title
stringlengths 6
88
| about_speakers
stringlengths 34
1.43k
⌀ | event
stringclasses 459
values | transcript
stringlengths 18
60.6k
|
|---|---|---|---|
At what moment are you dead? | null | TED-Ed | For as far back as we can trace our existence, humans have been fascinated with death and resurrection. Nearly every religion in the world has some interpretation of them, and from our earliest myths to the latest cinematic blockbusters, the dead keep coming back. But is resurrection really possible? And what is the actual difference between a living creature and a dead body, anyway? To understand what death is, we need to understand what life is. One ancient theory was an idea called vitalism, which claimed that living things were unique because they were filled with a special substance, or energy, that was the essence of life. Whether it was called qi, lifeblood, or humors, the belief in such an essence was common throughout the world, and still persists in the stories of creatures who can somehow drain life from others, or some form of magical sources that can replenish it. Vitalism began to fade in the Western world following the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century. René Descartes advanced the notion that the human body was essentially no different from any other machine, brought to life by a divinely created soul located in the brain's pineal gland. And in 1907, Dr. Duncan McDougall even claimed that the soul had mass, weighing patients immediately before and after death in an attempt to prove it. Though his experiments were discredited, much like the rest of vitalism, traces of his theory still come up in popular culture. But where do all these discredited theories leave us? What we now know is that life is not contained in some magical substance or spark, but within the ongoing biological processes themselves. And to understand these processes, we need to zoom down to the level of our individual cells. Inside each of these cells, chemical reactions are constantly occurring, powered by the glucose and oxygen that our bodies convert into the energy-carrying molecule known as ATP. Cells use this energy for everything from repair to growth to reproduction. Not only does it take a lot of energy to make the necessary molecules, but it takes even more to get them where they need to be. The universal phenomenon of entropy means that molecules will tend towards diffusing randomly, moving from areas of high concentration to low concentration, or even breaking apart into smaller molecules and atoms. So cells must constantly keep entropy in check by using energy to maintain their molecules in the very complicated formations necessary for biological functions to occur. The breaking down of these arrangements when the entire cell succumbs to entropy is what eventually results in death. This is the reason organisms can't be simply sparked back to life once they've already died. We can pump air into someone's lungs, but it won't do much good if the many other processes involved in the respiratory cycle are no longer functioning. Similarly, the electric shock from a defibrillator doesn't jump-start an inanimate heart, but resynchronizes the muscle cells in an abnormally beating heart so they regain their normal rhythm. This can prevent a person from dying, but it won't raise a dead body, or a monster sewn together from dead bodies. So it would seem that all our various medical miracles can delay or prevent death but not reverse it. But that's not as simple as it sounds because constant advancements in technology and medicine have resulted in diagnoses such as coma, describing potentially reversible conditions, under which people would have previously been considered dead. In the future, the point of no return may be pushed even further. Some animals are known to extend their lifespans or survive extreme conditions by slowing down their biological processes to the point where they are virtually paused. And research into cryonics hopes to achieve the same by freezing dying people and reviving them later when newer technology is able to help them. See, if the cells are frozen, there's very little molecular movement, and diffusion practically stops. Even if all of a person's cellular processes had already broken down, this could still conceivably be reversed by a swarm of nanobots, moving all the molecules back to their proper positions, and injecting all of the cells with ATP at the same time, presumably causing the body to simply pick up where it left off. So if we think of life not as some magical spark, but a state of incredibly complex, self-perpetuating organization, death is just the process of increasing entropy that destroys this fragile balance. And the point at which someone is completely dead turns out not to be a fixed constant, but simply a matter of how much of this entropy we're currently capable of reversing. |
Four sisters in Ancient Rome | null | TED-Ed | Today, we're going to look at the world of Rome through the eyes of a young girl. Here she is, drawing a picture of herself in the atrium of her father's enormous house. Her name is Domitia, and she is just 5 years old. She has an older brother who is fourteen, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, named after her dad. Girls don't get these long names that boys have. What is worse is that Dad insists on calling all his daughters Domitia. "Domitia!" His call to Domitia drawing on the column, Domitia III. She has an older sister, Domitia II, who is 7 years old. And then there's Domitia I, who is ten. There would have been a Domitia IV, but mom died trying to give birth to her three years ago. Confused? The Romans were too. They could work out ancestry through the male line with the nice, tripartite names such as Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. But they got in a real mess over which Domitia was married to whom and was either the great aunt or the great stepmother and so on to whom when they came to write it down. Domitia III is not just drawing on the pillar, she's also watching the action. You see, it's early, in the time of day when all her dad's clients and friends come to see him at home to pay their respects. Lucius Popidius Secundus, a 17 year old, he wants to marry Domitia II within the next five to seven years, has come as well. He seems to be wooing not his future wife, but her dad. Poor Lucius, he does not know that Domitia's dad thinks he and his family are wealthy but still scumbags from the Subura. Afterall, it is the part of Rome full of barbers and prostitutes. Suddenly, all the men are leaving with Dad. It's the second hour and time for him to be in court with a sturdy audience of clients to applaud his rhetoric and hiss at his opponent. The house is now quieter. The men won't return for seven hours, not until dinner time. But what happens in the house for those seven hours? What do Domitia, Domitia, and Domitia do all day? Not an easy question! Everything written down by the Romans that we have today was written by men. This makes constructing the lives of women difficult. However, we can't have a history of just Roman men, so here it goes. We can begin in the atrium. There is a massive loom, on which Dad's latest wife is working on a new toga. Domitia, Domitia, and Domitia are tasked with spinning the wool that will be used to weave this mighty garment, 30 or more feet long and elliptical in shape. Romans loved the idea that their wives work wool. We know that because it's written on the gravestones of so many Roman women. Unlike women in Greece, Roman women go out the house and move about the city. They go to the baths in the morning to avoid the men or to separate baths that are for women only. Some do go in for the latest fad of the AD 70s: nude bathing with men present. Where they have no place is where the men are: in the Forum, in the Law Court, or in the Senate House. Their place in public is in the porticos with gardens, with sculpture, and with pathways for walking in. When Domitia, Domitia, and Domitia want to leave the house to go somewhere, like the Portico of Livia, they must get ready. Domitia II and Domitia III are ready, but Domitia I, who is betrothed to be married in two years to darling Philatus, isn't ready. She's not slow, she just has more to do. Being betrothed means she wears the insignia of betrothal: engagement rings and all the gifts Pilatus has given her - jewels, earrings, necklaces, and the pendants. She may even wear her myrtle crown. All this bling shouts, "I'm getting married to that 19 year old who gave me all this stuff I'm wearing!" While as they wait, Domitia II and Domitia III play with their dolls that mirror the image of their sister decked out to be married. One day, these dolls will be dedicated to the household gods on the day of their wedding. Okay, we're ready. The girls step into litters carried by some burly slaves. They also have a chaperone with them and will be meeting an aunt at the Porticus of Livia. Carried high on the shoulders of these slaves, the girls look out through the curtains to see the crowded streets below them. They traverse the city, pass the Coliseum, but then turn off to climb up the hill to the Porticus of Livia. It was built by Livia, the wife of the first emperor Augustus, on the site of the house of Vedius Pollio. He wasn't such a great guy. He once tried to feed a slave to the eels in his fish pond for simply dropping a dish. Luckily, the emperor was at the dinner and tamed his temper. The litters are placed on the ground and the girls get out and arm in arm, two by two, they ascend the steps into the enclosed garden with many columns. Domitia III shot off and is drawing on a column. Domitia II joins her but seeks to read the graffiti higher up on the column. She spots a drawing of gladiators and tries to imagine seeing them fighting, something she will never be permitted to do, except from the very rear of the Coliseum. From there, she will have a good view of the 50,000 spectators but will see little by way of blood and gore. If she really wanted a decent view, she could become a vestal virgin and would sit right down the front. But a career tending the sacred flame of Vesta is not to everybody's taste. Domitia I has met another ten year old also decked out in the insignia of betrothal. Home time. When they get there after the eighth hour, something is up. A smashed dish lies on the floor. All the slaves are being gathered together in the atrium and await the arrival of their master. Dad is going to go mad. He will not hit his children, but like many other Romans, he believes that slaves have to be punished. The whip lies ready for his arrival. No one knows who smashed the dish, but Dad will call the undertaker to torture it out of them, if he must. The doorkeeper opens the front door to the house. A hush comes over the anxious slaves. In walks not their master but, instead, a pregnant teenager. It is the master's eldest daughter, age 15, who is already a veteran of marriage and child birth. Guess what her name is. There is a five to ten percent chance she won't survive giving birth to her child, but, for now, she has come to dinner with her family. As a teenage mother, she has proved that she is a successful wife by bringing children and descendants for her husband, who will carry on his name in the future. The family head off to the dining room and are served dinner. It would seem Dad has had an invite to dinner elsewhere. With dinner concluded, the girls crossed the atrium to bid farewell to their older sister who is carried home in a litter, escorted by some of Dad's bodyguards. Returning to the house, the girls cross the atrium. The slaves, young and old, male and female, await the return of their owner. When he returns, he may exact vengeance, ensuring his power over the slaves is maintained through violence and terror, to which any slave could be subjected. But, for the girls, they head upstairs for the night, ready for bed. |
Why do our bodies age? | null | TED-Ed | In 1997, a French woman named Jeanne Calment passed away after 122 years and 164 days on this Earth, making her the oldest known person in history. Her age was so astounding that a millionaire pledged $1 million to anyone who could break her record. But in reality, living to this age or beyond is a feat that very few, maybe even no humans, are likely to accomplish. Human bodies just aren't built for extreme aging. Our capacity is set at about 90 years. But what does aging really mean and how does it counteract the body's efforts to stay alive? We know intuitively what it means to age. For some, it means growing up, while for others, it's growing old. Yet finding a strict scientific definition of aging is a challenge. What we can say is that aging occurs when intrinsic processes and interactions with the environment, like sunlight, and toxins in the air, water, and our diets, cause changes in the structure and function of the body's molecules and cells. Those changes in turn drive their decline, and subsequently, the failure of the whole organism. The exact mechanisms of aging are poorly understood. But recently, scientists have identified nine physiological traits, ranging from genetic changes to alterations in a cell's regenerative ability that play a central role. Firstly, as the years pass, our bodies accumulate genetic damage in the form of DNA lesions. These occur naturally when the body's DNA replicates, but also in non-dividing cells. Organelles called mitochondria are especially prone to this damage. Mitochondria produce adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, the main energy source for all cellular processes, plus mitochondria regulate many different cell activities and play an important role in programmed cell death. If mitochondrial function declines, then cells and, later on, whole organs, deteriorate, too. Other changes are known to occur in the expression patterns of genes, also known as epigenetic alterations, that affect the body's tissues and cells. Genes silenced or expressed only at low levels in newborns become prominent in older people, leading to the development of degenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's, which accelerate aging. Even if we could avoid all these harmful genetic alterations, not even our own cells could save us. The fact remains that cellular regeneration, the very stuff of life, declines as we age. The DNA in our cells is packaged within chromosomes, each of which has two protective regions at the extremities called telomeres. Those shorten every time cells replicate. When telomeres become too short, cells stop replicating and die, slowing the body's ability to renew itself. With age, cells increasingly grow senescent, too, a process that halts the cell cycle in times of risk, like when cancer cells are proliferating. But the response also kicks in more as we age, halting cell growth and cutting short their ability to replicate. Aging also involves stem cells that reside in many tissues and have the property of dividing without limits to replenish other cells. As we get older, stem cells decrease in number and tend to lose their regenerative potential, affecting tissue renewal and maintenance of our organs original functions. Other changes revolve around cells' ability to function properly. As they age, they stop being able to do quality control on proteins, causing the accumulation of damaged and potentially toxic nutrients, leading to excessive metabolic activity that could be fatal for them. Intercellular communication also slows, ultimately undermining the body's functional ability. There's a lot we don't yet understand about aging. Ultimately, does longer life as we know it come down to diet, exercise, medicine, or something else? Will future technologies, like cell-repairing nanobots, or gene therapy, artificially extend our years? And do we want to live longer than we already do? Starting with 122 years as inspiration, there's no telling where our curiosity might take us. |
Would you opt for a life with no pain? | null | TED-Ed | Imagine if you could plug your brain into a machine that would bring you ultimate pleasure for the rest of your life. If you were given the choice to sign up for that kind of existence, would you? That's the question philosopher Robert Nozick posed through a thought experiment he called the Experience Machine. The experiment asks us to consider a world in which scientists have developed a machine that would simulate real life while guaranteeing experiences of only pleasure and never pain. The catch? You have to permanently leave reality behind, but you'll hardly know the difference. Your experiences will be indistinguishable from reality. Life's natural ups and downs will just be replaced with an endless series of ups. Sounds great, right? It may seem like a tempting offer, but perhaps it's not as ideal as it sounds. The experiment was actually designed to refute a philosophical notion called hedonism. According to hedonists, maximizing net pleasure is the most important thing in life because pleasure is the greatest good that life has to offer. For hedonists, the best choice that a person could make for himself is one that brings him the greatest possible amount of pleasure while bringing him no pain. Limitless pleasure minus zero pain equals maximum net pleasure, or in other words, the exact scenario the Experience Machine offers. Therefore, if hedonism is your philosophy of choice, plugging in would be a no-brainer. But what if there's more to life than just pleasure? That's what Nozick believed he was demonstrating through his Experience Machine thought experiment. Despite the machine's promise of maximum net pleasure, he still found reason not to plug in, as do many other experimenters who consider the proposition. But what could possibly dissuade us from choosing a future of ultimate pleasure? Consider this scenario. Betsy and Xander are in a loving, committed relationship. Betsy is head over heels and has never felt happier. However, unbeknownst to Betsy, Xander has been romancing her sister, Angelica, with love letters and secret rendezvous for the duration of their relationship. If Betsy found out, it would destroy her relationships with both Xander and Angelica, and the experience would be so traumatic, she would never love again. Since Betsy is in blissful ignorance about Xander's infidelity, hedonists would say she's better off remaining in the dark and maintaining her high level of net pleasure. As long as Betsy never finds out about the relationship, her life is guaranteed to go on as happily as it is right now. So, is there value in Besty knowing the truth of her situation? Imagine if you were Betsy. Would you prefer to know the truth? If the answer is yes, you'd be choosing an option that sharply decreases your net pleasure. Perhaps, then, you believe that there are things in life with greater intrinsic value than pleasure. Truth, knowledge, authentic connection with other human beings. These are all things that might make the list. By never learning the truth, Betsy is essentially living life in her own personal Experience Machine, a world of happiness that's not based in reality. This love triangle is an extreme example, but it mirrors many of the decisions we make in day to day life. So whether you're making a choice for Betsy or for yourself, why might you feel reality should be a factor? Is there inherent value in real experiences, whether pleasurable or painful? Do you yourself have more value when you're experiencing real life's pleasures and pains? Nozick's experiment may not provide all the answers, but it forces us to consider whether real life, though imperfect, holds some intrinsic value beyond the pleasure of plugging in. |
Debunking the myths of OCD | null | TED-Ed | There's a common misconception that if you like to meticulously organize your things, keep your hands clean, or plan out your weekend to the last detail, you might have OCD. In fact, OCD, which stands for obsessive compulsive disorder, is a serious psychiatric condition that is frequently misunderstood by society and mental health professionals alike. So let's start by debunking some myths. Myth one: repetitive or ritualistic behaviors are synonymous with OCD. As its name suggests, obsessive compulsive disorder has two aspects: the intrusive thoughts, images, or impulses, known as obsessions, and the behavioral compulsions people engage in to relieve the anxiety the obsessions cause. The kinds of actions that people often associate with OCD, like excessive hand washing, or checking things repeatedly, may be examples of obsessive or compulsive tendencies that many of us exhibit from time to time. But the actual disorder is far more rare and can be quite debilitating. People affected have little or no control over their obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors, which tend to be time consuming and interfere with work, school or social life to the point of causing significant distress. This set of diagnostic criteria is what separates people suffering from OCD from those who may just be a bit more meticulous or hygiene obsessed than usual. Myth two: the main symptom of OCD is excessive hand washing. Although hand washing is the most common image of OCD in popular culture, obsessions and compulsions can take many different forms. Obsessions can manifest as fears of contamination and illness, worries about harming others, or preoccupations with numbers, patterns, morality, or sexual identity. And compulsions can range from excessive cleaning or double checking, to the fastidious arrangement of objects, or walking in predetermined patterns. Myth three: individuals with OCD don't understand that they are acting irrationally. Many individuals with OCD actually understand the relationship between their obsessions and compulsions quite well. Being unable to avoid these thoughts and actions despite being aware of their irrationality is part of the reason why OCD is so distressing. OCD sufferers report feeling crazy for experiencing anxiety based on irrational thoughts and finding it difficult to control their responses. So what exactly causes OCD? The frustrating answer is we don't really know. However, we have some important clues. OCD is considered a neurobiological disorder. In other words, research suggests that OCD sufferers brains are actually hardwired to behave in a certain fashion. Research has implicated three regions of the brain variously involved in social behavior and complex cognitive planning, voluntary movement, and emotional and motivational responses. The other piece of the puzzle is that OCD is associated with low levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that communicates between brain structures and helps regulate vital processes, such as mood, aggression, impulse control, sleep, appetite, body temperature and pain. But are serotonin and activity in these brain regions the sources of OCD or symptoms of an unknown underlying cause of the disorder. We probably won't know until we have a much more intimate understanding of the brain. The good news is there are effective treatments for OCD, including medications, which increase serotonin in the brain by limiting its reabsorption by brain cells, behavioral therapy that gradually desensitizes patients to their anxieties, and in some cases, electroconvulsive therapy, or surgery, when OCD doesn't respond to other forms of treatment. Knowing that your own brain is lying to you while not being able to resist its commands can be agonizing. But with knowledge and understanding comes the power to seek help, and future research into the brain may finally provide the answers we're looking for. |
History vs. Christopher Columbus | null | TED-Ed | Many people in the United States and Latin America have grown up celebrating the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage, but was he an intrepid explorer who brought two worlds together or a ruthless exploiter who brought colonialism and slavery? And did he even discover America at all? It's time to put Columbus on the stand in History vs. Christopher Columbus. "Order, order in the court. Wait, am I even supposed to be at work today?" Cough "Yes, your Honor. From 1792, Columbus Day was celebrated in many parts of the United States on October 12th, the actual anniversary date. But although it was declared an official holiday in 1934, individual states aren't required to observe it. Only 23 states close public services, and more states are moving away from it completely." Cough "What a pity. In the 70s, we even moved it to the second Monday in October so people could get a nice three-day weekend, but I guess you folks just hate celebrations." "Uh, what are we celebrating again?" "Come on, Your Honor, we all learned it in school. Christopher Columbus convinced the King of Spain to send him on a mission to find a better trade route to India, not by going East over land but sailing West around the globe. Everyone said it was crazy because they still thought the world was flat, but he knew better. And when in 1492 he sailed the ocean blue, he found something better than India: a whole new continent." "What rubbish. First of all, educated people knew the world was round since Aristotle. Secondly, Columbus didn't discover anything. There were already people living here for millennia. And he wasn't even the first European to visit. The Norse had settled Newfoundland almost 500 years before." "You don't say, so how come we're not all wearing those cow helmets?" "Actually, they didn't really wear those either." Cough "Who cares what some Vikings did way back when? Those settlements didn't last, but Columbus's did. And the news he brought back to Europe spread far and wide, inspiring all the explorers and settlers who came after. Without him, none of us would be here today." "And because of him, millions of Native Americans aren't here today. Do you know what Columbus did in the colonies he founded? He took the very first natives he met prisoner and wrote in his journal about how easily he could conquer and enslave all of them." "Oh, come on. Everyone was fighting each other back then. Didn't the natives even tell Columbus about other tribes raiding and taking captives?" "Yes, but tribal warfare was sporadic and limited. It certainly didn't wipe out 90% of the population." "Hmm. Why is celebrating this Columbus so important to you, anyway?" "Your Honor, Columbus's voyage was an inspiration to struggling people all across Europe, symbolizing freedom and new beginnings. And his discovery gave our grandparents and great-grandparents the chance to come here and build better lives for their children. Don't we deserve a hero to remind everyone that our country was build on the struggles of immigrants?" "And what about the struggles of Native Americans who were nearly wiped out and forced into reservations and whose descendants still suffer from poverty and discrimination? How can you make a hero out of a man who caused so much suffering?" "That's history. You can't judge a guy in the 15th century by modern standards. People back then even thought spreading Christianity and civilization across the world was a moral duty." "Actually, he was pretty bad, even by old standards. While governing Hispaniola, he tortured and mutilated natives who didn't bring him enough gold and sold girls as young as nine into sexual slavery, and he was brutal even to the other colonists he ruled, to the point that he was removed from power and thrown in jail. When the missionary, Bartolomé de las Casas, visited the island, he wrote, 'From 1494 to 1508, over 3,000,000 people had perished from war, slavery and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this?'" "Well, I'm not sure I believe those numbers." "Say, aren't there other ways the holiday is celebrated?" "In some Latin American countries, they celebrate the same date under different names, such as Día de la Raza. In these places, it's more a celebration of the native and mixed cultures that survived through the colonial period. Some places in the U.S. have also renamed the holiday, as Native American Day or Indigenous People's Day and changed the celebrations accordingly." "So, why not just change the name if it's such a problem?" "Because it's tradition. Ordinary people need their heroes and their founding myths. Can't we just keep celebrating the way we've been doing for a century, without having to delve into all this serious research? It's not like anyone is actually celebrating genocide." "Traditions change, and the way we choose to keep them alive says a lot about our values." "Well, it looks like giving tired judges a day off isn't one of those values, anyway." Traditions and holidays are important to all cultures, but a hero in one era may become a villain in the next as our historical knowledge expands and our values evolve. And deciding what these traditions should mean today is a major part of putting history on trial. |
How to lead a conversation between people who disagree | {0: 'Eve Pearlman is committed to the work of reinventing and reinvigorating journalistic practice.'} | TED Salon Doha Debates | So in the run-up to the 2016 election, I was, like most of us, watching the rise in discord and vitriol and nastiness in our public spaces. It was this crazy uptick in polarization. It was both disheartening and distressing. And so I started thinking, with a fellow journalist, Jeremy Hay, about how we might practice our craft differently. How we might go to the heart of divides, to places of conflict, like journalists always have, but then, once there, do something really different. We knew we wanted to take the core tools of our craft — careful vetting of information, diligent research, curiosity, a commitment to serving the public good — to serving our democracy — and do something new. And so we mapped out this process, what we call dialogue journalism, for going to the heart of social and political divides, and then, once there, building journalism-supported conversations between people on opposite sides of polarizing issues. But how actually to do this in a world that's so divided, so deeply divided — when we live in a world in which cousins and aunts and uncles can't talk to one another, when we often live in separate and distinct news ecosystems, and when we reflexively and habitually malign and dismiss those with whom we disagree? But we wanted to try. And so right after the 2016 election, in that time between the election and the inauguration, we partnered with the Alabama Media Group to do something really different. We brought 25 Trump supporters from Alabama together in conversation with 25 Clinton supporters from California. And we brought them together in a closed, moderated Facebook group that we kept open for a month. What we wanted to do was to give them a place to engage with genuine curiosity and openness. And we wanted to support them in building relationships, not just with each other but with us as journalists. And then we wanted to supply facts and information — facts and information that they could actually receive and process and use to undergird their conversations. And so as a prelude to this conversation, the first step in what we call dialogue journalism, we asked what they thought the other side thought of them. So when we asked the Trump supporters from Alabama what they thought the Clinton supporters in California thought of them, this is some of what they said. "They think we are religious Bible thumpers." "That we're backwards and hickish, and stupid." "They think that we all have Confederate flags in our yards, that we're racist and sexist and uneducated." "They think we're barefoot and pregnant, with dirt driveways." "And they think we're all prissy butts and that we walk around in hoop skirts with cotton fields in the background." And then we asked that same question of the Californians: "What do you think the Alabamians think about you?" And they said this: "That we're crazy, liberal Californians." "That we're not patriotic." "We're snobby and we're elitist." "We're godless and we're permissive with our children." "And that we're focused on our careers, not our family." "That we're elitist, pie-in-the-sky intellectuals, rich people, Whole Foods-eating, very out of touch." So by asking questions like this at the start of every conversation and by identifying and sharing stereotypes, we find that people — people on all sides — begin to see the simplistic and often mean-spirited caricatures they carry. And in that — after that, we can move into a process of genuine conversation. So in the two years since that launch — California/Alabama Project — we've gone on to host dialogues and partnerships with media organizations across the country. And they've been about some of our most contentious issues: guns, immigration, race, education. And what we found, remarkably, is that real dialogue is in fact possible. And that when given a chance and structure around doing so, many, not all, but many of our fellow citizens are eager to engage with the other. Too often journalists have sharpened divides in the name of drama or readership or in service to our own views. And too often we've gone to each side quoting a partisan voice on one side and a partisan voice on the other with a telling anecdotal lead and a pithy final quote, all of which readers are keen to mine for bias. But our dialogue-based process has a slower pace and a different center. And our work is guided by the principle that dialogue across difference is essential to a functioning democracy, and that journalism and journalists have a multifaceted role to play in supporting that. So how do we work? At every stage, we're as transparent as possible about our methods and our motives. At every stage, we take time to answer people's questions — explain why we're doing what we're doing. We tell people that it's not a trap: no one's there to tell you you're stupid, no one's there to tell you your experience doesn't matter. And we always ask for a really different sort of behavior, a repatterning away from the reflexive name-calling, so entrenched in our discourse that most of us, on all sides, don't even notice it anymore. So people often come into our conversations a bit angrily. They say things like, "How can you believe X?" and "How can you read Y?" and "Can you believe that this happened?" But generally, in this miracle that delights us every time, people begin to introduce themselves. And they begin to explain who they are and where they come from, and they begin to ask questions of one another. And slowly, over time, people circle back again and again to difficult topics, each time with a little more empathy, a little more nuance, a little more curiosity. And our journalists and moderators work really hard to support this because it's not a debate, it's not a battle, it's not a Sunday morning talk show. It's not the flinging of talking points. It's not the stacking of memes and gifs or articles with headlines that prove a point. And it's not about scoring political victories with question traps. So what we've learned is that our state of discord is bad for everyone. It is a deeply unhappy state of being. And people tell us this again and again. They say they appreciate the chance to engage respectfully, with curiosity and with openness, and that they're glad and relieved for a chance to put down their arms. And so we do our work in direct challenge to the political climate in our country right now, and we do it knowing that it is difficult, challenging work to hold and support people in opposing backgrounds in conversation. And we do it knowing democracy depends on our ability to address our shared problems together. And we do this work by putting community at the heart of our journalistic process, by putting our egos to the side to listen first, to listen deeply, to listen around and through our own biases, our own habits of thought, and to support others in doing the same. And we do this work knowing that journalism as an institution is struggling, and that it has always had a role to play and will continue to have a role to play in supporting the exchange of ideas and views. For many of the participants in our groups, there are lasting reverberations. Many people have become Facebook friends and in-real-life friends too, across political lines. After we closed that first Trump/Clinton project, about two-thirds of the women went on to form their own Facebook group and they chose a moderator from each state and they continue to talk about difficult and challenging issues. People tell us again and again that they're grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this work, grateful to know that people on the other side aren't crazy, grateful that they've had a chance to connect with people they wouldn't have otherwise talked to. A lot of what we've seen and learned, despite the fact that we call ourselves Spaceship Media, is not at all rocket science. If you call people names, if you label them, if you insult them, they are not inclined to listen to you. Snark doesn't help, shame doesn't help, condescension doesn't help. Genuine communication takes practice and effort and restraint and self-awareness. There isn't an algorithm to solve where we are. Because real human connection is in fact real human connection. So lead with curiosity, emphasize discussion not debate, get out of your silo, because real connection across difference ... this is a salve that our democracy sorely needs. Thank you. (Applause) |
Why are earthquakes so hard to predict? | null | TED-Ed | In 132 CE, Chinese polymath Zhang Heng presented the Han court with his latest invention. This large vase, he claimed, could tell them whenever an earthquake occurred in their kingdom– including the direction they should send aid. The court was somewhat skeptical, especially when the device triggered on a seemingly quiet afternoon. But when messengers came for help days later, their doubts turned to gratitude. Today, we no longer rely on pots to identify seismic events, but earthquakes still offer a unique challenge to those trying to track them. So why are earthquakes so hard to anticipate, and how could we get better at predicting them? To answer that, we need to understand some theories behind how earthquakes occur. Earth’s crust is made from several vast, jagged slabs of rock called tectonic plates, each riding on a hot, partially molten layer of Earth’s mantle. This causes the plates to spread very slowly, at anywhere from 1 to 20 centimeters per year. But these tiny movements are powerful enough to cause deep cracks in the interacting plates. And in unstable zones, the intensifying pressure may ultimately trigger an earthquake. It’s hard enough to monitor these miniscule movements, but the factors that turn shifts into seismic events are far more varied. Different fault lines juxtapose different rocks– some of which are stronger–or weaker– under pressure. Diverse rocks also react differently to friction and high temperatures. Some partially melt, and can release lubricating fluids made of superheated minerals that reduce fault line friction. But some are left dry, prone to dangerous build-ups of pressure. And all these faults are subject to varying gravitational forces, as well as the currents of hot rocks moving throughout Earth’s mantle. So which of these hidden variables should we be analyzing, and how do they fit into our growing prediction toolkit? Because some of these forces occur at largely constant rates, the behavior of the plates is somewhat cyclical. Today, many of our most reliable clues come from long-term forecasting, related to when and where earthquakes have previously occurred. At the scale of millennia, this allows us to make predictions about when highly active faults, like the San Andreas, are overdue for a massive earthquake. But due to the many variables involved, this method can only predict very loose timeframes. To predict more imminent events, researchers have investigated the vibrations Earth elicits before a quake. Geologists have long used seismometers to track and map these tiny shifts in the earth’s crust. And today, most smartphones are also capable of recording primary seismic waves. With a network of phones around the globe, scientists could potentially crowdsource a rich, detailed warning system that alerts people to incoming quakes. Unfortunately, phones might not be able to provide the advance notice needed to enact safety protocols. But such detailed readings would still be useful for prediction tools like NASA’s Quakesim software, which can use a rigorous blend of geological data to identify regions at risk. However, recent studies indicate the most telling signs of a quake might be invisible to all these sensors. In 2011, just before an earthquake struck the east coast of Japan, nearby researchers recorded surprisingly high concentrations of the radioactive isotope pair: radon and thoron. As stress builds up in the crust right before an earthquake, microfractures allow these gases to escape to the surface. These scientists think that if we built a vast network of radon-thoron detectors in earthquake-prone areas, it could become a promising warning system– potentially predicting quakes a week in advance. Of course, none of these technologies would be as helpful as simply looking deep inside the earth itself. With a deeper view we might be able to track and predict large-scale geological changes in real time, possibly saving tens of thousands of lives a year. But for now, these technologies can help us prepare and respond quickly to areas in need– without waiting for directions from a vase. |
We don't "move on" from grief. We move forward with it | {0: "Nora McInerny makes a living talking to people about life's hardest moments."} | TEDWomen 2018 | So, 2014 was a big year for me. Do you ever have that, just like a big year, like a banner year? For me, it went like this: October 3, I lost my second pregnancy. And then October 8, my dad died of cancer. And then on November 25, my husband Aaron died after three years with stage-four glioblastoma, which is just a fancy word for brain cancer. So, I'm fun. (Laughter) People love to invite me out all the time. Packed social life. Usually, when I talk about this period of my life, the reaction I get is essentially: (Sighs) "I can't — I can't imagine." But I do think you can. I think you can. And I think that you should because, someday, it's going to happen to you. Maybe not these specific losses in this specific order or at this speed, but like I said, I'm very fun and the research that I have seen will stun you: everyone you love has a 100 percent chance of dying. (Laughter) And that's why you came to TED. (Laughter) (Applause) So, since all of this loss happened, I've made it a career to talk about death and loss, not just my own, because it's pretty easy to recap, but the losses and tragedies that other people have experienced. It's a niche, I have to say. (Laughter) It's a small niche, and I wish I made more money, but ... (Laughter) I've written some very uplifting books, host a very uplifting podcast, I started a little nonprofit. I'm just trying to do what I can to make more people comfortable with the uncomfortable, and grief is so uncomfortable. It's so uncomfortable, especially if it's someone else's grief. So part of that work is this group that I started with my friend Moe, who is also a widow; we call it the Hot Young Widows Club. (Laughter) And it's real, we have membership cards and T-shirts. And when your person dies, your husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, literally don't care if you were married, your friends and your family are just going to look around through friends of friends of friends of friends until they find someone who's gone through something similar, and then they'll push you towards each other so you can talk amongst yourselves and not get your sad on other people. (Laughter) So that's what we do. It's just a series of small groups, where men, women, gay, straight, married, partnered, can talk about their dead person, and say the things that the other people in their lives aren't ready or willing to hear yet. Huge range of conversations. Like, "My husband died two weeks ago, I can't stop thinking about sex, is that normal?" Yeah. "What if it's one of the Property Brothers?" Less normal, but I'll accept it. (Laughter) Things like, "Look, when I'm out in public and I see old people holding hands, couples who have clearly been together for decades, and then I look at them and I imagine all of the things they've been through together, the good things, the bad things, the arguments they've had over who should take out the trash ... I just find my heart filled with rage." (Laughter) And that example is personal to me. Most of the conversations that we have in the group can and will just stay amongst ourselves, but there are things that we talk about that the rest of the world — the world that is grief-adjacent but not yet grief-stricken — could really benefit from hearing. And if you can't tell, I'm only interested in / capable of unscientific studies, so what I did was go to The Hot Young Widows Club and say, "Hello, friends, remember when your person died?" They did. "Do you remember all the things people said to you?" "Oh, yeah." "Which ones did you hate the most?" I got a lot of comments, lot of answers, people say a lot of things, but two rose to the top pretty quickly. "Moving on." Now, since 2014, I will tell you I have remarried a very handsome man named Matthew, we have four children in our blended family, we live in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. We have a rescue dog. (Laughter) I drive a minivan, like the kind where doors open and I don't even touch them. (Laughter) Like, by any "mezhure," life is good. I've also never said "mezhure," I've never once said it that way. (Laughter) I don't know where that came from. (Laughter) I've never heard anyone else say it that way. It looks like it should be said that way, and that's why the English language is trash, so ... (Laughter) So impressed with anyone who, like, speaks it in addition to a language that makes sense — good job. (Laughter) But by any measure ... (Laughter) By any measure, life is really, really good, but I haven't "moved on." I haven't moved on, and I hate that phrase so much, and I understand why other people do. Because what it says is that Aaron's life and death and love are just moments that I can leave behind me — and that I probably should. And when I talk about Aaron, I slip so easily into the present tense, and I've always thought that made me weird. And then I noticed that everybody does it. And it's not because we are in denial or because we're forgetful, it's because the people we love, who we've lost, are still so present for us. So, when I say, "Oh, Aaron is ..." It's because Aaron still is. And it's not in the way that he was before, which was much better, and it's not in the way that churchy people try to tell me that he would be. It's just that he's indelible, and so he is present for me. Here, he's present for me in the work that I do, in the child that we had together, in these three other children I'm raising, who never met him, who share none of his DNA, but who are only in my life because I had Aaron and because I lost Aaron. He's present in my marriage to Matthew, because Aaron's life and love and death made me the person that Matthew wanted to marry. So I've not moved on from Aaron, I've moved forward with him. (Applause) We spread Aaron's ashes in his favorite river in Minnesota, and when the bag was empty — because when you're cremated, you fit into a plastic bag — there were still ashes stuck to my fingers. And I could have just put my hands in the water and rinsed them, but instead, I licked my hands clean, because I was so afraid of losing more than I had already lost, and I was so desperate to make sure that he would always be a part of me. But of course he would be. Because when you watch your person fill himself with poison for three years, just so he can stay alive a little bit longer with you, that stays with you. When you watch him fade from the healthy person he was the night you met to nothing, that stays with you. When you watch your son, who isn't even two years old yet, walk up to his father's bed on the last day of his life, like he knows what's coming in a few hours, and say, "I love you. All done. Bye, bye." That stays with you. Just like when you fall in love, finally, like really fall in love with someone who gets you and sees you and you even see, "Oh, my God, I've been wrong this entire time. Love is not a contest or a reality show — it's so quiet, it's this invisible thread of calm that connects the two of us even when everything is chaos, when things are falling apart, even when he's gone." That stays with you. We used to do this thing — because my hands are always freezing and he's so warm, where I would take my ice-cold hands and shove them up his shirt ... press them against his hot bod. (Laughter) And he hated it so much, (Laughter) but he loved me, and after he died, I laid in bed with Aaron and I put my hands underneath him and I felt his warmth. And I can't even tell you if my hands were cold, but I can tell you that I knew it was the last time I would ever do that. And that that memory is always going to be sad. That memory will always hurt. Even when I'm 600 years old and I'm just a hologram. (Laughter) Just like the memory of meeting him is always going to make me laugh. Grief doesn't happen in this vacuum, it happens alongside of and mixed in with all of these other emotions. So, I met Matthew, my current husband — who doesn't love that title, (Laughter) but it's so accurate. (Laughter) I met Matthew, and ... there was this audible sigh of relief among the people who love me, like, "It's over! She did it. She got a happy ending, we can all go home. And we did good." And that narrative is so appealing even to me, and I thought maybe I had gotten that, too, but I didn't. I got another chapter. And it's such a good chapter — I love you, honey — it's such a good chapter. But especially at the beginning, it was like an alternate universe, or one of those old "choose your own adventure" books from the '80s where there are two parallel plot lines. So I opened my heart to Matthew, and my brain was like, "Would you like to think about Aaron? Like, the past, the present, future, just get in there," and I did. And all of a sudden, those two plots were unfurling at once, and falling in love with Matthew really helped me realize the enormity of what I lost when Aaron died. And just as importantly, it helped me realize that my love for Aaron and my grief for Aaron, and my love for Matthew, are not opposing forces. They are just strands to the same thread. They're the same stuff. I'm ... what would my parents say? I'm not special. (Laughter) They had four kids, they were like ... frankly. (Laughter) But I'm not, I'm not special. I know that, I'm fully aware that all day, every day, all around the world, terrible things are happening. All the time. Like I said, fun person. But terrible things are happening, people are experiencing deeply formative and traumatic losses every day. And as part of my job, this weird podcast that I have, I sometimes talk to people about the worst thing that's ever happened to them. And sometimes, that's the loss of someone they love, sometimes days ago or weeks ago, years ago, even decades ago. And these people that I interview, they haven't closed themselves around this loss and made it the center of their lives. They've lived, their worlds have kept spinning. But they're talking to me, a total stranger, about the person they love who has died, because these are the experiences that mark us and make us just as much as the joyful ones. And just as permanently. Long after you get your last sympathy card or your last hot dish. Like, we don't look at the people around us experiencing life's joys and wonders and tell them to "move on," do we? We don't send a card that's like, "Congratulations on your beautiful baby," and then, five years later, think like, "Another birthday party? Get over it." (Laughter) Yeah, we get it, he's five. (Laughter) Wow. (Laughter) But grief is kind of one of those things, like, falling in love or having a baby or watching "The Wire" on HBO, where you don't get it until you get it, until you do it. And once you do it, once it's your love or your baby, once it's your grief and your front row at the funeral, you get it. You understand what you're experiencing is not a moment in time, it's not a bone that will reset, but that you've been touched by something chronic. Something incurable. It's not fatal, but sometimes grief feels like it could be. And if we can't prevent it in one another, what can we do? What can we do other than try to remind one another that some things can't be fixed, and not all wounds are meant to heal? We need each other to remember, to help each other remember, that grief is this multitasking emotion. That you can and will be sad, and happy; you'll be grieving, and able to love in the same year or week, the same breath. We need to remember that a grieving person is going to laugh again and smile again. If they're lucky, they'll even find love again. But yes, absolutely, they're going to move forward. But that doesn't mean that they've moved on. Thank you. (Applause) |
