpleasant side effects of cancer treatment parallels these tissue types: hair loss, skin rashes, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, weight loss, and pain. That makes sense because these are the cells that get hit the hardest. So, in the end, it is all about growth. Cancer hijacks cells' natural division machinery and forces them to put the pedal to the metal, growing rapidly and recklessly. But, using chemotherapeutic drugs, we take advantage of that aggressiveness, and we turn cancer's main strength into a weakness.

Online predators spread fake porn of me. Here's how I fought back

{0: 'Noelle Martin advocates for a safer and more just online world.'}

TEDxPerth

[This talk contains graphic language and descriptions of sexual abuse] Can I get a show of hands who here has ever Googled themselves? I have. But what started off as momentary curiosity very quickly turned into an almost five-year horrific battle that almost ruined my life. I Google Images reverse-searched myself: a function of Google that allows you to upload an image and it shows you where it is on the internet. This is me at 17 years old. An innocent selfie I took before a party. Now, before I continue, I must point out that what I'm about to talk about is very confronting and graphic. But there's no way out. This is a very confronting issue. In a split second, my screen was flooded with that image and dozens more images of me that had been stolen from my social media, on links connected to porn sites. On these sites, nameless, faceless sexual predators had published highly explicit sexual commentary about me and what they'd like to do to me. "Cover her face and we'd fuck her body," one person wrote. They also published identifying information about me: where I lived, what I studied, who I was. But things got worse. I soon discovered that these sexual predators had doctored or photoshopped my face onto the bodies of naked adult actresses engaged in sexual intercourse, on solo shots of me being ejaculated on by two men. Sperm was edited onto my face. I was edited onto the cover of a porn DVD. Perpetrators had edited my images to give the effect that my blouse was transparent or see-through, so you could see my nipples. Perpetrators ejaculated on images of me, took photos of their sperm and penises on these images and posted them onto porn sites. "Cum on printed pigs," is what they call it. Now, you might be wondering, what sorts of images I posted on social media. This is me, at around 19 at the Claremont Hotel, just a few suburbs away. And they superimposed that face into this. And things got worse. Nothing was off limits for these predators. They even posted an image with my little sister on these sites too. Now, you might be thinking, "Well, you do dress provocatively, even a little sexually suggestive, attention seeking maybe." But just because a woman's body gets attention, doesn't mean she's attention-seeking. And what is provocative anyway, what is sexually suggestive? In some parts of the world, showing your ankles is promiscuous, is provocative. It's just like, no matter what a woman wears, it's always perceived as more sexual than it is. For me, I just wanted to feel pretty and confident. What's so wrong with that? Now, you might be thinking, "Well, can't you just set your social media on private?" Well, these perpetrators were calculated. They befriended my friends on social media under fake profiles, they followed the public galleries of the events and places I regularly visited. But why? Why should one have to retreat and hide out of fear that something like this could happen? What I post and what I wear isn't an invitation to violate and abuse me. The only person that should be changing their behavior is the perpetrators. (Applause) Now, you might be thinking, why me? Well, I'm just one of the thousands upon thousands of ordinary women who are being preyed upon in these mass-scale, horrific online cultures, websites and threads that are dedicated to sexually exploiting and doctoring ordinary images of women into porn. As I speak, there are women who are being preyed upon, and they don't even know it. In the beginning, I tried seeking help. I went to police, I contacted government agencies, I even tried to hire a private investigator, but they were too expensive. There was nothing that they could do. I mean, what could you do when the sites are hosted overseas and the perpetrators are from overseas? I was told I had to contact the sites one by one, notifying the webmasters to get everything deleted. And so as you can imagine, in complete and utter fear and pain, I did. I contacted the webmasters, requesting that they delete the material shared without consent. And I had some successes, but I also had some major setbacks. The more I fought, the more sites I would discover, and with time, the more my images were being seen and shared in the tens of thousands. I had one webmaster respond to me saying he'll only delete the site if I sent him nude photos of myself within 24 hours. And this went on for years, fighting against these dodgy, disgusting sites. But I was fighting a losing battle. And I couldn't continue this any longer for my own mental health. But what could I do? Maybe, I thought, if I spoke out, I could reclaim my name, and I could rewrite my narrative on my own terms. Maybe if I spoke out, I could raise awareness about this. Maybe I could even try to change the law. And so I did. (Applause) I spoke out publicly late last year and news of my story reverberated around the world. But this was the response. "She's a fat, ugly slut, she's a whore." "She's an attention-seeking piece of trash." "Feel flattered, baby, it's a compliment." I was victim-blamed and slut-shamed and told I was deserving of what happened to me. And quite frankly, that was more difficult for me to endure than my actual experiences of image-based abuse. But I couldn’t let this criticism defeat me. I knew what the perpetrators had done was wrong, and I knew what they were doing to others was wrong. And so I petitioned. I sent out impassioned pleas for support. But it didn't work. I think I got like 330 signatures. And that was really disheartening. But I then contacted my state and federal MPs. And I was referred to the New South Wales Attorney General's department, who were already in the process of drafting new laws to criminalize the nonconsensual distribution of intimate images. Image-based sexual abuse. Some of you might know it as revenge porn. And soon I became a spokesperson, a public face for the new laws. But I must point out, I do not in any way, shape or form want to take credit for this change in the law. This is on the backs of cybersafety experts, of researchers, of the Attorney General's department, of so many people who have fought for years. New South Wales was the first state in all the world to specifically include a provision on altering images. Something that happened to me, something you certainly don't hear about very often. And now ACT has also criminalized this, also with a provision on altered images. And next year, WA is introducing legislation and hopefully, they introduce a provision on altered images and I urge every state and every country in this world to follow suit, because right now, there's no justice for people like me. Despite it all, despite the hate and despite the criticism, despite the fact that I'm never going to get justice, because my experiences happened before this movement of law reform, speaking out was the best thing I've ever done, because I know for a fact that it has helped people. And I just want to live in a world where, regardless of what I wear or what I post, that I'm still worthy of being treated with dignity and respect. Respect. Now, that's an idea worth sharing. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause)

Does stress cause pimples?

TED-Ed

She's only a few feet away. The closer he gets, the more nervous he becomes, the budding zit on his nose growing bigger and bigger until it practically eclipses his face. She looks at him hovering nearby, sees the massive zit, and giggles. He slumps away, feeling sick. Stress can sure make a mess, and it happens to both teens and adults. But how does it happen? Let's rewind to before the zit, to before Justin even sees his crush. Already late for school, Justin got to class just in time to hear the teacher say "pop quiz." He hadn't done his homework the night before, and felt more unprepared than the ambushed World War II soldiers he was supposed to write about. A sudden rush of panic swept over his body, leaving him with sweaty palms, a foggy mind and a racing heart. He stumbled out of class in a daze, and ran straight into his all-time crush, spiking up his stress. Stress is a general biological response to a potential danger. In primitive caveman terms, stress can make you fight for your life, or run for your life, if, for example, you're confronted by a hungry saber-tooth tiger. Special chemicals called stress hormones run through your body, giving you more oxygen and power to run away from danger or to face it and fight for your life, hence the term "fight or flight." But when you don't fight, or take flight, you face the plight. When we're taking final exams, sitting in traffic or pondering pollution, we internalize stress. It all begins in the brain. The hypothalamus, the master controller of your hormones, releases something called corticotropin-releasing hormone. This triggers the pituitary gland, a pea-sized gland found at the base of the brain, to release adrenocorticotropic hormone which then stimulates the adrenal gland sitting on top of the kidneys to release cortisol, the major stress hormone. These natural chemicals are a great help when you need to run away quickly, or do superhuman feats of courage, but when you're simply sitting, these stress hormones collect in the body and affect your overall health. Stress hormones increase inflammation in the body, suppress the immune system, which makes you more susceptible to infection by acne-causing bacteria, and can even increase oil production in the skin. And this is the perfect storm for forming a pimple. Cortisol is a major stress hormone involved in making skin cells churn out oily lipids from special glands called sebaceous glands. But when there's too much of these oily lipids, called sebum, they can plug up the swollen, inflamed pores and trap the pesky, acne-causing bacteria inside, where they set up house and thrive. Add a dash of inflammatory neuropeptides released by the nervous system when you're — well, nervous — and angry zits follow. To make matters worse, Justin is a boy, meaning he's got more testosterone than girls. Testosterone is another hormone that increases oil production in the skin. So, his already oily skin, together with a boost in oil and inflammation from stress, is the perfect environment for bacteria to swell, swell, swell up into a major zit. So what could've Justin done to avoid the big pimple? Stressful situations are unavoidable. But we can try to change our responses so that we're not so stressed in the end. And had he been confident in approaching her, she might not have noticed the pimple, or he might not have had one.

The legend of Annapurna, Hindu goddess of nourishment

TED-Ed

Lord Shiva— primordial destroyer of evil, slayer of demons, protector, and omniscient observer of the universe— was testing his wife’s patience. Historically, the union between Shiva and Parvati was a glorious one. They maintained the equilibrium between thought and action on which the well-being of the world depended. Without Parvati as the agent of energy, growth, and transformation on Earth, Shiva would become a detached observer, and the world would remain static. But together, the two formed a divine union known as Ardhanarishvara–– a sacred combination which brought fertility and connection to all living things. For these reasons, Parvati was worshipped far and wide as the mother of the natural world–– and the essential counterpart to Shiva’s powers of raw creation. She oversaw humanity’s material comforts; and ensured that the Earth’s inhabitants were bonded to each other physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Yet a rift had grown between these two formidable forces. While Parvati sustained daily life with care and control, Shiva had begun to belittle his wife’s essential work— and insisted on quarreling about their roles in the universe. He believed that Brahma, the Creator of the world, had conceived the material plane purely for his own fancy. And therefore, all material things were merely distractions called māyā— nothing but a cosmic illusion. For millennia Parvati had merely smiled knowingly as Shiva dismissed the things she nurtured. But upon His latest rebuke, she knew she had to prove the importance of her work once and for all. She took flight from the world, withdrawing her half of the cosmic energy that kept the Earth turning. At her disappearance, a sudden, terrifying and all-encompassing scarcity enveloped the world in eerie silence. Without Parvati, the land became dry and barren. Rivers shrank and crops shriveled in the fields. Hunger descended on humanity. Parents struggled to console their starving children while their own stomachs rumbled. With nothing to eat, people no longer gathered over heaped bowls of rice, but withdrew and shrank from the darkening world. To His shock and awe, Shiva also felt the profound emptiness left by his wife’s absence. Despite His supreme power, He too realized that He was not immune to the need for sustenance, and His yearning felt bottomless and unbearable. As Shiva despaired over the desolate Earth, He came to realize that the material world could not be so easily dismissed. At her husband’s epiphany, the compassionate Parvati could no longer stand by and watch her devotees wasting away. To walk among them and restore their health, she took the form of a new avatar, carrying a golden bowl of porridge and armed with a jewel-encrusted ladle. As word of this hopeful figure spread, she was worshipped as Annapurna, the Goddess of food. With the arrival of Annapurna, the world blossomed anew. People rejoiced at fertility and food, and communed together to give thanks. Some believe that Annapurna first appeared in the sacred city of Kashi, or the Place of Freedom, on the banks of the Ganges— where she opened a kitchen to fill the bellies of the people until they could eat no more. But it was not only mere mortals who were served at her feast. Humbled at the scenes of earthly pleasure blooming all around him, Lord Shiva himself approached the goddess with an empty bowl and begged for food and forgiveness. For this reason, the supreme deity is sometimes portrayed as a poor beggar at the mercy of Annapurna; holding her golden bowl in her left hand, while the right forms the abhaya mudra–– a gesture of safety and assurance. With these symbols, this powerful avatar makes it clear that the material world is anything but an illusion. Rather, it is a cycle of life that must be sustained— from the feeding of open mouths and rumbling bellies, to the equilibrium of the Earth.

In on a secret? That's dramatic irony

TED-Ed

What do horror movies and comedies have in common? The two genres might seem totally different, but the reason they're both so popular is perhaps because what they have in common: their use of dramatic irony. First, let's clarify. There are three types of irony out there. Situational irony is when you expect one thing, but get the opposite. Verbal irony is when someone says something, but truly means the opposite. Dramatic irony, though, is what we will be looking at right now. Dramatic irony is when the audience seems to know more about an event, a situation, or a conversation than the characters in the movie, on the show, or in the book do. The audience is in on a secret that the characters have missed. This is a great story-telling device that creates tremendous emotion within that text. Think about it for a moment. How does it feel when, in a horror film, you know that the scary villain is hiding behind that door in the darkened room. The music becomes eerie, the lighting creates complete shadows, this has to be bad for the hero! Of course, though, that hero must enter the room to find the villain. You feel tremendous tension and the suspense of knowing that someone will jump out and be scary, but you just don't know when. That tension is dramatic irony: you know something more than the characters in the film. Now, take the typical comedy. There will probably be some type of "misunderstanding". Again, we know more of what is going on than the characters do. Picture two characters making a plan for a birthday surprise for their roommate while that roommate overhears the entire conversation from the hallway. From there, confusion and misunderstanding occur, and the tension builds. This isn't the same tension as the horror film since it is probably pretty funny as the character tries to figure out the whos and the whats, but it serves as a great example of the tension and suspense of dramatic irony. This tension or suspense in both genres drives the story and keeps the plot progressing. The audience wants, no, needs, to see the tension of the dramatic irony broken either by the scary person jumping out of the shadows or by someone finally revealing someone's true identity and clearing up the confusion. So, when you feel like you are in on a secret, that is dramatic irony, a hallmark of all the great writers, from Shakespeare to Hitchcock.

How symbols and brands shape our humanity

{0: 'As host of the long-running podcast "Design Matters," Debbie Millman illuminates the creative processes of some of our era\'s most intriguing artists, designers and icons. She is the founder and chair of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.'}