Wearable tech that helps you navigate by touch | {0: 'Keith Kirkland is the cofounder of WearWorks, a company that builds products and experiences that communicate information through touch.'} | TED Residency | Do you remember your first kiss? Or that time you burned the roof of your mouth on a hot slice of pizza? What about playing tag or duck, duck, goose as a child? These are all instances where we're using touch to understand something. And it's the basis of haptic design. "Haptic" means of or relating to the sense of touch. And we've all been using that our entire lives. I was working on my computer when my friend, seeing me hunched over typing, walked over behind me. She put her left thumb into the left side of my lower back, while reaching her right index finger around to the front of my right shoulder. Instinctively, I sat up straight. In one quick and gentle gesture, she had communicated how to improve my posture. The paper I was working on at that very moment centered around developing new ways to teach movement using technology. I wanted to create a suit that could teach a person kung fu. (Laughter) But I had no idea how to communicate movement without an instructor being in the room. And in that moment, it became crystal clear: touch. If I had vibrating motors where she had placed each of her fingers, paired with motion-capture data of my current and optimal posture, I could simulate the entire experience without an instructor needing to be in the room. But there was still one important part of the puzzle that was missing. If I want you to raise your wrist two inches off of your lap, using vibration, how do I tell you to do that? Do I put a motor at the top of your wrist, so you know to lift up? Or do I put one at the bottom of your wrist, so it feels like you're being pushed up? There were no readily available answers because there was no commonly agreed-upon haptic language to communicate information with. So my cofounders and I set out to create that language. And the first device we built was not a kung fu suit. (Laughter) But in a way, it was even more impressive because of its simplicity and usefulness. We started with the use case of navigation, which is a simplified form of movement. We then created Wayband, a wrist-wearable device that could orient a user toward a destination, using vibrating cues. We would ask people to spin around and to stop in a way that they felt was the right way to go. Informally, we tried this with hundreds of people, and most could figure it out within about 15 seconds. It was that intuitive. Initially, we were just trying to get people out of their phones and back into the real world. But the more we experimented, the more we realized that those who stood to benefit most from our work were people who had little or no sight. When we first approached a blind organization, they told us, "Don't build a blind device. Build a device that everyone can use but that's optimized for the blind experience." We created our company WearWorks with three guiding principles: make cool stuff, create the greatest impact we can in our lifetimes and reimagine an entire world designed for touch. And on November 5, 2017, Wayband helped a person who was blind run the first 15 miles of the New York City Marathon without any sighted assistance. (Applause) It didn't get him through the entire race due to the heavy rain, but that didn't matter. (Laughter) We had proved the point: that it was possible to navigate a complex route using only touch. So, why touch? The skin has an innate sensitivity akin to the eyes' ability to recognize millions of colors or the ears' ability to recognize complex pitch and tone. Yet, as a communications channel, it's been largely relegated to Morse code-like cell phone notifications. If you were to suddenly receive a kiss or a punch, your reaction would be instinctive and immediate. Meanwhile, your brain would be playing catch-up on the back end to understand the details of what just occurred. And compared to instincts, conscious thought is pretty slow. But it's a lightning bolt compared to the snail's pace of language acquisition. I spent a considerable amount of time learning Spanish, Japanese, German and currently Swedish, with varying degrees of failure. (Laughter) But within those failures were kernels of how different languages are organized. That gave our team insight into how to use the linguistic order of well-established languages as inspiration for an entirely new haptic language, one based purely on touch. It also showed us when using language mechanics wasn't the best way to deliver information. In the same way a smile is a smile across every culture, what if there was some underlying mechanism of touch that transcended linguistic and cultural boundaries? A universal language, of sorts. You see, I could give you buzz-buzz-buzz, buzz-buzz, and you would eventually learn that that particular vibration means "stop." But as haptic designers, we challenged ourselves. What would it be like to design "stop?" Well, based on context, most of us have the experience of being in a vehicle and having that vehicle stop suddenly, along with our body's reaction to it. So if I wanted you to stop, I could send you a vibration pattern, sure. Or, I could design a haptic experience that just made stopping feel like it was the right thing to do. And that takes more than an arbitrary assignment of haptic cues to meanings. It takes a deep empathy. It also takes the ability to distill human experience into meaningful insights and then into haptic gestures and products. Haptic design is going to expand the human ability to sense and respond to our environments, both physical and virtual. There's a new frontier: touch. And it has the power to change how we all see the world around us. Thank you. (Applause) |
How risk-taking changes a teenager's brain | {0: 'Kashfia Rahman studies psychology, cognitive science and global health policy at Harvard University. '} | TED Salon U.S. Air Force | Have you ever tried to understand a teenager? It's exhausting, right? You must be puzzled by the fact that some teens do well in school, lead clubs and teams and volunteer in their communities, but they eat Tide Pods for an online challenge, speed and text while driving, binge drink and experiment with illicit drugs. How can so many teens be so smart, skilled and responsible — and careless risk-takers at the same time? When I was 16, while frequently observing my peers in person as well as on social media, I began to wonder why so many teens took such crazy risks. It seems like getting a certificate from DARE class in the fifth grade can't stop them. (Laughter) What was even more alarming to me was that the more they exposed themselves to these harmful risks, the easier it became for them to continue taking risks. Now this confused me, but it also made me incredibly curious. So, as someone with a name that literally means "to explore knowledge," I started searching for a scientific explanation. Now, it's no secret that teens ages 13 to 18 are more prone to risk-taking than children or adults, but what makes them so daring? Do they suddenly become reckless, or is this just a natural phase that they're going through? Well neuroscientists have already found evidence that the teen brain is still in the process of maturation — and that this makes them exceptionally poor at decision-making, causing them to fall prey to risky behaviors. But in that case, if the maturing brain is to blame, then why are teens more vulnerable than children, even though their brains are more developed than those of children? Also, not all teens in the world take risks at the same level. Are there some other underlying or unintentional causes driving them to risk-taking? Well, this is exactly what I decided to research. So, I founded my research on the basis of a psychological process known as "habituation," or simply what we refer to as "getting used to it." Habituation explains how our brains adapt to some behaviors, like lying, with repeated exposures. And this concept inspired me to design a project to determine if the same principle could be applied to the relentless rise of risk-taking in teenagers. So I predicted that habituation to risk-taking may have the potential to change the already-vulnerable teenage brain by blunting or even eradicating the negative emotions associated with risk, like fear or guilt. I also thought because they would feel less fearful and guilty, this desensitization would lead them to even more risk-taking. In short, I wanted to conduct a research study to answer one big question: Why do teens keep making outrageous choices that are harmful to their health and well-being? But there was one big obstacle in my way. To investigate this problem, I needed teenagers to experiment on, laboratories and devices to measure their brain activity, and teachers or professors to supervise me and guide me along the way. I needed resources. But, you see, I attended a high school in South Dakota with limited opportunity for scientific exploration. My school had athletics, band, choir, debate and other clubs, but there were no STEM programs or research mentors. And the notion of high schoolers doing research or participating in a science fair was completely foreign. Simply put, I didn't exactly have the ingredients to make a chef-worthy dish. And these obstacles were frustrating, but I was also a stubborn teenager. And as the daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants and one of just a handful of Muslim students in my high school in South Dakota, I often struggled to fit in. And I wanted to be someone with something to contribute to society, not just be deemed the scarf-wearing brown girl who was an anomaly in my homogenous hometown. I hoped that by doing this research, I could establish this and how valuable scientific exploration could be for kids like me who didn't necessarily find their niche elsewhere. So with limited research opportunities, inventiveness allowed me to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles. I became more creative in working with a variety of methodologies, materials and subjects. I transformed my unassuming school library into a laboratory and my peers into lab rats. (Laughter) My enthusiastic geography teacher, who also happens to be my school's football coach, ended up as my cheerleader, becoming my mentor to sign necessary paperwork. And when it became logistically impossible to use a laboratory electroencephalography, or EEG, which are those electrode devices used to measure emotional responses, I bought a portable EEG headset with my own money, instead of buying the new iPhone X that a lot of kids my age were saving up for. So finally I started the research with 86 students, ages 13 to 18, from my high school. Using the computer cubicles in my school library, I had them complete a computerized decision-making simulation to measure their risk-taking behaviors comparable to ones in the real world, like alcohol use, drug use and gambling. Wearing the EEG headset, the students completed the test 12 times over three days to mimic repeated risk exposures. A control panel on the EEG headset measured their various emotional responses: like attention, interest, excitement, frustration, guilt, stress levels and relaxation. They also rated their emotions on well-validated emotion-measuring scales. This meant that I had measured the process of habituation and its effects on decision-making. And it took 29 days to complete this research. And with months of frantically drafting proposals, meticulously computing data in a caffeinated daze at 2am, I was able to finalize my results. And the results showed that habituation to risk-taking could actually change a teen's brain by altering their emotional levels, causing greater risk-taking. The students' emotions that were normally associated with risks, like fear, stress, guilt and nervousness, as well as attention, were high when they were first exposed to the risk simulator. This curbed their temptations and enforced self-control, which prevented them from taking more risks. However, the more they were exposed to the risks through the simulator, the less fearful, guilty and stressed they became. This caused a situation in which they were no longer able to feel the brain's natural fear and caution instincts. And also, because they are teenagers and their brains are still underdeveloped, they became more interested and excited in thrill-seeking behaviors. So what were the consequences? They lacked self-control for logical decision-making, took greater risks and made more harmful choices. So the developing brain alone isn't to blame. The process of habituation also plays a key role in risk-taking and risk escalation. Although a teen's willingness to seek risk is largely a result of the structural and functional changes associated with their developing brains, the dangerous part that my research was able to highlight was that a habituation to risks can actually physically change a teen's brain and cause greater risk-taking. So it's the combination of the immature teen brain and the impact of habituation that is like a perfect storm to create more damaging effects. And this research can help parents and the general public understand that teens aren't just willfully ignoring warnings or simply defying parents by engaging in increasingly more dangerous behavior. The biggest hurdle they're facing is their habituation to risks: all the physical, detectable and emotional functional changes that drive and control and influence their over-the-top risk-taking. So yes, we need policies that provide safer environments and limit exposures to high risks, but we also need policies that reflect this insight. These results are a wake-up call for teens, too. It shows them that the natural and necessary fear and guilt that protect them from unsafe situations actually become numb when they repeatedly choose risky behaviors. So with this hope to share my findings with fellow teenagers and scientists, I took my research to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, or ISEF, a culmination of over 1,800 students from 75 countries, regions and territories, who showcase their cutting-edge research and inventions. It's like the Olympics of science fair. (Laughter) There, I was able to present my research to experts in neuroscience and psychology and garner valuable feedback. But perhaps the most memorable moment of the week was when the booming speakers suddenly uttered my name during the awards ceremony. I was in such disbelief that I questioned myself: Was this just another "La La Land" blunder like at the Oscars? (Laughter) Luckily, it wasn't. I really had won first place in the category "Behavioral and Social Sciences." (Applause) Needless to say, I was not only thrilled to have this recognition, but also the whole experience of science fair that validated my efforts keeps my curiosity alive and strengthens my creativity, perseverance and imagination. This still image of me experimenting in my school library may seem ordinary, but to me, it represents a sort of inspiration. It reminds me that this process taught me to take risks. And I know that might sound incredibly ironic. But I took risks realizing that unforeseen opportunities often come from risk-taking — not the hazardous, negative type that I studied, but the good ones, the positive risks. The more risks I took, the more capable I felt of withstanding my unconventional circumstances, leading to more tolerance, resilience and patience for completing my project. And these lessons have led me to new ideas like: Is the opposite of negative risk-taking also true? Can positive risk-taking escalate with repeated exposures? Does positive action build positive brain functioning? I think I just might have my next research idea. (Applause) |
The wild world of carnivorous plants | null | TED-Ed | Little do they know it, but these six creatures are each about to experience a very unusual death. One-by-one, they will fall prey to the remarkable, predatory antics of... a carnivorous plant. Around the world there are more than 600 plant species that supplement a regular diet of sunlight, water, and soil with insects, microbes, or even frogs and rats. Scientists believe that carnivory in plants evolved separately at least six times on our planet, suggesting that this flesh-munching adaptation holds a major benefit for plants. Carnivorous plants tend to grow in places with highly acidic soil, which is poor in crucial nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. In these hostile conditions, plants that are able to lure, trap, and digest prey have an advantage over those that rely on soil for their nutrients. Take this inhospitable bog, where pitcher plants reign supreme. Drawn to the pitcher’s vivid colors and alluring scent, the fly closes in and slurps its nectar. But this pitcher species has an ingredient called coniine in its nectar, a powerful narcotic to insects. As the coniine takes effect, the fly grows sluggish, stumbles, and falls down the funnel into a pool of liquid at the base, where he drowns. Enzymes and bacteria in the liquid slowly break his body down into microscopic particles the pitcher plant can consume through its leaves. Occasionally, larger prey also tumbles into the fatal funnel of the pitcher plant. The second victim faces off with the sticky sundew plant. The sundew’s tiny leaves are equipped with a viscous secretion called mucilage. The ant is swiftly trapped in this goo. As she struggles, enzymes begin to digest her body. Special tentacles sense her movement and curl around her, clenching her in their suffocating grip. Once she asphyxiates, which can happen in under an hour, the tentacles unfurl again to snare their next victim. Two down, four to go. The next target meets his end underground, in the coils of the corkscrew plant. He enters the roots through a tiny slit in search of food. But inside, he quickly loses his way through the tangled labyrinth. A forest of curved hairs prevents his escape, guiding him into a central chamber with flesh-digesting enzymes and deadly low levels of oxygen. In the murky depths of a nearby pond, a tadpole unwittingly swims into the path of the bladderwort, the speediest of all carnivorous plants. She treads on the bladderwort’s trigger, and in milliseconds, a trapdoor swings open and sucks her in. Trapped half in and half out, she struggles to free herself while the part of her body inside the plant gets digested. Over the next few hours, her writhing sets the trap off repeatedly, each time bringing her deeper into the plant to be digested alive bit by bit. Meanwhile, this beetle is bewitched by sweet-smelling nectar. The scent draws him closer and closer until he lands on the leaves of the world’s most infamous carnivorous plant. His landing triggers tiny hairs on the surface of the leaves, and the jaws of the venus fly trap snap shut around him. The spikes interlock to seal his fate. Once closed, the leaves act like an external stomach that digests the beetle’s soft tissues. When they open again a few days later, only the dry husk of his exoskeleton remains. The mayfly is the last creature standing. As she approaches the butterwort plant, she heads for the flowers that wave high above the plant’s globs of adhesive goo. She alights on the petals, drinks the nectar, and takes off unscathed. These long flower stalks keep certain insects away from the carnivore’s traps— a way of separating pollinators from food. Off the mayfly buzzes to live a long and fruitful life– oh. |
What happens when you remove the hippocampus? | null | TED-Ed | On September 1st, 1953, William Scoville used a hand crank and a cheap drill saw to bore into a young man's skull, cutting away vital pieces of his brain and sucking them out through a metal tube. But this wasn't a scene from a horror film or a gruesome police report. Dr. Scoville was one of the most renowned neurosurgeons of his time, and the young man was Henry Molaison, the famous patient known as "H.M.", whose case provided amazing insights into how our brains work. As a boy, Henry had cracked his skull in an accident and soon began having seizures, blacking out and losing control of bodily functions. After enduring years of frequent episodes, and even dropping out of high school, the desperate young man had turned to Dr. Scoville, a daredevil known for risky surgeries. Partial lobotomies had been used for decades to treat mental patients based on the notion that mental functions were strictly localized to corresponding brain areas. Having successfully used them to reduce seizures in psychotics, Scoville decided to remove H.M.'s hippocampus, a part of the limbic system that was associated with emotion but whose function was unknown. At first glance, the operation had succeeded. H.M.'s seizures virtually disappeared, with no change in personality, and his IQ even improved. But there was one problem: His memory was shot. Besides losing most of his memories from the previous decade, H.M. was unable to form new ones, forgetting what day it was, repeating comments, and even eating multiple meals in a row. When Scoville informed another expert, Wilder Penfield, of the results, he sent a Ph.D student named Brenda Milner to study H.M. at his parents' home, where he now spent his days doing odd chores, and watching classic movies for the first time, over and over. What she discovered through a series of tests and interviews didn't just contribute greatly to the study of memory. It redefined what memory even meant. One of Milner's findings shed light on the obvious fact that although H.M. couldn't form new memories, he still retained information long enough from moment to moment to finish a sentence or find the bathroom. When Milner gave him a random number, he managed to remember it for fifteen minutes by repeating it to himself constantly. But only five minutes later, he forgot the test had even taken place. Neuroscientists had though of memory as monolithic, all of it essentially the same and stored throughout the brain. Milner's results were not only the first clue for the now familiar distinction between short-term and long-term memory, but show that each uses different brain regions. We now know that memory formation involves several steps. After immediate sensory data is temporarily transcribed by neurons in the cortex, it travels to the hippocampus, where special proteins work to strengthen the cortical synaptic connections. If the experience was strong enough, or we recall it periodically in the first few days, the hippocampus then transfers the memory back to the cortex for permanent storage. H.M.'s mind could form the initial impressions, but without a hippocampus to perform this memory consolidation, they eroded, like messages scrawled in sand. But this was not the only memory distinction Milner found. In a now famous experiment, she asked H.M. to trace a third star in the narrow space between the outlines of two concentric ones while he could only see his paper and pencil through a mirror. Like anyone else performing such an awkward task for the first time, he did horribly. But surprisingly, he improved over repeated trials, even though he had no memory of previous attempts. His unconscious motor centers remembered what the conscious mind had forgotten. What Milner had discovered was that the declarative memory of names, dates and facts is different from the procedural memory of riding a bicycle or signing your name. And we now know that procedural memory relies more on the basal ganglia and cerebellum, structures that were intact in H.M.'s brain. This distinction between "knowing that" and "knowing how" has underpinned all memory research since. H.M. died at the age of 82 after a mostly peaceful life in a nursing home. Over the years, he had been examined by more than 100 neuroscientists, making his the most studied mind in history. Upon his death, his brain was preserved and scanned before being cut into over 2000 individual slices and photographed to form a digital map down to the level of individual neurons, all in a live broadcast watched by 400,000 people. Though H.M. spent most of his life forgetting things, he and his contributions to our understanding of memory will be remembered for generations to come. |
What is obesity? | null | TED-Ed | The most basic function of bodily fat is self-storage of food reserves. In prehistoric times, natural selection favored genotypes that could endure harsh conditions by stocking the most fat. With chronic malnutrition being the norm for most of human history, genetics evolved to favor fat storage. So when did body fat become problematic? The negative impacts of being overweight were not even noted in medical literature until as late as the 18th century. Then, technological advances coupled with public health measures resulted in the betterment of the quantity, quality, and variety of food. Sustained abundance of good food enabled a healthier population to boom economically. Output increased, and with it, leisure time and waistlines. By the mid 19th century, being excessively overweight, or obese, was recognized as a cause of ill health, and another century later, declared deadly. What is the distinction between being overweight and being obese? A calculation called the BMI breaks it down for us. For example, if someone weighs 65 kilgorams and is 1.5 meters tall, they have a BMI of about 29. Obesity is a condition of excess body fat that occurs when a person's BMI is above 30, just over the overweight range of 25 to 29.9. While BMI can be a helpful estimate of healthy weight, actual body fat percentage can only really be determined by also considering information like waist circumference and muscle mass. Athletes, for instance, have a naturally higher BMI. So how does a person become obese? At its most basic, obesity is caused by energy imbalance. If the energy input from calories is greater than the energy output from physical activity, the body stores the extra calories as fat. In most cases, this imbalance comes from a combination of circumstances and choices. Adults should be getting at least 2.5 hours of exercise each week, and children a whole hour per day. But globally, one in four adults and eight out of ten adolescents aren't active enough. Calorie-dense processed foods and growing portion sizes coupled with pervasive marketing lead to passive overeating. And scarce resources, and a lack of access to healthy, affordable foods creates an even greater risk in disadvantaged communities. Yet, our genetic makeup also plays a part. Studies on families and on separated twins have shown a clear causal hereditary relationship to weight gain. Recent studies have also found a link between obesity and variations in the bacteria species that live in our digestive systems. No matter the cause, obesity is an escalating global epidemic. It substantially raises the probability of diseases, like diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and cancer. It affects virtually all ages, genders, and socioeconomic groups in both developed and developing countries. With a 60% rise in child obesity globally over just two decades, the problem is too significant to ignore. Once a person is obese, the climb to recovery becomes progressively steeper. Hormonal and metabolic changes reduce the body's response to overeating. After losing weight, a formerly overweight person burns less calories doing the same exercises as a person who is naturally the same weight, making it much more difficult to shed the excess fat. And as people gain weight, damage to signaling pathways makes it increasingly difficult for the brain to measure food intake and fat storage. There is, however, some evidence that well-monitored, long-term changes in behavior can lead to improvements in obesity-related health issues. And weight loss from sustained lifestyle changes, or invasive treatments like bariatric surgery, can improve insulin resistance and decrease inflammation. What was once an advantage for survival is now working against us. As the world's population continues to slow down and get bigger, moving and consciously eating our way towards a healthier weight is essential to our overall well-being. And with the epidemic affecting every country in the world for different socioeconomic reasons, obesity cannot be seen as an isolated issue. More global measures for prevention are essential to manage the weight of the world. |
How does your body process medicine? | null | TED-Ed | Have you ever wondered what happens to a painkiller, like ibuprofen, after you swallow it? Medicine that slides down your throat can help treat a headache, a sore back, or a throbbing sprained ankle. But how does it get where it needs to go in the first place? The answer is that it hitches a ride in your circulatory blood stream, cycling through your body in a race to do its job before it's snared by organs and molecules designed to neutralize and expel foreign substances. This process starts in your digestive system. Say you swallow an ibuprofen tablet for a sore ankle. Within minutes, the tablet starts disintegrating in the acidic fluids of your stomach. The dissolved ibuprofen travels into the small intestine and then across the intestinal wall into a network of blood vessels. These blood vessels feed into a vein, which carries the blood, and anything in it, to the liver. The next step is to make it through the liver. As the blood and the drug molecules in it travel through liver blood vessels, enzymes attempt to react with the ibuprofen molecules to neutralize them. The damaged ibuprofen molecules, called metabolites, may no longer be effective as painkillers. At this stage, most of the ibuprofen makes it through the liver unscathed. It continues its journey out of the liver, through veins, into the body's circulatory system. Half an hour after you swallow the pill, some of the dose has already made it into the circulatory blood stream. This blood loop travels through every limb and organ, including the heart, brain, kidneys, and back through the liver. When ibuprofen molecules encounter a location where the body's pain response is in full swing, they bind to specific target molecules that are a part of that reaction. Painkillers, like ibuprofen, block the production of compounds that help the body transmit pain signals. As more drug molecules accumulate, the pain-cancelling affect increases, reaching a maximum within about one or two hours. Then the body starts efficiently eliminating ibuprofen, with the blood dose decreasing by half every two hours on average. When the ibuprofen molecules detach from their targets, the systemic blood stream carries them away again. Back in the liver, another small fraction of the total amount of the drug gets transformed into metabolites, which are eventually filtered out by the kidneys in the urine. The loop from liver to body to kidneys continues at a rate of about one blood cycle per minute, with a little more of the drug neutralized and filtered out in each cycle. These basic steps are the same for any drug that you take orally, but the speed of the process and the amount of medicine that makes it into your blood stream varies based on drug, person, and how it gets into the body. The dosing instructions on medicine labels can help, but they're averages based on a sample population that doesn't represent every consumer. And getting the dose right is important. If it's too low, the medicine won't do its job. If it's too high, the drug and its metabolites can be toxic. That's true of any drug. One of the hardest groups of patients to get the right dosage for are children. That's because how they process medicine changes quickly, as do their bodies. For instance, the level of liver enzymes that neutralize medication highly fluctuates during infancy and childhood. And that's just one of many complicating factors. Genetics, age, diet, disease, and even pregnancy influence the body's efficiency of processing medicine. Some day, routine DNA tests may be able to dial in the precise dose of medicine personalized to your liver efficiency and other factors, but in the meantime, your best bet is reading the label or consulting your doctor or pharmacist, and taking the recommended amounts with the recommended timing. |
The case of the missing fractals | {0: 'Alex Rosenthal takes everyday experiences and turns them into mind-bending puzzles.'} | TED-Ed | It was a night like any other night, except here I was climbing the platonic peaks like Romeo on a second date. (ugh) I was there for the dame. She had eyes like imaginary numbers and curves that went on forever. Said she wanted to go home. Said I could help. Said the pay was good. Didn't say anything about climbing a... Voice: "Who's there?" Manny Brot: "Manny Brot, private eye." Voice: "What are you doing here?" "A pretty number sent me to find a stolen dingus." Voice: "Well, to enter the cave, you must answer my riddles three." What was it with riddles, and why do they always come in threes? "Is it an egg?" "No. Why would it be an egg?" "It's usually an egg." "What can I hold in my hand, but has zero area?" "Is it a dodo egg?" "It's not an egg!" I took out the rock that had nearly brained me before and gave it a hard ponder. The size of the rising bump on my conk said to me that this thing had area, and a lot of it. But what if I carved out a triangle from this side here? As any mook could see, this triangle had a quarter of the area of the full triangle. I did the same thing again with each of the smaller triangles. Again, a quarter of the remaining area — gone. And I just kept going. After an infinite number of cuts, I was satisfied that my triangle had zero area. A bounded shape with zero area. Now, it's not often that I surprise myself, but my own two mitts had created something crazy, and new. "Very good. (ahem) Now, show me a shape with finite area, but an infinitely long perimeter." "Let me get this straight. If I want to make a snip in the border of this shape, smooth it out, and lay it on the ground ... " "It would go on for ... " "Wait 'til I'm through, and then you can talk. It would go on forever." "Are you through?" "Yeah." "So show me that shape then." Mmm ... I hadn't been this stuck since the Rubik's Cube fiasco of '58. All the shapes I knew had perimeters. Circles: 2πr. Triangles: sum of their sides. What's this? An angle. An angle from heaven. What if I were to pinch each side, like so. A third of the way through, just so. And do it again, and again, and again. After each pinch, the perimeter got a third longer because where there had been three line segments, now there were four. As for the area, every pinch made more triangles, that's true. But those triangles were getting smaller and smaller. You could say that the area was converging, approaching a fixed number, while the perimeter was just getting bigger and bigger, uncontrollably ballooning like an overindulgent birthday clown. After infinity pinches, flimflam, there it was: Finite area, but infinite perimeter. Now that is a piece of work. "Oh, you're good. (ahem) Riddle three: Show me a picture that if I magnify it under my microscope, I'll keep seeing the original picture, no matter how much I zoom in." "You're a strange little man." "Thank you." I was out of ideas, so I looked at my muse, my complex Dora. Voice: "Who's the dame?" And then it hit me. "She's a heart breaker, my fractal femme fatale. Will she do?" "Yes, she'll do just fine." (lightning) It was dark, and at first I thought the cave was empty, but then I noticed: the box. The dame had played me like a triangle. She had told me she wanted to go home. (Lightning) What she really wanted was to bring her home here. The fractals spread everywhere. Most of them the same no matter how deep you looked at them, like Dora's mugshot. Some had infinitely long perimeters, others were objects with no area or volume, all of them created through infinite repetition. So, you wanted to know what fractals are? Well, kid, they're the stuff that dreams are made of. (Music) |
How do schools of fish swim in harmony? | null | TED-Ed | How do schools of fish swim in harmony? And how do the tiny cells in your brain give rise to the complex thoughts, memories, and consciousness that are you? Oddly enough, those questions have the same general answer: emergence, or the spontaneous creation of sophisticated behaviors and functions from large groups of simple elements. Like many animals, fish stick together in groups, but that's not just because they enjoy each other's company. It's a matter of survival. Schools of fish exhibit complex swarming behaviors that help them evade hungry predators, while a lone fish is quickly singled out as easy prey. So which brilliant fish leader is the one in charge? Actually, no one is, and everyone is. So what does that mean? While the school of fish is elegantly twisting, turning, and dodging sharks in what looks like deliberate coordination, each individual fish is actually just following two basic rules that have nothing to do with the shark: one, stay close, but not too close to your neighbor, and two, keep swimmming. As individuals, the fish are focused on the minutiae of these local interactions, but if enough fish join the group, something remarkable happens. The movement of individual fish is eclipsed by an entirely new entity: the school, which has its own unique set of behaviors. The school isn't controlled by any single fish. It simply emerges if you have enough fish following the right set of local rules. It's like an accident that happens over and over again, allowing fish all across the ocean to reliably avoid predation. And it's not just fish. Emergence is a basic property of many complex systems of interacting elements. For example, the specific way in which millions of grains of sand collide and tumble over each other almost always produces the same basic pattern of ripples. And when moisture freezes in the atmosphere, the specific binding properties of water molecules reliably produce radiating lattices that form into beautiful snowflakes. What makes emergence so complex is that you can't understand it by simply taking it apart, like the engine of a car. Taking things apart is a good first step to understanding a complex system. But if you reduce a school of fish to individuals, it loses the ability to evade predators, and there's nothing left to study. And if you reduce the brain to individual neurons, you're left with something that is notoriously unreliable, and nothing like how we think and behave, at least most of the time. Regardless, whatever you're thinking about right now isn't reliant on a single neuron lodged in the corner of your brain. Rather, the mind emerges from the collective activities of many, many neurons. There are billions of neurons in the human brain, and trillions of connections between all those neurons. When you turn such a complicated system like that on, it could behave in all sorts of weird ways, but it doesn't. The neurons in our brain follow simple rules, just like the fish, so that as a group, their activity self-organizes into reliable patterns that let you do things like recognize faces, successfully repeat the same task over and over again, and keep all those silly little habits that everyone likes about you. So, what are the simple rules when it comes to the brain? The basic function of each neuron in the brain is to either excite or inhibit other neurons. If you connect a few neurons together into a simple circuit, you can generate rhythmic patterns of activity, feedback loops that ramp up or shut down a signal, coincidence detectors, and disinhibition, where two inhibitory neurons can actually activate another neuron by removing inhibitory brakes. As more and more neurons are connected, increasingly complex patterns of activity emerge from the network. Soon, so many neurons are interacting in so many different ways at once that the system becomes chaotic. The trajectory of the network's activity cannot be easily explained by the simple local circuits described earlier. And yet, from this chaos, patterns can emerge, and then emerge again and again in a reproducible manner. At some point, these emergent patterns of activity become sufficiently complex, and curious to begin studying their own biological origins, not to mention emergence. And what we found in emergent phenomena at vastly different scales is that same remarkable characteristic as the fish displayed: That emergence doesn't require someone or something to be in charge. If the right rules are in place, and some basic conditions are met, a complex system will fall into the same habits over and over again, turning chaos into order. That's true in the molecular pandemonium that lets your cells function, the tangled thicket of neurons that produces your thoughts and identity, your network of friends and family, all the way up to the structures and economies of our cities across the planet. |
How the food you eat affects your gut | null | TED-Ed | Trillions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi live on or inside of us, and maintaining a good, balanced relationship with them is to our advantage. Together, they form the gut microbiome, a rich ecosystem that performs a variety of functions in our bodies. The bacteria in our guts can break down food the body can't digest, produce important nutrients, regulate the immune system, and protect against harmful germs. We don't yet have the blueprint for exactly which good bacteria a robust gut needs, but we do know that it's important for a healthy microbiome to have a variety of bacterial species. Many factors affect our microbiomes, including our environment, medications like antibiotics, and even whether we were delivered by C-section or not. Diet, too, is emerging as one of the leading influences on the health of our guts. And while we can't control all these factors, we can manipulate the balance of our microbes by paying attention to what we eat. Dietary fiber from foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, and whole grains is the best fuel for gut bacteria. When bacteria digest fiber, they produce short chain fatty acids that nourish the gut barrier, improve immune function, and can help prevent inflammation, which reduces the risk of cancer. And the more fiber you ingest, the more fiber-digesting bacteria colonize your gut. In a recent study, scientists exchanged the regular high-fiber diets of a group of rural South Africans with the high-fat, meat-heavy diets of a group of African-Americans. After just two weeks on the high-fat, low-fiber, Western-style diet, the rural African group showed increased inflammation of the colon, as well as a decrease of butyrate. That's a short chain fatty acid thought to lower risk of colon cancer. Meanwhile, the group that switched to a high-fiber, low-fat diet had the opposite result. So what goes wrong with our gut bacteria when we eat low-fiber processed foods? Lower fiber means less fuel for the gut bacteria, essentially starving them until they die off. This results in less diversity and hungry bacteria. In fact, some can even start to feed on the mucus lining. We also know that specific foods can affect gut bacteria. In one recent microbiome study, scientists found that fruits, vegetables, tea, coffee, red wine, and dark chocolate were correlated with increased bacterial diversity. These foods contain polyphenols, which are naturally occurring antioxidant compounds. On the other hand, foods high in dairy fat, like whole milk, and sugar-sweetened sodas were correlated with decreased diversity. How food is prepared also matters. Minimally processed, fresh foods generally have more fiber and provide better fuel. So lightly steamed, sautéed, or raw vegetables are typically more beneficial than fried dishes. There are also ways of preparing food that can actually introduce good bacteria, also known as probiotics, into your gut. Fermented foods are teeming with helpful probiotic bacteria, like lactobacillus and bifidobacteria. Originally used as a way of preserving foods before the invention of refrigeration, fermentation remains a traditional practice all over the world. Foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, tempeh, and kombucha provide variety and vitality to our diets. Yogurt is another fermented food that can introduce helpful bacteria into our guts. That doesn't necessarily mean that all yogurt is good for us, though. Brands with too much sugar and not enough bacteria may not actually help. These are just general guidelines. More research is needed before we fully understand exactly how any of these foods interact with our microbiomes. We see positive correlations, but the insides of our guts are difficult places to make direct observations. For instance, we don't currently know whether these foods are directly responsible for the changes in diversity, or if something more complicated is happening. While we're only beginning to explore the vast wilderness inside our guts, we already have a glimpse of how crucial our microbiomes are for digestive health. The great news is we have the power to fire up the bacteria in our bellies. Fill up on fibers, fresh and fermented foods, and you can trust your gut to keep you going strong. |