TEDWomen 2019

Thirteen point eight billion years ago, the universe as we know it began with a big bang, and everything that we know and are and are made of was created. Fifty thousand years ago, our brains underwent a major genetic mutation, which resulted in the biological reorganization of the brain. Some scientists call this "The Big Brain Bang." Others call it "The Great Leap Forward," which I prefer. It's so much more poetic. This is when Homo sapiens began to evolve into the modern species that we are today. The Great Leap Forward activated most of our modern abilities: abstract thought, planning, cooking, competitive labor, language, art, music and self-decoration. After the Great Leap Forward, there was an explosion of stone toolmaking, more sophisticated weaponry and, 32,000 years ago, the creation of our first sophisticated mark-making on the cave walls of Lascaux. It's not a coincidence that we've gone from documenting our reality on the cave walls of Lascaux to the walls of Facebook. And, in a very meta experience, you can now a book a trip to see the walls of Lascaux on the walls of Facebook. Approximately 10,000 years ago, men and women began to array themselves with makeup. They started to self-decorate. But this wasn't for seductive purposes; this was for religious convictions. We wanted to be more beautiful, purer, cleaner in the eyes of something or someone that we believed had more power than we did. There is no culture in recorded human history that has not practiced some form of organized worship, which we now call "religion." Six thousand years ago, in an effort to unite people, our ancestors began to design telegraphic symbols to represent beliefs and to identify affiliations. These symbols connected like-minded people, and they are all extraordinary. These affiliations allowed us to feel safer and more secure in groups, and the sharing created consensus around what the symbols represented. With these marks, you knew where you fit in, both for the people that were in the in crowd and those, as importantly, that were excluded. These symbols were created in what I consider to be a very bottom-up manner: they were made by people for people and then shared for free among people to honor the higher power that they ascribed to. What's ironic is that the higher power actually had nothing to do with this. These early affiliations, they often shared identical characteristics, which is rather baffling given how scattered we were all over the planet. We constructed similar rituals, practices and behaviors no matter where we were anywhere on the globe. We constructed rituals to create symbolic logos. We built environments for worship. We developed strict rules on how to engage with each other with food, with hair, with birth, with death, with marriage and procreation. Some of the symbols have eerie commonalities. The hand of God shows up over and over and over again. It shows up as the hamsa hand in Mesopotamia. It shows us as the hand of Fatima in Islam. It shows up as the hand of Miriam in Judaism. Now, when we didn't agree on what our beliefs and behaviors were in regards to others, if we felt that somebody else's were incorrect, we began to fight, and many of our first wars were religious. Our flags were used on the battlefield to signify which side of the battlefield we belonged to, because that was the only way to be able to tell friend from foe. We all looked alike. And now our flags are on mass-manufactured uniforms that we are making. Logos on products to identify a maker came next, and brands were given legal recognition on January 1, 1876, with the advent of the Trademarks Registration Act. The first trademarked brand was Bass Ale, and I kind of wonder what that says about our humanity that first trademarked brand was an alcoholic beverage. Now, here is what I consider to be the first case of branded product placement. There are bottles of Bass Ale behind me with the logo accurately presented here in this very famous painting in 1882 by Édouard Manet. One of the most widely recognized logos in the world today is the Nike swoosh, which was introduced in 1971. Carolyn Davidson, a graphic design student, originally created the logo for 35 dollars. Upon seeing it, Nike CEO Phil Knight stated, "I don't love it but maybe it will grow on me." Maybe it will grow on me. But why is the swoosh so popular? Why is the swoosh so popular? Is it the mark? Or is the marketing? And what can we make of the fact that the Nike swoosh seems to be the Newport logo upside down or the Capital One logo on its side? That is not the only logo with a shared identity. This next logo is a logo that has a shared identity with wholly different meanings. As a Jewish person, I believe that this logo, this swastika, is the most heinous logo of all time. But it actually has a rather surprising trajectory. The word "swastika" originally comes from the ancient Sanskrit word "svastika," which actually means "good fortune," "luck" and "well-being." In the early 1900s, before it was appropriated by Hitler, it was used by Coca-Cola on a good luck bottle opener. The American Biscuit Company prominently registered the mark and put it on boxes of cookies. The US Playing Card Company registered the mark in 1921 for Fortune Playing Cards. The Boy Scouts used the mark on shoes in 1910, and the symbol was also featured on cigar labels, boxtops, road signs and even poker chips. Even the Jain made use of the logo along with a hand of God many millennia ago. These marks were identical, but with use as a Nazi symbol, the impact became very, very different. The hand of God, the Nike swoosh and the swastika: they all demonstrate how we've been manufacturing meaning with visual language over millennia. It's a behavior that's almost as old as we are. Today, in the United States, there are over 116,000 malls, and they all look pretty much the same. There are more than 40,000 supermarkets, and they each have over 40,000 items. If you went shopping for bottled water, you'd have over 80 options to choose from. Since their launch in 1912, you could choose from over 100 flavors and variants of Oreo cookies. Now, is this a good thing or is it a bad thing? Is a plethora of choice necessary in a free market? I believe it is both a good and bad thing, as humans are both good and bad, and we're the ones creating and using and buying these brands. However, I think that the question of whether this behavior is good or bad is actually secondary to understanding why — why we behave this way in the first place. Here's the thing: every one of our mass-marketed products are what I consider to be top-down brands. They're still created by people, but they are owned, operated, manufactured, advertised, designed, promoted and distributed by the corporation and pushed down and sold to the consumer for financial gain. These corporations have a responsibility to a P and L with an expectation of an ROI and have names like P and G and AT and T and J and J. And that's pretty much the way it's been for the last couple of hundred years: a top-down model controlled by the corporation. Until 2011. That's when we began to see evidence of real, significant, far-reaching change. The Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street proved how the internet could amplify messages and connect like-minded people with powerful beliefs to inspire change. We witnessed a cultural shift via social media with hashtags like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. In its wake, the discipline of branding has transformed more in the last 10 years than it has in the last 10,000, and for the first time in modern history, the most popular, influential brands are not brands being pushed down by the corporation. They are brands being pushed up by the people, for the people, for the sole purpose of changing the world and making it a better place. Our greatest innovations aren't brands providing a different form or a different flavor of our favorite snack. Our greatest innovations are the creation of brands that can make a difference in our lives and reflect the kind of world that we want to live in. In November of 2016, Krista Suh, Jayna Zweiman and Kat Coyle created a hat to be worn at the Women's March in Washington, DC. (Applause) This was the day after the presidential inauguration. Two months later, on January 21, 2017, millions of people all over the world wore handmade pink pussyhats in support of the Women's March all over the world. The hat was not created for any financial benefit. Like our religious symbols created thousands of years ago, the hat was created by the people, for the people to serve what I believe is the highest benefit of branding: to unite people in the communication of shared ideals. The pink pussyhat became a mark for a movement. In a very short time, two months, it became universally recognizable. It connected an audience in an unprecedented way. It is a brand, but it is more than that. Today, the pink pussyhat is proof positive that branding is not just a tool of capitalism. Branding is the profound manifestation of the human spirit. The condition of branding has always reflected the condition of our culture. It is our responsibility to continue to leverage the democratic power branding provides, and it is our responsibility to design a culture that reflects and honors the kind of world we want to live in. Thank you. (Applause)

The function and fashion of eyeglasses

{0: 'As host of the long-running podcast "Design Matters," Debbie Millman illuminates the creative processes of some of our era\'s most intriguing artists, designers and icons. She is the founder and chair of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.'}

Small Thing Big Idea

I think that at the time, Catwoman had a really cool pair of glasses in the Batman series that was on television. And I wanted to be cool like her. It didn't occur to me that glasses were really a medical device. (Small Thing.) (Big Idea.) When light rays reflect off an object and enter the eye through the cornea, your retina converts this light into electrical impulses that are sent to the brain, which interprets the impulses and allows you to understand what you're seeing. Eyeglasses help you see. The earliest forms of eye gear can be traced back 4,000 years. Cultures that needed to adapt to climates that were snowy created eye shields, and they were made of bone and animal hides. They had small slits for people to see through, but no lenses. The first vision aid was called a reading stone and was invented over 1,000 years ago. It's not exactly clear who invented the first eyeglasses, but many people attribute it to the Italians. Early versions of eyeglasses were called rivet spectacles. They were two magnifying glasses that were hinged together at the bridge of the nose. It took some time for eyeglasses to land on the perfect design. They didn't really have sides, which are also called temples, or arms, until about the 17th century. Modern-day eyeglasses feature a pair of rims that hold corrective lenses, a bridge that connects the rims, sides that slide behind the ears, hinges that connect the sides to the frames, and on some glasses, a pair of temple tips for behind the ear comfort. In American culture, 20th century cinema helped popularize eyeglasses. Audiences would see glamorous actresses and actors donning glasses to take on a different persona. Sometimes a pair of glasses became popularized by the actual person that was wearing them, and then that personality trait was projected into the actual device. You had the aviator glasses, which showed a forward-thinking, adventurous type of person. Glasses with heavy frames signified intelligence or nerdiness. Wayfarers signified this kind of nerdy punk, the outlaw, the misfit. Glasses have become so popular as a fashion device that some people actually don glasses without a prescription lens at all, because they want to portray a certain attribute about themselves. Glasses are a lifeline to people. People that can't see well enough to drive, well enough to cook, well enough to read rely on glasses for maintaining their lives. And there's lots of other objects in our society that have been created to help overcome various physical obstacles. And it's only the eyeglasses that have catapulted to that fashion statement. Wouldn't it be wonderful if anything that we use, any device that we've invented to help our humanity could also be elevated in the same way? (Upbeat music)