3 lessons on starting a movement from a self-defense trailblazer | {0: 'Rana Abdelhamid is an internationally acclaimed community organizer, first-degree black belt, public speaker and social entrepreneur focused on mass mobilization, international solidarity and the empowerment of marginalized communities.'} | TED Salon Doha Debates | So my story starts on July 4, 1992, the day my mother followed her college sweetheart to New York City from Egypt. As fireworks exploded behind the skyline, my father looked at my mother jokingly and said, "Look, habibti, Americans are celebrating your arrival." (Laughter) Unfortunately, it didn't feel much like a celebration when, growing up, my mother and I would wander past Queens into New York City streets, and my mother with her hijab and long flowy dresses would tighten her hand around my small fingers as she stood up against weathered comments like, "Go back to where you came from," "Learn English," "Stupid immigrant." These words were meant to make us feel unsafe, insecure in our own neighborhoods, in our own skin. But it was these same streets that made me fall in love with New York. Queens is one of the most diverse places in the world, with immigrant parents holding stories that always start with something between three and 15 dollars in a pocket, a voyage across a vast sea and a cash-only hustle sheltering families in jam-packed, busted apartments. And it was these same families that worked so hard to make sure that we had safe microcommunities — we, as immigrant children, to feel affirmed and loved in our identities. But it was mostly the women. And these women are the reason why, regardless of these statements that my mom faced, she remained unapologetic. And these women were some of the most powerful women I have ever met in my entire life. I mean, they had networks for everything. They had rotations for who watched whose kids when, for saving extra cash, for throwing belly dance parties and memorizing Koran and learning English. And they would collect small gold tokens to fundraise for the local mosque. And it was these same women, when I decided to wear my hijab, who supported me through it. And when I was bullied for being Muslim, I always felt like I had an army of unapologetic North African aunties who had my back. And so every morning at 15, I would wake up and stand in front of a mirror, and wrap beautiful bright silk around my head the way my mother does and my grandmother did. And one day that summer 2009, I stepped out into the streets of New York City on my way to volunteer at a domestic violence organization that a woman in my neighborhood had started. And I remember at that moment I felt a yank at the back of my head. Then someone pulled and grabbed me, trying to remove my hijab from off of my head. I turned around to a tall, broad-shouldered man, pure hate in his eyes. I struggled and fought back, and finally was able to get away, hid myself in the bathroom of that organization and cried and cried. I kept thinking to myself, "Why does he hate me? He doesn't even know me." Hate crimes against Muslims in the US increased by 1,600 percent post-9/11, and one in every four women in the US will suffer some form of gender violence. And it may not seem like it, but Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence is a form of gender violence, given the visibility of Muslim women in our hijabs. And so I was not alone, and that horrified me. It made me want to do something. It made me want to go out there and make sure that no one I loved, that no woman would have to feel this insecure in her own skin. So I started to think about how the women in my own neighborhood were able to build community for themselves, and how they were able to use the very little resources they had to actually offer something. And I began to think about what I could potentially offer to build safety and power for women. And through this journey, I learned a couple of things, and this is what I want to share with you today, some of these lessons. So lesson number one: start with what you know. At the time, I had been doing Shotokan karate for as long as I could remember, and so I had a black belt. Yeah. And so, I thought — surprise. (Laughter) I thought that maybe I should go out into my neighborhood and teach self-defense to young girls. And so I actually went out and knocked on doors, spoke to community leaders, to parents, to young women, and finally was able to secure a free community center basement and convince enough young women that they should come to my class. And it actually all worked out, because when I pitched the idea, most of the responses were, like, "All right, cute, this 5'1" hijabi girl who knows karate. How nice." But in reality, I became the Queens, New York version of Mr. Miyagi at 16 years old, and I started teaching 13 young women in that community center basement self-defense. And with every single self-defense move, for eight sessions over the course of that summer, we began to understand the power of our bodies, and we began to share our experiences about our identities. And sometimes there were shocking realizations, and other times there were tears, but mostly it was laughs. And I ended that summer with this incredible sisterhood, and I began to feel much safer in my own skin. And it was because of these women that we just kept teaching. I never thought that I would continue, but we just kept teaching. And today, nine years, 17 cities, 12 countries, 760 courses and thousands of women and girls later, I'm still teaching. And what started as a self-defense course in the basement of a community center is now an international grassroots organization focused on building safety and power for women around the world: Malikah. (Applause) Now, for lesson number two: start with who you know. Oftentimes, it could be quite exciting, especially if you're an expert in something and you want to have impact, to swoop into a community and think you have the magic recipe. But very early on I learned that, as esteemed philosopher Kendrick Lamar once said, it's really important to be humble and to sit down. So, basically, at 15 years old, the only community that I had any business doing work with were the 14-year-old girls in my neighborhood, and that's because I was friends with them. Other than that, I didn't know what it meant to be a child of Bengali immigrants in Brooklyn or to be Senegalese in the Bronx. But I did know young women who were connected to those communities, and it was quite remarkable how they already had these layers of trust and awareness and relationship with their communities. So like my mother and the women in her neighborhood, they had these really strong social networks, and it was about providing capacity and believing in other women's definition of safety. Even though I was a self-defense instructor, I couldn't come into a community and define safety for any other woman who was not part of my own community. And it was because, as our network expanded, I learned that self-defense is not just physical. It's actually really emotional work. I mean, we would do a 60-minute self-defense class, and then we'd have 30 minutes reserved for just talking and healing. And in those 30 minutes, women would share what brought them to the class to begin with but also various other experiences with violence. And, as an example, one time in one of those classes, one woman actually started to talk about the fact that she had been in a domestic violence relationship for over 30 years, and it was her first time being able to articulate that because we had established that safe space for her. So it's powerful work, but it only happens when we believe in women's agency to define what safety and what power looks like for themselves. All right, for lesson number three — and this was the hardest thing for me — the most important thing about this work is to start with the joy. When I started doing this work, I was reacting to a hate-based attack, so I was feeling insecure and anxious and overwhelmed. I was really afraid. And it makes sense, because if you take a step back, and I can imagine that a lot of women in this room can probably relate to this, the feeling, an overwhelming feeling of insecurity, is oftentimes with us constantly. I mean, imagine this: walking home late at night, hearing footsteps behind you. You wonder if you should walk faster or if you should slow down. You keep your keys in your hand in case you need to use them. You say, "Text me when you get home. I want to make sure you are safe." And we mean those words. We're afraid to put down our drinks. We're afraid to speak too much or too little in a meeting. And imagine being woman and black and trans and queer and Latinx and undocumented and poor and immigrant, and you could then only imagine how overwhelming this work can be, especially within the context of personal safety. However, when I took a step to reflect on what brought me to this work to begin with, I began to realize it was actually the love that I had for women in my community. It was the way I saw them gather, their ability to build for each other, that inspired me to keep doing this work day in and day out. So whether I was in a refugee camp in Jordan or a community center in Dallas, Texas or a corporate office in Silicon Valley, women gathered in beautifully magical ways and they built together and supported each other in ways that shifted culture to empower and build safety for women. And that is how the change happens. It was through those relationships we built together. That's why we don't just teach self-defense, but we also throw dance parties and host potlucks and write love notes to each other and sing songs together. And it's really about the friendship, and it's been so, so fun. So the last thing I want to leave you with is that the key takeaway for me in teaching self-defense all of these years is that I actually don't want women, as cool as the self-defense moves are, to go out and use these self-defense techniques. I don't want any woman to have to de-escalate any violent situation. But for that to happen, the violence shouldn't happen, and for the violence not to happen, the systems and the cultures that allow for this violence to take place to begin with needs to stop. And for that to happen, we need all hands on deck. So I've given you my secret recipe, and now it's up to you. To start with what you know, to start with who you know and to start with joy. But just start. Thank you so much. (Applause) |
What percentage of your brain do you use? | null | TED-Ed | An enduring myth says we use only 10% of our brain, the other 90% standing idly by for spare capacity. Hucksters promised to unlock that hidden potential with methods "based on neuroscience," but all they really unlock is your wallet. Two-thirds of the public and nearly half of science teachers mistakenly believe the 10% myth. In the 1890s, William James, the father of American psychology, said, "Most of us do not meet our mental potential." James meant this as a challenge, not an indictment of scant brain usage. But the misunderstanding stuck. Also, scientists couldn't figure out for a long time the purpose of our massive frontal lobes or broad areas of the parietal lobe. Damage didn't cause motor or sensory deficits, so authorities concluded they didn't do anything. For decades, these parts were called silent areas, their function elusive. We've since learned that they underscore executive and integrative ability, without which, we would hardly be human. They are crucial to abstract reasoning, planning, weighing decisions and flexibly adapting to circumstances. The idea that 9/10 of your brain sits idly by in your skull looks silly when we calculate how the brain uses energy. Rodent and canine brains consume 5% of total body energy. Monkey brains use 10%. An adult human brain, which accounts for only 2% of the body's mass, consumes 20% of daily glucose burned. In children, that figure is 50%, and in infants, 60%. This is far more than expected for their relative brain sizes, which scale in proportion to body size. Human ones weigh 1.5 kilograms, elephant brains 5 kg, and whale brains 9 kg, yet on a per weight basis, humans pack in more neurons than any other species. This dense packing is what makes us so smart. There is a trade-off between body size and the number of neurons a primate, including us, can sustain. A 25 kg ape has to eat 8 hours a day to uphold a brain with 53 billion neurons. The invention of cooking, one and half million years ago, gave us a huge advantage. Cooked food is rendered soft and predigested outside of the body. Our guts more easily absorb its energy. Cooking frees up time and provides more energy than if we ate food stuffs raw and so we can sustain brains with 86 billion densely packed neurons. 40% more than the ape. Here's how it works. Half the calories a brain burns go towards simply keeping the structure intact by pumping sodium and potassium ions across membranes to maintain an electrical charge. To do this, the brain has to be an energy hog. It consumes an astounding 3.4 x 10^21 ATP molecules per minute, ATP being the coal of the body's furnace. The high cost of maintaining resting potentials in all 86 billion neurons means that little energy is left to propel signals down axons and across synapses, the nerve discharges that actually get things done. Even if only a tiny percentage of neurons fired in a given region at any one time, the energy burden of generating spikes over the entire brain would be unsustainable. Here's where energy efficiency comes in. Letting just a small proportion of cells signal at any one time, known as sparse coding, uses the least energy, but carries the most information. Because the small number of signals have thousands of possible paths by which to distribute themselves. A drawback of sparse coding within a huge number of neurons is its cost. Worse, if a big proportion of cells never fire, then they are superfluous and evolution should have jettisoned them long ago. The solution is to find the optimum proportion of cells that the brain can have active at once. For maximum efficiency, between 1% and 16% of cells should be active at any given moment. This is the energy limit we have to live with in order to be conscious at all. The need to conserve resources is the reason most of the brain's operations must happen outside of consciousness. It's why multitasking is a fool's errand. We simply lack the energy to do two things at once, let alone three or five. When we try, we do each task less well than if we had given it our full attention. The numbers are against us. Your brain is already smart and powerful. So powerful that it needs a lot of power to stay powerful. And so smart that it has built in an energy-efficiency plan. So don't let a fraudulent myth make you guilty about your supposedly lazy brain. Guilt would be a waste of energy. After all this, don't you realize it's dumb to waste mental energy? You have billions of power-hungry neurons to maintain. So hop to it! |
Can robots be creative? | null | TED-Ed | How does this music make you feel? Do you find it beautiful? Is it creative? Now, would you change your answers if you learned the composer was this robot? Believe it or not, people have been grappling with the question of artificial creativity, alongside the question of artifcial intelligence, for over 170 years. In 1843, Lady Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician considered the world's first computer programmer, wrote that a machine could not have human-like intelligence as long as it only did what humans intentionally programmed it to do. According to Lovelace, a machine must be able to create original ideas if it is to be considered intelligent. The Lovelace Test, formalized in 2001, proposes a way of scrutinizing this idea. A machine can pass this test if it can produce an outcome that its designers cannot explain based on their original code. The Lovelace Test is, by design, more of a thought experiment than an objective scientific test. But it's a place to start. At first glance, the idea of a machine creating high quality, original music in this way might seem impossible. We could come up with an extremely complex algorithm using random number generators, chaotic functions, and fuzzy logic to generate a sequence of musical notes in a way that would be impossible to track. But although this would yield countless original melodies never heard before, only a tiny fraction of them would be worth listening to. With the computer having no way to distinguish between those which we would consider beautiful and those which we won't. But what if we took a step back and tried to model a natural process that allows creativity to form? We happen to know of at least one such process that has lead to original, valuable, and even beautiful outcomes: the process of evolution. And evolutionary algorithms, or genetic algorithms that mimic biological evolution, are one promising approach to making machines generate original and valuable artistic outcomes. So how can evolution make a machine musically creative? Well, instead of organisms, we can start with an initial population of musical phrases, and a basic algorithm that mimics reproduction and random mutations by switching some parts, combining others, and replacing random notes. Now that we have a new generation of phrases, we can apply selection using an operation called a fitness function. Just as biological fitness is determined by external environmental pressures, our fitness function can be determined by an external melody chosen by human musicians, or music fans, to represent the ultimate beautiful melody. The algorithm can then compare between our musical phrases and that beautiful melody, and select only the phrases that are most similar to it. Once the least similar sequences are weeded out, the algorithm can reapply mutation and recombination to what's left, select the most similar, or fitted ones, again from the new generation, and repeat for many generations. The process that got us there has so much randomness and complexity built in that the result might pass the Lovelace Test. More importantly, thanks to the presence of human aesthetic in the process, we'll theoretically generate melodies we would consider beautiful. But does this satisfy our intuition for what is truly creative? Is it enough to make something original and beautiful, or does creativity require intention and awareness of what is being created? Perhaps the creativity in this case is really coming from the programmers, even if they don't understand the process. What is human creativity, anyways? Is it something more than a system of interconnected neurons developed by biological algorithmic processes and the random experiences that shape our lives? Order and chaos, machine and human. These are the dynamos at the heart of machine creativity initiatives that are currently making music, sculptures, paintings, poetry and more. The jury may still be out as to whether it's fair to call these acts of creation creative. But if a piece of art can make you weep, or blow your mind, or send shivers down your spine, does it really matter who or what created it? |
Mansa Musa, one of the wealthiest people who ever lived | {0: 'For master teacher and performing artist, Jessica “Culture Queen” Smith, there’s nothing more important than helping children and families connect with their culture and discover their own regalia.Smith has traveled the globe to awaken children’s curiosity, cultural awareness, and self-pride. She has taken center-stage at the Kennedy Center, trained educators at Yale University, facilitated workshops for teachers and students in Ghana, and delivered community-based programming for the Smithsonian and dozens of other museums, libraries, and schools.'} | TED-Ed | If someone asked you who the richest people in history were, who would you name? Perhaps a billionaire banker or corporate mogul, like Bill Gates or John D. Rockefeller. How about African King Musa Keita I? Ruling the Mali Empire in the 14th century CE, Mansa Musa, or the King of Kings, amassed a fortune that possibly made him one of the wealthiest people who ever lived. But his vast wealth was only one piece of his rich legacy. When Mansa Musa came to power in 1312, much of Europe was racked by famine and civil wars. But many African kingdoms and the Islamic world were flourishing, and Mansa Musa played a great role in bringing the fruits of this flourishing to his own realm. By strategically annexing the city of Timbuktu, and reestablishing power over the city of Gao, he gained control over important trade routes between the Mediterranean and the West African Coast, continuing a period of expansion, which dramatically increased Mali's size. The territory of the Mali Empire was rich in natural resources, such as gold and salt. The world first witnessed the extent of Mansa Musa's wealth in 1324 when he took his pilgrimage to Mecca. Not one to travel on a budget, he brought a caravan stretching as far as the eye could see. Accounts of this journey are mostly based on an oral testimony and differing written records, so it's difficult to determine the exact details. But what most agree on is the extravagant scale of the excursion. Chroniclers describe an entourage of tens of thousands of soldiers, civilians, and slaves, 500 heralds bearing gold staffs and dressed in fine silks, and many camels and horses bearing an abundance of gold bars. Stopping in cities such as Cairo, Mansa Musa is said to have spent massive quantities of gold, giving to the poor, buying souvenirs, and even having mosques built along the way. In fact, his spending may have destabilized the regional economy, causing mass inflation. This journey reportedly took over a year, and by the time Mansa Musa returned, tales of his amazing wealth had spread to the ports of the Mediterranean. Mali and its king were elevated to near legendary status, cemented by their inclusion on the 1375 Catalan Atlas. One of the most important world maps of Medieval Europe, it depicted the King holding a scepter and a gleaming gold nugget. Mansa Musa had literally put his empire and himself on the map. But material riches weren't the king's only concern. As a devout Muslim, he took a particular interest in Timbuktu, already a center of religion and learning prior to its annexation. Upon returning from his pilgrimage, he had the great Djinguereber Mosque built there with the help of an Andalusian architect. He also established a major university, further elevating the city's reputation, and attracting scholars and students from all over the Islamic world. Under Mansa Musa, the Empire became urbanized, with schools and mosques in hundreds of densely populated towns. The king's rich legacy persisted for generations and to this day, there are mausoleums, libraries and mosques that stand as a testament to this golden age of Mali's history. |
The Atlantic slave trade: What too few textbooks told you | null | TED-Ed | Slavery, the treatment of human beings as property, deprived of personal rights, has occurred in many forms throughout the world. But one institution stands out for both its global scale and its lasting legacy. The Atlantic slave trade, occurring from the late 15th to the mid 19th century and spanning three continents, forcibly brought more than 10 million Africans to the Americas. The impact it would leave affected not only these slaves and their descendants, but the economies and histories of large parts of the world. There had been centuries of contact between Europe and Africa via the Mediterranean. But the Atlantic slave trade began in the late 1400s with Portuguese colonies in West Africa, and Spanish settlement of the Americas shortly after. The crops grown in the new colonies, sugar cane, tobacco, and cotton, were labor intensive, and there were not enough settlers or indentured servants to cultivate all the new land. American Natives were enslaved, but many died from new diseases, while others effectively resisted. And so to meet the massive demand for labor, the Europeans looked to Africa. African slavery had existed for centuries in various forms. Some slaves were indentured servants, with a limited term and the chance to buy one's freedom. Others were more like European serfs. In some societies, slaves could be part of a master's family, own land, and even rise to positions of power. But when white captains came offering manufactured goods, weapons, and rum for slaves, African kings and merchants had little reason to hesitate. They viewed the people they sold not as fellow Africans but criminals, debtors, or prisoners of war from rival tribes. By selling them, kings enriched their own realms, and strengthened them against neighboring enemies. African kingdoms prospered from the slave trade, but meeting the European's massive demand created intense competition. Slavery replaced other criminal sentences, and capturing slaves became a motivation for war, rather than its result. To defend themselves from slave raids, neighboring kingdoms needed European firearms, which they also bought with slaves. The slave trade had become an arms race, altering societies and economies across the continent. As for the slaves themselves, they faced unimaginable brutality. After being marched to slave forts on the coast, shaved to prevent lice, and branded, they were loaded onto ships bound for the Americas. About 20% of them would never see land again. Most captains of the day were tight packers, cramming as many men as possible below deck. While the lack of sanitation caused many to die of disease, and others were thrown overboard for being sick, or as discipline, the captain's ensured their profits by cutting off slave's ears as proof of purchase. Some captives took matters into their own hands. Many inland Africans had never seen whites before, and thought them to be cannibals, constantly taking people away and returning for more. Afraid of being eaten, or just to avoid further suffering, they committed suicide or starved themselves, believing that in death, their souls would return home. Those who survived were completley dehumanized, treated as mere cargo. Women and children were kept above deck and abused by the crew, while the men were made to perform dances in order to keep them exercised and curb rebellion. What happened to those Africans who reached the New World and how the legacy of slavery still affects their descendants today is fairly well known. But what is not often discussed is the effect that the Atlantic slave trade had on Africa's future. Not only did the continent lose tens of millions of its able-bodied population, but because most of the slaves taken were men, the long-term demographic effect was even greater. When the slave trade was finally outlawed in the Americas and Europe, the African kingdoms whose economies it had come to dominate collapsed, leaving them open to conquest and colonization. And the increased competition and influx of European weapons fueled warfare and instability that continues to this day. The Atlantic slave trade also contributed to the development of racist ideology. Most African slavery had no deeper reason than legal punishment or intertribal warfare, but the Europeans who preached a universal religion, and who had long ago outlawed enslaving fellow Christians, needed justification for a practice so obviously at odds with their ideals of equality. So they claimed that Africans were biologically inferior and destined to be slaves, making great efforts to justify this theory. Thus, slavery in Europe and the Americas acquired a racial basis, making it impossible for slaves and their future descendants to attain equal status in society. In all of these ways, the Atlantic slave trade was an injustice on a massive scale whose impact has continued long after its abolition. |
What is love? | null | TED-Ed | What is love? Seriously, though, what is it? What is love? A verb? A noun? A universal truth? An ideal? A common thread of all religions? A cult? A neurological phenomenon? There's no shortage of answers. Some are all-encompassing. It conquers all. It's all you need. It's all there is. These are all comparisons, though, ways of defining it by contrast, by saying it's more important than all other things, but is it? Sure, love matters more than your standard turkey sandwich, but does it matter more than shelter? Or sanity? Or an exceptional turkey sandwich? No matter your answer, you're just ranking it, not defining it. Another challenge to defining love is we often try to do so while falling into it or out of it. Would you trust someone who just won the lottery to accurately define the concept of currency? Or, I don't know, ask a guy to define bears while he's fending them off? Or is romance not like winning the lottery? Are break ups not like bear attacks? Bad comparisons? That's my point. I'm not thinking right because I'm in love, so ha! Taking a step back, or taking a cold shower, whatever, love is potentially the most intensely thought about thing in all of human history. And despite centuries upon centuries of obsession, it still overwhelms us. Some say it's a feeling, a magical emotion, a feeling for someone like you've never felt before. But feelings are fluid, not very concrete foundation for a definition. Sometimes you hate the person you love. Plus, come on, you've felt feelings like it before, sort of in miniature. Your relationships with your family shape your relationships with partners. And your love for your partner may be in its own dynamic relationship, healthy or totally weird, with the love of your parents and siblings. Love is also a set of behaviors we associate with the feeling: Holding hands, kissing, hugging, public displays of affection, dating, marriage, having kids, or just sex. But these loving actions can be subjective or culturally relative. You may love or be someone who can't have kids or doesn't want to, who believes in marriage but also in divorce, who's from a culture where people don't really date the way we think of dating, or who just doesn't want to make out on the bus. But if love is a thing that we can define, then how can it mean opposite things for so many people? So, maybe love's just all in your head, a personal mystery winding through your neural pathways and lighting up pleasing, natural rewards in your nervous system. Perhaps these rewards are addictive. Perhaps love is a temporary or permanent addiction to a person, just like a person can be addicted to a drug. I don't mean to be edgy like some pop song. Evidence shows that chemicals in your brain stimulated by another person can make you develop a habit for that person. The person comes to satisfy a physiological craving, and you want more. But then sometimes, slowly or suddenly, you don't. You've fallen out of love, become unaddicted, for a spell. What happened? Does one develop a tolerance or hit a limit? Why do some lovers stay addicted to each other their entire lives? Perhaps to create new lives, to proliferate their species? Maybe love is just human DNA's optimal method for bringing about its own replication. There are evolutionary arguments regarding every human mating behavior, from how we display ourselves to potential mates, to how we treat each other in relationships, to how we raise kids. Thus, some argue that the feeling you think you feel in your soul is just biology's way to make you continue our species. Nature has selected you to have crushes on hotties, just like it makes monkeys have crushes on hot monkeys, and biology marches on. But is that all love is? Or, perhaps worse, is it just a construct, some fake concept we all convince each other to try to live up to for a fake sense of purpose? Maybe it is a construct, but let's be more precise about what a construct is because love is constructed from reality: Our experiences, feelings, brain chemistry, cultural expectations, our lives. And this edifice can be viewed through countless dimensions: scientific, emotional, historical, spiritual, legal, or just personal. If no two people are the same, no two people's love is the same either. So, in every loving relationship, there's a lot to talk about and partners should be open to that, or the relationship probably won't last. Love is always up for discussion and, sure, under construction. So, if we can't define it, that's a good sign. It means we're all still making it. Wait, I didn't mean, you know what I meant. |
Why do some people go bald? | null | TED-Ed | What do Charles Darwin, Michael Jordan, and Yoda have in common? They, like many other historical and fictive individuals, are bald, in some cases by their own choice. For centuries, a shining dome has been a symbol of intelligence, but despite this, many balding people still wish their hair would return. Scientists have long pondered, "Why do some people lose their hair, and how can we bring it back?" The full-headed among us have about 100,000 to 150,000 hairs on our scalps, and scientists have discovered two things about this dense thicket. Firstly, the sprouting hair we see is mostly made up of keratin, the protein leftover from dead cells that are forced upwards as new cells grow beneath them. Secondly, the structures that drive hair growth are called hair follicles, a network of complex organs that forms before we're born, and grows hair in an everlasting cycle. This cycle has three main phases. The first is anagen, the growth phase, which up to 90% of your hair follicles are experiencing right now, causing them to push up hair at a rate of one centimeter per month. Anagen can last for two to seven years, depending on your genes. After this productive period, signals within the skin instruct some follicles to enter a new phase known as catagen, or the regressing stage, causing hair follicles to shrink to a fraction of their original length. Catagen lasts for about two to three weeks and cuts blood supply to the follicle, creating a club hair, meaning it's ready to be shed. Finally, hairs enter telogen, the resting phase, which lasts for ten to twelve weeks, and affects about 5-15% of your scalp follicles. During telogen, up to 200 club hairs can be shed in a day, which is quite normal. Then, the growth cycle begins anew. But not all heads are hairy, and, in fact, some of them grow increasingly patchy over time in response to bodily changes. 95% of baldness in men can be attributed to male pattern baldness. Baldness is inherited, and in people with this condition, follicles become incredibly sensitive to the effects of dihydrotestosterone, a hormonal product made from testosterone. DHT causes shrinkage in these overly sensitive follicles, making hair shorter and wispier. But loss isn't sudden. It happens gradually, along a metric known as the Norwood Scale, which describes the severity of hair loss. First, hair recedes along the temples, then hair on the crown begins to thin in a circular pattern. At the highest rating on the scale, these balding areas meet and expand dramatically, eventually leaving only a ring of sparse hair around the temples and the back of the head. Genetics isn't all that drives hair loss. Long periods of stress can release signals that shock follicles and force them into the resting phase prematurely. Some women experience this after childbirth. Follicles might also lose the ability to go into anagen, the growth phase. People going through chemotherapy treatment temporarily experience this. But while balding may look permanent, scientific investigation has revealed the opposite. Below the skin's surface, the roots that give rise to our hair actually remain alive. Using this knowledge, scientists have developed drugs that shorten the resting phase, and force follicles into anagen. Other drugs combat male pattern baldness by blocking the conversion of testosterone to DHT so that it doesn't affect those sensitive follicles. Stem cells also play a role in regulating the growth cycle, and so scientists are investigating whether they can manipulate the activity of these cells to encourage follicles to start producing hair again. And in the meantime, while scientists hone their hair-reviving methods, anyone going bald, or considering baldness, can remember that they're in great company. |
The moon illusion | null | TED-Ed | Have you ever noticed how the full moon looks bigger when it's near the horizon than when it's high over head? If so, you're not alone. People have wondered about this strange effect since ancient times, and surprisingly, we still don't have a great explanation, but that's not for lack of trying. Some of the greatest minds in history - Aristotle, Ptolemy, Da Vinci, Decartes - have all wrestled with this problem and failed to generate an adequate explanation. One of the first ideas suggested was that the image of the moon in the sky really is bigger near the horizon. Perhaps the Earth's atmosphere acts like a giant lens, magnifying the moon as it rises and sets. But this explanation doesn't cut it. If anything, the refraction of the atmosphere would make the moon look slightly smaller. Plus, if you actually measure the size of the visible moon at different positions, it doesn't change at all. But then, why does it still seem bigger when it's rising? This must be some kind of optical illusion. The question is, which one? One explanation is the Ebbinghaus Illusion, where two identical objects look different because of the relative size of the objects they're surrounded by. Here the two center circles are actually the same size. Maybe the moon looks bigger near the horizon because it's next to tiny trees, houses, and towers in the distance. But when the moon is higher up, it's surrounded by the vast darkness of the night sky and looks tiny by comparison. Another possibility is the famous Ponzo Illusion. If you've ever tried to draw in perspective, you know that the closer something is to the horizon, the smaller you should draw it. Our brain compensates automatically for this by perceiving objects near the horizon as larger than they actually appear. The two yellow lines in this drawing are the same size, but the upper one seems bigger because we interpret it as receding farther into the horizon. So, between Ponzo and Ebbinghaus, it seems like we've solved the mystery of the moon illusion, but, unfortunately, there are a few details that complicate things. For one thing, if this was just the Ebbinghaus effect, then we would expect the moon illusion to disappear for pilots flying high above the clouds since there wouldn't be any other smaller objects near the horizon. But in fact, pilots and sailors out on the ocean still claim to see the moon illusion. On the other hand, if it's just our brain's autocorrecting the size of objects near the horizon, then we'd expect the moon illusion to be visible inside a planetarium, where the whole sky, including the horizon, is displayed on a spherical dome overhead. Studies have shown, though, that this is not the case. To make matters worse, it seems the moon illusion disappears entirely if you just bend over and look at the moon between your legs. Now, this is just getting ridiculous! One of the most promising explanations today is known as Convergence Micropsia. Our brains judge the distance to objects and their apparent size by the focus of our eyes. When looking at the horizon, your eyes focus far off into the distance so your brain knows you're looking far away. The moon appears a certain size. Your brain thinks it's far away, which it is, so you naturally conclude the moon must be big. But when looking up at the night sky, there's nothing for your eyes to focus on, so they default to their rest focus, which is a point just a few meters away. Now your brain thinks the moon is much closer than it really is, so you naturally conclude the moon's not as big as you thought it was. Rather than explain why the moon looks so big near the horizon, Convergence Microspia explains why the moon looks so small when overhead. Still not satisfied? Well, frankly, neither are many scientists, so the debate over the moon illusion still rages on and may continue as long as we still see it in the night sky. |
The most groundbreaking scientist you've never heard of | null | TED-Ed | Nicolas Steno is rarely heard of outside Intro to Geology, but anyone hoping to understand life on Earth should see how Steno expanded and connected those very concepts: Earth, life, and understanding. Born Niels Stensen in 1638 Denmark, son of a goldsmith, he was a sickly kid whose school chums died of plague. He survived to cut up corpses as an anatomist, studying organs shared across species. He found a duct in animal skulls that sends saliva to the mouth. He refuted Descartes' idea that only humans had a pineal gland, proving it wasn't the seat of the soul, arguably, the debut of neuroscience. Most remarkable for the time was his method. Steno never let ancient texts, Aristotelian metaphysics, or Cartesian deductions overrule empirical, experimental evidence. His vision, uncluttered by speculation or rationalization, went deep. Steno had seen how gallstones form in wet organs by accretion. They obeyed molding principles he knew from the goldsmith trade, rules useful across disciplines for understanding solids by their structural relationships. Later, the Grand Duke of Tuscany had him dissect a shark. Its teeth resembled tongue stones, odd rocks seen inside other rocks in Malta and the mountains near Florence. Pliny the Elder, old Roman naturalist, said these fell from the sky. In the Dark Ages, folks said they were snake tongues, petrified by Saint Paul. Steno saw that tongue stones were shark teeth and vice versa, with the same signs of structural growth. Figuring similar things are made in similar ways, he argued the ancient teeth came from ancient sharks in waters that formed rock around the teeth and became mountains. Rock layers were once layers of watery sediment, which would lay out horizontally, one atop another, oldest up to newest. If layers were deformed, tilted, cut by a fault or a canyon, that change came after the layer formed. Sounds simple today; back then, revolutionary. He'd invented stratigraphy and laid geology's ground work. By finding one origin for shark teeth from two eras by stating natural laws ruling the present also ruled the past, Steno planted seeds for uniformitarianism, the idea that the past was shaped by processes observable today. In the 18th and 19th centuries, English uniformitarian geologists, James Hutton and Charles Lyell, studied current, very slow rates of erosion and sedimentation and realized the Earth had to be way older than the biblical guestimate, 6000 years. Out of their work came the rock cycle, which combined with plate tectonics in the mid-twentieth century to give us the great molten-crusting, quaking, all-encircling theory of the Earth, from a gallstone to a 4.5 billion-year-old planet. Now think bigger, take it to biology. Say you see shark teeth in one layer and a fossil of an organism you've never seen under that. The deeper fossil's older, yes? You now have evidence of the origin and extinction of species over time. Get uniformitarian. Maybe a process still active today caused changes not just in rocks but in life. It might also explain similarities and differences between species found by anatomists like Steno. It's a lot to ponder, but Charles Darwin had the time on a long trip to the Galapagos, reading a copy of his friend Charles Lyell's "Principles of Geology," which Steno sort of founded. Sometimes giants stand on the shoulders of curious little people. Nicolas Steno helped evolve evolution, broke ground for geology, and showed how unbiased, empirical observation can cut across intellectual borders to deepen our perspective. His finest accomplishment, though, may be his maxim, casting the search for truth beyond our senses and our current understanding as the pursuit of the beauty of the as yet unknown. Beautiful is what we see, more beautiful is what we know, most beautiful, by far, is what we don't. |
What happens during a heart attack? | null | TED-Ed | Approximately 7 million people around the world die from heart attacks every year, and cardiovascular disease, which causes heart attacks and other problems like strokes, is the world's leading killer. So what causes a heart attack? Like all muscles, the heart needs oxygen, and during a heart attack, it can't get enough. Fatty deposits, or plaques, develop on the walls of our coronary arteries. Those are the vessels that supply oxygenated blood to the heart. These plaques grow as we age, sometimes getting chunky, hardened, or enflamed. Eventually, the plaques can turn into blockages. If one of the plaques ruptures or cracks, a blood clot will form around it in minutes, and a partially closed artery can become completely blocked. Blood flow is cut off to the cardiac muscle and the oxygen-starved cells start to die within several minutes. This is a myocardial infarction, or heart attack. Things can rapidly deteriorate in the absence of treatment. The injured muscle may not be able to pump blood as well, and its rhythm might be thrown off. In the worst case scenario, a heart attack can cause sudden death. And how do you know that someone is having a heart attack? The most common symptom is chest pain caused by the oxygen-deprived heart muscle. Patients describe it as crushing or vice-like. It can radiate to the left arm, jaw, back, or abdomen. But it's not always as sudden and dramatic as it is in the movies. Some people experience nausea or shortness of breath. Symptoms may be less prominent in women and the elderly. For them, weakness and tiredness may be the main signal. And surprisingly, in many people, especially those with diabetes, which affects the nerves that carry pain, a heart attack may be silent. If you think that someone might be having a heart attack, the most important thing is to respond quickly. If you have access to emergency medical services, call them. They're the fastest way to get to a hospital. Taking aspirin, which thins the blood, and nitroglycerin, which opens up the artery, can help keep the heart attack from getting worse. In the emergency room, doctors can diagnose a heart attack. They commonly use an electrocardiogram to measure the heart's electrical activity and a blood test to assess heart muscle damage. The patient is then taken to a high-tech cardiac suite where tests are done to locate the blockages. Cardiologists can reopen the blocked artery by inflating it with a balloon in a procedure called an angioplasty. Frequently, they also insert a metal or polymer stent that will hold the artery open. More extensive blockages might require coronary artery bypass surgery. Using a piece of vein or artery from another part of the body, heart surgeons can reroute blood flow around the blockage. These procedures reestablish circulation to the cardiac muscle, restoring heart function. Heart attack treatment is advancing, but prevention is vital. Genetics and lifestyle factors both affect your risk. And the good news is that you can change your lifestyle. Exercise, a healthy diet, and weight loss all lower the risk of heart attacks, whether you've had one before or not. Doctors recommend exercising a few times a week, doing both aerobic activity and strength training. A heart-healthy diet is low in sugar and saturated fats, which are both linked to heart disease. So what should you eat? Lots of fiber from vegetables, chicken and fish instead of red meat, whole grains and nuts like walnuts and almonds all seem to be beneficial. A good diet and exercise plan can also keep your weight in a healthy range, which will lower your heart attack risk as well. And of course, medications can also help prevent heart attacks. Doctors often prescribe low-dose aspirin, for example, particularly for patients who've already had a heart attack and for those known to be at high risk. And drugs that help manage risk factors, like high blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes, will make heart attacks less likely, too. Heart attacks may be common, but they don't have to be inevitable. A healthy diet, avoiding tobacco use, staying fit, and enjoying plenty of sleep and lots of laughter all go a long way in making sure your body's most important muscle keeps on beating. |
The death of the universe | null | TED-Ed | Looking up at the night sky, we are amazed by how it seems to go on forever. But what will the sky look like billions of years from now? A particular type of scientist, called a cosmologist, spends her time thinking about that very question. The end of the universe is intimately linked to what the universe contains. Over 100 years ago, Einstein developed the Theory of General Relativity, formed of equations that help us understand the relationship between what a universe is made of and its shape. It turns out that the universe could be curved like a ball or sphere. We call this positively curved or closed. Or it could be shaped like a saddle. We call this negatively curved or open. Or it could be flat. And that shape determines how the universe will live and die. We now know that the universe is very close to flat. However, the components of the universe can still affect its eventual fate. We can predict how the universe will change with time if we measure the amounts or energy densities of the various components in the universe today. So, what is the universe made of? The universe contains all the things that we can see, like stars, gas, and planets. We call these things ordinary or baryonic matter. Even though we see them all around us, the total energy density of these components is actually very small, around 5% of the total energy of the universe. So, now let's talk about what the other 95% is. Just under 27% of the rest of the energy density of the universe is made up of what we call dark matter. Dark matter is only very weakly interacting with light, which means it doesn't shine or reflect light in the way that stars and planets do, but, in every other way, it behaves like ordinary matter — it attracts things gravitationally. In fact, the only way we can detect this dark matter is through this gravitational interaction, how things orbit around it and how it bends light as it curves the space around it. We have yet to discover a dark matter particle, but scientists all over the world are searching for this elusive particle or particles and the effects of dark matter on the universe. But this still doesn't add up to 100%. The remaining 68% of the energy density of the universe is made up of dark energy, which is even more mysterious than dark matter. This dark energy doesn't behave like any other substance we know at all and acts more like anti-gravity force. We say that it has a gravitational pressure, which ordinary matter and dark matter do not. Instead of pulling the universe together, as we would expect gravity to do, the universe appears to be expanding apart at an ever-increasing rate. The leading idea for dark energy is that it is a cosmological constant. That means it has the strange property that it expands as the volume of space increases to keep its energy density constant. So, as the universe expands as it is doing right now, there will be more and more dark energy. Dark matter and baryonic matter, on the other hand, don't expand with the universe and become more diluted. Because of this property of the cosmological constant, the future universe will be more and more dominated by dark energy, becoming colder and colder and expanding faster and faster. Eventually, the universe will run out of gas to form stars, and the stars themselves will run out of fuel and burn out, leaving the universe with only black holes in it. Given enough time, even these black holes will evaporate, leaving a universe that is completely cold and empty. That is what we call the heat death of the universe. While it might sound depressing living in a universe that will end its lifetime cold and devoid of life, the end fate of our universe actually has a beautiful symmetry to its hot, fiery beginning. We call the accelerating end state of the universe a de Sitter phase, named after the Dutch mathematician Willem de Sitter. However, we also believe that the universe had another phase of de Sitter expansion in the earliest times of its life. We call this early period inflation, where, shortly after the Big Bang, the universe expanded extremely fast for a brief period. So, the universe will end in much the same state as it began, accelerating. We live at an extraordinary time in the life of the universe where we can start to understand the universe's journey and view a history that plays itself out on the sky for all of us to see. |