How the compass unlocked the world

{0: 'David Biello is TED\'s science curator and the author of "The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth\'s Newest Age."'}

Small Thing Big Idea

Growing up in Missouri, they would kind of take us out into the woods, and they would give you a map, and they would give you a compass, and you had to find your way home. And without the compass, you can't even read the map. That's what I'm here to tell you. The compass is the key. [Small thing.] [Big idea.] A compass is most simply a piece of metal that has been magnetized, so that it will turn towards the Earth's magnetic pole. The one that we all think of is the pocket compass. It looks like a watch, right? You can hold it in your hand and watch the little needle bounce around until you find north. Magnetism is still a pretty mysterious force to physicists, but what we do know for sure is that a compass works because the Earth is this giant magnet. And when you use a compass, you are in touch with the very center of our planet, where this kind of roiling ball of molten iron is spinning around and creating a magnetic field. Just like a magnet you can play with on your tabletop, it has a north pole and a south pole, and we use compasses to find our way north because of that fact. The earliest known compass comes from about 200 BC in China. They figured out that some of the metal coming out of the ground was naturally magnetic, and so they fashioned this magnetized metal into this kind of ladle-looking thing, put it on a brass plate and then it would point north. It seems to have been primarily used to improve feng shui, so they could figure out what was the best way for energy to flow through their living spaces. Sailors were probably the early adopters of the more portable versions of it, because no matter where the sun was, no matter what the condition of the stars were, they would always be able to find north. Now, much later, the Europeans are the ones who innovate and come up with the compass rose. It essentially laid out what north, south, east and west looked like, and it also enabled you to kind of create new directions, like northwest, southeast, what have you. And for the first time, they knew where they were going. That's kind of a big deal. But also, I think it was part of this general reinvigoration of European science. You might know it as the Renaissance. Lots of new tools were invented, from the telescope to the microscope. Maps got better because of compasses, right? Because then you start to understand which direction is which, you get a lot more detail, and that just kind of changes the human relationship to the world. The compass with a map is like a superpower. Everything that we think of as world history would not have taken place without the compass: the age of exploration, Magellan circumnavigating the globe, even the fact that we know it is a globe. The compass ends up getting embedded in all these other tools, because it is such a functional object. So you might have it embedded in your multi-tool, you might have it embedded in your phone. The compass is everywhere, because it's literally how we find our way across the face of the Earth. So you can go off and explore, and find out what is over that next hill or that next horizon, but you can also reliably find your way home.

Why pasta comes in all shapes and sizes

{0: "Paola Antonelli is on a mission to introduce -- and explain -- design to the world. With her shows at New York's Museum of Modern Art, she celebrates design's presence in every part of life."}

Small Thing Big Idea

Food is design. It is design when you compose plates, but it is amazing, even better and most delightful design when it's about the units. [Small thing.] [Big idea.] "Pasta" comes from Latin, and it means "paste." It's about putting together water and some powder, so that you can actually shape it. There are cultures in the world that use rice powder, others use soy powder. In Italy, we tend to use durum wheat. Pasta existed for centuries, but it really blossomed during the Renaissance. And it's only later on in the 17th century that it became more mass produced. Whenever you design an object of any kind, you think of how you want it to perform. So think about the same for pasta. Do you want it to be ribbed or you want it to be smooth? The ribbed ones absorb the sauce better. Do you want them to be round or do you want them to be square? They have a different feel on the palate. Everything is for a reason. In the amazing taxonomy of the pasta species, there are many different ways to divide it, but one of the basic divisions is between fresh pasta and dry pasta. Dry pasta is always durum wheat flour and water. Fresh pasta could be either that or it could be flour and eggs. Just think of having a dough that you can shape in any way you want. I mean, really, wouldn't you go crazy? So fresh and dry, but then, there's also long and short. And then within those families, there's even more diversity. Let's talk about some really classical types of short pasta. Penne — we all know them, right? They are cut at a slanted angle, perfect to pick up some of the sauce. "Farfalle" means "butterflies," or how do you call it here, bow ties, because they are, like, pinched in the middle. "Orecchiette" means "little ears," and they're typical from Puglia, and they are delicious. And "conquilla," shells, and of course, they look like shells. They are ribbed, so they scoop up the sauce on the outside and they are smooth on the inside. Pasta is definitely gorgeous, but the form also is about how it touches the palate, how it touches the tongue, so it's never just about giving it a shape. When you hone one object across centuries, standards become really, really high. Many so-called great designers failed miserably, because they tried to impose a shape onto pasta. The great Philippe Starck tried mandala. Some parts of it, the walls, were very thick, and the others were thinner, so when you would boil the pasta, some of it would be completely mushy while part of it was too crunchy and uncooked. So really wrong, but they were not women from Bologna, they were not chefs from Naples, they were not centuries of families of grandmothers that were trying to improve on the thinness of the walls of the pasta. There's no way to trace pasta back to one designer, one inventor, and that's the beauty of it. It belongs to the people. And if you think about it, this simple mixture of a carbohydrate and water becomes the scaffold for a whole culture to be built.

Why 1.5 billion people eat with chopsticks

{0: 'Jennifer 8. Lee reports on culture and city life.'}

Small Thing Big Idea

It is such a sort of instrumental part of our cooking vocabulary, in terms of the utensils. And it was like, that's interesting, there are people who live without chopsticks. [Small Thing.] [Big Idea.] Chopsticks are a pair of two long sticks used to eat things with one hand. Holding chopsticks is a little bit like holding a pencil, except that you have two of them and you move them together in a pincer movement. Most of them are made out of wood. They're also made out of plastic, bamboo, jade, gold, silver and even ivory, though I think that's not so cool anymore. Chopsticks are really well designed for eating small bits of food. They're good for picking up noodles. If you're skilled, you can eat rice, pick up dumplings, pieces of meat. There are some no-nos with chopsticks. You should not use the chopsticks like drumsticks, which I know is tempting. You don't want to stick chopsticks into a bowl of rice face-up. And the reason for that is it actually looks like a bowl of incense, so it sort of echoes death. Chopsticks are used in a huge portion of the world, across much of Asia, about 1.5 billion people are covered in the chopsticks sphere. Different cultures have slightly different variations of chopsticks. Chinese chopsticks will tend to be long and round, Korean chopsticks are flatter and often made of metal and Japanese chopsticks tend to be round and very, very pointy. While chopsticks are actually really commonplace in American society today, there was definitely a time in the late 1800s where this idea that Asian men, because they ate rice with sticks, were of a different quality than American men, who ate proper meat with a knife and fork. But when China and the United States began their diplomatic engagement in the 1970s, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, had to practice eating with chopsticks. What's been really interesting to see is that as Asian cuisine has moved from the East into the West, chopsticks have become part of the experience. There's evidence of chopsticks as long ago as the Shang dynasty, which is about 3000 years ago, and they loved tripods during the Shang dynasty. So when you cook with these big tripods, chopsticks were actually really useful, because it was a way for you to stir and to reach without getting burned as the water was boiling in these really big pots. Chinese culture has knives and has forks. It uses them in many cases for cooking. But in terms of like what moved into the dining room, it was the chopsticks. One of the things about Asian cooking is that it often comes in very small pieces. And I think part of that has to do with the fact that it's actually a lot more energy-efficient to cook little pieces quickly. But also, then you don't have to cut them. So you have a circular influence, where the type of food that is cooked allows people to use chopsticks, and then the fact that you have chopsticks influences the food that you can cook. But at the same time, chopsticks reflect the communal nature of eating food. You'll have these dishes that you put in the middle, it's very family style. You go in with your chopsticks, and you put it on your rice, and then you eat individually. There's actually a famous sort of legend where everyone has these really, really long chopsticks, like way too long for them to feed themselves. And so in hell, everyone starves, because they can't pick up food and put it in their mouths. But in heaven, people take the same chopsticks and then feed each other.