Could human civilization spread across the whole galaxy? | {0: 'Roey Tzezana, PhD, is a research fellow in the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center and manages the program for Futures Studies at Lahav Executive Education in Recanati Business School at Tel Aviv University.\n\nHis first book, Guide to the Future, focused public attention on the disruptive influence of emerging technologies on society. Tzezana has founded and is the director of The Simpolitix Project for political forecasting, and is ‘living the future’ as co-founder of TeleBuddy: a start-up company helping people connect via telepresence robots everywhere in the world.'} | TED-Ed | Could human civilization eventually spread across the whole Milky Way galaxy? Could we move beyond our small blue planet to establish colonies in the multitude of star systems out there? This question's a pretty daunting one. There are around 300 billion stars in the galaxy, which is about 160,000 light-years across. So far we've sent a single spacecraft outside our solar system, trudging along at 0.006% of the speed of light. At that rate, it would take over 2.5 billion years just to get from one end of the galaxy to the other. And then there's the question of human survival. The gulf between stars is simply enormous. We couldn't live sustainably on most planets, and we require a lot of resources to stay alive. And yet, decades ago, scholars found that it's theoretically possible to not just spread human civilization across the galaxy, but to do so quite quickly, without breaking any known laws of physics. Their idea is based on the work of a mathematician named John von Neumann, who designed on paper machines that could self-replicate and create new generations of themselves. These would later come to be known as von Neumann machines. In the context of space exploration, von Neumann machines could be built on Earth and launched into space. There, the self-sufficient machines would land on distant planets. They would then mine the available resources and harvest energy, build replicas of themselves, launch those to the nearest planets, and continue the cycle. The result is the creation of millions of probes spreading outwards into the universe like a drop of ink in a fishbowl. Scholars crunched the numbers and found that a single von Neumann machine traveling at 5% of the speed of light should be able to replicate throughout our galaxy in 4 million years or less. That may sound like a long time, but when you consider that our universe is 14 billion years old, on a cosmic scale, it's incredibly fast - the equivalent of about 2.5 hours in an entire year. Creating von Neumann machines would require a few technologies we don't have yet, including advanced artificial intelligence, miniaturization, and better propulsion systems. If we wanted to use them to spread actual humans throughout the galaxy, we would need yet another technological leap - the ability to artificially grow biological organisms and bodies using raw elements and genetic information. Regardless, if in the last billion years an alien civilization created such a machine and set it multiplying its way toward us, our galaxy would be swarming with them by now. So then where are all these machines? Some astronomers, like Carl Sagan, say that intelligent aliens wouldn't build self-replicating machines at all. They might hurtle out of control, scavenging planets to their cores in order to keep replicating. Others take the machines absence as proof that intelligent alien civilizations don't exist, or that they go extinct before they can develop the necessary technologies. But all this hasn't stopped people from imagining what it would be like if they were out there. Science fiction author David Brin writes about a universe in which many different von Neumann machines exist and proliferate simultaneously. Some are designed to greet young civilizations, others to locate and destroy them before they become a threat. In fact, in Brin's story "Lungfish," some von Neumann machines are keeping a close watch over the Earth right now, waiting for us to reach a certain level of sophistication before they make their move. For now, all we have is curiosity and theory. But the next time you look at the night sky, consider that billions of self-replicating machines could be advancing between stars in our galaxy right now. If they exist, one of them will eventually land on Earth, or maybe, just maybe, they're already here. |
Empower a girl, transform a community | {0: "Dr. Kakenya Ntaiya is the founder and president of Kakenya's Dream, an international nonprofit organization leveraging education to empower girls, end harmful traditional practices and transform communities in rural Kenya."} | TEDWomen 2018 | To empower girls, you need to educate them. That was my dream. And so I built a school, and in the process, I learned something much bigger. When you empower a girl, you transform a community. School is just a start. I grew up in rural Kenya in a small village called Enoosaen. I was the first of eight children, and I spent my childhood helping my mother cook, clean, farm and take care of my siblings. Like other Maasai girls, I was engaged from a very young age to be married. But as I reached puberty, I underwent female genital mutilation, known as FGM. This picture shows some of the tools that are used to perform FGM on girls. FGM was supposed to mark the end of my childhood and, by extension, my education. But I negotiated with my father in order to stay in school — even after going through FGM. Years later I went to university. And in order to get my community's support, I promised to come back one day to repay that support. But years later, when I went back to my village, not much had changed. Girls were still going through FGM, still leaving school, still getting married to men older than their fathers and still having children when they're teenagers. I did not want to see any more girls go through that. That's when I knew what I needed to do to give back to my community. I built a school just for girls so that they can be free from FGM and early marriage. At my first enrollment — (Applause and cheers) At my first enrollment, I had hoped for 10 girls. 100 came. (Cheers and applause) I started to realize just how big this dream was, and soon I learned that my school could be the foundation — but it wasn't going to be enough. So that first year, I enrolled these 30 girls. Some had been abused, others were orphans, and some came from families that are very traditional, that had never sent any girl to school. So school started. Though the girls seemed excited to be there, they were having difficulty staying awake. What was going on? They had a teacher, they had books, there was a new classroom on the way, but ... They were determined to be there, but they had no energy. Then I realized they were hungry, so I quickly found a cook and food. Soon thereafter, I learned that a classroom was not enough. I needed a boarding school. Not only were the girls tired and hungry from chores and long walks to school and back home, they were also not safe. It's a sad truth, but girls are often assaulted, raped and even kidnapped on their way to school. So before a girl could learn math or history, she needed to feel safe, she needed to be rested and be well-nourished. So let me tell you about some of my girls. This is Faith. Faith comes from a very traditional family in the community. Her older sister had already gone through FGM and already married, but Faith was so determined. She really loved learning, and she wanted to come to my school when she heard about it. So she asked her father, her mother — anyone to bring her to my school. They all refused. Faith did something very brave. She stole an egg from her mother's house, went to the market, sold the egg and bought a single pencil. Then she walked five miles, clenching that pencil, trying to enroll. She arrived — (Applause) She arrived tired and hungry, but determined. I listened to her story, and we enrolled her in my school. But getting into my school was only just the start. Faith needed food, she needed medicine, she needed counseling — all of which we provided. And she also met adults who already believed in her. Supported by this community, Faith was ready to learn. This is Faith. Six months of schooling, now she's a happy sixth grader who dreams of becoming a pilot someday, and her family now supports her, and best of all, her younger sisters will follow in her footsteps. (Applause) Child marriage is expected to cost the global economy trillions of dollars over the next 15 years. We can talk numbers, but in a real lifetime, what child marriage will cost my village is the doctor, the teacher, the entrepreneur, the true partner our men will need in the future ... real ways women can help us lift out of poverty. So I came to realize once again, as I did when I needed help to go to university, that while I could dream or have a dream, I could not make it come true all by myself. So I went back to the elders who helped me more than a decade ago. I needed their support once again if I was going to be successful. So I formed a community board with religious leaders, parents and some teachers from other schools. I needed allies in the government and in the community to help advance my goal. I needed especially the support of the chief to help me enforce the no-FGM policy in my school. At first he was resistant, but I persisted — (Laughter) and now he's our greatest ally. (Applause) I also needed the fathers. That brings me to Linet. Linet's father, Momposhi, did not believe in the education of girls. In fact, he himself never went to school. But Linet's mother believed in Linet and brought her to enroll in my school, and I knew she belonged with us. I just had to find a way to get Momposhi to believe in Linet, too. So I used the pretense of revealing Linet's grade to get Momposhi to come. He came, and he started noticing his daughter being promising as a student. With each visit, he built a strong relationship with his daughter — noticing not just her grades but also accepting her as someone with full potential. So when Linet was accepted in one of the top national high schools after eighth grade, Momposhi was bursting with pride and went around the village telling everyone how proud and how smart his daughter was. (Laughter) Can you imagine? He brought Linet to the new school himself. It was the first time either of them had ever been to Nairobi. Today Linet is studying at university in Australia — (Applause and cheers) and Momposhi is our greatest advocate in the community. I also brought mothers to the table, including my own. That's my mother in one of our training programs. And our mothers are involved in the education of their own children. I also brought grandmothers into the mix. (Laughter) In my community, grandmothers are the proud keepers of our stories and cultures, and I wanted my girls to learn and embrace our rich Maasai culture. Today, grandmothers do story time with the girls, and it's a beautiful way our community remains connected. I also ... started working with the boys! (Laughter) What would happen if the boys grew up with the same mindset as their fathers before them? I'll tell you, not much will change. So I enlisted support from an organization called I'm Worth Defending: a group of young, progressive leaders led by Alfred and George. Together we created a training program for boys and girls who could not attend my school, sharing vital information about gender equality, health and human rights. Today we have reached over 10,000 boys and girls and counting. (Applause) It turns out it truly does take a village to make this kind of a dream come true. (Laughter) That's what you're seeing today, where nearly 400 girls have not gone through FGM in my village, in a region where nearly 80 percent of women have been cut. Believe me, these girls, they are sharing their experiences with their sisters, their cousins and their friends. They're so interested. Over time, this is becoming the new normal and it's being embraced by the same, same community — my community. So what does transforming communities mean to Kenya? President Obama visited Kenya in 2015, and he met with representatives from organizations trying to help improve communities. Guess what? He met Linet! (Laughter) (Applause) Together they talked about a Kenya where all girls have the same opportunities, where Linet is a leader and where communities like Enoosaen are thriving because its members — all its members — have opportunities. Helping the communities see that each daughter is a treasure, every sister is full of potential, and helping every single girl see that value in herself. There is no limit to what that future will cost. Not every girl who comes to my school will be a PhD, but every single one of them will achieve her full potential and will become an advocate for her children and her grandchildren for years to come. Today my dreams are informed by what I learned from them and what I've learned from you. My journey led me out of Enoosaen and back again. And in the process, I was embraced by the world, and you have become my village. So I make a new promise to you, my elders, my sisters and my friends, that I am going to keep dreaming and keep going until girls like Linet and Faith achieve their dreams and I see mine: that all communities give every single woman and every single girl their dreams come true. Thank you. (Applause and cheers) Thank you, thank you. (Applause and cheers) |
Where in the world is it easiest to get rich? | {0: 'Harald Eia is a trained sociologist who works in television with comedy and documentaries.'} | TEDxOslo | Where in the world is it easiest to get ... rich? That's the question I asked my professor when I studied sociology in the early 90s because he was having a lecture about social democracies, the Scandinavian welfare state, and he was a classical left-wing sociology professor, and he could not hide his enthusiasm when he talked about these egalitarian societies with no rich people and no poor people. But I, on the other hand, I was writing my master's thesis about rich people. When I interviewed my informants from the upper classes, they all said the same thing: "Life in Scandinavia is tough." (Laughter) "We have to work twice as hard to earn money because we have to struggle against: high taxes, strong unions controlling the wages and a generous welfare state that makes people lazy." As one rich guy told me, he said, "They call it a social security net. Well, I call it a hammock." (Laughter) And as every aspiring social scientist, I started to go native; I started to feel sympathy for these rich people. And that's why I raised my hand and asked my professor, "Well, what if you don't care so much about equality? What if your dream is to become rich? Where in the world should I have been born to become really rich?" I still remember the puzzled look on my professor's face. But he answered the best he could. Something like, "Well, if that's your goal in life, you should probably have been born in a society with free markets, low taxes, and minimal government intervention. And he added, "If you want to become rich, you should probably not study sociology." (Laughter) That was a good answer and the best guess we had back then. That is until I saw that the University of Oslo professor in Economy, Karl Moene, actually had checked the facts: "Where in the world is it easiest to get rich?" And before I share with you where you should go to earn money, we have to define "rich." The UN talks about the poverty line. You know, if you earn less than one dollar a day, maybe two dollars a day. But we have to define the richness line. It's a more fun line, actually. And the most reliable report, when it comes to rich people, the Wealth Report, they set the richness line at individuals with net worth more than 30 million USD. In the consultant jargon, these people are called UHNWI's. That is Ultra High Net Worth Individuals. That guy, by the way, is not rich. He is just a model. (Laughter) Actually, on the lower part of the model. (Laughter) And I have saved some money by keeping the watermark there as well. (Laughter) Smart. (Laughter) (Applause) So, according to The Wealth Report, there are more than 170, 000 UHNWI's in the world. And here is the top five list of countries with the richest people. Number five: China, with more than 8,000. UK, Germany, Japan, and on top, of course, the United States with more than 40,000 rich people. But of course, we are not interested in the absolute numbers here. We are interested in rich people per capita, per million inhabitants. And if we leave out the pure tax havens, like Cyprus, and Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Monaco - where we have an artificially huge share of rich people - it turns out that we have on number 5 Denmark - with 179 rich people per one million inhabitants - Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and on top: Norway. (Laughter) But where's the US? On place 13. So what happened to my old professor's, you know, social democracies? There are no rich people there. But OK. 30 million dollars, that's just pocket money in a country like the US, where people can get insanely rich. (Laughter) Look at the watermark again? (Laughter) So, let's raise the richness line up from 30 million dollars up to ... 1 billion dollars. And the most reliable source here is the Forbes billionaires list. And according to the Forbes, if you look at billionaires per million inhabitants. Number 5, Germany: 1.2 billionaires. 1.2 billionaires per million inhabitants. The United States 1.7, Norway 2, Sweden, and on top Iceland with 3.1 (Laughter) With a single billionaire: Thor Björgólfsson. (Laughter) (Applause) He could have been a model. (Laughter) But the point is, the United States: 1.7 Scandinavia taken as a whole: 2.1 And the big mystery is ... How can this be? How can Bernie Sanders' dream societies, these socialist paradises be such a breeding place for rich people? (Laughter) That's a mystery. (Laughter) There are two reasons. Reason number one is free education. Social democracies give free higher education to everybody, and cheap student loans, and grants. That enables more people to use their talents and earn money. We can see this in the social mobility numbers. Imagine all fathers in a society, and we divide them into five groups based on income: from the bottom fifth up to the top fifth. Then we look at their sons, and divide their income into five steps, and we see how many sons of the fathers from the bottom income end up on top. How many sons go from rags to riches? If it was perfect social mobility, if talents and opportunities were equally distributed, 20% from the bottom would end up on each of these five ladders. So let's look at the numbers for the different countries. In Denmark, they are pretty close to perfect social mobility with 14% that goes from rags to riches. In Norway 12, Sweden 11, the United States 8. Because of free education, there are more self-made men in Scandinavia than in the US. And if we look at those sons who don't end up on top but stay at the bottom, that go from rags to rags. Again, 20% would be perfect mobility. In Denmark, 25% ends up at the bottom, Sweden a bit more. Norway. And look at the United States. This is because education in the United States is very expensive. But the second and most important explanation for Scandinavia being such a breeding place for rich people is this: Have you ever noticed if you have been to the United States, when you drive around and drive through a toll plaza, there are actually people sitting there taking your money. Compare that to my local toll plaza. (Laughter) Just a sign with some gizmo attached to it. And when you go to a supermarket in the United States, there are actually people there helping to pack your things into your bags. It's very friendly and convenient compared to my local grocery store. Like this. (Laughter) There's nobody there. (Laughter) The biggest shock I had when I went to the US for the first time, when I went to the restroom, there were actually people working there. Compare that to my local public toilet. (Laughter) There's not even a cleaner there; it cleans itself automatically. And the reason for this difference is that Scandinavian unions are pressing up the minimum wages. It's so expensive to have these people working there. In Norway, tollbooth operators, supermarket packers, and a restroom janitor would earn almost three times as much as in the US. And that's why we have replaced these people with machines. That is why I was surprised when I saw this article in The New York Times in 2014. Preparing for Chip-and-PIN Cards in the United States. (Laughter) Because in the United States people are still using paper checks as a method of payment, while Scandinavian banks have made us start using Chip-and-PIN cards long ago. Because the minimum wages here are so high. So Scandinavian banks can't afford having people manually control the checks. So Scandinavian companies, because of the unions pressing up the wages, they have to downsize and introduce new technology or else ... they will go broke. And new technology increases the productivity in a society, which in the long run also increases profit. And on the upper end of the wage ladder, in the name of solidarity, Scandinavian unions hold back the highest salaries of the skilled workers. So for example, a Norwegian senior engineer - it's my uncle, by the way. (Laughter) That's why there's no watermark there. (Laughter) Actually, he would look cooler with a watermark, better. (Laughter) He earns, on average per year, 76,000 dollars, while his American colleague earns more than 100,000 dollars. So American engineers ... (Laughter) They are not only more good-looking, but they are more expensive. Of course, this wage restraint on high-skilled work is good for profit. So, the unions are in effect subsidizing the capitalists. I wish I knew all this when I gave up a career in social science because the beauty and the irony of these findings, I think, is amazing. On the one hand, you have my rich informants that complain about how hard it is to get rich in Scandinavia. They had it all wrong. Not only is it easier to get rich in a social democracy, but they are critical to the very institutions that have helped them get rich. High taxes, which gives free education and more talent into the economy. Strong unions that are helping to increase productivity, and a generous welfare state that makes the unions accept downsizing because they know that their members will be well taken care of. So the unions cooperate because of the safety net. So rich people are a bit like Immanuel Kant's famous bird, who thinks she could fly even faster in airless space, forgetting that it's the air itself that gives her lift. On the other part of the political spectrum, when Bernie Sanders is praising Scandinavian societies, he forgets that these are not anti-rich or anti-capitalist systems. Because the welfare state and the unions work in tandem with capitalist dynamics. And I think that is the most important lesson here. The economy is not a zero-sum game. We are in this together. And that is why Scandinavia is a better place to fulfill the American dream ... (Laughter) than America itself. Thank you so much. (Applause) (Cheering) |
Facebook's role in Brexit -- and the threat to democracy | {0: 'Carole Cadwalladr is an investigative journalist and features writer.'} | TED2019 | So, on the day after the Brexit vote, in June 2016, when Britain woke up to the shock of discovering that we're leaving the European Union, my editor at the "Observer" newspaper in the UK asked me to go back to South Wales, where I grew up, and to write a report. And so I went to a town called Ebbw Vale. Here it is. It's in the South Wales Valleys, which is this quite special place. So it's had this very, sort of rich, working-class culture, and it's famous for its Welsh male voice choirs and rugby and its coal. But when I was a teenager, the coal mines and the steelworks closed, and the entire area was devastated. And I went there because it had one of the highest "Leave" votes in the country. Sixty-two percent of the people here voted to leave the European Union. And I wanted to know why. When I got there, I was just a bit taken aback, because the last time I went to Ebbw Vale, it looked like this. And now, it looks like this. This is a new 33-million-pound college of further education that was mostly funded by the European Union. And this is the new sports center that's at the middle of 350-million-pound regeneration project that's being funded by the European Union. And this is the new 77-million-pound road-improvement scheme, and there's a new train line, a new railway station, and they're all being funded by the European Union. And it's not as if any of this is a secret, because there's big signs like this everywhere. [EU Funds: Investing in Wales] (Laughter) I had this sort of weird sense of unreality, walking around the town. And it came to a head when I met this young man in front of the sports center. And he told me that he had voted to leave, because the European Union had done nothing for him. He was fed up with it. And all around town, people told me the same thing. They said that they wanted to take back control, which was one of the slogans in the campaign. And they told me that they were most fed up with the immigrants and with the refugees. They'd had enough. Which was odd. Because walking around, I didn't meet any immigrants or refugees. I met one Polish woman who told me she was practically the only foreigner in town. And when I checked the figures, I discovered that Ebbw Vale actually has one of the lowest rates of immigration in the country. And so I was just a bit baffled, because I couldn't really understand where people were getting their information from. Because it was the right-wing tabloid newspapers which printed all these stories about immigration. And this is a very much left-wing Labour stronghold. But then after the article came out, this woman got in touch with me. And she was from Ebbw Vale, and she told me about all this stuff that she'd seen on Facebook. I was like, "What stuff?" And she said it was all this quite scary stuff about immigration, and especially about Turkey. So I tried to find it. But there was nothing there. Because there's no archive of ads that people had seen or what had been pushed into their news feeds. No trace of anything, gone completely dark. And this referendum that will have this profound effect forever on Britain — it's already had a profound effect: the Japanese car manufacturers that came to Wales and the north east to replace the mining jobs — they are already going because of Brexit. And this entire referendum took place in darkness, because it took place on Facebook. And what happens on Facebook stays on Facebook, because only you see your news feed, and then it vanishes, so it's impossible to research anything. So we have no idea who saw what ads or what impact they had, or what data was used to target these people. Or even who placed the ads, or how much money was spent, or even what nationality they were. But Facebook does. Facebook has these answers, and it's refused to give them to us. Our parliament has asked Mark Zuckerberg multiple times to come to Britain and to give us these answers. And every single time, he's refused. And you have to wonder why. Because what I and other journalists have uncovered is that multiple crimes took place during the referendum. And they took place on Facebook. It's because in Britain, we limit the amount of money that you can spend in an election. And it's because in the 19th century, people would walk around with literally wheelbarrows of cash and just buy voters. So we passed these strict laws to stop that from happening. But those laws don't work anymore. This referendum took place almost entirely online. And you can spend any amount of money on Facebook or on Google or on YouTube ads and nobody will know, because they're black boxes. And this is what happened. We've actually got no idea of the full extent of it. But we do know that in the last days before the Brexit vote, the official "Vote Leave" campaign laundered nearly three quarters of a million pounds through another campaign entity that our electoral commission has ruled was illegal, and it's referred it to the police. And with this illegal cash, "Vote Leave" unleashed a fire hose of disinformation. Ads like this. [Turkey's 76m people joining the EU] This is a lie, it's a total lie. Turkey is not joining the European Union. There's not even any discussions of it joining the European Union. And most of us, we never saw these ads, because we were not the target of them. "Vote Leave" identified a tiny sliver of people who it identified as persuadable, and they saw them. And the only reason we are seeing these now is because parliament forced Facebook to hand them over. And maybe you think, "Well, it was just a bit of overspending. It's a few lies." But this was the biggest electoral fraud in Britain for 100 years. In a once-in-a-generation vote that hinged upon just one percent of the electorate. And it was just one of the crimes that took place in the referendum. There was another group, which was headed by this man, Nigel Farage, the one to the right of Trump. And his group, "Leave.EU" — it also broke the law. It broke British electoral laws and British data laws, and it's also being referred to the police. And this man, Arron Banks, he funded this campaign. And in a completely separate case, he's being referred to our National Crime Agency, our equivalent of the FBI, because our electoral commission has concluded they don't know where his money came from. Or if it was even British. And I'm not even going to go into the lies that Arron Banks has told about his covert relationship with the Russian government. Or the weird timing of Nigel Farage's meetings with Julian Assange and with Trump's buddy, Roger Stone, now indicted, immediately before two massive WikiLeaks dumps, both of which happened to benefit Donald Trump. But I will tell you that Brexit and Trump were intimately entwined. This man told me that Brexit was the petri dish for Trump. And we know it's the same people, the same companies, the same data, the same techniques, the same use of hate and fear. This is what they were posting on Facebook. And I don't even want to call this a lie, [Immigration without assimilation equals invasion] because it feels more like a hate crime to me. I don't have to tell you that hate and fear are being sown online all across the world. Not just in Britain and America, but in France and in Hungary and Brazil and Myanmar and New Zealand. And we know there is this dark undertow which is connecting us all globally. And it is flowing via the technology platforms. But we only see a tiny amount of what's going on on the surface. And I only found out anything about this dark underbelly because I started looking into Trump's relationship to Farage, into a company called Cambridge Analytica. And I spent months tracking down an ex-employee, Christopher Wiley. And he told me how this company, that worked for both Trump and Brexit, had profiled people politically in order to understand their individual fears, to better target them with Facebook ads. And it did this by illicitly harvesting the profiles of 87 million people from Facebook. It took an entire year's work to get Christopher on the record. And I had to turn myself from a feature writer into an investigative reporter to do it. And he was extraordinarily brave, because the company is owned by Robert Mercer, the billionaire who bankrolled Trump, and he threatened to sue us multiple times, to stop us from publishing. But we finally got there, and we were one day ahead of publication. We got another legal threat. Not from Cambridge Analytica this time, but from Facebook. It told us that if we publish, they would sue us. We did it anyway. (Applause) Facebook, you were on the wrong side of history in that. And you were on the wrong side of history in this — in refusing to give us the answers that we need. And that is why I am here. To address you directly, the gods of Silicon Valley. (Applause) Mark Zuckerberg ... (Applause) and Sheryl Sandberg and Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Jack Dorsey, and your employees and your investors, too. Because 100 years ago, the biggest danger in the South Wales coal mines was gas. Silent and deadly and invisible. It's why they sent the canaries down first to check the air. And in this massive, global, online experiment that we are all living through, we in Britain are the canary. We are what happens to a western democracy when a hundred years of electoral laws are disrupted by technology. Our democracy is broken, our laws don't work anymore, and it's not me saying this, it's our parliament published a report saying this. This technology that you have invented has been amazing. But now, it's a crime scene. And you have the evidence. And it is not enough to say that you will do better in the future. Because to have any hope of stopping this from happening again, we have to know the truth. And maybe you think, "Well, it was just a few ads. And people are smarter than that, right?" To which I would say, "Good luck with that." Because what the Brexit vote demonstrates is that liberal democracy is broken. And you broke it. This is not democracy — spreading lies in darkness, paid for with illegal cash, from God knows where. It's subversion, and you are accessories to it. (Applause) Our parliament has been the first in the world to try to hold you to account, and it's failed. You are literally beyond the reach of British law — not just British laws, this is nine parliaments, nine countries are represented here, who Mark Zuckerberg refused to come and give evidence to. And what you don't seem to understand is that this is bigger than you. And it's bigger than any of us. And it is not about left or right or "Leave" or "Remain" or Trump or not. It's about whether it's actually possible to have a free and fair election ever again. Because as it stands, I don't think it is. And so my question to you is, is this what you want? Is this how you want history to remember you: as the handmaidens to authoritarianism that is on the rise all across the world? Because you set out to connect people. And you are refusing to acknowledge that the same technology is now driving us apart. And my question to everybody else is, is this what we want: to let them get away with it, and to sit back and play with our phones, as this darkness falls? The history of the South Wales Valleys is of a fight for rights. And this is not a drill — it's a point of inflection. Democracy is not guaranteed, and it is not inevitable, and we have to fight and we have to win and we cannot let these tech companies have this unchecked power. It's up to us — you, me and all of us. We are the ones who have to take back control. (Applause) (Cheers) (Applause) |
The artificial muscles that will power robots of the future | {0: 'Christoph Keplinger aims to fundamentally challenge current limitations of robotic hardware, combining soft matter physics and chemistry with advanced engineering technologies to create a new generation of lifelike robots.'} | TEDxMileHigh | In 2015, 25 teams from around the world competed to build robots for disaster response that could perform a number of tasks, such as using a power tool, working on uneven terrain and driving a car. That all sounds impressive, and it is, but look at the body of the winning robot, HUBO. Here, HUBO is trying to get out of a car, and keep in mind, the video is sped up three times. (Laughter) HUBO, from team KAIST out of Korea, is a state-of-the-art robot with impressive capabilities, but this body doesn't look all that different from robots we've seen a few decades ago. If you look at the other robots in the competition, their movements also still look, well, very robotic. Their bodies are complex mechanical structures using rigid materials such as metal and traditional rigid electric motors. They certainly weren't designed to be low-cost, safe near people and adaptable to unpredictable challenges. We've made good progress with the brains of robots, but their bodies are still primitive. This is my daughter Nadia. She's only five years old and she can get out of the car way faster than HUBO. (Laughter) She can also swing around on monkey bars with ease, much better than any current human-like robot could do. In contrast to HUBO, the human body makes extensive use of soft and deformable materials such as muscle and skin. We need a new generation of robot bodies that is inspired by the elegance, efficiency and by the soft materials of the designs found in nature. And indeed, this has become the key idea of a new field of research called soft robotics. My research group and collaborators around the world are using soft components inspired by muscle and skin to build robots with agility and dexterity that comes closer and closer to the astonishing capabilities of the organisms found in nature. I've always been particularly inspired by biological muscle. Now, that's not surprising. I'm also Austrian, and I know that I sound a bit like Arnie, the Terminator. (Laughter) Biological muscle is a true masterpiece of evolution. It can heal after damage and it's tightly integrated with sensory neurons for feedback on motion and the environment. It can contract fast enough to power the high-speed wings of a hummingbird; it can grow strong enough to move an elephant; and it's adaptable enough to be used in the extremely versatile arms of an octopus, an animal that can squeeze its entire body through tiny holes. Actuators are for robots what muscles are for animals: key components of the body that enable movement and interaction with the world. So if we could build soft actuators, or artificial muscles, that are as versatile, adaptable and could have the same performance as the real thing, we could build almost any type of robot for almost any type of use. Not surprisingly, people have tried for many decades to replicate the astonishing capabilities of muscle, but it's been really hard. About 10 years ago, when I did my PhD back in Austria, my colleagues and I rediscovered what is likely one of the very first publications on artificial muscle, published in 1880. "On the shape and volume changes of dielectric bodies caused by electricity," published by German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen. Most of you know him as the discoverer of the X-ray. Following his instructions, we used a pair of needles. We connected it to a high-voltage source, and we placed it near a transparent piece of rubber that was prestretched onto a plastic frame. When we switched on the voltage, the rubber deformed, and just like our biceps flexes our arm, the rubber flexed the plastic frame. It looks like magic. The needles don't even touch the rubber. Now, having two such needles is not a practical way of operating artificial muscles, but this amazing experiment got me hooked on the topic. I wanted to create new ways to build artificial muscles that would work well for real-world applications. For the next years, I worked on a number of different technologies that all showed promise, but they all had remaining challenges that are hard to overcome. In 2015, when I started my own lab at CU Boulder, I wanted to try an entirely new idea. I wanted to combine the high speed and efficiency of electrically driven actuators with the versatility of soft, fluidic actuators. Therefore, I thought, maybe I can try using really old science in a new way. The diagram you see here shows an effect called Maxwell stress. When you take two metal plates and place them in a container filled with oil, and then switch on a voltage, the Maxwell stress forces the oil up in between the two plates, and that's what you see here. So the key idea was, can we use this effect to push around oil contained in soft stretchy structures? And indeed, this worked surprisingly well, quite honestly, much better than I expected. Together with my outstanding team of students, we used this idea as a starting point to develop a new technology called HASEL artificial muscles. HASELs are gentle enough to pick up a raspberry without damaging it. They can expand and contract like real muscle. And they can be operated faster than the real thing. They can also be scaled up to deliver large forces. Here you see them lifting a gallon filled with water. They can be used to drive a robotic arm, and they can even self-sense their position. HASELs can be used for very precise movement, but they can also deliver very fluidic, muscle-like movement and bursts of power to shoot up a ball into the air. When submerged in oil, HASEL artificial muscles can be made invisible. So how do HASEL artificial muscles work? You might be surprised. They're based on very inexpensive, easily available materials. You can even try, and I recommend it, the main principle at home. Take a few Ziploc bags and fill them with olive oil. Try to push out air bubbles as much as you can. Now take a glass plate and place it on one side of the bag. When you press down, you see the bag contract. Now the amount of contraction is easy to control. When you take a small weight, you get a small contraction. With a medium weight, we get a medium contraction. And with a large weight, you get a large contraction. Now for HASELs, the only change is to replace the force of your hand or the weight with an electrical force. HASEL stands for "hydraulically amplified self-healing electrostatic actuators." Here you see a geometry called Peano-HASEL actuators, one of many possible designs. Again, you take a flexible polymer such as our Ziploc bag, you fill it with an insulating liquid, such as olive oil, and now, instead of the glass plate, you place an electrical conductor on one side of the pouch. To create something that looks more like a muscle fiber, you can connect a few pouches together and attached a weight on one side. Next, we apply voltage. Now, the electric field starts acting on the liquid. It displaces the liquid, and it forces the muscle to contract. Here you see a completed Peano-HASEL actuator and how it expands and contracts when voltage is applied. Viewed from the side, you can really see those pouches take a more cylindrical shape, such as we saw with the Ziploc bags. We can also place a few such muscle fibers next to each other to create something that looks even more like a muscle that also contracts and expands in cross section. These HASELs here are lifting a weight that's about 200 times heavier than their own weight. Here you see one of our newest designs, called quadrant donut HASELs and how they expand and contract. They can be operated incredibly fast, reaching superhuman speeds. They are even powerful enough to jump off the ground. (Laughter) Overall, HASELs show promise to become the first technology that matches or exceeds the performance of biological muscle while being compatible with large-scale manufacturing. This is also a very young technology. We are just getting started. We have many ideas how to drastically improve performance, using new materials and new designs to reach a level of performance beyond biological muscle and also beyond traditional rigid electric motors. Moving towards more complex designs of HASEL for bio-inspired robotics, here you see our artificial scorpion that can use its tail to hunt prey, in this case, a rubber balloon. (Laughter) Going back to our initial inspiration, the versatility of octopus arms and elephant trunks, we are now able to build soft continuum actuators that come closer and closer to the capabilities of the real thing. I am most excited about the practical applications of HASEL artificial muscles. They'll enable soft robotic devices that can improve the quality of life. Soft robotics will enable a new generation of more lifelike prosthetics for people who have lost parts of their bodies. Here you see some HASELs in my lab, early testing, driving a prosthetic finger. One day, we may even merge our bodies with robotic parts. I know that sounds very scary at first. But when I think about my grandparents and the way they become more dependent on others to perform simple everyday tasks such as using the restroom alone, they often feel like they're becoming a burden. With soft robotics, we will be able to enhance and restore agility and dexterity, and thereby help older people maintain autonomy for longer parts of their lives. Maybe we can call that "robotics for antiaging" or even a next stage of human evolution. Unlike their traditional rigid counterparts, soft life-like robots will safely operate near people and help us at home. Soft robotics is a very young field. We're just getting started. I hope that many young people from many different backgrounds join us on this exciting journey and help shape the future of robotics by introducing new concepts inspired by nature. If we do this right, we can improve the quality of life for all of us. Thank you. (Applause) |
How colorism shapes our standards of beauty | {0: "Chika Okoro is a second year MBA student at Stanford. Passionate about race and gender equality, she is excited to raise awareness about the many issues that women of color face around the world. She hopes that her talk will start a conversation about important issues that people are less vocal about today. While at Stanford Chika is an Arbuckle Leadership Fellow providing leadership coaching and training to MBA 1st year students. Before coming to Stanford she worked at Procter & Gamble as an assistant brand manager and spent last summer at Google as a product-marketing manager. Chika holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard University where she wrote her honors thesis on race and identity in the black community."} | TEDxStanford | The movie "Straight Outta Compton" comes out. I'm so excited. I'm from LA, so this movie is particularly close to my heart. I saw it in theaters three times. So I'm cruising the Internet devouring everything I can about this movie. I come across the casting call. This movie has already come out and I'm no actress, so I wouldn't actually audition, but I just wondered, hypothetically, if I did, what role would I get? I look at the casting call, I'm going down the categories, and I start at the top: the A girls. The casting call reads: "These are the hottest of the hottest, models, must have real hair, no extensions." Well, since I have 20 inches of Brazilian hair extensions on my head, doesn't quite apply to me. But that's fine. I go to the next category: the B girls. The casting call reads: "These are fine girls, long natural hair, must have light skin, Beyoncé's the prototype hit here." Light skin? Also not me. And might I add: not even Beyoncé made the cut to be an A girl. But that's fine. (Laughter) I go to the next category: the C girls. The casting call reads: "These are African American girls, can have extensions, must be medium to light skin toned." Now, maybe back when I lived in Boston, in the middle of the winter can I get away with being "medium skin toned," but since I've come back to sunny California where I spend all my free time baking in the sun, not so much. So I scroll all the way down to the last category: the D girls. The casting call reads: "These are African American girls, poor, not in good shape, must have a darker skin tone." A darker skin tone. Well, I guess that's me: a D girl. When I first read this, I felt betrayed. Any given year, there are just a handful of movies starring black actors and actresses, just a handful of opportunities when people can see actresses that look like me, on the big screen, and see that we are fierce and beautiful and desirable. So I felt betrayed. Not even in these small circles I'm allowed to feel beautiful? I felt shoved aside for those of more "favorable" features: light skin, light eyes, long, soft real hair. But the more I thought about it, the more the feeling of betrayal slipped away for the more familiar feeling of "that's just the way it is" because in my world, this phenomenon is all too familiar. Something just as sinister and subtle as racism: Colorism, the discrimination of those with a darker skin tone, typically among individuals within the same racial or ethnic group. The story of colorism in the US begins with slavery. The mass rape of African slave females by white male slave masters gave birth to a cohort of mixed-race slave children. These mixed-race slaves are related to the slave masters and had more Anglo features, and were given preferential treatment and allowed to work inside the house, doing less strenuous work, as opposed to the darker skinned slaves that had to work out in the fields, doing more laborious work. Even after slavery was abolished, whites still gave more preferential treatment to blacks that had more Anglo-type features, giving them better access to jobs, housing and education. The thing is, though, even within the black community, black people used skin tone and facial features to discriminate against each other. They would only allow entrance into sororities, fraternities or elite social clubs to blacks that were able to display Anglo-type features. They'd go through a series of tests to see if you fit the bill. One well-known test was the "brown paper bag" test. Where if you were lighter than a brown paper bag, you're in! But if you were darker than a brown paper bag, you're out. Another well-known test was the pencil test, where they would take a pencil and run it through your hair to make sure that it's straight enough so the pencil wouldn't get stuck. The last test was called the shadow test, where they would take a flashlight and shine it against your profile and look at the shadow that your profile made against the wall. And if it matched that of a white person's profile, you're fine. But if it didn't, you're out. Now, though these practices are no longer in effect today, the effects of them are still very much so present. I remember a common "compliment" I would often get in middle and high school, often told to me by other black males; it went to the effect of: "Oh! You're so pretty for a dark skinned girl." And it doesn't help that the media continues to place a premium on lighter skin by retouching and photoshopping the skin of actresses of color before putting them on the cover of magazines, as can be seen here, here, here and even here. Now, colorism is not just isolated to the US, its effects are global, as best illustrated by the skin-lightening and skin-bleaching creams all over the world. In India and Asia alone, skin lightening and skin bleaching is a multi-billion dollar business. Despite the harmful toxins that are present in these products, people are still willing to take the risk and use them in order to achieve what they are led to believe is beautiful. And beauty products have flocked on this insight. One known brand, "Vaseline," even partnered with Facebook to come up with an app that would lighten the skin of you profile picture in order to promote their skin-lightening cream. And you can't travel throughout Asia without being inundated by advertising and commercials that promise happiness and success if you could just be a little bit lighter. (Laughter) Studies have shown that these messages that we see at a young age have a profound effect on us. In 2010, CNN did a study where they interviewed young children, just five, six, seven years old, and asked them to place values and attributes to people based on their skin tone. Here's a clip from that study. (Video starts) Interviewer: And why is she the smart child? Girl: Because she is white. Interviewer: OK. Show me the dumb child. And why is she the dumb child? Girl: Because she's black. Interviewer: Well, show me the ugly child. And why is she the ugly child? Girl: Because she's black. Interviewer: Show me the good-looking child. And why is she the good-looking child? Girl: Because she's light-skinned. Chika Okoro: These messages that we see at such a young age and these messages that we internalize, they stay with us. They stayed with me. And though I denied it and blocked it out and I say I'm strong, I'm smart, I'm accomplished, I'm beautiful, I'm here at Stanford and I'm not a D girl, this stuff, these messages, they stayed with me. And they manifest in this voice that makes me question, makes me doubt and makes me think: "But wait ..." "Am I a D girl?" It stays with me. And so now, whenever someone gives me compliment or says, "Oh! You look nice, you look pretty," the voice fills in the rest of the sentence with: "for a dark skinned girl." It stays with me. And it makes me question my intentions because even though I say that I have these extensions just for fun and that I like them, that voice says "No!" "You got them because you're trying to reach a beauty standard you can actually never obtain." It stays with me. Even as I go to send a simple text message, that voice in my head tells me that I should be embarrassed or ashamed when I scroll all the way to the end, to the last, darkest emoji. It stays with me. But I don't want it to stay with me. And the good thing is it doesn't have to. Because these beauty preferences that we have, they're not something we are born with, they're learned. And if they're learned, they can be unlearned. Among us are CEOs and co-founders, directors of marketing, you all are the arbiters of what society considers beautiful by deciding who you chose to put in your advertising or who you chose to be the face of you brand. So you have the opportunity to make the unconventional choice. And those of us that consume these messages, we play our role too. Because the first step to change is awareness. And now everyone in this room is a little more aware and will see the world just a little bit differently. And you don't have to passively accept what society tells us to think is beautiful. We can question it, and we can challenge the status quo. Because when we do, we get one step closer to broadening the standard of beauty and creating a society where the world can see that D girls are beautiful too. Thank you. (Applause) (Cheers) |