The power of the Afro pick

{0: 'Culinary evangelist Jon Gray is the voice of Ghetto Gastro, a cooking advocacy collective that ignites conversations about race, class and inclusion via the medium of food.'}

Small Thing Big Idea

You don't really look at a toothbrush and say, "I'm great!" But when you look at an Afro pick, which is a grooming tool, it can remind you in your subconscious to, like, really be proud and, like, "All right." [Small thing.] [Big idea.] An Afro pick is a utilitarian tool used to maintain the Afro hairstyle. I think the Afro pick was designed for the ergonomics of creating something that felt like you were running fingers through your hair. The shape, even the depth that it goes in — it's like a hand. You have plastic or nylon teeth, and then you have the stainless steel or the nickel teeth. I always prefer the metal tooth just 'cause I like the sound and the ones I know have the black power fist on the handle. When I think of black hair in America, I think of something that's been policed. Back in the days, it was expected for black people to chemically treat their hair. Whether that's healthy for them is a secondary thing to blending in. In the 50s, dancer Ruth Beckford and a lot of jazz singers were tired of straightening their hair, so they said, all right, we're going to just let it grow naturally and started rocking natural, close-cropped hair. And in the 60s, that style evolved with the formation of the Afro, which was the cropped hair, natural, picked out into a more spherical shape. You had civil rights leaders, activists, that adopted the hairstyle as a means of rebellion and black pride. And then you had musicians like James Brown, who was infamously known for chemically straightening his hair, reject that and go natural. It went hand-in-hand with his music, so he had songs like "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud." The black is beautiful movement is just rejecting the notion that to be black or to have darker skin, to have a curlier grade of hair, was something to be ashamed of. I have one of my favorite pictures of my mother and my grandmother, and my grandmother had a small 'fro, and that was in the 60s. African hair combs date back to 3500 BCE. The oldest African combs are found in ancient Egypt and Sudan, so they were making pyramids and combs. The way the ancient African combs were embellished represented status or tribal affiliation. It's no coincidence that the fist on the modern Afro pick also sets the tone for affiliation and what set you claim. And then there's the Black Power movement. Most movements need their icons, right? You have the fist, you have the 'fro. These things coincide with the Black Panther aesthetic, where you could kind of spot your tribe from afar, because you're not just keeping a pick in, like, your beauty kit. It's in your back pocket, purposely with the first outside of it, and in your hair, you'll rock it in your 'fro. If I think about iconic Afros, I definitely think about Angela Davis. Her 'fro personifies elegance, style, freedom, rebellion. You feel all of these feelings at once when you see Angela Davis fighting for her life in federal court. By the 80s, the Afro style became less radical. The Afro picks are still produced to this day with the clenched fist, so it's the remnants of the movement in the everyday object. When I was young, it was just, like, another object. It was a comb. But as I became more enlightened to really understand the roots and the origin and the intentionality of the design and why the fist and all of these things ... I woke up.

Why books are here to stay

{0: "Chip Kidd's book jacket designs spawned a revolution in the art of American book packaging."}

Small Thing Big Idea

I will lend books to people, but of course, the rule is "Don't do that unless you never intend to see that book again." [Small thing.] [Big idea.] The physical object of a book is almost like a person. I mean, it has a spine and it has a backbone. It has a face. Actually, it can sort of be your friend. Books record the basic human experience like no other medium can. Before there were books, ancient civilizations would record things by notches on bones or rocks or what have you. The first books as we know them originated in ancient Rome. We go by a term called the codex, where they would have two heavy pieces of wood which become the cover, and then the pages in between would then be stitched along one side to make something that was relatively easily transportable. They all had to completely be done by hand, which became the work of what we know as a scribe. And frankly, they were luxury items. And then a printer named Johannes Gutenberg, in the mid-fifteenth century, created the means to mass-produce a book, the modern printing press. It wasn't until then that there was any kind of consumption of books by a large audience. Book covers started to come into use in the early nineteenth century, and they were called dust wrappers. They usually had advertising on them. So people would take them off and throw them away. It wasn't until the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century that book jackets could be seen as interesting design in and of themselves. Such that I look at that and I think, "I want to read that. That interests me." The physical book itself represents both a technological advance but also a piece of technology in and of itself. It delivered a user interface that was unlike anything that people had before. And you could argue that it's still the best way to deliver that to an audience. I believe that the core purpose of a physical book is to record our existence and to leave it behind on a shelf, in a library, in a home, for generations down the road to understand where they came from, that people went through some of the same things that they're going through, and it's like a dialogue that you have with the author. I think you have a much more human relationship to a printed book than you do to one that's on a screen. People want the experience of holding it, of turning the page, of marking their progress in a story. And then you have, of all things, the smell of a book. Fresh ink on paper or the aging paper smell. You don't really get that from anything else. The book itself, you know, can't be turned off with a switch. It's a story that you can hold in your hand and carry around with you and that's part of what makes them so valuable, and I think will make them valuable for the duration. A shelf of books, frankly, is made to outlast you, (Laughs) no matter who you are.

The evolution of the coffee cup lid

{0: "Immersing himself in alternate lifestyles and hilarious experiments (usually with himself as the guinea pig), writer A.J. Jacobs tests the limits of behavior, customs, culture -- and reports back on the wisdom and practical knowledge he's gained."}

Small Thing Big Idea

You never give it any thought, and there are billions of them out there, but the amount of design and passion and creativity that goes into this little disc is remarkable. [Small thing.] [Big idea.] The coffee cup lid is a lid for your coffee cup. It snaps on. It has an opening. You've got lids with a little latch that opens and closes. You've got ones that are in creative shapes. Coffee cup lids have their own vocabulary. People talk about the "peripheral skirts," the "press-in dimples," the "fragrance outlets," the "slosh factor." But you need these words, because so much thought and innovation goes into these coffee cup lids. Our society is just more and more mobile. Everything is on the move. The good part: it's convenient. You can drink coffee anywhere, you don't have the stay in the diner. It can be in the subway. You can be walking. The bad part is, it's harder to savor a coffee when you're taking it on the road. The first patent for a lid on a cup was in 1934, but it was for cold beverages. And in 1950, this guy named James Reifsnyder invented the first snap-on lid. But it didn't have an opening for drinking. In the '60s there was this huge cultural shift, where people started drinking coffee on the move. And 7-Eleven was the first to sell coffee to go. And then came this revolution in 1967. A man named Alan Frank invented a lid that you could peel a tab off, like in the shape of a guitar pick, and drink it from there. In 1975, another big advance: you could peel back a tab and attach it to the lid itself. So, more and more people started drinking coffee on the go. In 1984, a watershed moment in the history of coffee cup lids: the birth of the traveler lid. And it is iconic — you've seen it a million times. And it solved a whole host of problems. It's designed so that you don't splash your face, because it's higher than any of the other ones. And it's got this protruding rim, so it slightly cools the coffee before it hits your lips. It's got a small depression in the center for your nose, so you can really get in there and get maximum aroma. It's got this tiny air hole that lets the steam out and stops it from creating a vacuum. This is one of those objects where you just don't notice it until it dribbles on your lap. So I think the coffee cup lid will just continue to evolve, and you're going to see a move away from single-use plastic lids to lids that are a little more sustainable. We're not going to stop moving. We're not going to stop drinking coffee. And I think that's what these coffee lid engineers are trying to do, is to make it so that the experience of taking it on the road is as good as sitting in a restaurant, drinking from a ceramic cup. Because, you know, coffee is serious business.

For the love of fangirls

{0: 'Yve Blake challenges the myth that fangirls are something to be laughed at, pointing out the long legacy of sexist derision of young, enthusiastic women.'}

TEDxSydney

Four years ago, a teenage girl changed my life in one conversation. She was 13 years old, she was a friend's little cousin and she casually told me that she had met the man she was going to marry. So I said, "OK, tell me about him." And she told me that his name was Harry Styles. (Laughter) So I laughed a little, like you, and then she said, "I know you don't think I'm serious, but I'm actually going to be with him. Because I love him so much that I would slit someone's throat to be with him." (Laughter) And that was the moment that I became obsessed with fangirls. I didn't know it then, but that moment would transform the course of my life and go on to change everything that I thought I knew about being an adult, being a woman and being truly happy. But before we get started, what is a fangirl, and what is a Harry Styles? Well, according to the dictionary, the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a fangirl is a "girl or woman who is an extremely or overly enthusiastic fan of someone or something." Technically, you can have fangirls of anything, but my specific interest was in fangirls of boy bands. Because of their somewhat lethal reputation. I remember, my dad had told me this story of some Beatles fans in the '60s, who apparently had torn a parked BMW to literal pieces, because the band had supposedly just been sat in it. In the '60s, the Beatles were the biggest boy band on the planet, but when I met this girl in 2015, the biggest boy band on the planet was none other than One Direction. And Harry Styles was a member of One Direction. Harry Styles was reputed for his compassionate demeanor and perfect hair. I learn this when I read thousands of tweets about him. I learn that he is a sweet cupcake. I learn that he is a perfect angel. I learn that one time, he vomited on the side of a freeway in California and that within two hours, fans had turned the site of the vomit into a sacred shrine. (Laughter) I scroll through — (Laughter) I scroll through fan-made paintings of Harry, baby photos of him, paintings of baby photos of him. I watch videos that show me how to make DIY love totems for Harry — for example, a lampshade covered in photos of his face, or a key ring that states the exact time of his birth. I read hours of fan fiction, and I fall down this specific rabbit hole of stories that actually place me as a protagonist inside of various imagined romances with him. So in one, I tell him that I'm pregnant with his child. In another, we meet in hospital where we're both fighting cancer, and in another, we fall so deeply in love that we become fugitives who kill people. (Laughter) But then ... something unthinkable happens. One Direction, the biggest boy band on the planet, loses a member. Zayn Malik quits the band, and the internet explodes with feels. I read tweets as these girls describe the physical pain of this loss, how they can't eat or sleep or walk. I read them describe how much Zayn had meant to them. And I watch videos of 10-year-old girls crying. But, like, really crying. And then I watch as people repost these videos but with new titles that contain words like "crazy" and "creepy" and "insane." And suddenly, my YouTube sidebar contains "Compilation: Fans react to Zayn leaving. Psycho alert!" Then I watch as mainstream news outlets cover the story. I read them describe these "young banshees." I read one journalist say, "It's a commonly known fact since the age of the Beatles that there is nothing scarier in this world than a group of excited teenage girls." (Laughter) And then I ask myself a question I've never considered in my life. Why is it that the image of young girls screaming their lungs out with excitement for a pop star is considered crazy, psycho, scary, a bit much? But the image of young boys screaming their lungs out for a footballer is perfectly normal? Boys crying at the footie, that's the love of the game. Girls crying at a Justin Bieber concert? That's pathetic. And as soon as I realized this double standard, I realized that all of my curiosity about fangirls had been sparked by exactly the same judgments. I, too, had suspected that they were a bit crazy. I'd looked at images of girls screaming for the Beatles, the Backstreet Boys, One Direction, and the word that had come to mind was not "excitement" but "hysteria." And what I did not know was the history of that word. That in the 19th century, hysteria was considered to be a legitimate female mental disorder that could be diagnosed by doctors if women displayed excessive emotion or difficult behavior. The word "hysterical" comes from the Latin word "hystericus," meaning "of the womb," because it was thought that this condition was caused by a dysfunction of the uterus. And so, a treatment for hysteria was a hysterectomy. Which is what we still call a removal of the womb. And at this point, I decide to redeclare my obsession. Because I am no longer just obsessed with fangirls. Now, I'm obsessed with the way that the world talks about fangirls and the way that the world looks at young, female enthusiasm. Because, I want to know, if girls grow up in a world where words like "crazy" and "psycho" and "hysterical" are casually used to describe female enthusiasm, then how does that shape the way that those girls get to see themselves? And if girls grow up in a world that tells them that they are designed just a bit crazier than the boys, then isn't that a little bit like telling them that they are born less capable of rationality than men, less capable of reason and unworthy of the same intellectual respect as their brothers. Separately, I become obsessed with female screams. Not in a creepy way. I'm talking about, like, those shrieks and squeals that fangirls let out at concerts. I want to know why it is that some people instinctively flinch when I merely describe the sound, like it's painful just to think about it. Then I meet Amy Hume. She's a voice coach. And she blows my mind. Because she tells me that the female voice between the ages of 11 and 13 is one of the most interesting things to study. Why? Because there's this research by Carol Gilligan that says that is the age when girls begin to perform and alter their voices. For example, adding breath for maturity, (Imitating vocal fry) or adding vocal fry for apathy. (Laughter) But tell me, according to this research, when do you reckon boys begin to perform and alter their voices? Now, I guessed 18, because "men mature later," right? Wrong. The answer was four years old. Because that is when boys learn not to cry or squeal. That those are not manly sounds. And that's when I realized that a fangirl's shriek is therefore like a superpower. (Laughter) Because it's this fearless and honest expression of pure celebration and joy, and it's a sound they have not forgotten how to make. I actually reckon that fangirls have a second superpower, because they know how to do something that most of my adult friends have no idea how to do. Fangirls know how to love something without apology or fear. My years of researching fangirls culminated in this determination to write something that celebrates and vindicates them. So I decided to make this thriller comedy musical that sounds like a Beyoncé concert meets rave meets church. I called it "Fangirls," and I designed it like a Trojan horse. So it appears to make fun of these young women, only to, like, smuggle them into your heart. (Laughter) Thanks. (Applause) At one point — Thanks. At one point, a girl sings, "Why should I hide my feelings? Because they annoy you? Or because it isn't what the boys do?" And as a former fangirl cynic, that is the question that I want to leave you all with. Why should fangirls tone it down? Because they're crazy? Or because our definition of "reasonable" is based on what it is acceptable for men to do? What if we rethink the judgments we've been conditioned to feel when we see young women screaming their lungs out with excitement? What if we decided to rethink the words we use to describe that joy, and what if we didn't allow ourselves to diminish girls with words that undermine their intelligence, their interests and their capability? Because, according to my research, they are capable of building a shrine to Harry Styles's vomit on the side of a freeway within two hours. (Laughter) That takes some executive skills in logistics and communication. (Laughter) If that isn't "capable," I don't know what is. (Applause) I reckon, instead of judging fangirls, we can learn from them. We can all die tomorrow, so why not love things while we're still breathing? And with that, I'd like to ask you all to try something with me. Can I get you all to stand up? Stand up if you can, stand up. Alright, so here's what's going to happen. I'm going to count to three and when I finish, I'm going to ask every single one of you to let out your very best fangirl scream. (Laughter) Yeah? Here is why I am asking you to do this. Because if all five-or-so thousand of you do this and really commit, we all get our first chance to hear that sound and to decide that it is not a crazy sound. It is a hopeful sound. So shall we do this? I said, shall we do this? (Audience: Yes!) Alright. OK, I am going to cheat and I'm not going to go full volume, because I'm miked and we don't want to hear that. But it means you all have to go 110 percent. You ready? Take a deep breath with me. Think of someone you love, let's go, one, two, three. (Audience screams) (Laughter and applause) You all just sounded stunning and as sane and as intelligent and as dignified as when you walked in this room. (Laughter) Thank you. (Applause)