How Twitter needs to change | {0: 'Jack Dorsey is the CEO of Twitter, CEO & Chairman of Square, and a cofounder of both.', 1: 'After a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas worth spreading.', 2: 'Whitney Pennington Rodgers is an award-winning journalist and media professional.'} | TED2019 | Chris Anderson: What worries you right now? You've been very open about lots of issues on Twitter. What would be your top worry about where things are right now? Jack Dorsey: Right now, the health of the conversation. So, our purpose is to serve the public conversation, and we have seen a number of attacks on it. We've seen abuse, we've seen harassment, we've seen manipulation, automation, human coordination, misinformation. So these are all dynamics that we were not expecting 13 years ago when we were starting the company. But we do now see them at scale, and what worries me most is just our ability to address it in a systemic way that is scalable, that has a rigorous understanding of how we're taking action, a transparent understanding of how we're taking action and a rigorous appeals process for when we're wrong, because we will be wrong. Whitney Pennington Rodgers: I'm really glad to hear that that's something that concerns you, because I think there's been a lot written about people who feel they've been abused and harassed on Twitter, and I think no one more so than women and women of color and black women. And there's been data that's come out — Amnesty International put out a report a few months ago where they showed that a subset of active black female Twitter users were receiving, on average, one in 10 of their tweets were some form of harassment. And so when you think about health for the community on Twitter, I'm interested to hear, "health for everyone," but specifically: How are you looking to make Twitter a safe space for that subset, for women, for women of color and black women? JD: Yeah. So it's a pretty terrible situation when you're coming to a service that, ideally, you want to learn something about the world, and you spend the majority of your time reporting abuse, receiving abuse, receiving harassment. So what we're looking most deeply at is just the incentives that the platform naturally provides and the service provides. Right now, the dynamic of the system makes it super-easy to harass and to abuse others through the service, and unfortunately, the majority of our system in the past worked entirely based on people reporting harassment and abuse. So about midway last year, we decided that we were going to apply a lot more machine learning, a lot more deep learning to the problem, and try to be a lot more proactive around where abuse is happening, so that we can take the burden off the victim completely. And we've made some progress recently. About 38 percent of abusive tweets are now proactively identified by machine learning algorithms so that people don't actually have to report them. But those that are identified are still reviewed by humans, so we do not take down content or accounts without a human actually reviewing it. But that was from zero percent just a year ago. So that meant, at that zero percent, every single person who received abuse had to actually report it, which was a lot of work for them, a lot of work for us and just ultimately unfair. The other thing that we're doing is making sure that we, as a company, have representation of all the communities that we're trying to serve. We can't build a business that is successful unless we have a diversity of perspective inside of our walls that actually feel these issues every single day. And that's not just with the team that's doing the work, it's also within our leadership as well. So we need to continue to build empathy for what people are experiencing and give them better tools to act on it and also give our customers a much better and easier approach to handle some of the things that they're seeing. So a lot of what we're doing is around technology, but we're also looking at the incentives on the service: What does Twitter incentivize you to do when you first open it up? And in the past, it's incented a lot of outrage, it's incented a lot of mob behavior, it's incented a lot of group harassment. And we have to look a lot deeper at some of the fundamentals of what the service is doing to make the bigger shifts. We can make a bunch of small shifts around technology, as I just described, but ultimately, we have to look deeply at the dynamics in the network itself, and that's what we're doing. CA: But what's your sense — what is the kind of thing that you might be able to change that would actually fundamentally shift behavior? JD: Well, one of the things — we started the service with this concept of following an account, as an example, and I don't believe that's why people actually come to Twitter. I believe Twitter is best as an interest-based network. People come with a particular interest. They have to do a ton of work to find and follow the related accounts around those interests. What we could do instead is allow you to follow an interest, follow a hashtag, follow a trend, follow a community, which gives us the opportunity to show all of the accounts, all the topics, all the moments, all the hashtags that are associated with that particular topic and interest, which really opens up the perspective that you see. But that is a huge fundamental shift to bias the entire network away from just an account bias towards a topics and interest bias. CA: Because isn't it the case that one reason why you have so much content on there is a result of putting millions of people around the world in this kind of gladiatorial contest with each other for followers, for attention? Like, from the point of view of people who just read Twitter, that's not an issue, but for the people who actually create it, everyone's out there saying, "You know, I wish I had a few more 'likes,' followers, retweets." And so they're constantly experimenting, trying to find the path to do that. And what we've all discovered is that the number one path to do that is to be some form of provocative, obnoxious, eloquently obnoxious, like, eloquent insults are a dream on Twitter, where you rapidly pile up — and it becomes this self-fueling process of driving outrage. How do you defuse that? JD: Yeah, I mean, I think you're spot on, but that goes back to the incentives. Like, one of the choices we made in the early days was we had this number that showed how many people follow you. We decided that number should be big and bold, and anything that's on the page that's big and bold has importance, and those are the things that you want to drive. Was that the right decision at the time? Probably not. If I had to start the service again, I would not emphasize the follower count as much. I would not emphasize the "like" count as much. I don't think I would even create "like" in the first place, because it doesn't actually push what we believe now to be the most important thing, which is healthy contribution back to the network and conversation to the network, participation within conversation, learning something from the conversation. Those are not things that we thought of 13 years ago, and we believe are extremely important right now. So we have to look at how we display the follower count, how we display retweet count, how we display "likes," and just ask the deep question: Is this really the number that we want people to drive up? Is this the thing that, when you open Twitter, you see, "That's the thing I need to increase?" And I don't believe that's the case right now. (Applause) WPR: I think we should look at some of the tweets that are coming in from the audience as well. CA: Let's see what you guys are asking. I mean, this is — generally, one of the amazing things about Twitter is how you can use it for crowd wisdom, you know, that more knowledge, more questions, more points of view than you can imagine, and sometimes, many of them are really healthy. WPR: I think one I saw that passed already quickly down here, "What's Twitter's plan to combat foreign meddling in the 2020 US election?" I think that's something that's an issue we're seeing on the internet in general, that we have a lot of malicious automated activity happening. And on Twitter, for example, in fact, we have some work that's come from our friends at Zignal Labs, and maybe we can even see that to give us an example of what exactly I'm talking about, where you have these bots, if you will, or coordinated automated malicious account activity, that is being used to influence things like elections. And in this example we have from Zignal which they've shared with us using the data that they have from Twitter, you actually see that in this case, white represents the humans — human accounts, each dot is an account. The pinker it is, the more automated the activity is. And you can see how you have a few humans interacting with bots. In this case, it's related to the election in Israel and spreading misinformation about Benny Gantz, and as we know, in the end, that was an election that Netanyahu won by a slim margin, and that may have been in some case influenced by this. And when you think about that happening on Twitter, what are the things that you're doing, specifically, to ensure you don't have misinformation like this spreading in this way, influencing people in ways that could affect democracy? JD: Just to back up a bit, we asked ourselves a question: Can we actually measure the health of a conversation, and what does that mean? And in the same way that you have indicators and we have indicators as humans in terms of are we healthy or not, such as temperature, the flushness of your face, we believe that we could find the indicators of conversational health. And we worked with a lab called Cortico at MIT to propose four starter indicators that we believe we could ultimately measure on the system. And the first one is what we're calling shared attention. It's a measure of how much of the conversation is attentive on the same topic versus disparate. The second one is called shared reality, and this is what percentage of the conversation shares the same facts — not whether those facts are truthful or not, but are we sharing the same facts as we converse? The third is receptivity: How much of the conversation is receptive or civil or the inverse, toxic? And then the fourth is variety of perspective. So, are we seeing filter bubbles or echo chambers, or are we actually getting a variety of opinions within the conversation? And implicit in all four of these is the understanding that, as they increase, the conversation gets healthier and healthier. So our first step is to see if we can measure these online, which we believe we can. We have the most momentum around receptivity. We have a toxicity score, a toxicity model, on our system that can actually measure whether you are likely to walk away from a conversation that you're having on Twitter because you feel it's toxic, with some pretty high degree. We're working to measure the rest, and the next step is, as we build up solutions, to watch how these measurements trend over time and continue to experiment. And our goal is to make sure that these are balanced, because if you increase one, you might decrease another. If you increase variety of perspective, you might actually decrease shared reality. CA: Just picking up on some of the questions flooding in here. JD: Constant questioning. CA: A lot of people are puzzled why, like, how hard is it to get rid of Nazis from Twitter? JD: (Laughs) So we have policies around violent extremist groups, and the majority of our work and our terms of service works on conduct, not content. So we're actually looking for conduct. Conduct being using the service to repeatedly or episodically harass someone, using hateful imagery that might be associated with the KKK or the American Nazi Party. Those are all things that we act on immediately. We're in a situation right now where that term is used fairly loosely, and we just cannot take any one mention of that word accusing someone else as a factual indication that they should be removed from the platform. So a lot of our models are based around, number one: Is this account associated with a violent extremist group? And if so, we can take action. And we have done so on the KKK and the American Nazi Party and others. And number two: Are they using imagery or conduct that would associate them as such as well? CA: How many people do you have working on content moderation to look at this? JD: It varies. We want to be flexible on this, because we want to make sure that we're, number one, building algorithms instead of just hiring massive amounts of people, because we need to make sure that this is scalable, and there are no amount of people that can actually scale this. So this is why we've done so much work around proactive detection of abuse that humans can then review. We want to have a situation where algorithms are constantly scouring every single tweet and bringing the most interesting ones to the top so that humans can bring their judgment to whether we should take action or not, based on our terms of service. WPR: But there's not an amount of people that are scalable, but how many people do you currently have monitoring these accounts, and how do you figure out what's enough? JD: They're completely flexible. Sometimes we associate folks with spam. Sometimes we associate folks with abuse and harassment. We're going to make sure that we have flexibility in our people so that we can direct them at what is most needed. Sometimes, the elections. We've had a string of elections in Mexico, one coming up in India, obviously, the election last year, the midterm election, so we just want to be flexible with our resources. So when people — just as an example, if you go to our current terms of service and you bring the page up, and you're wondering about abuse and harassment that you just received and whether it was against our terms of service to report it, the first thing you see when you open that page is around intellectual property protection. You scroll down and you get to abuse, harassment and everything else that you might be experiencing. So I don't know how that happened over the company's history, but we put that above the thing that people want the most information on and to actually act on. And just our ordering shows the world what we believed was important. So we're changing all that. We're ordering it the right way, but we're also simplifying the rules so that they're human-readable so that people can actually understand themselves when something is against our terms and when something is not. And then we're making — again, our big focus is on removing the burden of work from the victims. So that means push more towards technology, rather than humans doing the work — that means the humans receiving the abuse and also the humans having to review that work. So we want to make sure that we're not just encouraging more work around something that's super, super negative, and we want to have a good balance between the technology and where humans can actually be creative, which is the judgment of the rules, and not just all the mechanical stuff of finding and reporting them. So that's how we think about it. CA: I'm curious to dig in more about what you said. I mean, I love that you said you are looking for ways to re-tweak the fundamental design of the system to discourage some of the reactive behavior, and perhaps — to use Tristan Harris-type language — engage people's more reflective thinking. How far advanced is that? What would alternatives to that "like" button be? JD: Well, first and foremost, my personal goal with the service is that I believe fundamentally that public conversation is critical. There are existential problems facing the world that are facing the entire world, not any one particular nation-state, that global public conversation benefits. And that is one of the unique dynamics of Twitter, that it is completely open, it is completely public, it is completely fluid, and anyone can see any other conversation and participate in it. So there are conversations like climate change. There are conversations like the displacement in the work through artificial intelligence. There are conversations like economic disparity. No matter what any one nation-state does, they will not be able to solve the problem alone. It takes coordination around the world, and that's where I think Twitter can play a part. The second thing is that Twitter, right now, when you go to it, you don't necessarily walk away feeling like you learned something. Some people do. Some people have a very, very rich network, a very rich community that they learn from every single day. But it takes a lot of work and a lot of time to build up to that. So we want to get people to those topics and those interests much, much faster and make sure that they're finding something that, no matter how much time they spend on Twitter — and I don't want to maximize the time on Twitter, I want to maximize what they actually take away from it and what they learn from it, and — CA: Well, do you, though? Because that's the core question that a lot of people want to know. Surely, Jack, you're constrained, to a huge extent, by the fact that you're a public company, you've got investors pressing on you, the number one way you make your money is from advertising — that depends on user engagement. Are you willing to sacrifice user time, if need be, to go for a more reflective conversation? JD: Yeah; more relevance means less time on the service, and that's perfectly fine, because we want to make sure that, like, you're coming to Twitter, and you see something immediately that you learn from and that you push. We can still serve an ad against that. That doesn't mean you need to spend any more time to see more. The second thing we're looking at — CA: But just — on that goal, daily active usage, if you're measuring that, that doesn't necessarily mean things that people value every day. It may well mean things that people are drawn to like a moth to the flame, every day. We are addicted, because we see something that pisses us off, so we go in and add fuel to the fire, and the daily active usage goes up, and there's more ad revenue there, but we all get angrier with each other. How do you define ... "Daily active usage" seems like a really dangerous term to be optimizing. (Applause) JD: Taken alone, it is, but you didn't let me finish the other metric, which is, we're watching for conversations and conversation chains. So we want to incentivize healthy contribution back to the network, and what we believe that is is actually participating in conversation that is healthy, as defined by those four indicators I articulated earlier. So you can't just optimize around one metric. You have to balance and look constantly at what is actually going to create a healthy contribution to the network and a healthy experience for people. Ultimately, we want to get to a metric where people can tell us, "Hey, I learned something from Twitter, and I'm walking away with something valuable." That is our goal ultimately over time, but that's going to take some time. CA: You come over to many, I think to me, as this enigma. This is possibly unfair, but I woke up the other night with this picture of how I found I was thinking about you and the situation, that we're on this great voyage with you on this ship called the "Twittanic" — (Laughter) and there are people on board in steerage who are expressing discomfort, and you, unlike many other captains, are saying, "Well, tell me, talk to me, listen to me, I want to hear." And they talk to you, and they say, "We're worried about the iceberg ahead." And you go, "You know, that is a powerful point, and our ship, frankly, hasn't been built properly for steering as well as it might." And we say, "Please do something." And you go to the bridge, and we're waiting, and we look, and then you're showing this extraordinary calm, but we're all standing outside, saying, "Jack, turn the fucking wheel!" You know? (Laughter) (Applause) I mean — (Applause) It's democracy at stake. It's our culture at stake. It's our world at stake. And Twitter is amazing and shapes so much. It's not as big as some of the other platforms, but the people of influence use it to set the agenda, and it's just hard to imagine a more important role in the world than to ... I mean, you're doing a brilliant job of listening, Jack, and hearing people, but to actually dial up the urgency and move on this stuff — will you do that? JD: Yes, and we have been moving substantially. I mean, there's been a few dynamics in Twitter's history. One, when I came back to the company, we were in a pretty dire state in terms of our future, and not just from how people were using the platform, but from a corporate narrative as well. So we had to fix a bunch of the foundation, turn the company around, go through two crazy layoffs, because we just got too big for what we were doing, and we focused all of our energy on this concept of serving the public conversation. And that took some work. And as we dived into that, we realized some of the issues with the fundamentals. We could do a bunch of superficial things to address what you're talking about, but we need the changes to last, and that means going really, really deep and paying attention to what we started 13 years ago and really questioning how the system works and how the framework works and what is needed for the world today, given how quickly everything is moving and how people are using it. So we are working as quickly as we can, but quickness will not get the job done. It's focus, it's prioritization, it's understanding the fundamentals of the network and building a framework that scales and that is resilient to change, and being open about where we are and being transparent about where are so that we can continue to earn trust. So I'm proud of all the frameworks that we've put in place. I'm proud of our direction. We obviously can move faster, but that required just stopping a bunch of stupid stuff we were doing in the past. CA: All right. Well, I suspect there are many people here who, if given the chance, would love to help you on this change-making agenda you're on, and I don't know if Whitney — Jack, thank you for coming here and speaking so openly. It took courage. I really appreciate what you said, and good luck with your mission. JD: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. (Applause) Thank you. |
Inside the black hole image that made history | {0: 'Sheperd Doeleman led the global team behind the Event Horizon Telescope that captured the historic, first-ever image of a black hole.'} | TED2019 | Chris Anderson: Shep, thank you so much for coming. I think your plane landed literally two hours ago in Vancouver. Such a treat to have you. So, talk us through how do you get from Einstein's equation to a black hole? Sheperd Doeleman: Over 100 years ago, Einstein came up with this geometric theory of gravity which deforms space-time. So, matter deforms space-time, and then space-time tells matter in turn how to move around it. And you can get enough matter into a small enough region that it punctures space-time, and that even light can't escape, the force of gravity keeps even light inside. CA: And so, before that, the reason the Earth moves around the Sun is not because the Sun is pulling the Earth as we think, but it's literally changed the shape of space so that we just sort of fall around the Sun. SD: Exactly, the geometry of space-time tells the Earth how to move around the Sun. You're almost seeing a black hole puncture through space-time, and when it goes so deeply in, then there's a point at which light orbits the black hole. CA: And so that's, I guess, is what's happening here. This is not an image, this is a computer simulation of what we always thought, like, the event horizon around the black hole. SD: Until last week, we had no idea what a black hole really looked like. The best we could do were simulations like this in supercomputers, but even here you see this ring of light, which is the orbit of photons. That's where photons literally move around the black hole, and around that is this hot gas that's drawn to the black hole, and it's hot because of friction. All this gas is trying to get into a very small volume, so it heats up. CA: A few years ago, you embarked on this mission to try and actually image one of these things. And I guess you took — you focused on this galaxy way out there. Tell us about this galaxy. SD: This is the galaxy — we're going to zoom into the galaxy M87, it's 55 million light-years away. CA: Fifty-five million. SD: Which is a long way. And at its heart, there's a six-and-a-half-billion- solar-mass black hole. That's hard for us to really fathom, right? Six and a half billion suns compressed into a single point. And it's governing some of the energetics of the center of this galaxy. CA: But even though that thing is so huge, because it's so far away, to actually dream of getting an image of it, that's incredibly hard. The resolution would be incredible that you need. SD: Black holes are the smallest objects in the known universe. But they have these outsize effects on whole galaxies. But to see one, you would need to build a telescope as large as the Earth, because the black hole that we're looking at gives off copious radio waves. It's emitting all the time. CA: And that's exactly what you did. SD: Exactly. What you're seeing here is we used telescopes all around the world, we synchronized them perfectly with atomic clocks, so they received the light waves from this black hole, and then we stitched all of that data together to make an image. CA: To do that the weather had to be right in all of those locations at the same time, so you could actually get a clear view. SD: We had to get lucky in a lot of different ways. And sometimes, it's better to be lucky than good. In this case, we were both, I like to think. But light had to come from the black hole. It had to come through intergalactic space, through the Earth's atmosphere, where water vapor can absorb it, and everything worked out perfectly, the size of the Earth at that wavelength of light, one millimeter wavelength, was just right to resolve that black hole, 55 million light-years away. The universe was telling us what to do. CA: So you started capturing huge amounts of data. I think this is like half the data from just one telescope. SD: Yeah, this is one of the members of our team, Lindy Blackburn, and he's sitting with half the data recorded at the Large Millimeter Telescope, which is atop a 15,000-foot mountain in Mexico. And what he's holding there is about half a petabyte. Which, to put it in terms that we might understand, it's about 5,000 people's lifetime selfie budget. (Laughter) CA: It's a lot of data. So this was all shipped, you couldn't send this over the internet. All this data was shipped to one place and the massive computer effort began to try and analyze it. And you didn't really know what you were going to see coming out of this. SD: The way this technique works that we used — imagine taking an optical mirror and smashing it and putting all the shards in different places. The way a normal mirror works is the light rays bounce off the surface, which is perfect, and they focus in a certain point at the same time. We take all these recordings, and with atomic clock precision we align them perfectly, later in a supercomputer. And we recreate kind of an Earth-sized lens. And the only way to do that is to bring the data back by plane. You can't beat the bandwidth of a 747 filled with hard discs. (Laughter) CA: And so, I guess a few weeks or a few months ago, on a computer screen somewhere, this started to come into view. This moment. SD: Well, it took a long time. CA: I mean, look at this. That was it. That was the first image. (Applause) So tell us what we're really looking at there. SD: I still love it. (Laughter) So what you're seeing is that last orbit of photons. You're seeing Einstein's geometry laid bare. The puncture in space-time is so deep that light moves around in orbit, so that light behind the black hole, as I think we'll see soon, moves around and comes to us on these parallel lines at exactly that orbit. It turns out, that orbit is the square root of 27 times just a handful of fundamental constants. It's extraordinary when you think about it. CA: When ... In my head, initially, when I thought of black holes, I'm thinking that is the event horizon, there's lots of matter and light whirling around in that shape. But it's actually more complicated than that. Well, talk us through this animation, because it's light being lensed around it. SD: You'll see here that some light from behind it gets lensed, and some light does a loop-the-loop around the entire orbit of the black hole. But when you get enough light from all this hot gas swirling around the black hole, then you wind up seeing all of these light rays come together on this screen, which is a stand-in for where you and I are. And you see the definition of this ring begin to come into shape. And that's what Einstein predicted over 100 years ago. CA: Yeah, that is amazing. So tell us more about what we're actually looking at here. First of all, why is part of it brighter than the rest? SD: So what's happening is that the black hole is spinning. And you wind up with some of the gas moving towards us below and receding from us on the top. And just as the train whistle has a higher pitch when it's coming towards you, there's more energy from the gas coming towards us than going away from us. You see the bottom part brighter because the light is actually being boosted in our direction. CA: And how physically big is that? SD: Our entire solar system would fit well within that dark region. And if I may, that dark region is the signature of the event horizon. The reason we don't see light from there, is that the light that would come to us from that place was swallowed by the event horizon. So that — that's it. CA: And so when we think of a black hole, you think of these huge rays jetting out of it, which are pointed directly in our direction. Why don't we see them? SD: This is a very powerful black hole. Not by universal standards, it's still powerful, and from the north and south poles of this black hole we think that jets are coming. Now, we're too close to really see all the jet structure, but it's the base of those jets that are illuminating the space-time. And that's what's being bent around the black hole. CA: And if you were in a spaceship whirling around that thing somehow, how long would it take to actually go around it? SD: First, I would give anything to be in that spaceship. (Laughter) Sign me up. There’s something called the — if I can get wonky for one moment — the innermost stable circular orbit, that's the innermost orbit at which matter can move around a black hole before it spirals in. And for this black hole, it's going to be between three days and about a month. CA: It's so powerful, it's weirdly slow at one level. I mean, you wouldn't even notice falling into that event horizon if you were there. SD: So you may have heard of "spaghettification," where you fall into a black hole and the gravitational field on your feet is much stronger than on your head, so you're ripped apart. This black hole is so big that you're not going to become a spaghetti noodle. You're just going to drift right through that event horizon. CA: So, it's like a giant tornado. When Dorothy was whipped by a tornado, she ended up in Oz. Where do you end up if you fall into a black hole? (Laughter) SD: Vancouver. (Laughter) CA: Oh, my God. (Applause) It's the red circle, that's terrifying. No, really. SD: Black holes really are the central mystery of our age, because that's where the quantum world and the gravitational world come together. What's inside is a singularity. And that's where all the forces become unified, because gravity finally is strong enough to compete with all the other forces. But it's hidden from us, the universe has cloaked it in the ultimate invisibility cloak. So we don't know what happens in there. CA: So there's a smaller one of these in our own galaxy. Can we go back to our own beautiful galaxy? This is the Milky Way, this is home. And somewhere in the middle of that there's another one, which you're trying to find as well. SD: We already know it's there, and we've already taken data on it. And we're working on those data right now. So we hope to have something in the near future, I can't say when. CA: It's way closer but also a lot smaller, maybe the similar kind of size to what we saw? SD: Right. So it turns out that the black hole in M87, that we saw before, is six and a half billion solar masses. But it's so far away that it appears a certain size. The black hole in the center of our galaxy is a thousand times less massive, but also a thousand times closer. So it looks the same angular size on the sky. CA: Finally, I guess, a nod to a remarkable group of people. Who are these guys? SD: So these are only some of the team. We marveled at the resonance that this image has had. If you told me that it would be above the fold in all of these newspapers, I'm not sure I would have believed you, but it was. Because this is a great mystery, and it's inspiring for us, and I hope it's inspiring to everyone. But the more important thing is that this is just a small number of the team. We're 200 people strong with 60 institutes and 20 countries and regions. If you want to build a global telescope you need a global team. And this technique that we use of linking telescopes around the world kind of effortlessly sidesteps some of the issues that divide us. And as scientists, we naturally come together to do something like this. CA: Wow, boy, that's inspiring for our whole team this week. Shep, thank you so much for what you did and for coming here. SD: Thank you. (Applause) |
How hip-hop helps us understand science | {0: 'Danielle N. Lee examines the ecology and natural history of nuisance rodents, using hip-hop to share science with broader audiences.'} | TED2019 | How y'all doing? Good. I came here to give you a science lesson about animal mating systems and why defining monogamy has been a challenge for scientists. But you won't need a textbook or to download an online lecture. All you'll simply need to do is revisit the song "OPP" by Naughty by Nature. (Laughter) It was released in 1991. Now, "OPP" is a call-and-response song. So throughout the talk, I'm going to put lyrics up on the screen, and I'm going to recite some and I'm going to prompt you when it's your turn to do the response, OK? (Cheers) Now, I know some people in this audience know this song, so I need you to lead the way with the tempo and the rhythm, if that's alright, OK? Right, y'all ready? You down with OPP? Audience: Yeah, you know me! DNL: You down with OPP? Audience: Yeah, you know me! DNL: You down with OPP? Audience: Yeah, you know me! DNL: That was perfect. Thank you. "OPP, how can I explain it? I'll take it frame by frame it. To have y'all jumping shout and singing it O is for other, P is for people. scratch your temple. The last P, well, that's not that simple." Now, in the song, the MC hints that it's a five-letter word, but to keep it rated PG, he simply refers to it as "property." (Laughter) The song is about cheating on your significant other. Now, around the time that this song was in heavy rotation, biologists were in deep discussion about whether bird species, notably songbirds and waterfowl were actually monogamous or not. See, for decades, generations of science students were taught that well over 90 percent of the bird species were monogamous. A male and female mating faithfully for life. That was until the late 1980s, when a new laboratory technique came on the scene, which could copy DNA from a small tissue or fluid sample and decode the genetics of individuals. Now, before that technique, we were never ever certain about, 100 percent, who the parents of baby birds were. All we had were our field notes. And we would know which adults lived in a nest and which ones fed the baby birds. Well, come to find out, study after study kept coming in and we found so much evidence of infidelity — (Laughter) among bird species, particularly these songbirds that we thought were the pinnacle of monogamy. It would have made Maury Povich jealous for the ratings. (Laughter) It rocked biology and ornithology so hard, we had to modify and expand the entire definition of monogamy. Now, it was so bad that this was the headline of the "New York Times" science section, August, 1990. "Mating for Life? It's not for the Birds or the Bees." (Laughter) We had to come up with new definitions. The situation where an individual would change partners, either between breeding seasons or just simply because they didn't like their partner anymore? We now call this "serial monogamy." (Laughter) I didn't know it was going to be this funny. (Laughter) The situation where we know the male and female pair together and all the babies belong to both partners? We call that "genetic monogamy." And we now recognize that it only holds true for about 14 percent of the songbird species, which we were very certain were truly monogamous. And with this reclassification, we realized that in a lot of those field observations where we saw a male and female sharing a nest, comaintaining a territory, even provisioning offspring together, often included a few baby birds that did not belong to the male partner. We call this "social monogamy." (Laughter) And the mechanism responsible? Extra-pair copulation. "It's OPP, time for other people's what you get it there's no room for relationship, there's just room to ..." Audience: "Hit it!" "How many brothers out there know just what I'm getting at? Who thinks it's wrong because I was splitting and cohitting that. Well if you do, that's OPP" Actually, that's EPC Which is the abbreviation for extra-pair copulation. (Laughter) Now, we define extra-pair copulation as the mating outside of a pair bond. And just like we were discovering via science, it can lead to babies that don't belong to the male partner. Alright? Now, I first learned about EPCs years later, after all the science news broke while I was in graduate school. And as we were taking a class, talking about current discoveries and mating systems, this topic comes up. And as my professor's going through the definition and recounting all the dramatic turns of events that lead to these new revelations, I'm sitting in class and a familiar song starts bopping in my head. I'm like, "You down with OPP? Yeah, you know me!" (Laughter) I mean, that's exactly what that song was about: EPCs. And what I recognized is that this gives us an opportunity to revisit this song. Let's switch the lyrics up. So say EPC. Audience: EPC. DNL: Say it, EPC! Audience: EPC! "I like to say it with pride now, when you do it, do it well, and make sure that it counts. You're not down with a discount." You down with EPC? Audience: Yeah, you know me! Now, I had always been playing songs in my head while I was in science class, kind of tapping into this index of pop culture and hip-hop songs. But when I would share my analogies with my science professors, all of whom were older white men, I often got blank and confused stares as responses. (Laughter) But when I would share this with people from communities like mine, or other colleagues — so, diverse communities — this hip-hop science remix was a hit. That's because I was either talking to people who looked and sounded like me, or at the very least, you know, listened to some of the same songs. We were sharing a common cultural lexicon. And with that lexicon, I was able to bring new science terms to them, and together, we were sharing a new comprehension of science for the culture. Now, hip-hop song references are a really good tool for teaching content to students from hip-hop culture or urban communities. And I use it intentionally to connect to those students, tapping into vocabulary that they already know and systems that they already comprehend. And what it does in that process is it ratifies them, us, our culture as knowledge purveyors. I use hip-hop to frame and communicate science because I'm intentionally communicating science to broader audiences that public science outreach has traditionally overlooked. And in the process, I am affirming the genius that thrives in the young minds of people from every hood everywhere. So let me ask you one last time, you down with EPC? Audience: Yeah, you know me! DNL: You down with EPC? Audience: Yeah, you know me! DNL: You down with EPC? Audience: Yeah, you know me! DNL: Who's down with EPC? Audience: All the homies! Thank you. (Applause and cheers) |
A personal air-quality tracker that lets you know what you're breathing | {0: 'Romain Lacombe creates technology to track and forecast air quality levels in real time.'} | TED2018 | So for the past 12 years, I've been obsessed with this idea that climate change is an information issue that computers will help us fight. I went from data science to climate policy research, from tech to public service, in pursuit of better data to avoid the wasted energy, resources, opportunities that lead to runaway carbon emissions. Until one day, running in the streets with a friend, it hit me: the same cars, factories, power plants whose emissions are wrecking our climate over time also release harmful, local pollutants that threaten our health right here and right now. All this time I'd focused on the long-term environmental risk when I should have been up in arms about the immediate health impact of pollutants in the air. Air pollution is a burning public health crisis. It kills seven million people every year, it costs five trillion dollars to the world economy and, worst, it robs us of our most precious gift, the years in our lives: six months of life expectancy in my hometown of Paris and up to three, four, five years in parts of India and China. And in the US, more people die from car exhaust than from car accidents. So how do we protect ourselves from pollution? The reason it's difficult is an information gap. We simply lack the data to understand our exposure. And that's because the way we monitor air quality today is designed not to help people breathe but to help governments govern. Most major cities operate networks of air-quality monitoring stations like this one in London, to decide when to cut traffic or when to shut down factories. And these machines are like the computers from the '60s that filled entire rooms. They're incredibly precise but incredibly large, heavy, costly — so much that you can only deploy just a few of them, and they cannot move. So to governments, air pollution looks like this. But for the rest of us, air quality looks like this. It changes all the time: hour by hour, street by street, up to eight times within a single city block. And even more from indoor to outdoor. So unless you happen to be walking right next to one of those stations, they just cannot tell you what you breathe. So what would environmental protection look like if it was designed for the age of the smartphone? So for the past three years, my team and I have been building a technology that helps you know what you breathe and fits in your hand. Flow is a personal air-quality tracker that you can wear with you on a backpack, a bike, a stroller. It's packed with miniature sensors that monitor the most important pollutants in the air around you, like nitrogen oxides, the exhaust gas from cars, or particulate matter that gets into your bloodstream and creates strokes and heart issues. Or volatile organic compounds, the thousands of chemicals in everyday products that we end up breathing. And that makes this data actionable and helps you understand what you're breathing by telling you where and when you've been exposed to poor air quality, and that way you can make informed decisions to take action against pollution. You can change the products you use at home, you can find the best route to cycle to work, you can run when pollution is not peaking and you can find the best park to bring your children out. Over time you build better habits to decrease your exposure to pollution, and by tracking air quality around them, cyclists, commuters, parents will also contribute to mapping air quality in their city. So we're building more than a device, but a community. And last summer, we sent early prototypes of our technology to 100 volunteers in London, and together they mapped air quality across 1,000 miles of sidewalk and 20 percent of all of central London. So our goal now is to scale this work around the world, to crowdsource data so we can map air quality on every street, to build an unprecedented database so scientists can research pollution, and to empower citizens, civic leaders, policy makers to support clean-air policies for change. Because this can and must change. Remember cigarettes in bars? It took decades of lung cancer research and second-hand smoking studies, but eventually, we reached a tipping point and we passed smoking-ban laws. We must reach the same tipping point for air quality and I believe we will. In the past couple years alone, governments have fined carmakers record amounts for cheating on emission standards. Cities have passed congestion charges or built bike lanes — like Paris that turned this highway, right next to my home, in the middle of the city, into a waterfront park. And now mayors around the world are thinking of banning diesel outright by 2025, 2030, 2035. But how much faster could we go, how many lives could we save? Technology alone will not solve climate change, nor will it make air pollution disappear overnight. But it can make the quality of our air much more transparent, and if we can empower people to take action to improve their own health, then together we can act to bring an end to our pollution. Thank you very much. (Applause) |
Plug into your hard-wired happiness | {0: 'Executive, educator, writer and life coach Srikumar S. Rao asks, "Are you ready to succeed?" -- and in his famous course "Creativity and Personal Mastery," he teaches his students how to do so.'} | Arbejdsglaede Live | I have a vision for each one of you, and the vision I have for you is that when you wake up in the morning, your blood is singing at the thought of being who you are and doing what you do; that as you go through the day, you can literally sink to your knees in gratitude at the tremendous good fortune that's been bestowed on you; that as you go through the day, you become radiantly alive several times. And if your life isn't like that, I'd like to humbly suggest that you're wasting your life. A life is too short to be wasted. So what I propose to do in the next 17 minutes — I've used up one minute already — is to give you a set of powerful tools which can get you started on being there. Is that of interest to you? Audience: Yes. Srikumar Rao: OK. This is a conference on happiness, but even if it wasn't a conference on happiness, would it be right if I said that in some way, shape, fashion or form, you're devoting your entire life to being happy? Everything you do — your job, family, children, relationships, whatever — is a quest for happiness. Correct? I'd like you to think about the following: What do you have to get in order to be happy? We're just going to spend a minute on this. What do you have to get in order to be happy? Anybody, quick? When I conduct this experiment, a bunch of stuff comes up: vast wealth, trophy spouse, good health, lots of travel, time, etc, etc, etc. Right now, if you were to think about it, you probably have a list of, "Here's what I need to get in order to be happy." I would like you to consider this: anything that you can get — let me repeat that — anything you can get, you can un-get. Is that correct? So, vast wealth can make you happy. Vast wealth can disappear tomorrow. A number of people in the financial sector have discovered this already. So whatever you get that can make you happy can go away. Where does that leave you? Not a very nice place, right? I have a different proposition to suggest to you. What I have to suggest to you is that there is nothing that you have to get, do or be in order to be happy. Let me repeat that: there is nothing that you have to get, do or be in order to be happy. In fact, happiness is your innate nature. It is hardwired into you. It is part of your DNA. You cannot not be happy. Now, all of you are very polite, and in some of the other forums I speak in, such as top business schools, they're not so polite. And invariably, somebody articulates what many of you are thinking, which is: "If happiness is my innate nature, how come I am not experiencing it? How come I am experiencing my life sucks?" (Laughter) And the answer to that is actually very simple. You have spent your entire life learning to be unhappy. Let me repeat that: you have spent your entire life learning to be unhappy. And the way we learn to be unhappy is by buying into a particular mental model. A mental model is a notion we have that this is the way the world works. All of us have mental models, we've got dozens of mental models. We've got mental models on how to find a job, how to get ahead at work, how to pick a restaurant to eat at, how to have a movie to go to ... dozens of them. The problem isn't that we have mental models. The problem is that we don't know that we have mental models. We think this is the way the world works. And the more we invest in a mental model, the more it appears that this, in fact, is the way the world works. But it isn't: it's just a mental model, and the mental model we have that we buy into so strongly is that we have to get something so we can do something so we can be something. Like, we have to get a great deal of money so we can travel to exotic places so we can be happy. We have to be in a relationship so we can have great sex so we can be happy. All of this is a variation of the if-then model. And the if-then model is: if this happens, then we will be happy. If I were to get a better job, if I were to get more money, if my boss would have a heart attack, if only I was married, if only my wife would leave me — (Laughter) if only I had children, if my children would grow up and go to college ... It doesn't matter what it is. The whole notion is if this happens, then I will be happy. And right now, the only thing that's different between the persons in this audience is what is the particular "if" that you are focusing on? And the only thing that's different between you now and where you were 10 years ago is what is the particular "if" that you were focusing on? Think about your life 10 years ago. Spend a minute doing that. Ten years ago, if you remember clearly, there were certain things you wanted. Is that correct? Odds are pretty good that many of those things you wanted 10 years ago you now have. Is that correct? Where has that left you? In exactly the same place, right? What we don't realize is the model itself is flawed. The if-then model — "If this happens I will be happy" — the model itself is flawed. But instead of recognizing that it is the model itself that's flawed, what we do is spend enormous amounts of time changing the "if." "Oh, well, I thought if I became CEO it would help, but now I realize it's not that I want to become a CEO. I want to become the billionaire CEO, and then I will be happy." You've got your own variation on that. But it's the model itself that's flawed, not what you put on the "if" side of the equation. I can demonstrate that to you. Can any of you recall a time when you were confronted with a scene of such spectacular beauty that it took you outside of yourself into a place of great serenity? Maybe a rainbow, a mountain range, a valley, the sea. And if you remember that — raise your hands if you could. Virtually all of you could, right? Have you ever wondered why that happened? The reason that happened is that somehow, for some reason, at that instant, you accepted the universe exactly as it was. You didn't say, "That's a beautiful rainbow, but it's kind of off to the left, and if I could move it 200 yards to the right, it would be ever so much more beautiful." (Laughter) You didn't say, "That's a beautiful valley, but the tree in the foreground has too many crooked branches. So if you gave me a chainsaw and 20 minutes, I'd make it ever so much better." Oh no, the rainbow off-center was just fine. The tree with its crooked branches was just fine. And the moment you accepted the universe just as it was, your habitual-wanting self dropped away, and the happiness which is your innate nature surfaced, and you felt it. And I know you felt it because now, even now after all those years, you can still remember it. The problem is that your life right now, with all of the problems that you have — more precisely, all of the problems that you think you have — is equally perfect. But you do not accept it. In fact, you're spending all your time striving with might and main to make it different. You are not accepting it. And when you're not accepting it, you're buying into the if-then model: if this happens, then I will be happy. And it's the model itself that is flawed. So let me show you how you can get out of that, or at least you can begin the steps towards getting out of that. I'd like to share with you that action. We all live our lives because we want to achieve something, correct? You know, we are here and we want to have something. Alex wants to have a successful conference. You know, many of you want to have great programs for your companies that are very successful. You want to progress, have more money, all of that, is that correct? Each of those is an outcome; you would like something to happen. Now, I'd like you to think about the following: actions are within your control, not entirely, but to a large extent. The outcome is completely out of your control. OK? Actions are within your control. The outcome is completely outside your control. Have any of you recognized that when you have a goal and you start to work towards it, some of the time you don't achieve your goal, and some of the time what you get is the exact opposite of what you wanted? Has that happened to any of you? Like there was a friend of mine who said, "Gee, you know, I have not been paying a lot of attention to my wife, and this has to change." So the next time we went on a business trip, he bought a very expensive dress for her. And this was his way of showing, you know, I care for you, and nice things would happen. And when he presented the gift to his wife, her immediate reaction was, "After 20 years of marriage, you don't know my size?" (Laughter) "And furthermore, don't you know I never wear this kind of thing?" And the next thing you know, he had a full-blown marital spat. Has that happened to any of you? You've taken action for a particular outcome and the outcome you got was the exact opposite of what you wanted? Happens all the time. Well, we live in a world where what we think of, what we invest in, is the outcome. We define our life in the following way: here I am, here is where I want to go, these are the steps I have to take in order to get from where I am to where I want to go, and if I succeed, life is wonderful. And if I don't, then I have failed, life is no good, life sucks. True? False? That is how we live. We invest in the outcome, and as I've just pointed out, the outcome is frequently different from what we would like, and sometimes the diametric opposite of what we would like. You invest in the outcome and you are guaranteed to have more than your share of frustration, angst and all the rest of the stuff that makes life suck. There is an alternative. And the alternative is that you do not invest in the outcome, you invest in the process. And the best way to describe that is a quote by John Wooden. I don't know how many of you are familiar with John Wooden. He's very well-known in the United States and certainly among basketball fans. He's the only person ever to make the basketball Hall of Fame both as a player and as a coach. And what he told his entering team — he led UCLA to an unprecedented number of victories and finals in the NCAA — and what he used to tell any new team is he never spoke about winning. He always said, "When it's over and you look in the mirror, did you do the best that you were capable of? And if you did the best that you were capable of, the score doesn't matter. But I would suspect that if you did the best that you were capable of, you will find the score to your liking." That is investing in a process. What we do is the exact opposite. We invest in the outcome. This is what I want — oh, I want it so desperately, because if I get it I will be happy. And you try with might and main, to do whatever you can, but you are always focusing on, "This is the outcome." Now, focusing on the outcome is fine. It gives you direction. Investing in the outcome means that you make the achievement of a particular outcome dependent for your well-being. And that is a surefire recipe for failure. What you can do is something else. You can invest in the process. That is, once you have determined, here is where I am, here is where I want to be, and that's fine, you focus on the outcome only to the extent that it gives you direction, and then you invest yourself completely in the process. You say, here are the steps you want to take, and you put everything into it. And if you succeed, wonderful. And if you don't succeed, still wonderful, because now you have a new starting point, and from that new starting point, you select another outcome and keep going. And when you do that, you will find that every day is a blast. Let me give you an example. And if you have children — raise your hands if you have children. Have you ever seen a small child learn to walk? What happens, and this happens typically between 11 and 13 months, is the child gets up and she sees everybody walking, she wants to walk, she gets up, she falls down, she starts crying and momma runs up and comforts her, kisses the place, makes it well. She tries again, falls down, mommy runs up again. After some time, mommy feels tired and no longer runs up and the child stops crying, and then she gets up, takes a step and doesn't fall down, and then she takes another, and a beautiful smile comes on her face. And very soon, generally within 24 hours, she's walking all over the place, upsetting your living room arrangements. And you know you've gone to a new stage of parenting. Right? Now, imagine what would happen if each time the child fell, she would say, "Oh my God, I failed again. I'm never going to learn to walk." And you have to get counseling for her to help her deal with feelings of inadequacy and not being able to achieve and fail yet again. How long do you think it would take her to learn to walk if you had to do that, if every three times she fell down, you had to get a counselor to counsel her and so on? Sounds funny, doesn't it? But that is exactly what we're doing. What the child is doing is focusing on the process. She's investing in the process, not in the outcome. What we do is the exact opposite. As we grow up, we lose the ability to invest in the process, we start investing in the outcome. By definition the outcome is outside of our control, and if that's where we spend all of our emotional energy, we are going to get drained as we do. But if, on the other hand, we said, "Here is the outcome, I am going to invest in the process and give it every single bit I could," every day is a blast, and you're well on your way to achieving the vision that I outlined to you. The question that I get all the time, is people say, "Professor Rao, but nothing makes me passionate." So I say, "OK, what would?" And they invariably come up with, you know, here is a list of things. Here's my job and here's how much it pays, this is the kind of person my boss is, the kind of people my colleagues are, and here's how my customers are, here's how much I travel, here's how big my office is, how deep the carpeting is, how many windows I have — a bunch of parameters. And what I tell them is what I want to share with you, because all of that stuff — first of all, it doesn't exist. But second, even if it did and you were plugged into it, it would not take more than six months for you to be the same sorry, miserable self there as you are now, because passion exists inside you. It does not exist in the job. And if you don't find a way to ignite it within you right where you are, you are not going to find it outside. But if you do find a way to ignite it where you are, then you will find that the external world rearranges itself to accommodate the new person that you are becoming. And as you do that, you will find that miracles happen on a regular basis. Persons come up whom you're delighted to meet. New people enter your life. It's just a breeze, because all you do in your life is you take journeys. You came here to this conference; you went on a journey. You hang around the water cooler, talking about how terrible your place of work is; you went on a journey. You watch "Desperate Housewives," you go on a journey. You go on a journey where 40-something women are having affairs with 19-something gardeners while the husbands are playing around with models. All you do is go on journeys. There's nothing wrong with that, but just ask yourself, "Is this a journey I want to take? Does this take me to a place I want to spend time?" And if you start doing that, you will find that your life changes. The kind of people you meet, the things you talk about, the movies you go to, the books you read — everything changes. And you begin all of that by focusing on the process. Invest in the process, not in the outcome. Thank you. |
Can we cure genetic diseases by rewriting DNA? | {0: 'David R. Liu leads a research group that combines chemistry and evolutionary techniques to create revolutionary new medicines.'} | TED2019 | The most important gift your mother and father ever gave you was the two sets of three billion letters of DNA that make up your genome. But like anything with three billion components, that gift is fragile. Sunlight, smoking, unhealthy eating, even spontaneous mistakes made by your cells, all cause changes to your genome. The most common kind of change in DNA is the simple swap of one letter, or base, such as C, with a different letter, such as T, G or A. In any day, the cells in your body will collectively accumulate billions of these single-letter swaps, which are also called "point mutations." Now, most of these point mutations are harmless. But every now and then, a point mutation disrupts an important capability in a cell or causes a cell to misbehave in harmful ways. If that mutation were inherited from your parents or occurred early enough in your development, then the result would be that many or all of your cells contain this harmful mutation. And then you would be one of hundreds of millions of people with a genetic disease, such as sickle cell anemia or progeria or muscular dystrophy or Tay-Sachs disease. Grievous genetic diseases caused by point mutations are especially frustrating, because we often know the exact single-letter change that causes the disease and, in theory, could cure the disease. Millions suffer from sickle cell anemia because they have a single A to T point mutations in both copies of their hemoglobin gene. And children with progeria are born with a T at a single position in their genome where you have a C, with the devastating consequence that these wonderful, bright kids age very rapidly and pass away by about age 14. Throughout the history of medicine, we have not had a way to efficiently correct point mutations in living systems, to change that disease-causing T back into a C. Perhaps until now. Because my laboratory recently succeeded in developing such a capability, which we call "base editing." The story of how we developed base editing actually begins three billion years ago. We think of bacteria as sources of infection, but bacteria themselves are also prone to being infected, in particular, by viruses. So about three billion years ago, bacteria evolved a defense mechanism to fight viral infection. That defense mechanism is now better known as CRISPR. And the warhead in CRISPR is this purple protein that acts like molecular scissors to cut DNA, breaking the double helix into two pieces. If CRISPR couldn't distinguish between bacterial and viral DNA, it wouldn't be a very useful defense system. But the most amazing feature of CRISPR is that the scissors can be programmed to search for, bind to and cut only a specific DNA sequence. So when a bacterium encounters a virus for the first time, it can store a small snippet of that virus's DNA for use as a program to direct the CRISPR scissors to cut that viral DNA sequence during a future infection. Cutting a virus's DNA messes up the function of the cut viral gene, and therefore disrupts the virus's life cycle. Remarkable researchers including Emmanuelle Charpentier, George Church, Jennifer Doudna and Feng Zhang showed six years ago how CRISPR scissors could be programmed to cut DNA sequences of our choosing, including sequences in your genome, instead of the viral DNA sequences chosen by bacteria. But the outcomes are actually similar. Cutting a DNA sequence in your genome also disrupts the function of the cut gene, typically, by causing the insertion and deletion of random mixtures of DNA letters at the cut site. Now, disrupting genes can be very useful for some applications. But for most point mutations that cause genetic diseases, simply cutting the already-mutated gene won't benefit patients, because the function of the mutated gene needs to be restored, not further disrupted. So cutting this already-mutated hemoglobin gene that causes sickle cell anemia won't restore the ability of patients to make healthy red blood cells. And while we can sometimes introduce new DNA sequences into cells to replace the DNA sequences surrounding a cut site, that process, unfortunately, doesn't work in most types of cells, and the disrupted gene outcomes still predominate. Like many scientists, I've dreamed of a future in which we might be able to treat or maybe even cure human genetic diseases. But I saw the lack of a way to fix point mutations, which cause most human genetic diseases, as a major problem standing in the way. Being a chemist, I began working with my students to develop ways on performing chemistry directly on an individual DNA base, to truly fix, rather than disrupt, the mutations that cause genetic diseases. The results of our efforts are molecular machines called "base editors." Base editors use the programmable searching mechanism of CRISPR scissors, but instead of cutting the DNA, they directly convert one base to another base without disrupting the rest of the gene. So if you think of naturally occurring CRISPR proteins as molecular scissors, you can think of base editors as pencils, capable of directly rewriting one DNA letter into another by actually rearranging the atoms of one DNA base to instead become a different base. Now, base editors don't exist in nature. In fact, we engineered the first base editor, shown here, from three separate proteins that don't even come from the same organism. We started by taking CRISPR scissors and disabling the ability to cut DNA while retaining its ability to search for and bind a target DNA sequence in a programmed manner. To those disabled CRISPR scissors, shown in blue, we attached a second protein in red, which performs a chemical reaction on the DNA base C, converting it into a base that behaves like T. Third, we had to attach to the first two proteins the protein shown in purple, which protects the edited base from being removed by the cell. The net result is an engineered three-part protein that for the first time allows us to convert Cs into Ts at specified locations in the genome. But even at this point, our work was only half done. Because in order to be stable in cells, the two strands of a DNA double helix have to form base pairs. And because C only pairs with G, and T only pairs with A, simply changing a C to a T on one DNA strand creates a mismatch, a disagreement between the two DNA strands that the cell has to resolve by deciding which strand to replace. We realized that we could further engineer this three-part protein to flag the nonedited strand as the one to be replaced by nicking that strand. This little nick tricks the cell into replacing the nonedited G with an A as it remakes the nicked strand, thereby completing the conversion of what used to be a C-G base pair into a stable T-A base pair. After several years of hard work led by a former post doc in the lab, Alexis Komor, we succeeded in developing this first class of base editor, which converts Cs into Ts and Gs into As at targeted positions of our choosing. Among the more than 35,000 known disease-associated point mutations, the two kinds of mutations that this first base editor can reverse collectively account for about 14 percent or 5,000 or so pathogenic point mutations. But correcting the largest fraction of disease-causing point mutations would require developing a second class of base editor, one that could convert As into Gs or Ts into Cs. Led by Nicole Gaudelli, a former post doc in the lab, we set out to develop this second class of base editor, which, in theory, could correct up to almost half of pathogenic point mutations, including that mutation that causes the rapid-aging disease progeria. We realized that we could borrow, once again, the targeting mechanism of CRISPR scissors to bring the new base editor to the right site in a genome. But we quickly encountered an incredible problem; namely, there is no protein that's known to convert A into G or T into C in DNA. Faced with such a serious stumbling block, most students would probably look for another project, if not another research advisor. (Laughter) But Nicole agreed to proceed with a plan that seemed wildly ambitious at the time. Given the absence of a naturally occurring protein that performs the necessary chemistry, we decided we would evolve our own protein in the laboratory to convert A into a base that behaves like G, starting from a protein that performs related chemistry on RNA. We set up a Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest selection system that explored tens of millions of protein variants and only allowed those rare variants that could perform the necessary chemistry to survive. We ended up with a protein shown here, the first that can convert A in DNA into a base that resembles G. And when we attached that protein to the disabled CRISPR scissors, shown in blue, we produced the second base editor, which converts As into Gs, and then uses the same strand-nicking strategy that we used in the first base editor to trick the cell into replacing the nonedited T with a C as it remakes that nicked strand, thereby completing the conversion of an A-T base pair to a G-C base pair. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) As an academic scientist in the US, I'm not used to being interrupted by applause. (Laughter) We developed these first two classes of base editors only three years ago and one and a half years ago. But even in that short time, base editing has become widely used by the biomedical research community. Base editors have been sent more than 6,000 times at the request of more than 1,000 researchers around the globe. A hundred scientific research papers have been published already, using base editors in organisms ranging from bacteria to plants to mice to primates. While base editors are too new to have already entered human clinical trials, scientists have succeeded in achieving a critical milestone towards that goal by using base editors in animals to correct point mutations that cause human genetic diseases. For example, a collaborative team of scientists led by Luke Koblan and Jon Levy, two additional students in my lab, recently used a virus to deliver that second base editor into a mouse with progeria, changing that disease-causing T back into a C and reversing its consequences at the DNA, RNA and protein levels. Base editors have also been used in animals to reverse the consequence of tyrosinemia, beta thalassemia, muscular dystrophy, phenylketonuria, a congenital deafness and a type of cardiovascular disease — in each case, by directly correcting a point mutation that causes or contributes to the disease. In plants, base editors have been used to introduce individual single DNA letter changes that could lead to better crops. And biologists have used base editors to probe the role of individual letters in genes associated with diseases such as cancer. Two companies I cofounded, Beam Therapeutics and Pairwise Plants, are using base editing to treat human genetic diseases and to improve agriculture. All of these applications of base editing have taken place in less than the past three years: on the historical timescale of science, the blink of an eye. Additional work lies ahead before base editing can realize its full potential to improve the lives of patients with genetic diseases. While many of these diseases are thought to be treatable by correcting the underlying mutation in even a modest fraction of cells in an organ, delivering molecular machines like base editors into cells in a human being can be challenging. Co-opting nature's viruses to deliver base editors instead of the molecules that give you a cold is one of several promising delivery strategies that's been successfully used. Continuing to develop new molecular machines that can make all of the remaining ways to convert one base pair to another base pair and that minimize unwanted editing at off-target locations in cells is very important. And engaging with other scientists, doctors, ethicists and governments to maximize the likelihood that base editing is applied thoughtfully, safely and ethically, remains a critical obligation. These challenges notwithstanding, if you had told me even just five years ago that researchers around the globe would be using laboratory-evolved molecular machines to directly convert an individual base pair to another base pair at a specified location in the human genome efficiently and with a minimum of other outcomes, I would have asked you, "What science-fiction novel are you reading?" Thanks to a relentlessly dedicated group of students who were creative enough to engineer what we could design ourselves and brave enough to evolve what we couldn't, base editing has begun to transform that science-fiction-like aspiration into an exciting new reality, one in which the most important gift we give our children may not only be three billion letters of DNA, but also the means to protect and repair them. Thank you. (Applause) Thank you. |
What color is Tuesday? Exploring synesthesia | null | TED-Ed | Imagine a world in which you see numbers and letters as colored even though they're printed in black, in which music or voices trigger a swirl of moving, colored shapes, in which words and names fill your mouth with unusual flavors. Jail tastes like cold, hard bacon while Derek tastes like earwax. Welcome to synesthesia, the neurological phenomenon that couples two or more senses in 4% of the population. A synesthete might not only hear my voice, but also see it, taste it, or feel it as a physical touch. Sharing the same root with anesthesia, meaning no sensation, synesthesia means joined sensation. Having one type, such as colored hearing, gives you a 50% chance of having a second, third, or fourth type. One in 90 among us experience graphemes, the written elements of language, like letters, numerals, and punctuation marks, as saturated with color. Some even have gender or personality. For Gail, 3 is athletic and sporty, 9 is a vain, elitist girl. By contrast, the sound units of language, or phonemes, trigger synestetic tastes. For James, college tastes like sausage, as does message and similar words with the -age ending. Synesthesia is a trait, like having blue eyes, rather than a disorder because there's nothing wrong. In fact, all the extra hooks endow synesthetes with superior memories. For example, a girl runs into someone she met long ago. "Let's see, she had a green name. D's are green: Debra, Darby, Dorothy, Denise. Yes! Her name is Denise!" Once established in childhood, pairings remain fixed for life. Synesthetes inherit a biological propensity for hyperconnecting brain neurons, but then must be exposed to cultural artifacts, such as calendars, food names, and alphabets. The amazing thing is that a single nucleotide change in the sequence of one's DNA alters perception. In this way, synesthesia provides a path to understanding subjective differences, how two people can see the same thing differently. Take Sean, who prefers blue tasting food, such as milk, oranges, and spinach. The gene heightens normally occurring connections between the taste area in his frontal lobe and the color area further back. But suppose in someone else that the gene acted in non-sensory areas. You would then have the ability to link seemingly unrelated things, which is the definition of metaphor, seeing the similar in the dissimilar. Not surprisingly, synesthesia is more common in artists who excel at making metaphors, like novelist Vladimir Nabokov, painter David Hockney, and composers Billy Joel and Lady Gaga. But why do the rest of us non-synesthetes understand metaphors like "sharp cheese" or "sweet person"? It so happens that sight, sound, and movement already map to one another so closely, that even bad ventriloquists convince us that the dummy is talking. Movies, likewise, can convince us that the sound is coming from the actors' mouths rather than surrounding speakers. So, inwardly, we're all synesthetes, outwardly unaware of the perceptual couplings happening all the time. Cross-talk in the brain is the rule, not the exception. And that sounds like a sweet deal to me! |
The surprising reason our muscles get tired | null | TED-Ed | You're lifting weights. The first time feels easy, but each lift takes more and more effort until you can’t continue. Inside your arms, the muscles responsible for the lifting have become unable to contract. Why do our muscles get fatigued? We often blame lactic acid or running out of energy, but these factors alone don’t account for muscle fatigue. There’s another major contributor: the muscle’s ability to respond to signals from the brain. To understand the roots of muscle fatigue, it helps to know how a muscle contracts in response to a signal from a nerve. These signals travel from the brain to the muscles in a fraction of a second via long, thin cells called motor neurons. The motor neuron and the muscle cell are separated by a tiny gap, and the exchange of particles across this gap enables the contraction. On one side of the gap, the motor neuron contains a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. On the other side, charged particles, or ions, line the muscle cell’s membrane: potassium on the inside, and sodium on the outside. In response to a signal from the brain, the motor neuron releases acetylcholine, which triggers pores on the muscle cell membrane to open. Sodium flows in, and potassium flows out. The flux of these charged particles is a crucial step for muscle contraction: the change in charge creates an electrical signal called an action potential that spreads through the muscle cell, stimulating the release of calcium that’s stored inside it. This flood of calcium causes the muscle to contract by enabling proteins buried in the muscle fibers to lock together and ratchet towards each other, pulling the muscle tight. The energy used to power the contraction comes from a molecule called ATP. ATP also helps pump the ions back across the membrane afterward, resetting the balance of sodium and potassium on either side. This whole process repeats every time a muscle contracts. With each contraction, energy in the form of ATP gets used up, waste products like lactic acid are generated, and some ions drift away from the muscle’s cell membrane, leaving a smaller and smaller group behind. Though muscle cells use up ATP as they contract repeatedly, they are always making more, so most of the time even heavily fatigued muscles still have not depleted this energy source. And though many waste products are acidic, fatigued muscles still maintain pH within normal limits, indicating that the tissue is effectively clearing these wastes. But eventually, over the course of repeated contractions there may not be sufficient concentrations of potassium, sodium or calcium ions immediately available near the muscle cell membrane to reset the system properly. So even if the brain sends a signal, the muscle cell can’t generate the action potential necessary to contract. Even when ions like sodium, potassium or calcium are depleted in or around the muscle cell, these ions are plentiful elsewhere in the body. With a little time, they will flow back to the areas where they’re needed, sometimes with the help of active sodium and potassium pumps. So if you pause and rest, muscle fatigue will subside as these ions replenish throughout the muscle. The more regularly you exercise, the longer it takes for muscle fatigue to set in each time. That’s because the stronger you are, the fewer times this cycle of nerve signal from the brain to contraction in the muscle has to be repeated to lift a certain amount of weight. Fewer cycles means slower ion depletion, so as your physical fitness improves, you can exercise for longer at the same intensity. Many muscles grow with exercise, and larger muscles also have bigger stores of ATP and a higher capacity to clear waste, pushing fatigue even farther into the future. |
The hidden network that makes the internet possible | null | TED-Ed | In 2012, a team of Japanese and Danish researchers set a world record, transmitting 1 petabit of data— that’s 10,000 hours of high-def video— over a fifty-kilometer cable, in a second. This wasn’t just any cable. It was a souped-up version of fiber optics— the hidden network that links our planet and makes the internet possible. For decades, long-distance communications between cities and countries were carried by electrical signals, in wires made of copper. This was slow and inefficient, with metal wires limiting data rates and power lost as wasted heat. But in the late 20th century, engineers mastered a far superior method of transmission. Instead of metal, glass can be carefully melted and drawn into flexible fiber strands, hundreds of kilometers long and no thicker than human hair. And instead of electricity, these strands carry pulses of light, representing digital data. But how does light travel within glass, rather than just pass through it? The trick lies in a phenomenon known as total internal reflection. Since Isaac Newton’s time, lensmakers and scientists have known that light bends when it passes between air and materials like water or glass. When a ray of light inside glass hits its surface at a steep angle, it refracts, or bends as it exits into air. But if the ray travels at a shallow angle, it’ll bend so far that it stays trapped, bouncing along inside the glass. Under the right condition, something normally transparent to light can instead hide it from the world. Compared to electricity or radio, fiber optic signals barely degrade over great distances— a little power does scatter away, and fibers can’t bend too sharply, otherwise the light leaks out. Today, a single optical fiber carries many wavelengths of light, each a different channel of data. And a fiber optic cable contains hundreds of these fiber strands. Over a million kilometers of cable crisscross our ocean floors to link the continents— that’s enough to wind around the Equator nearly thirty times. With fiber optics, distance hardly limits data, which has allowed the internet to evolve into a planetary computer. Increasingly, our mobile work and play rely on legions of overworked computer servers, warehoused in gigantic data centers flung across the world. This is called cloud computing, and it leads to two big problems: heat waste and bandwidth demand. The vast majority of internet traffic shuttles around inside data centers, where thousands of servers are connected by traditional electrical cables. Half of their running power is wasted as heat. Meanwhile, wireless bandwidth demand steadily marches on, and the gigahertz signals used in our mobile devices are reaching their data delivery limits. It seems fiber optics has been too good for its own good, fueling overly-ambitious cloud and mobile computing expectations. But a related technology, integrated photonics, has come to the rescue. Light can be guided not only in optical fibers, but also in ultrathin silicon wires. Silicon wires don’t guide light as well as fiber. But they do enable engineers to shrink all the devices in a hundred kilometer fiber optic network down to tiny photonic chips that plug into servers and convert their electrical signals to optical and back. These electricity-to-light chips allow for wasteful electrical cables in data centers to be swapped out for power-efficient fiber. Photonic chips can help break open wireless bandwidth limitations, too. Researchers are working to replace mobile gigahertz signals with terahertz frequencies, to carry data thousands of times faster. But these are short-range signals: they get absorbed by moisture in the air, or blocked by tall buildings. With tiny wireless-to-fiber photonic transmitter chips distributed throughout cities, terahertz signals can be relayed over long-range distances. They can do so via a stable middleman, optical fiber, and make hyperfast wireless connectivity a reality. For all of human history, light has gifted us with sight and heat, serving as a steady companion while we explored and settled the physical world. Now, we’ve saddled light with information and redirected it to run along a fiber optic superhighway— with many different integrated photonic exits— to build an even more expansive, virtual world. |
Titan of terror: the dark imagination of H.P. Lovecraft | null | TED-Ed | Arcane books of forbidden lore, disturbing secrets in the family bloodline, and terrors so unspeakable the very thought of them might drive you mad. By now, these have become standard elements in many modern horror stories. But they were largely popularized by a single author– one whose name has become an adjective for the particular type of terror he inspired. Born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1890, Howard Phillips Lovecraft grew up admiring the Gothic horror stories written by Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Chambers. But by the time he began writing in 1917, World War I had cast a long shadow over the arts. People had seen real horrors, and were no longer frightened of fantastical folklore. Lovecraft sought to invent a new kind of terror, one that responded to the rapid scientific progress of his era. His stories often used scientific elements to lend eerie plausibility. In "The Colour out of Space," a strange meteorite falls near a farmhouse, mutating the farm into a nightmarish hellscape. Others incorporated scientific methodology into their form. "At the Mountains of Madness" is written as a report of an Antarctic expedition that unearths things better left undiscovered. In others, mathematics themselves become a source of horror, as impossible geometric configurations wreak havoc on the minds of any who behold them. Like then-recent discoveries of subatomic particles or X-rays, the forces in Lovecraft’s fiction were powerful, yet often invisible and indescribable. Rather than recognizable monsters, graphic violence, or startling shocks, the terror of “Lovecraftian” horror lies in what’s not directly portrayed– but left instead to the dark depths of our imagination. Lovecraft’s dozens of short stories, novellas, and poems often take place in the same fictional continuity, with recurring characters, locations, and mythologies. At first glance, they appear to be set within Lovecraft’s contemporary New England. But beneath the surface of this seemingly similar reality lie dark masters, for whom Earth’s inhabitants are mere playthings. More like primordial forces than mere deities, Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones lurk at the corners of our reality. Beings such as Yog-Sothoth, “who froths as primal slime in nuclear chaos beyond the nethermost outposts of space and time.” Or the blind, idiot god Azathoth, whose destructive impulses are stalled only by the “maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.” These beings exist beyond our conceptions of reality, their true forms as inscrutable as their motives. Lovecraft’s protagonists– often researchers, anthropologists, or antiquarians– stumble onto hints of their existence. But even these indirect glimpses are enough to drive them insane. And if they survive, the reader is left with no feeling of triumph, only cosmic indifference– the terrible sense that we are but insignificant specks at the mercy of unfathomable forces. But perhaps the greatest power these creatures had was their appeal to Lovecraft’s contemporaries. During his lifetime, Lovecraft corresponded with other writers, encouraging them to employ elements and characters from his stories in their own. References to Lovecraftian gods or arcane tomes can be found in many stories by his pen pals, such as Robert E. Howard and Robert Bloch. Today, this shared universe is called the Cthulhu Mythos, named after Lovecraft’s infamous blend of dragon and octopus. Unfortunately, Lovecraft’s fear of the unknown found a less savory expression in his personal views. The author held strong racist views, and some of his works include crude stereotypes and slurs. But the rich world he created would outlive his personal prejudices. And after Lovecraft’s death, the Cthulhu Mythos was adopted by a wide variety of authors, often reimagining them from diverse perspectives that transcend the author’s prejudices. Despite his literary legacy, Lovecraft was never able to find financial success. He died unknown and penniless at the age of 46– a victim of the universe’s cosmic indifference. But his work has inspired numerous short stories, novels, tabletop games, and cultural icons. And as long as humans feel a sense of dread about our unknown future, Lovecraftian horror will have a place in the darkest corners of our imagination. |
Turbulence: one of the great unsolved mysteries of physics | null | TED-Ed | You’re on an airplane when you feel a sudden jolt. Outside your window nothing seems to be happening, yet the plane continues to rattle you and your fellow passengers as it passes through turbulent air in the atmosphere. Although it may not comfort you to hear it, this phenomenon is one of the prevailing mysteries of physics. After more than a century of studying turbulence, we’ve only come up with a few answers for how it works and affects the world around us. And yet, turbulence is ubiquitous, springing up in virtually any system that has moving fluids. That includes the airflow in your respiratory tract. The blood moving through your arteries. And the coffee in your cup, as you stir it. Clouds are governed by turbulence, as are waves crashing along the shore and the gusts of plasma in our sun. Understanding precisely how this phenomenon works would have a bearing on so many aspects of our lives. Here’s what we do know. Liquids and gases usually have two types of motion: a laminar flow, which is stable and smooth; and a turbulent flow, which is composed of seemingly unorganized swirls. Imagine an incense stick. The laminar flow of unruffled smoke at the base is steady and easy to predict. Closer to the top, however, the smoke accelerates, becomes unstable, and the pattern of movement changes to something chaotic. That’s turbulence in action, and turbulent flows have certain characteristics in common. Firstly, turbulence is always chaotic. That’s different from being random. Rather, this means that turbulence is very sensitive to disruptions. A little nudge one way or the other will eventually turn into completely different results. That makes it nearly impossible to predict what will happen, even with a lot of information about the current state of a system. Another important characteristic of turbulence is the different scales of motion that these flows display. Turbulent flows have many differently-sized whirls called eddies, which are like vortices of different sizes and shapes. All those differently-sized eddies interact with each other, breaking up to become smaller and smaller until all that movement is transformed into heat, in a process called the “energy cascade." So that’s how we recognize turbulence– but why does it happen? In every flowing liquid or gas there are two opposing forces: inertia and viscosity. Inertia is the tendency of fluids to keep moving, which causes instability. Viscosity works against disruption, making the flow laminar instead. In thick fluids such as honey, viscosity almost always wins. Less viscous substances like water or air are more prone to inertia, which creates instabilities that develop into turbulence. We measure where a flow falls on that spectrum with something called the Reynolds number, which is the ratio between a flow’s inertia and its viscosity. The higher the Reynolds number, the more likely it is that turbulence will occur. Honey being poured into a cup, for example, has a Reynolds number of about 1. The same set up with water has a Reynolds number that’s closer to 10,000. The Reynolds number is useful for understanding simple scenarios, but it’s ineffective in many situations. For example, the motion of the atmosphere is significantly influenced by factors including gravity and the earth’s rotation. Or take relatively simple things like the drag on buildings and cars. We can model those thanks to many experiments and empirical evidence. But physicists want to be able to predict them through physical laws and equations as well as we can model the orbits of planets or electromagnetic fields. Most scientists think that getting there will rely on statistics and increased computing power. Extremely high-speed computer simulations of turbulent flows could help us identify patterns that could lead to a theory that organizes and unifies predictions across different situations. Other scientists think that the phenomenon is so complex that such a full-fledged theory isn’t ever going to be possible. Hopefully we’ll reach a breakthrough, because a true understanding of turbulence could have huge positive impacts. That would include more efficient wind farms; the ability to better prepare for catastrophic weather events; or even the power to manipulate hurricanes away. And, of course, smoother rides for millions of airline passengers. |