A brief tour of the last 4 billion years (dinosaurs not included)

{0: 'TED Fellow Lauren Sallan is a "next generation" paleobiologist applying cutting-edge developments in big data analytics to reveal how evolution happens at the largest scales (macroevolution), particularly in the oceans.'}

TEDSummit 2019

Paleontology, a science geared towards small children, focused on digging up dinosaurs while sporting a "Jurassic Park" costume. Skulls are popped out of the ground and put on display for public gawking. The relevance of this, beyond clickbait, coloring books and monster movies is unknown. No ... Wait. That's not paleontology at all. Paleontology is nothing less than the study of past life. All past life. From ancestors to alien forms. It involves fundamental questions like "Who are we?" And "How did we get here?" — using the broadest possible definition of "we": life itself. Dinosaurs, a category of birds, are just a small percentage of that. (Laughter) Yet they get the most media attention. [The incredible diversity of ancient life, Dinosaurs, Paleontology] It's a very accurate meme; I didn't even make this one. This is just the truth. Anyway, most of us paleontologists consider dinosaurs to be a gateway drug. There is so much cooler stuff in the fossil record, and we know so much about it. Let's go on a brief, dinosaur-free tour of the last four billion years. (Laughter) First up, genetic material. Viruses, basically, started producing proteins and wrecking their environment. The Earth was infected with life. Some of these new bacteria learned how to eat sunshine, producing oxygen, pulling in carbon from the air and destroying the iron food of other microbes by turning it into rust. This went on for billions of years. Some bacteria consumed other bacteria, gaining their power to turn oxygen into energy, becoming the precursors of animals and plants. But as a result, there were climate shocks, from hot to cold and back again, which ended up turning the Earth into a snowball covered with glaciers. The technical term for this time period is "Snowball Earth." (Laughter) Seven hundred, eight hundred million years ago. Anyway, microbes banded together, creating multicellular life. Six hundred million years ago, geometric colonies appeared, sucking microbes from the water. These were soon replaced by the ancestors of modern animals. The Cambrian explosion. Lobster relatives ate other animals, capturing them using their grasping arms. Armored wriggling clam worms crawled across the seafloor and into it, creating new ecosystems. Our tadpole-like ancestors flitted along ancient coastlines, while their eel-like relatives with gnashing throat teeth swam above the ice-cream cone corals of the first reefs, dodging school-bus-sized krakens and hungry sea scorpions. Plant fungus came onto land. But then the glaciers returned, killing pretty much everything. But mass extinctions open opportunities. Jawless fishes invaded the ocean, sporting points, prongs, and finally, fins. Spiders, scorpions, snails and worms came onto land. Somewhere around China, a fish developed jaws, and its descendants drove jawless fishes, sea scorpions and branching plankton to extinction. Some of these fishes, which had arm bones in their fins, sprouted fingers, seven or eight per flipper. On land, plants became trees, growing massive or spreading their spores only once before dying. But then the glaciers came back again, and it was mass extinction number two. It was the age of weird fishes and plated sea lilies. Sharks with wings. Sharks with buzz saw jaws. Sharks with fins covered in tiny teeth. Sharks with crushing tooth plates. Bony fishes that looked like modern angelfish and eels for the first time. Wetlands developed, sporting ten-foot-long millipedes and giant dragon flies. These spread across the supercontinent of Pangaea and died, creating coal, leading to a 100-million-year Ice Age. Finally, vertebrates made it onto land on a permanent basis, leading to alligator-like amphibians and saber-toothed protomammals. But then, volcanoes erupted all over Siberia, everything almost died and it was mass extinction number three. (Laughter) The day life nearly died. A single, lonely tusked mammal survived and thrived, but it was soon replaced by galloping crocodiles. In the ocean, marine reptiles, giant rafts made of the living relatives of sea urchins and armored squids, ammonoids, of every kind and form. But then, Pangaea started to split apart, forming a sea of lava that would one day become the Atlantic Ocean, spewing toxic gas into the atmosphere and mass extinction number four. (Laughter) Yeah, there's actually a lot more than these five, these are the big ones. (Laughter) So, finally, there were whale-sized fishes, and modern fishes mobbed corals, made gigantic by using their captured algae to eat sunshine. Crabs, stingrays and other fishes with crushing teeth appeared, smashing shells and leading to an arms race between predators and prey. There was an explosion of marine biodiversity. Mammals climbed trees, flew and did a lot of other things that are seemingly sort of modern. They were feeding on the first flowers pollinated by the first bees. There were ecological revolutions on land and at sea, leading to the modern world. Except that an asteroid hit Mexico, and then that triggered volcanoes on the other side of the world in India, and everything almost died again. (Laughter) But — there's always a but, because we're still here — mammals arose from the ashes, became small under extreme heat and then ever larger. There were palm trees and snakes in the Arctic. Predatory deer dogs frolicked along ancient rivers, while their relatives returned to the ocean to become the first otter-like whales. Not hyenas and other sort of carnivores were chased off by giant long-necked rhinos. Everything at this point seems kind of familiar but not really. In Antarctica, an ice age started, forming the first permanent polar ice cap in two hundred million years. This dried out the rest of the world, but it allowed the rise of grasses, of rodents, of cats. Somewhere in Africa, an ape started walking across the new savannah. Oh, and there were giant saber-toothed salmon, I just have to mention that. (Laughter) So, we know all of this happened and so much more. How? Why? Paleontology is a thriving science at the intersection of multiple other fields and technologies. There is no bigger data than the fossil record, and we mine every bit of it. We use CAT scans, we use isotopes, we use genomes, we use robots, we use mathematical simulations and all kinds of analytics. We maximize all of it so that we can understand the past and how evolution works. It also lets us make predictions for the future. What will happen after the next mass extinction? What weird things will show up? Will mammals get smaller again? Will there even be mammals? In sum, we have learned a lot about dinosaurs. But there's so much left to learn from the other 99.9 percent of things that have ever lived. And that's paleontology. Thank you. (Applause and cheers)

How surfboards connect us to nature

{0: 'Yves Béhar is a designer, entrepreneur and avid surfer whose principles for good design have been deeply influential across the field.'}