How generational stereotypes hold us back at work | {0: 'Leah Georges is a professor and researcher who works with organizations to pull apart the enduring fable of generations at war in the workplace.'} | TEDxCreightonU | So, for the first time in America's modern history, we have five generations interacting at work. The veterans, born between 1922 and 1943, are known as the Greatest Generation, the matures, the silents. They're known for their self-sacrifice, respect for authority and work as its own reward. The boomers came shortly after, born between 1944 and 1960. This is a generation characterized by hard work. In fact, we can thank this generation for the term "workaholic." They appreciate competition, they love effective communication. And they're thinking towards retirement, if they haven't retired already. Generation X is known as the lost generation the latchkey generation, born between 1961 and 1980. This is the smallest generation, sandwiched between boomers and the big millennials. More parents were divorced in this generation than any generation prior. They also were the first generation to tell us about work-life balance, and the first to really ask for that in the workplace. And then millennials — you know, the everybody-gets-a-ribbon generation — born between 1981 and 2000. Never knew a time where technology wasn't present in the home. They're incredibly pragmatic, they're hopeful and they're determined. They think they're going to change the world, in fact, I believe they're going to do it. They might be a little bit idealistic sometimes, but in just the last several years, we've seen millennials overtake Generation X to be the most represented generation in the workforce. In fact, more than one in three people in the United States labor force is a millennial. And soon to join us there, Generation Z, born since 2000, our high school interns or soon to be high school graduates. Now, if you open any internet browser, look at Amazon, search any of your favorite search engines, you might assume there's a literal war in the workplace, right? We see blog topics like "Seventeen reasons why millennials are the worst generation." And "Why baby boomers have ruined it for everybody." Or "Bridging the great generational divide." It's like turning into this "West Side Story," like, boomers come in one door, millennials come in another door, the lobby, they just fight with each other all day, complain, go home, do the same, come back to work, right? Well, so what if I told you these generations may not exist? I've been spending some time thinking about this and researching this, and fellow researchers and I aren't exactly sure that these generations are real. And in fact, if we can agree that these groups even exist, we certainly don't agree who belongs in them. And they span something like 20 years. So at whatever point in history, a one-year-old and a 20-year-old are said to share the same value system, to want the same things at work, to have the same stereotypes working for and against them. And in fact, different areas of the world define these generations differently. So we can't even compare generations across various areas of the world. And these stereotypes about each generation have, in a lot of ways, created this self-fulfilling prophecy, that people begin to act as if they're part of that generation because we've said out loud that generation is real. I'm not so sure that it is. And in fact, this idea of generations has become deeply embedded in United States culture. When we talk generations, people know exactly what we're talking about. In fact, people have a lot of thoughts and feelings about each of these generations. And I'll tell you how I know this. I did the thing that every red-blooded American and pre-tenure academic does when they have a question. I Googled some stuff. And this is what I learned. Google is based on algorithms, and they provide you with commonly searched terms, or suggested hits, based on what other people are searching surrounding the same topic. And it gave me a really good sense of what people think about each of these generations. Take a look. I learned that baby boomers are conservative, that Americans think they're stupid. The worst generation, they're angry, apparently they're racist and they're so important. Looking at Generation X, I learned Generation X is a cynical group, they're angry, they're known as the lost generation — we know this; they're the smallest generation. Apparently, they're stupid too. (Laughter) And mostly, they're frustrated with baby boomers. Alright, millennials, this is what I learned about us. So, we're obsessed with food. (Laughter) We're also stupid, ah! We're lazy, we're sensitive, we're fired, we're also hated, and we think we're important. And perhaps the most terrifying search result on the internet — Generation Z is screwed. (Laughter) OK, so, for five years, I've been talking to leaders and followers across a wide variety of organizations. And this is what I've come to realize. Generations haven't become part of the conversation — generations have become the conversation at work. What I've learned is that we're working under the assumption that those Google results are true. And so, what I think is that organizations are now desperate to figure out how to "manage" the multigenerational workplace. "Manage" it. We manage all sorts of things. We're preparing for this wave of millennials to come to work. So we prepare for hurricanes, right? We prepare to take the MCAT, we prepare for natural disasters. Why are we preparing for 23-year-olds to come to work? (Laughter) I've talked to these organizations, and I've heard amazing things that they're doing to create a workspace for everybody to get along and to have autonomy and to feel like they're thriving. But I've also heard some really incredibly harebrained ideas about how to navigate the multigenerational workplace. Are you ready? This is what I saw. I visited an organization, and they adopted this idea that if you can see it, you can be it. A really important concept. But I think they blew it. The put pictures on the walls of the ideal multigenerational workplace, because if you can see it, you can be it. (Laughter) Or like this one. (Laughter) Like, I don't even want to work here. (Laughter) You don't get to wear color here, apparently, and HR seriously has problems with people jumping in heels, I promise you that, OK? I talked to an organization who recently decided against putting a ball pit in the break room because that's how you retain millennials. We're 30, not three. (Laughter) And in fact, I know a young, at the time, millennial, who was told that if she wanted people to take her seriously, just because she was a millennial, she would have to do this — wear shoulder pads. Yes. People younger than her and older than her wouldn't take her seriously unless she wore shoulder pads. Straight-out-of-the-80s, can't-even-buy-them-anywhere shoulder pads. This young woman had two graduate degrees. This young woman was me. And this is the best we came up with? How to navigate the multigenerational workplace ... is shoulder pads? (Laughter) So, this is also what I've learned talking to organizations that employ a wide range of people of various ages. We are so much more similar than we are different. And we're hearing this consistently. People want work that matters, they want flexibility, they want support, they want appreciation, they want better coffee. But none of these things are tied to a generation. Now, sure, we see small differences in what people want. We know 20-year-olds and 60-year-olds go home and do different things. They have different values. At least when it comes to things happening outside of work. But I think what's happened is that this focus on generational cohorts, these groups of people, has created a space where we just forgot that people are people. And to know who they really are, who we really work with, we have to figure out how to better navigate this multigenerational workplace than ball pits. Call me one of those idealist millennials, but I think we can get there. And I don't think the idea is too terribly difficult. What if we radically, simply, not easily, meet people where they are? Individualize our approach. I've never met a generation. I've had a lot of conversations with people who happened to identify with a specific generational cohort. I know that 80-year-olds text message and 23-year-olds crochet blankets. None of these things are stereotypical of that generation, right? Nilofer Merchant — she's a thought leader in innovation — she tells us we have to meet people in their onlyness, that is, that spot in the world where only we stand, as a function of our unique history, our experiences and our hopes. But this requires flexibility and curiosity. And what happens when we meet people in their onlyness, only the spot in the world that they stand, we learn that that boomer who is just acting "angry" at work all the time is scared. Because he's worked every day since he was 16 years old, and on a Monday, sooner than he can imagine, he'll never go to work again. He's got plans. It's going to take like a week and a half to do all the things on that retirement list. But then what? What if we give a little bit of grace to the person that might be a little scared? Or that Generation X-er who has four drop-offs, three kids, two hands, and is just trying to keep the wheels on the bus. Sure, maybe she's a little aloof at work. Maybe she's a little independent, maybe she's exhausted. Or that millennial who asks for a raise after two months because they're "entitled?" Well, maybe it's because that generation has more debt than any generation before them, coming out of college, and they just need the money to keep going, to pay rent. And suddenly, when you meet people in their onlyness, that spot in the world only they stand, we're not talking about a generation anymore. We're talking about Jim or Jen or Candice. And so here's my challenge to us. Pick a person, just one, and explore their onlyness. And then learn. And then in the moments where it's appropriate, teach. And figure out what they bring to work that no one else can bring to work, because that's what makes work richer. And then do it again. And do it again. And then some day, we're not working with generations anymore. We're working with people. And so to really understand the beauty of the multigenerational workplace, I think we just have to meet people where they are. And that doesn't require that we unpack and live there with them. But we might find, at least on occasion, it's a beautiful place to visit. And so I think there's just no need to argue about which generation is the most angry or the most entitled or the most so obsessed with food. We all come to the classroom, to work, back to our homes, a little bit tired and a little bit tattered sometimes. Maybe let's just do our best to humbly meet people where they are, how they show up that day, generation and all. And in those moments where it can feel a little bit like intergenerational warfare, I think we can at least all agree that shoulder pads aren't the solution. (Laughter) Thank you. (Applause) |
What is a butt tuba and why is it in medieval art? | null | TED-Ed | A rabbit attempts to play a church organ, while a knight fights a giant snail and a naked man blows a trumpet with his rear end. Painted with squirrel-hair brushes on vellum or parchment by monks, nuns, and urban craftspeople, these bizarre images populate the margins of the most prized books from the Middle Ages. Their illustrations often tell a second story as rich as the text itself. Some images appear in many different illuminated manuscripts, and often reinforce the religious content of the books they decorated. For example, a porcupine picking up fruit on its spines could represent the devil stealing the fruits of faith— or Christ taking up the sins of mankind. Medieval lore stated that a hunter could only capture a unicorn when it lay its horn in the lap of a virgin, so a unicorn could symbolize either sexual temptation or Christ being captured by his enemies. Rabbits, meanwhile, could represent human’s lustful natures— and could redeem themselves through attempts to make sacred music despite their failings. All of these references would have been familiar to medieval Europeans from other art forms and oral tradition, though some have grown more mysterious over the centuries. Today, no one can say for sure what the common motif of a knight fighting a snail means— or why the knight so often appears to be losing. The snail might be a symbol of the inevitability of death, which defeats even the strongest knights. Or it could represent humility, and a knight’s need to vanquish his own pride. Many illuminated manuscripts were copies of religious or classical texts, and the bookmakers incorporated their own ideas and opinions in illustrations. The butt tuba, for example, was likely shorthand to express disapproval with— or add an ironic spin to— the action in the text. Illuminations could also be used to make subversive political commentary. The text of the "Smithfield Decretals" details the Church’s laws and punishments for lawbreakers. But the margins show a fox being hanged by geese, a possible allusion to the common people turning on their powerful oppressors. In the "Chronica Majora," Matthew Paris summarized a scandal of his day, in which the Welsh prince Griffin plummeted to his death from the tower of London. Some believed the prince fell, Paris wrote, while others thought he was pushed. He added his own take in the margins, which show the prince falling to his death while trying to escape on a rope made of bed-sheets. Some margins told stories of a more personal nature. "The Luttrell Psalter," a book of psalms and prayers commissioned by Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, shows a young woman having her hair done, while a young man catches a bird in a net. The shaved patch on his head is growing out, indicating that he is a clergyman neglecting his duties. This alludes to a family scandal where a young cleric ran away with Sir Geoffrey’s daughter Elizabeth. The family’s personal spiritual advisor likely painted it into the book to remind his clients of their failings and encourage their spiritual development. Some artists even painted themselves into the manuscripts. The opening image of Christine de Pisan’s collected works shows de Pisan presenting the book to the Queen of France. The queen was so impressed by de Pisan's previous work that she commissioned her own copy. Such royal patronage enabled her to establish her own publishing house in Paris. The tradition of illuminated manuscripts lasted for over a thousand years. The books were created by individuals or teams for uses as wide-ranging as private prayer aids, service books in churches, textbooks, and protective talismans to take into battle. Across all this variation, those tricky little drawings in the margins are a unique window into the minds of medieval artists. |
The surprising connection between brain injuries and crime | {0: "Kim Gorgens studies the brain's response to injury -- and advocates that we mind our (gray) matter."} | TEDxMileHigh | A traumatic brain injury, or TBI, is a disruption in brain function caused by an external blow to the head. And when you hear that definition, you might think about sports and professional athletes, since it's the kind of injury we're used to seeing on the playing field. And this imagery has really come to define TBI in the public consciousness. I myself do research on TBI in retired and college athletes. I stood on a TED stage in 2010, talking about concussions in kids' sports. So I have to say, as someone who researches and treats these injuries, that I've been really gratified to see the growing awareness of TBI and specifically, the short- and long-term risks to athletes. Today, though, I want to introduce you to a larger but no less controversial group of people impacted by traumatic brain injury, who don't often show up in the headlines. I've come to recognize these inmates and probationers as surprisingly among the most vulnerable members of society. For the last six years, my colleagues and I have been doing research that has completely changed the way we think about the criminal justice system and the people in it. And it may change the way you think about those things, too. So I'll start with a shocking statistic: 50 to 80 percent of people in criminal justice have a traumatic brain injury. Up to 80 percent. In the general public, in this room, for example, that number is less than five percent. And I'm not just talking about getting your bell rung. These are the kinds of injuries that require hospitalization. Most of them are the product of a physical assault, and some of them are actually sustained in jail. All of these numbers are even higher among the women in criminal justice. Almost every single woman in the criminal justice system has been exposed to interpersonal violence and abuse. More than half of these women have been exposed to repeated brain injuries. In this way, these women's brains look like the brains of retired NFL players, and they'll likely face the same risks for dementing diseases as they age. The same risks. TBI, together with mental illness and substance abuse and trauma, makes it hard for people to think. They have cognitive impairments like poor judgment and poor impulse control, problems that make criminal justice a revolving door. People get arrested and booked into jail. They oftentimes get into trouble while they're in there. They get into fights. They fall out of their bunk. And then they get released and do stupid things, like forgetting mandatory check-ins, and they get rearrested. Statistically speaking, they're actually more likely to be rearrested than not. A colleague calls this "serving a life sentence 30 days at a time." And oftentimes, these folks don't know why this is so hard for them. They feel out of control and frustrated. So knowing that TBI is at the root of so many of these challenges, the mission for a group of us in Colorado has been to disrupt that cycle, to jam the revolving the door. So working together with my state and local partners, we crafted a plan to meet everyone's needs: the system, the inmates and probationers, my graduate students. In this program, we assess how each person's brain works so that we can recommend basic modifications to make this system more effective and safer. And here when I say "safer," I mean safer not only for the inmates, but safer also for correctional staff. In some ways, this is such a simple approach. We're not treating the brain injury, we're treating the underlying problem that gets people into all of this trouble in the first place. We do quick neuropsychological screening tests to identify strengths and weaknesses in the way an inmate thinks. Using that information, we write two reports. One, a report for the system with specific recommendations on how to manage that inmate. The other is a letter to the inmate with specific suggestions for how to manage themselves. For example, if our test result suggests that a probationer has a hard time remembering the things they hear, that would be an auditory memory deficit. In that case, our letter to the court might suggest that that probationer get handouts of important information. And our letter to that probationer would say, among other things, that they should carry a notebook to record that information for themselves. Now, most importantly, is that I pause here to be really clear about one point. This program does not minimize responsibility or make excuses for anyone's behavior. This is about changing longstanding negative perceptions and building self-advocacy. It's actually about taking responsibility. The inmates move from, "I'm a total screwup, I'm a loser," to, "Here's what I don't do well, and here's what I have to do about it." (Applause) And the system comes to see an inmate's problematic behavior as the things they can't do versus the things they won't do. And that change — seeing behavior as a deficit rather than outright defiance — is everything in these settings. We hear from inmates around the country, and they write, and more than anything, they want to know how to help themselves. This is an excerpt from a letter from Troy in Virginia, an excerpt from a 50-page letter. And he writes, "Can you tell me what you think of all the head traumas I've dealt with? What can I do? Can you help me?" Closer to home, we have thousands of stories like this, and smart stories, stories that have a great outcome. Here's Vinny. Vinny was hit by a car when he was 15, and from that moment forward, spent more time in jail than in school. With some basic skill-building, after our assessment revealed that he had some pretty significant memory impairments, Vinny learned to use the alarm and reminder function on his iPhone to track important appointments, and he keeps a checklist to break larger tasks into smaller, manageable ones. And with basic tools like that under his belt, Vinny's been out of jail for two years, clean for nine months, and recently back to work. (Applause) What's so striking for Vinny is that this is his first time off of court supervision since his injury more than 15 years ago. He made it out of the revolving door. (Applause) He says now, "I can do anything. I just have to work a lot harder at it." (Laughs) And here's Thomas. Thomas has some pretty significant attention and behavior problems after an injury landed him in a coma for more than a month. After relearning how to walk, his first stop? Court. He couldn't imagine a future where he wasn't in trouble. He now carries a calendar to avoid being held in contempt for missed court dates, and he schedules a break into his day every day to recharge before he gets agitated. And nobody knows the revolving door better than the person sitting at the front of the courtroom. This is my good friend and colleague Judge Brian Bowen. Now, Judge Bowen was already on a mission to make the system work for everyone, and when he heard about this program, he saw the perfect fit. He actually sits down with all of his prosecutors to help them see that there's basically two categories of defendants in the courtroom: the ones we're afraid of — oftentimes, rightfully so — and the ones we're mad at. These are the ones who miss all of their scheduled appointments and they blow through the best-laid probation plans. And Judge Bowen believes that, with a little more support, we could move people in this latter category, the maddening category, through and ultimately out of the system. He proved that with Navy veteran Mike. Judge Bowen saw the correlation between Mike's history of a massive 70-foot fall and his long-standing pattern of difficulty showing up on the right day for court appointments and complying with mandatory therapy requirements, for example. And instead of sentencing him to more and more jail time, Judge Bowen sent him home with maps and checklists and handouts and recommended instead vocational rehabilitation and flexible scheduling for those therapies. And this with those supports, Mike's back to work for the first time since his injury while he was in the service. He's repairing relationships with his family, and just last month, he graduated from Judge Bowen's veteran's court. (Applause) This program shows us the overwhelming prevalence of traumatic brain injuries and cognitive deficits and the accumulation of brokenness in the criminal justice system. And it highlights the extraordinary power of resilience and responsibility. In Mike and Thomas and Vinny, even Judge Bowen's story, you saw the transformation made possible by a change in perception and some simple accommodations. All told, in this program, these inmates and probationers come to see themselves differently. The system sees them differently, and when you meet them in the community, I hope you see them differently, too. Thanks, guys. (Applause) |
Can you solve the cuddly duddly fuddly wuddly riddle? | null | TED-Ed | For your son’s sixth birthday, you’ve promised to get him the cutest creature in creation: the cuddly. It’s hard to believe that it’s a cousin of the terrifying duddly or the hideous fuddly. They’re all members of the Wuddly species, and the process of adopting them is deeply peculiar. It takes 100 eggs to make a single animal in genus Wuddly. When 100 eggs are placed together in an incubator, they undergo egg fusion, and combine in the following way. Blue and purple combine to make red eggs. Red and blue combine to make purple eggs, and red and purple combine to make blue eggs. The most plentiful eggs pair up first, and if two piles are even, an egg comes from one of them at random. They keep combining until there’s just one left. If the final egg is blue, a Cuddly hatches out of it. Purple eggs give you Duddlies, and Red eggs give you Fuddlies. The incubator currently has 99 eggs in it. 23 are blue, 33 are purple, and 43 are red. You can begin the process of egg fusion by adding an egg of any color to the room. When all the eggs have combined into a single egg, the creature that hatches will bond with you on sight, which is why getting a Cuddly is so important. After all, you made a promise to your son. Which color egg should you add to the incubator to get a cuddly? Pause the video to figure it out for yourself. Answer in 3 Answer in 2 Answer in 1 It’s easy to get mixed up with all the cuddlies, duddlies, and fuddlies coming from different colored eggs. If we ignore how many total eggs of each color there are, and just look at the process of egg fusion, we might notice something that will make this problem simpler. When two eggs fuse, the number of eggs of each of those colors decreases by one, and the number of the third color increases by one. That means they all change parity, or evenness and oddness, at the same time. Right now all three piles are odd, but you get to add an egg to one color, which means that it’ll be even and the other two will be odd. Whichever color you choose will always be the opposite parity of the other two piles: odd when they’re even and even when they’re odd, since every egg fusion flips each pile’s parity simultaneously. We want to end with 1 blue, 0 purple, and 0 red eggs, or odd, even, even. That means we want the blue egg pile to be the opposite parity of the other two piles at the start as well. So you add a blue egg into the room, and 99 egg fusions later, only a single blue egg remains. The Cuddly that hatches is sure to make your 6-year-old as happy as can be. Just be sure to follow the shopkeeper’s warning, and never feed it after midnight. |
Helping others makes us happier -- but it matters how we do it | {0: 'Elizabeth Dunn discovers ways that people can optimize their use of time, money and technology in order to maximize their own happiness.'} | TED2019 | So, I have a pretty fun job, which is to figure out what makes people happy. It's so fun, it might almost seen a little frivolous, especially at a time where we're being confronted with some pretty depressing headlines. But it turns out that studying happiness might provide a key to solving some of the toughest problems we're facing. It's taken me almost a decade to figure this out. Pretty early on in my career, I published a paper in "Science" with my collaborators, entitled, "Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness." I was very confident in this conclusion, except for one thing: it didn't seem to apply to me. (Laughter) I hardly ever gave money to charity, and when I did, I didn't feel that warm glow I was expecting. So I started to wonder if maybe there was something wrong with my research or something wrong with me. My own lackluster emotional response to giving was especially puzzling because my follow-up studies revealed that even toddlers exhibited joy from giving to others. In one experiment, my colleagues Kiley Hamlin, Lara Aknin and I brought kids just under the age of two into the lab. Now, as you might imagine, we had to work with a resource that toddlers really care about, so we used the toddler equivalent of gold, namely, Goldfish crackers. (Laughter) We gave kids this windfall of Goldfish for themselves and a chance to give some of their Goldfish away to a puppet named Monkey. (Video) Researcher: I found even more treats, and I'm going to give them all to you. Toddler: Ooh. Thank you. Researcher: But, you know, I don't see any more treats. Will you give one to Monkey? Toddler: Yeah. Researcher: Yeah? Toddler: Yeah. Here. Researcher: Ooh, yummy. Mmmm. Toddler: All gone, he ate it. Elizabeth Dunn: Now, we trained research assistants to watch these videos and code toddlers' emotional reactions. Of course, we didn't tell them our hypotheses. The data revealed that toddlers were pretty happy when they got this pile of Goldfish for themselves, but they were actually even happier when they got to give some of their Goldfish away. And this warm glow of giving persists into adulthood. When we analyzed surveys from more than 200,000 adults across the globe, we saw that nearly a third of the world's population reported giving at least some money to charity in the past month. Remarkably, in every major region of the world, people who gave money to charity were happier than those who did not, even after taking into account their own personal financial situation. And this correlation wasn't trivial. It looked like giving to charity made about the same difference for happiness as having twice as much income. Now, as a researcher, if you're lucky enough to stumble on an effect that replicates around the world in children and adults alike, you start to wonder: Could this be part of human nature? We know that pleasure reinforces adaptive behaviors like eating and sex that help perpetuate our species, and it looked to me like giving might be one of those behaviors. I was really excited about these ideas, and I wrote about them in the "New York Times." One of the people who read this article was my accountant. (Laughter) Yeah. At tax time, I found myself seated across from him, watching as he slowly tapped his pen on the charitable giving line of my tax return with this look of, like, poorly concealed disapproval. (Laughter) Despite building my career by showing how great giving can feel, I actually wasn't doing very much of it. So I resolved to give more. Around that time, devastating stories about the Syrian refugee crisis were everywhere. I really wanted to help, so I pulled out my credit card. I knew my donations would probably make a difference for someone somewhere, but going to the website of an effective charity and entering my Visa number still just didn't feel like enough. That's when I learned about the Group of Five. The Canadian government allows any five Canadians to privately sponsor a family of refugees. You have to raise enough money to support the family for their first year in Canada, and then they literally get on a plane to your city. One of the things that I think is so cool about this program is that no one is allowed to do it alone. And instead of a Group of Five, we ended up partnering with a community organization and forming a group of 25. After almost two years of paperwork and waiting, we learned that our family would be arriving in Vancouver in less than six weeks. They had four sons and a daughter, so we raced to find them a place to live. We were very lucky to find them a house, but it needed quite a bit of work. So my friends came out on evenings and weekends and painted and cleaned and assembled furniture. When the big day came, we filled their fridge with milk and fresh fruit and headed to the airport to meet our family. It was a little overwhelming for everyone, especially the four-year-old. His mother was reunited with her sister who had come to Canada earlier through the same program. They hadn't seen each other in 15 years. When you hear that more than 5.6 million refugees have fled Syria, you're faced with this tragedy that the human brain hasn't really evolved to comprehend. It's so abstract. Before, if any of us had been asked to donate 15 hours a month to help out with the refugee crisis, we probably would have said no. But as soon as we took our family to their new home in Vancouver, we all had the same realization: we were just going to do whatever it took to help them be happy. This experience made me think a little more deeply about my research. Back in my lab, we'd seen the benefits of giving spike when people felt a real sense of connection with those they were helping and could easily envision the difference they were making in those individuals' lives. For example, in one experiment, we gave participants an opportunity to donate a bit of money to either UNICEF or Spread the Net. We chose these charities intentionally, because they were partners and shared the same critically important goal of promoting children's health. But I think UNICEF is just such a big, broad charity that it can be a little hard to envision how your own small donation will make a difference. In contrast, Spread the Net offers donors a concrete promise: for every 10 dollars donated, they provide one bed net to protect a child from malaria. We saw that the more money people gave to Spread the Net, the happier they reported feeling afterward. In contrast, this emotional return on investment was completely eliminated when people gave money to UNICEF. So this suggests that just giving money to a worthwhile charity isn't always enough. You need to be able to envision how, exactly, your dollars are going to make a difference. Of course, the Group of Five program takes this idea to a whole new level. When we first took on this project, we would talk about when the refugees would arrive. Now, we just refer to them as our family. Recently, we took the kids ice skating, and later that day, my six-year-old, Oliver, asked me, "Mommy, who is the oldest kid in our family?" I assumed he was talking about his plethora of cousins, and he was talking about them, but also about our Syrian family. Since our family arrived, so many people and organizations have offered to help, providing everything from free dental fillings to summer camps. It's made me see the goodness that exists in our community. Thanks to one donation, the kids got to go to bike camp, and every day of the week, some member of our group tried to be there to cheer for them. I happened to be there the day the training wheels were supposed to come off, and let me tell you, the four-year-old did not think this was a good idea. So I went over and talked to him about the long-term benefits of riding without training wheels. (Laughter) Then I remembered that he was four and barely spoke English. So I reverted to two words he definitely knew: ice cream. You try without training wheels, I'll buy you ice cream. Here's what happened next. (Video) ED: Yes. Yeah! Kid: I'm gonna try. ED: Oh my God! Look at you go! (Squealing) Look at you go! You're doing it all by yourself! (Audience) (Laughter) (Video) ED: Good job! (Audience) (Laughter) (Applause) ED: So this is the kind of helping that human beings evolved to enjoy, but for 40 years, Canada was the only country in the world that allowed private citizens to sponsor refugees. Now — Canada! (Applause) It's pretty great. Now Australia and the UK are starting up similar programs. Just imagine how different the refugee crisis could look if more countries made this possible. Creating these kinds of meaningful connections between individuals provides an opportunity to deal with challenges that feel overwhelming. One of those challenges lies just blocks from where I'm standing right now, in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. By some measures, it's the poorest urban postal code in Canada. We actually debated whether to bring over a family of refugees, because there are so many people right here already struggling. My friend Evan told me that when he was a kid and his parents drove through this neighborhood, he would duck down in the back seat. But Evan's parents never would have guessed that when he grew up, he would open up the doors of a local restaurant and invite this community inside to enjoy three-course dinners. The program that Evan helped build is called "Plenty of Plates," and the goal is not just to provide free meals but to create moments of connection between people who otherwise might never make eye contact. Each night, a local business sponsors the dinner and sends a team of volunteers who help make and serve the meal. Afterward, the leftovers get distributed to people who are out on the street, and importantly, there's enough money left to provide a thousand free lunches for this community in the days that follow. But the benefits of this program extend beyond food. For the volunteers, it provides an opportunity to engage with people, to sit down and hear their stories. After this experience, one volunteer changed his commute so that instead of avoiding this neighborhood, he walks through it, smiling or making eye contact as he passes familiar faces. All of us are capable of finding joy in giving. But we shouldn't expect this to happen automatically. Spending money helping others doesn't necessarily promote happiness. Instead, it matters how we do it. And if we want people to give more, we need to subvert the way we think about charitable giving. We need to create opportunities to give that enable us to appreciate our shared humanity. If any of you work for a charity, don't reward your donors with pens or calendars. (Applause) Reward them with the opportunity to see the specific impact that their generosity is having and to connect with the individuals and communities they're helping. We're used to thinking about giving as something we should do. And it is. But in thinking about it this way, we're missing out on one of the best parts of being human: that we have evolved to find joy in helping others. Let's stop thinking about giving as just this moral obligation and start thinking of it as a source of pleasure. Thank you. (Applause) |
How does the stock market work? | null | TED-Ed | In the 1600s the Dutch East India Company employed hundreds of ships to trade gold, porcelain, spices, and silks around the globe. But running this massive operation wasn’t cheap. In order to fund their expensive voyages, the company turned to private citizens– individuals who could invest money to support the trip in exchange for a share of the ship’s profits. This practice allowed the company to afford even grander voyages, increasing profits for both themselves and their savvy investors. Selling these shares in coffee houses and shipping ports across the continent, the Dutch East India Company unknowingly invented the world’s first stock market. Since then, companies have been collecting funds from willing investors to support all kinds of businesses. And today, the stock market has schools, careers, and even whole television channels dedicated to understanding it. But the modern stock market is significantly more complicated than its original incarnation. So how do companies and investors use the market today? Let’s imagine a new coffee company that decides to launch on the market. First, the company will advertise itself to big investors. If they think the company is a good idea, they get the first crack at investing, and then sponsor the company’s initial public offering, or IPO. This launches the company onto the official public market, where any company or individual who believes the business could be profitable might buy a stock. Buying stocks makes those investors partial owners in the business. Their investment helps the company to grow, and as it becomes more successful, more buyers may see potential and start buying stocks. As demand for those stocks increases, so does their price, increasing the cost for prospective buyers, and raising the value of the company's stocks people already own. For the company, this increased interest helps fund new initiatives, and also boosts its overall market value by showing how many people are willing to invest in their idea. However, if for some reason a company starts to seem less profitable the reverse can also happen. If investors think their stock value is going to decline, they’ll sell their stocks with the hopes of making a profit before the company loses more value. As stocks are sold and demand for the stock goes down, the stock price falls, and with it, the company’s market value. This can leave investors with big losses– unless the company starts to look profitable again. This see-saw of supply and demand is influenced by many factors. Companies are under the unavoidable influence of market forces– such as the fluctuating price of materials, changes in production technology, and the shifting costs of labor. Investors may be worried about changes in leadership, bad publicity, or larger factors like new laws and trade policies. And of course, plenty of investors are simply ready to sell valuable stocks and pursue personal interests. All these variables cause day-to-day noise in the market, which can make companies appear more or less successful. And in the stock market, appearing to lose value often leads to losing investors, and in turn, losing actual value. Human confidence in the market has the power to trigger everything from economic booms to financial crises. And this difficult-to-track variable is why most professionals promote reliable long term investing over trying to make quick cash. However, experts are constantly building tools in efforts to increase their chances of success in this highly unpredictable system. But the stock market is not just for the rich and powerful. With the dawn of the Internet, everyday investors can buy stocks in many of the exact same ways a large investor would. And as more people educate themselves about this complex system they too can trade stocks, support the businesses they believe in, and pursue their financial goals. The first step is getting invested. |
Three ideas. Three contradictions. Or not. | {0: "Hannah Gadsby skewers the straight world's dismissal and outright hostility toward the LGBTQ community in her stand-up sets, stage performances and television shows."} | TED2019 | My name is Hannah. And that is a palindrome. That is a word you can spell the same forwards and backwards, if you can spell. But the thing is — (Laughter) my entire family have palindromic names. It's a bit of a tradition. We've got Mum, Dad — (Laughter) Nan, Pop. (Laughter) And my brother, Kayak. (Laughter) There you go. That's just a bit a joke, there. (Laughter) I like to kick things off with a joke because I'm a comedian. Now there's two things you know about me already: my name's Hannah and I'm a comedian. I'm wasting no time. Here's a third thing you can know about me: I don't think I'm qualified to speak my own mind. Bold way to begin a talk, yes, but it's true. I've always had a great deal of difficulty turning my thinking into the talking. So it seems a bit of a contradiction, then, that someone like me, who is so bad at the chat, could be something like a stand-up comedian. But there you go. There you go. It's what it is. I first tried my hand at stand-up comedi — comedie ... See? See? See? (Laughter) I first tried my hand at stand-up comedy in my late 20s, and despite being a pathologically shy virtual mute with low self-esteem who'd never held a microphone before, I knew as soon as I walked and stood in front of the audience, I knew, before I'd even landed my first joke, I knew that I really liked stand-up, and stand-up really liked me. But for the life of me, I couldn't work out why. Why is it I could be so good at doing something I was so bad at? (Laughter) I just couldn't work it out, I could not understand it. That is, until I could. Now, before I explain to you why it is that I can be good at something I'm so bad at, let me throw another spanner of contradiction into the work by telling you that not long after I worked out why that was, I decided to quit comedy. And before I explain that little oppositional cat I just threw amongst the thinking pigeons, let me also tell you this: quitting launched my comedy career. (Laughter) Like, really launched it, to the point where after quitting comedy, I became the most talked-about comedian on the planet, because apparently, I'm even worse at making retirement plans than I am at speaking my own mind. Now, all I've done up until this point apart from giving over a spattering of biographical detail is to tell you indirectly that I have three ideas that I want to share with you today. And I've done that by way of sharing three contradictions: one, I am bad at talking, I am good at talking; I quit, I did not quit. Three ideas, three contradictions. Now, if you're wondering why there's only two things on my so-called list of three — (Laughter) I remind you it is literally a list of contradictions. Keep up. (Laughter) Now, the folks at TED advised me that with a talk of this length, it's best to stick with just sharing one idea. I said no. (Laughter) What would they know? To explain why I have chosen to ignore what is clearly very good advice, I want to take you back to the beginning of this talk, specifically, my palindrome joke. Now that joke uses my favorite trick of the comedian trade, the rule of three, whereby you make a statement and then back that statement up with a list. My entire family have palindromic names: Mum, Dad, Nan, Pop. The first two ideas on that list create a pattern, and that pattern creates expectation. And then the third thing — bam! — Kayak. What? That's the rule of three. One, two, surprise! Ha ha. (Laughter) Now, the rule of three is not only fundamental to the way I do my craft, it is also fundamental to the way I communicate. So I won't be changing anything for nobody, not even TED, which, I will point out, stands for three ideas: technology, entertainment and dickheads. (Laughter) Works every time, doesn't it? But you need more than just jokes to be able to cut it as a professional comedian. You need to be able to walk that fine line between being charming and disarming. And I discovered the most effective way to generate the amount of charm I needed to offset my disarming personality was through not jokes but stories. So my stand-up routines are filled with stories: stories about growing up, my coming out story, stories about the abuse I've copped for being not only a woman but a big woman and a masculine-of-center woman. If you watch my work online, check the comments out below for examples of abuse. (Laughter) It's that time in the talk where I shift into second gear, and I'm going to tell you a story about everything I've just said. In the last few days of her life, my grandma was surrounded by people, a lot of people, because my grandma was the loving matriarch of a large and loving family. Now, if you haven't made the connection already, I am a member of that family. I was lucky enough to be able to say goodbye to my grandma on the day she died. But as she was already cocooned within herself by then, it was something of a one-sided goodbye. So I thought about a lot of things, things I hadn't thought about in a long time, like the letters I used to write to my grandma when I first started university, letters I filled with funny stories and anecdotes that I embellished for her amusement. And I remembered how I couldn't articulate the anxiety and fear that filled me as I tried to carve my tiny little life into a world that felt far too big for me. But I remembered finding comfort in those letters, because I wrote them with my grandma in mind. But as the world got more and more overwhelming and my ability to negotiate it got worse, not better, I stopped writing those letters. I just didn't think I had the life that Grandma would want to read about. Grandma did not know I was gay, and about six months before she died, out of nowhere, she asked me if I had a boyfriend. Now, I remember making a conscious decision in that moment not to come out to my grandmother. And I did that because I knew her life was drawing to an end, and my time with her was finite, and I did not want to talk about the ways we were different. I wanted to talk about the ways were we connected. So I changed the subject. And at the time, it felt like the right decision. But as I sat witness to my grandmother's life as it tapered to its inevitable end, I couldn't help but feel I'd made a mistake not to share such a significant part of my life. But I also knew that I'd missed my opportunity, and as Grandma always used to say, "Ah, well, it's all part of the soup. Too late to take the onions out now." (Laughter) And I thought about that, and I thought about how I had to deal with too many onions as a kid, growing up gay in a state where homosexuality was illegal. And with that thought, I could see how tightly wrapped in the tendrils of my own internalized shame I was. And with that, I thought about all my traumas: the violence, the abuse, my rape. And with all that cluster of thinking, a thought, a question, kept popping into my mind to which I had no answer: What is the purpose of my human? Out of anyone in my family, I felt the most akin to my grandmother. I mean, we share the most traits in common. Not so much these days. Death really changes people. But that — (Laughter) is my grandmother's sense of humor. But the person I felt most akin to in the world was a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, a great-great-grandmother. Me? I represented the very end of my branch of the family tree. And I wasn't entirely sure I was still connected to the trunk. What was the purpose of my human? The year after my grandmother's death was the most intensely creative of my life. And I suppose that's because, at an end, my thoughts gather more than they scatter. My thought process is not linear. I'm a visual thinker. I see my thoughts. I don't have a photographic memory, and nor is my head a static gallery of sensibly collected think pieces. It's more that I've got this ever-evolving language of hieroglyphics that I've developed and can understand fluently and think deeply with. but I struggle to translate. I can't paint, draw, sculpt, or even haberdash, and as for the written word, I'm OK at it but it's a tortuous process of translation, and I don't feel it does the job. And as far as speaking my own mind, like I said, I'm not great at it. Speech has always felt like an inadequate freeze-frame for the life inside of me. All this to say, I've always understood far more than I've ever been able to communicate. Now, about a year before Grandma died, I was formally diagnosed with autism. Now for me, that was mostly good news. I always thought that I couldn't sort my life out like a normal person because I was depressed and anxious. But it turns out I was depressed and anxious because I couldn't sort my life out like a normal person, because I was not a normal person, and I didn't know it. Now, this is not to say I still don't struggle. Every day is a bit of a struggle, to be honest. But at least now I know what my struggle is, and getting to the starting line of normal is not it. My struggle is not to escape the storm. My struggle is to find the eye of the storm as best I can. Now, apart from the usual way us spectrum types find our calm — repetitive behaviors, routine and obsessive thinking — I have another surprising doorway into the eye of the storm: stand-up comedy. And if you need any more proof I'm neurodivergent, yes, I am calm doing a thing that scares the hell out of most people. I'm almost dead inside up here. (Laughter) Diagnosis gave me a framework on which to hang bits of me I could never understand. My misfit suddenly had a fit, and for a while, I got giddy with a newfound confidence I had in my thinking. But after Grandma died, that confidence took a dive, because thinking is how I grieve. And in that grief of thought, I could suddenly see with so much clarity just how profoundly isolated I was and always had been. What was the purpose of my human? I began to think a lot about how autism and PTSD have so much in common. And I started to worry, because I had both. Could I ever untangle them? I'd always been told that the way out of trauma was through a cohesive narrative. I had a cohesive narrative, but I was still at the mercy of my traumas. They're all part of my soup, but the onions still stung. And at that point, I realized that I'd been telling my stories for laughs. I'd been trimming away the darkness, cutting away the pain and holding on to my trauma for the comfort of my audience. I was connecting other people through laughs, yet I remained profoundly disconnected. What was the purpose of my human? I did not have an answer, but I had an idea. I had an idea to tell my truth, all of it, not to share laughs but to share the literal, visceral pain of my trauma. And I thought the best way to do that would be through a comedy show. And that is what I did. I wrote a comedy show that did not respect the punchline, that line where comedians are expected and trusted to pull their punches and turn them into tickles. I did not stop. I punched through that line into the metaphorical guts of my audience. I did not want to make them laugh. I wanted to take their breath away, to shock them, so they could listen to my story and hold my pain as individuals, not as a mindless, laughing mob. And that's what I did, and I called that show "Nanette." Now, many — (Applause) Now, many have argued that "Nanette" is not a comedy show. And while I can agree "Nanette" is definitely not a comedy show, those people are still wrong — (Laughter) because they have framed their argument as a way of saying I failed to do comedy. I did not fail to do comedy. I took everything I knew about comedy — all the tricks, the tools, the know-how — I took all that, and with it, I broke comedy. You cannot break comedy with comedy if you fail at comedy. Flaccid be thy hammer. (Laughter) (Applause) That was not my point. The point was not simply to break comedy. The point was to break comedy so I could rebuild it and reshape it, reform it into something that could better hold everything I needed to share, and that is what I meant when I said I quit comedy. Now, it's probably at this point where you're going, "Yeah, cool, but what are the three ideas, exactly? It's a bit vague." I'm glad I pretended you asked. (Laughter) Now, I'm sure there's quite a few of you who have already identified three ideas. A smart crowd, by all accounts, so I wouldn't be surprised at all. But you might be surprised to find out that I don't have three ideas. I told you I had three ideas, and that was a lie. That was pure misdirection — I'm very funny. What I've done instead is I've taken whole handfuls of my ideas as seeds, and I've scattered them all throughout my talk. And why did I do that? Well, apart from shits and giggles, it comes down to something my grandma always used to say. "It's not the garden, it's the gardening that counts." And "Nanette" taught me the truth to that truism. I fully expected by breaking the contract of comedy and telling my story in all its truth and pain that that would push me further into the margins of both life and art. I expected that, and I was willing to pay that cost in order to tell my truth. But that is not what happened. The world did not push me away. It pulled me closer. Through an act of disconnection, I found connection. And it took me a long time to understand that what is at the heart of that contradiction is also at the heart of the contradiction as to why I can be so good at something I am so bad at. You see, in the real world, I struggle to talk to people because my neurodiversity makes it difficult for me to think, listen, speak and process new information all at the same time. But onstage, I don't have to think. I prepare my thinks well in advance. I don't have to listen. That is your job. (Laughter) And I don't really have to talk, because, strictly speaking, I'm reciting. So all that is left is for me to do my best to make a genuine connection with my audience. And if the experience of "Nanette" taught me anything, it's that connection depends not just on me. You play a part. "Nanette" may have begun in me, but she now lives and grows in a whole world of other minds, minds I do not share. But I trust I am connected. And in that, she is so much bigger than me, just like the purpose of being human is so much bigger than all of us. Make of that what you will. Thank you, and hello. (Applause) |