Small Thing Big Idea

Riding a wave is like suddenly gaining speed and gliding at the same time. Like walking on water, like flying. I think it's really about being one with a natural phenomenon. [Small thing. Big idea.] The surfboard requires a lot of ergonomic thinking. How do I stand on it? How do I not slip off? But at the same time, it really has to work in that fluid environment. It's really considered for the rider in some areas and for water and physics in others. A surfboard is made out of a core element which tends to be foam, which makes the board float, and the skin of the board is some kind of resin, epoxy, sometimes fiberglass. There often is also a stringer, a wood piece down the middle, which makes it stronger. The rocker is the curvature of the board in the front. That is important because that determines what kind of wave you will be able to take, how steep the wave is. The tail affects performance. Different tails will make the board react differently, so it's a lot about personal preference. Our understanding of surfing comes from when the Tahitians in 1200 AD brought it to Hawaii. So when James Cook arrived around 1780, he was mesmerized by hundreds of people in the water, children, women, men, surfing naked. Calvinist missionaries arrive and they're scandalized by it. It becomes an illegal activity. It becomes counterculture. The father of modern surfing is a Hawaiian named Duke Kahanamoku. He is an extraordinary swimmer, wins gold at the Olympics in 1912. Goes around the world to show his swimming but brings surfboards and demonstrates surfing. Imagine, people had never seen surfing before. Suddenly, some person from a faraway place is standing on water, riding on water. He comes back to Hawaii, and they start to make more boards. Pre-Second World War, you're still looking at big, heavy wood boards. Post-Second World War, new materials and new technologies become available, and those make the board lighter, more accessible, cheaper, but it continues to be a custom object, something that is made specifically for a person or for a certain spot. It's a very symbiotic relationship between surfer and shaper. There's so many different criteria that affect the physics of how that surfboard is moving in water. A longboard is typically used on smaller waves. The riding has a lot of style. You can walk the board, put your toes over it, do a hang ten. A shortboard will be faster. They're harder to ride, they sink under the body. Board design comes at the intersection between those physical factors, and really, how I want to put myself in the water. It's an expression as much as it is a physical activity. The draw may be because water is so elusive. You can't fight it, you can't change it. The best I can do is recognize what it does. The surf may be big and getting bigger and surging while you're in the water. The elements are changing. The wind is coming up. You have to be in symbiosis with the environment. You need to look and feel for everything that's happening around you. And yet, it's so short. Five, eight, 15 seconds. It's fleeting, but you have to go back to it.

This is your brain on air pollution

{0: "María Neira seeks to improve health and safety around the globe, especially within the world's most vulnerable populations."}

TEDSummit 2019

There is something we desperately need that we cannot stop doing: it is breathing. Do you want to try? Why don't we stop breathing together for, let's say, even 10 seconds. Is that OK? Let's do it. Get ready ... OK, now! Oof, difficult, isn't it? Well, this is an incredible number that will again take your breath away: seven. Seven what? Seven million premature deaths a year caused by exposure to the bad quality of the air we breathe. Imagine — it's like more than the entire population of my dear Madrid will be wiped out in one year. And you may ask: Has this information been disclosed? Has this information been publicized, distributed? Well, yes. We have at the moment more than 70,000 scientific papers examining the relationship between air pollution and our health, and the global media has been regularly covering this issue. In fact, in a relatively short period of time, we have come to know that air pollution is having a negative impact on almost all our major organs. Let's start by the lungs. When we think about air pollution, we always think about the lungs. In fact, every time we take a breath, we are inhaling toxic pollutants, and our poor pink and lovely lungs are suffering all of that. Over the last 10 years, we have put together a lot of knowledge about what's happened to that, but let me tell you first what is air pollution. OK, air pollution is a very complex mixture of solid particles, liquid droplets and gaseous chemicals. Imagine all of this mixture that might come from sources like household fuel burning or industry or traffic or many other indoor and outdoor sources. And, of course, different sources of pollution will make different mixtures of pollutants. The point is that all of these toxins, they can be combined in different ways. Let's take, for instance, the particulate matter, the PM. It can be a mixture that will include — look at the cocktail here — soil and road dust, sea salt, toxic metals, diesel smog, nitrates and sulfates, and all of this toxic poison, this delicious cocktail, is going through our lungs every day, and we are constantly exposed to this air pollution because we cannot stop breathing. I mean, we can do it for 10 seconds, but no more than that. We cannot stop breathing and, in addition, we need, every day, around 10,000 liters of air. So we said that we have seven million deaths caused by air pollution every year. Are we panicking? Are we keeping calm? Are we declaring a national disaster, a global emergency? Well, no, and in fact I'm asking myself this question every day: What is happening? But here is something that maybe will force us to react more quickly. Air pollution is not just affecting our lungs. It's affecting our brain as well. This is our brain. Beautiful. We all have it. We all need it. Hopefully, we all use it — (Laughter) some more than others. And in the last 10 years of history, the research about the relationship between air pollution and our brain's health has been increased dramatically, so maybe now our brain is going up in smoke. But let me tell you the evidence, what we know so far about air pollution in our brain. First, there is an emerging body of evidence regarding the potential harmful effects of air pollutants into our central nervous system. But let's go back to the toxic particles. Remember? We left them at the lungs, enjoying life, polluting everything. But now the smallest of them, they can cross into the bloodstream, and from the bloodstream, pumped by the heart, they can reach the whole body, threatening every organ, including the brain. We used to say that air pollution has no borders, and it's true as well within our bodies, because air pollutants will cross the placental barrier and reach the fetus and alter the cerebral cortex of our children even before they take their first breath. Second, several studies have suggested that both prenatal and early childhood long-term exposure to air pollution will have a negative influence on neural development, will have lower cognitive test outcomes, and there will be an influence as well, a negative influence, on some behavioral disorders like autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In addition to that, some evidence found that exposing our children's and young adults' brains for a long time to particulate matter will cause some reactions like brain inflammation, altering the neural response and [also] leading to the influence of more protein plaques that are accumulating, and those can increase the risks for diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Ironic, isn't it: we are investing in our children's future, we are sending them to school every day to expand their minds, the society is investing in their education, and yet the air they breathe while waiting for the school bus is influencing negatively the development of their brain. Let's go to the third: What about adults? According to recent scientific evidence, long-term exposure to particulate matter will cause a cognitive decline in study participants as they age. And not only that, if you expose them to long-term, very fine particulate matter, their brain will age more rapidly, and they will have higher odds of having small, silent strokes. The last one — and I will not give you more evidence, because there is a ton of [it] — some epidemiological studies in animal models have suggested that there might be an increased risk of dementia with sustained exposure to air pollutants. So, almost everybody is exposed to air pollution. Whether you live in a rural area or an urban area, whether you live in a high-income country or a low-income country, everybody's brains, including yours, are at risk. As a medical doctor, I have been dedicating the last more than 20 years now of my professional life to raise awareness about public health issues, public health risks, at the World Health Organization, and I know that the knowledge is there and the solutions as well. Sure, some places are more polluted than others, but this a global issue, and no individual, no city, no group, no country, no region will be able to solve it alone. We need very strong commitments and very strong action by everyone: civil society, private sector, even individuals. We all have a role to play. Yes, we need to influence the way we consume, the way we commute, the way we use our energy. And the good thing is that all of those solutions are available. The question is, if we postpone action by one day, there might be thousands of lives that we will lose, but if we postpone it by one year, we might be losing again seven million. So every policy maker, every politician, needs to be aware of the consequences on human health of postponing their decisions. In fact, this is not the first time in history that we are confronted with the risks of this invisible killer. This was London in 1952, and as was done in London in the '50s and the '60s, governments and cities, they need to take urgent action to stop the terrible impact of air pollution. Every politician must know that delaying what they call the tough actions, like reducing traffic in cities or investing in public transport and engaging in promoting cycling in cities, investing in renewable energy, promoting cleaner energy for cooking, cooling and transportation and heating are solutions that are very smart, because, in fact, they reduce emissions, they improve air quality in line with WHO standards, which are the standards that will protect ourselves. So in fact, all politicians that we need these very strong political commitments and political will from, but [we need] all of them now. Those who fail, who postpone action, they have been requested even to defend their position in court. And from now on, no politician will be able to say, "I didn't know." So the question here is: How many lives, loss of quality of life and losing our brain power are we ready to accept? If the answer is "none," I will request that you, while our brains are still functioning, while we are still intelligent, please exercise your right, put pressure on your politicians and make sure that they take action to stop the sources of air pollution. This is the first thing we need to do to protect yourself and to protect our beautiful brain. Thank you very much. (Applause)