How to recover from activism burnout | {0: 'TED Senior Fellow Yana Buhrer Tavanier explores human rights innovation at the intersection of activism, art, tech and science -- and their potential to instigate change.'} | TED Residency | In the summer of 2017, a woman was murdered by her partner in Sofia. The woman, let's call her "V," was beaten for over 50 minutes before she died. The morning after, her neighbors told the press that they heard her screams, but they didn't intervene. You see, in Bulgaria and many other societies, domestic violence is typically seen as a private matter. Neighbors, however, are quick to react to any other kind of noise. We wanted to expose and affect the absurdity of this. So we designed an experiment. We rented the apartment just below V's for one night. And at 10pm, Maksim, the artist in our group, sat on the drum set we had assembled in the living room and started beating it. Ten seconds. Thirty seconds. Fifty seconds. A minute. A light came on in the hallway. One minute and 20 seconds. A man was standing at the door, hesitant to press the bell. One minute and 52 seconds. The doorbell rang, a ring that could have saved a life. "Beat." is our project exploring the ominous silence surrounding domestic violence. We filmed the experiment, and it became instantly viral. Our campaign amplified the voices of survivors who shared similar stories online. It equipped neighbors with specific advice, and many committed to taking action. In a country where every other week, the ground quietly embraces the body of a woman murdered by a partner or a relative, we were loud, and we were heard. I am an activist, passionate about human rights innovation. I lead a global organization for socially engaged creative solutions. In my work, I think about how to make people care and act. I am here to tell you that creative actions can save the world, creative actions and play. I know it is weird to talk about play and human rights in the same sentence, but here is why it's important. More and more, we fear that we can't win this. Campaigns feel dull, messages drown, people break. Numerous studies, including a recent one published by Columbia University, show that burnout and depression are widespread amongst activists. Years ago, I myself was burned out. In a world of endless ways forward, I felt at my final stop. So what melts fear or dullness or gloom? Play. From this very stage, psychiatrist and play researcher Dr. Stuart Brown said that nothing lights up the brain like play, and that the opposite of play is not work, it's depression. So to pull out of my own burnout, I decided to turn my activism into what I call today "play-tivism." (Laughter) When we play, others want to join. Today, my playground is filled with artists, techies and scientists. We fuse disciplines in radical collaboration. Together, we seek new ways to empower activism. Our outcomes are not meant to be playful, but our process is. To us, play is an act of resistance. For example, "Beat.," the project I talked about earlier, is a concept developed by a drummer and a software engineer who didn't know each other two days before they pitched the idea. "Beat." is the first winner in our lab series where we pair artists and technologists to work on human rights issues. Other winning concepts include a pop-up bakery that teaches about fake news through beautiful but horrible-tasting cupcakes — (Laughter) or a board game that puts you in the shoes of a dictator so you get to really grasp the range of tools and tactics of oppression. We did our first lab just to test the idea, to see where it cracks and if we can make it better. Today, we are so in love with the format that we put it all online for anyone to implement. I cannot overstate the value of experimentation in activism. We can only win if we are not afraid to lose. When we play, we learn. A recent study published by Stanford University about the science of what makes people care reconfirms what we have been hearing for years: opinions are changed not from more information but through empathy-inducing experiences. So learning from science and art, we saw that we can talk about global armed conflict through light bulbs, or address racial inequality in the US through postcards, or tackle the lack of even one single monument of a woman in Sofia by flooding the city with them, and, with all these works, to trigger dialogue, understanding and direct action. Sometimes, when I talk about taking risks and trying and failing in the context of human rights, I meet raised eyebrows, eyebrows that say, "How irresponsible," or, "How insensitive." People often mistake play for negligence. It is not. Play doesn't just grow our armies stronger or spark better ideas. In times of painful injustice, play brings the levity we need to be able to breathe. When we play, we live. I grew up in a time when all play was forbidden. My family's lives were crushed by a communist dictatorship. For my aunt, my grandfather, my father, we always held two funerals: one for their bodies, but, years before that, one for their dreams. Some of my biggest dreams are nightmares. I have a nightmare that one day all the past will be forgotten and new clothes will be dripping the blood of past mistakes. I have a nightmare that one day the lighthouses of our humanity will crumble, corroded by acid waves of hate. But way more than that, I have hope. In our fights for justice and freedom, I hope that we play, and that we see the joy and beauty of us playing together. That's how we win. Thank you. (Applause) |
Why is this painting so shocking? | null | TED-Ed | On April 26th, 1937, Fascist forces bombed the Basque village of Guernica in Northern Spain. It was one of the worst civilian casualties of the Spanish Civil War, waged between the democratic republic and General Franco’s fascist contingent. For Pablo Picasso, the tragedy sparked a frenzied period of work in which he produced a massive anti-war mural, aptly titled "Guernica." The painting is a powerful work of historical documentation and political protest. But while Picasso’s artistic motivations are clear, the symbolism of the painting can be as confusing and chaotic as war itself. How can we make sense of this overwhelming image, and what exactly makes it a masterpiece of anti-war art? The painting’s monumental canvas is disorienting from the start, rendered in the abstracted Cubist style Picasso pioneered. Cubism deliberately emphasized the two-dimensionality of the canvas by flattening the objects being painted. This afforded viewers multiple and often impossible perspectives on the same object; a technique considered shocking even in Picasso’s domestic scenes. But in this context, the style offers a profoundly overwhelming view of violence, destruction, and casualties. Multiple perspectives only compound the horror on display– sending the eyes hurtling around the frame in a futile hunt for peace. On the far left, a woman holding her dead child releases a scream; her eyes sliding down her face in the shape of tears and her head bending back unnaturally to echo her baby’s. There is the statue of a soldier present below, but he is unable to defend the woman and child. Instead his broken body lies in pieces, his arm clutching a splintered sword in a signal of utmost defeat. The tip of his sword meets a woman’s foot as she attempts to flee the devastation. But her other leg appears rooted to the spot, locked in the corner of the canvas even as she stretches to move it. Another victim appears behind this slouching figure. Falling helplessly as flames lick around her, she too is caught in her own hopeless scene. Each of these figures bordering the painting are horribly trapped, giving the work an acute sense of claustrophobia. And where you might expect the canvas’ massive size to counteract this feeling, its scale only highlights the nearly life-sized atrocities on display. Some possible relief comes from a lamp held tightly by a ghostly woman reaching out her window. But is her lantern’s hopeful glow truly lighting the scene? Or is it the jagged lightbulb– thought to represent the technologies of modern warfare– which illuminates her view of the chaos below? From the coffin-like confines of her window, her arm guides the viewer back into the fray, to perhaps the most controversial symbols of all– two ghostly animals caught in the destruction. Does the screaming horse embody the threat of Franco’s military nationalism; or does the spike running through its body convey its victimhood? Does the white bull represent Spain, the country of matadors and a common theme in Picasso’s work– or does it stand for the brutality of war? In this scene of strife, these animals raise more questions than answers. And additional elements hidden throughout the frame offer even more secrets for close observers. At the top of the canvas flashes a bird desperate to escape the carnage. And the abundance of animals on display may hint at the bombing’s date– a market day which flooded the streets with villagers, animals, and other potential causalities. Like the bombing of Guernica itself, Picasso’s painting is dense with destruction. But hidden beneath this supposed chaos, are carefully crafted scenes and symbols, carrying out the painting’s multifaceted attack on fascism. Decades after its creation, "Guernica" retains its power to shock viewers and ignite debate, and is often referenced at anti-war gatherings around the world. Hundreds of viewers have grappled with its harsh imagery, shattering symbolism and complex political messaging. But even without a close understanding of it’s complicated subtext, Picasso’s work remains a searing reminder of the true casualties of violence. |
Why we ignore obvious problems -- and how to act on them | {0: 'Michele Wucker coined the term "gray rhino" as a metaphor for obvious risks that are neglected despite -- in fact, often because of -- their size and likelihood.'} | TED Salon U.S. Air Force | So what if there were a highly obvious problem right in front of you? One that everyone was talking about, one that affected you directly. Would you do everything within your power to fix things before they got worse? Don't be so sure. We are all much more likely than any of us would like to admit to miss what's right in front of our eyes. And in fact, we're sometimes most likely to turn away from things precisely because of the threat that they represent to us, in business, life and the world. So I want to give you an example from my world, economic policy. So when Alan Greenspan was head of the Federal Reserve, his entire job was to watch out for problems in the US economy and to make sure that they didn't spin out of control. So, after 2006, when real estate prices peaked, more and more and more respected leaders and institutions started to sound the alarm bells about risky lending and dangerous market bubbles. As you know, in 2008 it all came tumbling down. Banks collapsed, global stock markets lost nearly half their value, millions and millions of people lost their homes to foreclosure. And at the bottom, nearly one in 10 Americans was out of work. So after things calmed down a little bit, Greenspan and many others came out with a postmortem and said, "Nobody could have predicted that crisis." They called it "a black swan." Something that was unimaginable, unforeseeable and completely improbable. A total surprise. Except it wasn't always such a surprise. For example, my Manhattan apartment nearly doubled in value in less than four years. I saw the writing on the wall and I sold it. (Laughter) (Applause) So, a lot of other people also saw the warning, spoke out publicly and they were ignored. So we didn't know exactly what the crisis was going to look like, not the exact parameters, but we could all tell that the thing coming at us was as dangerous, visible and predictable as a giant gray rhino charging right at us. The black swan lends itself to the idea that we don't have power over our futures. And unfortunately, the less control that we think we have, the more likely we are to downplay it or ignore it entirely. And this dangerous dynamic masks another problem: that most of the problems that we're facing are so probable and obvious, they're things that we can see, but we still don't do anything about. So I created the gray rhino metaphor to meet what I felt was an urgent need. To help us to take a fresh look, with the same passion that people had for the black swan, but this time, for the things that were highly obvious, highly probable, but still neglected. Those are the gray rhinos. Once you start looking for gray rhinos, you see them in the headlines every day. And so what I see in the headlines is another big gray rhino, a new highly probable financial crisis. And I wonder if we've learned anything in the last 10 years. So if you listen to Washington or Wall Street, you could almost be forgiven for thinking that only smooth sailing laid ahead. But in China, where I spend a lot of time, the conversation is totally different. The entire economic team, all the way up to president Xi Jinping himself, talk very specifically and clearly about financial risks as gray rhinos, and how they can tame them. Now, to be sure, China and the US have very, very different systems of government, which affects what they're able to do or not. And many of the root causes for their economic problems are totally different. But it's no secret that both countries have problems with debt, with inequality and with economic productivity. So how come the conversations are so different? You could actually ask this question, not just about countries, but about just about everyone. The auto companies that put safety first and the ones that don't bother to recall their shoddy cars until after people die. The grandparents who, in preparing for the inevitable — the ones who have the eulogy written, the menu for the funeral lunch. (Laughter) My grandparents did. (Laughter) And everything but the final date chiseled into the gravestone. But then you have the grandparents on the other side, who don't put their final affairs in order, who don't get rid of all the junk they've been hoarding for decades and decades and leave their kids to deal with it. So what makes the difference between one side and the other? Why do some people see things and deal with them, and the other ones just look away? So the first one has to do with culture, society, the people around you. If you think that someone around you is going to help pick you up when you fall, you're much more likely to see a danger as being smaller. And that allows us to take good chances, not just the bad ones. For example, like risking criticism when you talk about the danger that nobody wants you to talk about. Or taking the opportunities that are kind of scary, so in their own way are gray rhinos. So the US has a very individualist culture — go it alone. And paradoxically, this makes many Americans much less open to change and taking good risks. In China, by contrast, people believe that the government is going to keep problems from happening, which might not always be what happens, but people believe it. They believe they can rely on their families, so that makes them more likely to take certain risks. Like buying Beijing real estate, or like being more open about the fact that they need to change direction, and in fact, the pace of change in China is absolutely amazing. Second of all, how much do you know about a situation, how much are you willing to learn? And are you willing to see things even when it's not what you want? So many of us are so unlikely to pay attention to the things that we just want to black out, we don't like them. We pay attention to what we want to see, what we like, what we agree with. But we have the opportunity and the ability to correct those blind spots. I spend a lot of time talking with people of all walks of life about the gray rhinos in their life and their attitudes. And you might think that the people who are more afraid of risk, who are more sensitive to them, would be the ones who would be less open to change. But the opposite is actually true. I've found that the people who are wiling to recognize the problems around them and make plans are the ones who are able to tolerate more risk, good risk, and deal with the bad risk. And it's because as we seek information, we increase our power to do something about the things that we're afraid of. And that brings me to my third point. How much control do you feel that you have over the gray rhinos in your life? One of the reasons we don't act is that we often feel too helpless. Think of climate change, it can feel so big, that not a single one of us could make a difference. So some people go about life denying it. Other people blame everyone except themselves. Like my friend who says he's not ever going to give up his SUV until they stop building coal plants in China. But we have an opportunity to change. No two of us are the same. Every single one of us has the opportunity to change our attitudes, our own and those of people around us. So today, I want to invite all of you to join me in helping to spark an open and honest conversation with the people around you, about the gray rhinos in our world, and be brutally honest about how well we're dealing with them. I hear so many times in the States, "Well, of course we should deal with obvious problems, but if you don't see what's in front of you, you're either dumb or ignorant." That's what they say, and I could not disagree more. If you don't see what's in front of you, you're not dumb, you're not ignorant, you're human. And once we all recognize that shared vulnerability, that gives us the power to open our eyes, to see what's in front of us and to act before we get trampled. (Applause) |
How supercharged plants could slow climate change | {0: 'Recognized as one of the greatest scientific innovators of our time, Joanne Chory studies the genetic codes of plants. Her goal: to use plants to help fight climate change.'} | TED2019 | I recently had an epiphany. I realized that I could actually play a role in solving one of the biggest problems that faces mankind today, and that is the problem of climate change. It also dawned on me that I had been working for 30 years or more just to get to this point in my life where I could actually make this contribution to a bigger problem. And every experiment that I have done in my lab over the last 30 years and people who work for me did in my lab over the last 30 years has been directed toward doing the really big experiment, this one last big experiment. So who am I? I'm a plant geneticist. I live in a world where there's too much CO2 in the atmosphere because of human activity. But I've come to appreciate the plants as amazing machines that they are, whose job has been, really, to just suck up CO2. And they do it so well, because they've been doing it for over 500 million years. And they're really good at it. And so ... I also have some urgency I want to tell you about. As a mother, I want to give my two children a better world than I inherited from my parents, it would be nicer to keep it going in the right direction, not the bad direction. But I also ... I've had Parkinson's for the last 15 years, and this gives me a sense of urgency that I want to do this now, while I feel good enough to really be part of this team. And I have an incredible team. We all work together, and this is something we want to do because we have fun. And if you're only going to have five people trying to save the planet, you better like each other, because you're going to be spending a lot of time together. (Laughter) OK, alright. But enough about me. Let's talk about CO2. CO2 is the star of my talk. Now, most of you probably think of CO2 as a pollutant. Or perhaps you think of CO2 as the villain in the novel, you know? It's always the dark side of CO2. But as a plant biologist, I see the other side of CO2, actually. And that CO2 that we see, we see it differently because I think we remember, as plant biologists, something you may have forgotten. And that is that plants actually do this process called photosynthesis. And when they do photosynthesis — all carbon-based life on our earth is all because of the CO2 that plants and other photosynthetic microbes have dragged in from CO2 that was in the atmosphere. And almost all of the carbon in your body came from air, basically. So you come from air, and it's because of photosynthesis, because what plants do is they use the energy in sunlight, take that CO2 and fix it into sugars. It's a great thing. And the other thing that is really important for what I'm going to tell you today is that plants and other photosynthetic microbes have a great capacity for doing this — twentyfold or more than the amount of CO2 that we put up because of our human activities. And so, even though we're not doing a great job at cutting our emissions and things, plants have the capacity, as photosynthetic organisms, to help out. So we're hoping that's what they'll do. But there's a catch here. We have to help the plants a little ourselves, because what plants like to do is put most of the CO2 into sugars. And when the end of the growing season comes, the plant dies and decomposes, and then all that work they did to suck out the CO2 from the atmosphere and make carbon-based biomass is now basically going right back up in the atmosphere as CO2. So how can we get plants to redistribute the CO2 they bring in into something that's a little more stable? And so it turns out that plants make this product, and it's called suberin. This is a natural product that is in all plant roots. And suberin is really cool, because as you can see there, I hope, everywhere you see a black dot, that's a carbon. There's hundreds of them in this molecule. And where you see those few red dots, those are oxygens. And oxygen is what microbes like to find so they can decompose a plant. So you can see why this is a perfect carbon storage device. And actually it can stabilize the carbon that gets fixed by the plant into something that's a little bit better for the plant. And so, why now? Why is now a good time to do a biological solution to this problem? It's because over the last 30 or so years — and I know that's a long time, you're saying, "Why now?" — but 30 years ago, we began to understand the functions of all the genes that are in an organism in general. And that included humans as well as plants and many other complicated eukaryotes. And so, what did the 1980s begin? What began then is that we now know the function of many of the genes that are in a plant that tell a plant to grow. And that has now converged with the fact that we can do genomics in a faster and cheaper way than we ever did before. And what that tells us is that all life on earth is really related, but plants are more related to each other than other organisms. And that you can take a trait that you know from one plant and put it in another plant, and you can make a prediction that it'll do the same thing. And so that's important as well. Then finally, we have these little genetic tricks that came along, like you heard about this morning — things like CRISPR, that allows us to do editing and make genes be a little different from the normal state in the plant. OK, so now we have biology on our side. I'm a biologist, so that's why I'm proposing a solution to the climate change problem that really involves the best evolved organism on earth to do it — plants. So how are we going to do it? Biology comes to the rescue. Here we go. OK. You have to remember three simple things from my talk, OK? We have to get plants to make more suberin than they normally make, because we need them to be a little better than what they are. We have to get them to make more roots, because if we make more roots, we can make more suberin — now we have more of the cells that suberin likes to accumulate in. And then the third thing is, we want the plants to have deeper roots. And what that does is — we're asking the plant, actually, "OK, make stable carbon, more than you used to, and then bury it for us in the ground." So they can do that if they make roots that go deep rather than meander around on the surface of the soil. Those are the three traits we want to change: more suberin, more roots, and the last one, deep roots. Then we want to combine all those traits in one plant, and we can do that easily and we will do it, and we are doing it actually, in the model plant, Arabidopsis, which allows us to do these experiments much faster than we can do in another big plant. And when we find that we have plants where traits all add up and we can get more of them, more suberin in those plants, we're going to move it all — we can and we we will, we're beginning to do this — move it to crop plants. And I'll tell you why we're picking crop plants to do the work for us when I get to that part of my talk. OK, so I think this is the science behind the whole thing. And so I know we can do the science, I feel pretty confident about that. And the reason is because, just in the last year, we've been able to find single genes that affect each of those three traits. And in several of those cases, two out of the three, we have more than one way to get there. So that tells us we might be able to even combine within a trait and get even more suberin. This shows one result, where we have a plant here on the right that's making more than double the amount of root than the plant on the left, and that's just because of the way we expressed one gene that's normally in the plant in a slightly different way than the plant usually does on its own. Alright, so that's just one example I wanted to show you. And now I want to tell you that, you know, we still have a lot of challenges, actually, when we get to this problem, because it takes ... We have to get the farmers to actually buy the seeds, or at least the seed company to buy seeds that farmers are going to want to have. And so when we do the experiments, we can't actually take a loss in yield, because while we are doing these experiments, say, beginning about 10 years from now, the earth's population will be even more than it is right now. And it's rapidly growing still. So by the end of the century, we have 11 billion people, we have wasted ecosystems that aren't really going to be able to handle all the load they have to take from agriculture. And then we also have this competition for land. And so we figure, to do this carbon sequestration experiment actually requires a fair amount of land. We can't take it away from food, because we have to feed the people that are also going to be on the earth until we get past this big crisis. And the climate change is actually causing loss of yield all over the earth. So why would farmers want to buy seeds if it's going to impact yield? So we're not going to let it impact yield, we're going to always have checks and balances that says go or no go on that experiment. And then the second thing is, when a plant actually makes more carbon and buries it in the soil like that, almost all the soils on earth are actually depleted of carbon because of the load from agriculture, trying to feed eight billion people, which is what lives on the earth right now. And so, that is also a problem as well. Plants that are making more carbon, those soils become enriched in carbon. And carbon-enriched soils actually hold nitrogen and they hold sulphur and they hold phosphate — all the minerals that are required for plants to grow and have a good yield. And they also retain water in the soil as well. So the suberin will break up into little particles and give the whole soil a new texture. And as we've shown that we can get more carbon in that soil, the soil will get darker. And so we will be able to measure all that, and hopefully, this is going to help us solve the problem. So, OK. So we have the challenges of a lot of land that we need to use, we have to get farmers to buy it, and that's going to be the hard thing for us, I think, because we're not really salesmen, we're people who like to Google a person rather than meet them, you know what I mean? (Laughter) That's what scientists are mostly like. But we know now that, you know, no one can really deny — the climate is changing, everyone knows that. And it's here and it's bad and it's serious, and we need to do something about it. But I feel pretty optimistic that we can do this. So I'm here today as a character witness for plants. And I want to tell you that plants are going to do it for us, all we have to do is give them a little help, and they will go and get a gold medal for humanity. Thank you very much. (Applause) (Cheers) Thank you. (Applause) I finally got it out. Chris Anderson: Wow. Joanne, you're so extraordinary. Just to be sure we heard this right: you believe that within the next 10 years you may be able to offer the world seed variants for the major crops, like — what? — wheat, corn, maybe rice, that can offer farmers just as much yield, sequester three times, four times, more carbon than they currently do? Even more than that? Joanne Chory: We don't know that number, really. But they will do more. CA: And at the same time, make the soil that those farmers have more fertile? JC: Yes, right. CA: So that is astonishing. And the genius of doing that and a solution that can scale where there's already scale. JC: Yes, thank you for saying that. CA: No, no, you said it, you said it. But it almost seems too good to be true. Your Audacious Project is that we scale up the research in your lab and pave the way to start some of these pilots and make this incredible vision possible. JC: That's right, yes, thank you. CA: Joanne Chory, thank you so much. Godspeed. (Applause) JC: Thank you. |
Mind-blowing stage sculptures that fuse music and technology | {0: 'Es Devlin is an artist and designer practicing across the worlds of art, music and technology.'} | TED2019 | These are sequences from a play called "The Lehman Trilogy," which traces the origins of Western capitalism in three hours, with three actors and a piano. And my role was to create a stage design to write a visual language for this work. The play describes Atlantic crossings, Alabama cotton fields, New York skylines, and we framed the whole thing within this single revolving cube, a kind of kinetic cinema through the centuries. It's like a musical instrument played by three performers. And as they step their way around and through the lives of the Lehman brothers, we, the audience, begin to connect with the simple, human origins at the root of the complex global financial systems that we're all still in thrall to today. I used to play musical instruments myself when I was younger. My favorite was the violin. It was this intimate transfer of energy. You held this organic sculpture up to your heart, and you poured the energy of your whole body into this little piece of wood, and heard it translated into music. And I was never particularly good at the violin, but I used to sit at the back of the second violin section in the Hastings Youth Orchestra, scratching away. We were all scratching and marveling at this symphonic sound that we were making that was so much more beautiful and powerful than anything we would ever have managed on our own. And now, as I create large-scale performances, I am always working with teams that are at least the size of a symphony orchestra. And whether we are creating these revolving giant chess piece time tunnels for an opera by Richard Wagner or shark tanks and mountains for Kanye West, we're always seeking to create the most articulate sculpture, the most poetic instrument of communication to an audience. When I say poetic, I just mean language at its most condensed, like a song lyric, a poetic puzzle to be unlocked and unpacked. And when we were preparing to design Beyoncé's "Formation" tour, we looked at all the lyrics, and we came across this poem that Beyoncé wrote. "I saw a TV preacher when I was scared, at four or five about bad dreams who promised he'd say a prayer if I put my hand to the TV. That's the first time I remember prayer, an electric current running through me." And this TV that transmitted prayer to Beyoncé as a child became this monolithic revolving sculpture that broadcast Beyoncé to the back of the stadium. And the stadium is a mass congregation. It's a temporary population of a hundred thousand people who have all come there to sing along with every word together, but they've also come there each seeking one-to-one intimacy with the performer. And we, as we conceive the show, we have to provide intimacy on a grand scale. It usually starts with sketches. I was drawing this 60-foot-high, revolving, broadcast-quality portrait of the artist, and then I tore the piece of paper in half. I split the mask to try to access the human underneath it all. And it's one thing to do sketches, but of course translating from a sketch into a tourable revolving six-story building took some exceptional engineers working around the clock for three months, until finally we arrived in Miami and opened the show in April 2016. (Video: Cheers) (Music: "Formation," Beyoncé) Beyoncé: Y'all haters corny with that Illuminati mess Paparazzi, catch my fly, and my cocky fresh I'm so reckless when I rock my Givenchy dress I'm so possessive so I rock his Roc necklaces My daddy Alabama Momma Louisiana You mix that negro with that Creole make a Texas bama (Music ends) I call my work — (Cheers, applause) Thank you. (Cheers, applause) I call my work stage sculpture, but of course what's really being sculpted is the experience of the audience, and as directors and designers, we have to take responsibility for every minute that the audience spend with us. We're a bit like pilots navigating a flight path for a hundred thousand passengers. And in the case of the Canadian artist The Weeknd, we translated this flight path literally into an origami paper folding airplane that took off over the heads of the audience, broke apart in mid-flight, complications, and then rose out of the ashes restored at the end of the show. And like any flight, the most delicate part is the liftoff, the beginning, because when you design a pop concert, the prime material that you're working with is something that doesn't take trucks or crew to transport it. It doesn't cost anything, and yet it fills every atom of air in the arena, before the show starts. It's the audience's anticipation. Everyone brings with them the story of how they came to get there, the distances they traveled, the months they had to work to pay for the tickets. Sometimes they sleep overnight outside the arena, and our first task is to deliver for an audience on their anticipation, to deliver their first sight of the performer. When I work with men, they're quite happy to have their music transformed into metaphor — spaceflights, mountains. But with women, we work a lot with masks and with three-dimensional portraiture, because the fans of the female artist crave her face. And when the audience arrived to see Adele's first live concert in five years, they were met with this image of her eyes asleep. If they listened carefully, they would hear her sleeping breath echoing around the arena, waiting to wake up. Here's how the show began. (Video: Cheers, applause) (Music) Adele: Hello. (Cheers, applause) Es Devlin: With U2, we're navigating the audience over a terrain that spans three decades of politics, poetry and music. And over many months, meeting with the band and their creative teams, this is the sketch that kept recurring, this line, this street, the street that connects the band's past with their present, the tightrope that they walk as activists and artists, a walk through cinema that allows the band to become protagonists in their own poetry. (Music: U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name") Bono: I wanna run I want to hide I wanna tear down the walls That hold me inside Es Devlin: The end of the show is like the end of a flight. It's an arrival. It's a transfer from the stage out to the audience. For the British band Take That, we ended the show by sending an 80-foot high mechanical human figure out to the center of the crowd. (Music) Like many translations from music to mechanics, this one was initially deemed entirely technically impossible. The first three engineers we took it to said no, and eventually, the way that it was achieved was by keeping the entire control system together while it toured around the country, so we had to fold it up onto a flatbed truck so it could tour around without coming apart. And of course, what this meant was that the dimension of its head was entirely determined by the lowest motorway bridge that it had to travel under on its tour. And I have to tell you that it turns out there is an unavoidable and annoyingly low bridge low bridge just outside Hamburg. (Laughter) (Music) Another of the most technically complex pieces that we've worked on is the opera "Carmen" at Bregenz Festival in Austria. We envisaged Carmen's hands rising out of Lake Constance, and throwing this deck of cards in the air and leaving them suspended between sky and sea. But this transient gesture, this flick of the wrists had to become a structure that would be strong enough to withstand two Austrian winters. So there's an awful lot that you don't see in this photograph that's working really hard. It's a lot of ballast and structure and support around the back, and I'm going to show you the photos that aren't on my website. They're photos of the back of a set, the part that's not designed for the audience to see, however much work it's doing. And you know, this is actually the dilemma for an artist who is working as a stage designer, because so much of what I make is fake, it's an illusion. And yet every artist works in pursuit of communicating something that's true. But we are always asking ourselves: "Can we communicate truth using things that are false?" And now when I attend the shows that I've worked on, I often find I'm the only one who is not looking at the stage. I'm looking at something that I find equally fascinating, and it's the audience. (Cheers) I mean, where else do you witness this: (Cheers) this many humans, connected, focused, undistracted and unfragmented? And lately, I've begun to make work that originates here, in the collective voice of the audience. "Poem Portraits" is a collective poem. It began at the Serpentine Gallery in London, and everybody is invited to donate one word to a collective poem. And instead of that large single LED portrait that was broadcasting to the back of the stadium, in this case, every member of the audience gets to take their own portrait home with them, and it's woven in with the words that they've contributed to the collective poem. So they keep a fragment of an ever-evolving collective work. And next year, the collective poem will take architectural form. This is the design for the UK Pavilion at the World Expo 2020. The UK ... In my lifetime, it's never felt this divided. It's never felt this noisy with divergent voices. And it's never felt this much in need of places where voices might connect and converge. And it's my hope that this wooden sculpture, this wooden instrument, a bit like that violin I used to play, might be a place where people can play and enter their word at one end of the cone, emerge at the other end of the building, and find that their word has joined a collective poem, a collective voice. (Music) These are simple experiments in machine learning. The algorithm that generates the collective poem is pretty simple. It's like predictive text, only it's trained on millions of words written by poets in the 19th century. So it's a sort of convergence of intelligence, past and present, organic and inorganic. And we were inspired by the words of Stephen Hawking. Towards the end of his life, he asked quite a simple question: If we as a species were ever to come across another advanced life-form, an advanced civilization, how would we speak to them? What collective language would we speak as a planet? The language of light reaches every audience. All of us are touched by it. None of us can hold it. And in the theater, we begin each work in a dark place, devoid of light. We stay up all night focusing the lights, programming the lights, trying to find new ways to sculpt and carve light. (Music) This is a portrait of our practice, always seeking new ways to shape and reshape light, always finding words for things that we no longer need to say. And I want to say that this, and everything that I've just shown you, no longer exists in physical form. (Music) In fact, most of what I've made over the last 25 years doesn't exist anymore. But our work endures in memories, in synaptic sculptures, in the minds of those who were once present in the audience. (Music) I once read that a poem learnt by heart is what you have left, what can't be lost, even if your house burns down and you've lost all your possessions. I want to end with some lines that I learnt by heart a long time ago. (Music) They're written by the English novelist E.M. Forster, in 1910, just a few years before Europe, my continent, (Music) began tearing itself apart. (Music) And his call to convergence still resonates through most of what we're trying to make now. (Music) "Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, And human love will be seen at its height. Only connect! And live in fragments no longer." Thank you. (Applause) |
"Accents" | null | TED-Ed | I'm Denice Frohman, and this is "Accents." my mom holds her accent like a shotgun, with two good hands. her tongue, all brass knuckle slipping in between her lips her hips, are all laughter and wind clap. she speaks a sanchocho of spanish and english, pushing up and against one another, in rapid fire there is no telling my mama to be "quiet," my mama don't know "quiet." her voice is one size better fit all and you best not tell her to hush, she waited too many years for her voice to arrive to be told it needed house keeping. English sits in her mouth remixed so "strawberry" becomes "eh-strawbeddy" and "cookie" becomes "eh-cookie" and kitchen, key chain, and chicken all sound the same. my mama doesn't say "yes" she says, "ah ha" and suddenly the sky in her mouth becomes a Hector Lavoe song. her tongue can't lay itself down flat enough for the English language, it got too much hip too much bone too much conga too much cuatro to two step got too many piano keys in between her teeth, it got too much clave too much hand clap got too much salsa to sit still it be an anxious child wanting to make Play-Doh out of concrete English be too neat for her kind of wonderful. her words spill in conversation between women whose hands are all they got sometimes our hands are all we got and accents that remind us that we are still bomba, still plena you say "wepa" and a stranger becomes your hermano, you say "dale" and a crowd becomes a family reunion. my mother's tongue is a telegram from her mother decorated with the coqui's of el campo so even when her lips can barely stretch themselves around english, her accent is a stubborn compass always pointing her towards home. |
How this disease changes the shape of your cells | null | TED-Ed | What shape are your cells? Squishy cylinders? Jagged zig-zags? You probably don’t think much about the bodies of these building blocks, but at the microscopic level, small changes can have huge consequences. And while some adaptations change these shapes for the better, others can spark a cascade of debilitating complications. This is the story of sickle-cell disease. Sickle-cell disease affects the red blood cells, which transport oxygen from the lungs to all the tissues in the body. To perform this vital task, red blood cells are filled with hemoglobin proteins to carry oxygen molecules. These proteins float independently inside the red blood cell’s pliable, doughnut-like shape, keeping the cells flexible enough to accommodate even the tiniest of blood vessels. But in sickle cell disease, a single genetic mutation alters the structure of hemoglobin. After releasing oxygen to tissues, these mutated proteins lock together into rigid rows. Rods of hemoglobin cause the cell to deform into a long, pointed sickle. These red blood cells are harder and stickier, and no longer flow smoothly through blood vessels. Sickled cells snag and pile up– sometimes blocking the vessel completely. This keeps oxygen from reaching a variety of cells, causing the wide range of symptoms experienced by people with sickle-cell disease. Starting when they’re less than a year old, patients suffer from repeated episodes of stabbing pain in oxygen-starved tissues. The location of the clogged vessel determines the specific symptoms experienced. A blockage in the spleen, part of the immune system, puts patients at risk for dangerous infections. A pileup in the lungs can produce fevers and difficulty breathing. A clog near the eye can cause vision problems and retinal detachment. And if the obstructed vessels supply the brain the patient could even suffer a stroke. Worse still, sickled red blood cells also don’t survive very long— just 10 or 20 days, versus a healthy cell’s 4 months. This short lifespan means that patients live with a constantly depleted supply of red blood cells; a condition called sickle-cell anemia. Perhaps what’s most surprising about this malignant mutation is that it originally evolved as a beneficial adaptation. Researchers have been able to trace the origins of the sickle cell mutation to regions historically ravaged by a tropical disease called malaria. Spread by a parasite found in local mosquitoes, malaria uses red blood cells as incubators to spread quickly and lethally through the bloodstream. However, the same structural changes that turn red blood cells into roadblocks also make them more resistant to malaria. And if a child inherits a copy of the mutation from only one parent, there will be just enough abnormal hemoglobin to make life difficult for the malaria parasite, while most of their red blood cells retain their normal shape and function. In regions rife with this parasite, sickle cell mutation offered a serious evolutionary advantage. But as the adaptation flourished, it became clear that inheriting the mutation from both parents resulted in sickle-cell anemia. Today, most people with sickle-cell disease can trace their ancestry to a country where malaria is endemic. And this mutation still plays a key role in Africa, where more than 90% of malaria infections occur worldwide. Fortunately, as this “adaptation” thrives, our treatment for sickle cell continues to improve. For years, hydroxyurea was the only medication available to reduce the amount of sickling, blunting symptoms and increasing life expectancy. Bone marrow transplantations offer a curative measure, but these procedures are complicated and often inaccessible. But promising new medications are intervening in novel ways, like keeping oxygen bonded to hemoglobin to prevent sickling, or reducing the stickiness of sickled cells. And the ability to edit DNA has raised the possibility of enabling stem cells to produce normal hemoglobin. As these tools become available in the areas most affected by malaria and sickle cell disease, we can improve the quality of life for more patients with this adverse adaptation. |
Everything around you can become a computer | {0: 'Ivan Poupyrev works at the forefront of interaction design, using technology as a raw ingredient to change the way we interact with the physical world.'} | TED2019 | Computers have become truly incredible. We are walking around with supercomputers in our pocket. How amazing is that? So it is disappointing that the way we use computers, the way we interact with them, hasn't really changed in the last 50 years. We still use a mouse and keyboards. We're clicking on screens and buttons. Mobile phones are the same. We're just using fingers instead of a mouse. So is that it? Is that what the future looks like? We're going to be stuck in the screens with our faces not seeing the world around us? That's not the future I imagine, or the future I'm attracted to. What I've been always interested in is things, physical things we use every day, like things on this table that the family doesn't pay attention to. Things tell our story. They tell who we are. They tell a lot about us. Let me give you an example. These are photographs of things a person touched during 24 hours. What can you tell about him? He loves his motorcycle. Right? The biggest thing in his picture. What can you tell about this girl? She spends all her time on the beach. There's a surfboard. She lives by the sea. What can you tell about this guy? He's a chef. Look at all the ingredients he touched during the day, while he was preparing the food, and the computer is a tiny part of his life, this sad thing in the corner. So if we are using things all the time, and this is a big part of our lives, can things become the way for us to interact with our digital life? Can the world become your interface? That was my idea. I've been working for 20 years on it. My idea is that in order to interact in digital life, you don't need to have screens and keyboards and mouses. You can interact with your digital life just by using the things you use every day. And to realize this idea, I need to solve three big challenges. Let me tell you about them. The first one, obviously: Is it even possible? How can you take an everyday thing you use every day and turn it into a computer interface? Now I was inspired by the book "Hackers." I read it when I was a teenager, and one of the essential ideas of this book is that you can change the purpose of things by inventing new technology and then hacking into things and changing them. So I've been thinking what kind of technology I can invent so that I can hack into things you use every day and make them interactive. So when I was working on this thing, I invented this sensor which injects structured electric fields into objects and turns them into gesture interfaces. So this doorknob, unmodified, can become a gesture sensor. It can know how you're touching it. It can feel how you're touching it. It makes a circle, or can I grasp. And this doorknob isn't modified. There's nothing special about doorknobs. Anything can become interactive. What about plants? So plants are interesting, because with plants, they can know where you're touching. You can see the line moving up and down on the image. And that can turn into a musical interface. (Musical tones) Now, we do have also practical applications: a calendar plant for those who are obsessed about practicality. (Laughter) We can give things a personality. (Low notes changing in pitch) So in this particular example, the orchid can communicate to you through images and sounds. It doesn't like to be touched, so it's created these electric images that are hissing at you. This plant, for example, is more robust, it's a snake plant, and it likes playing with you. It engages you. So every thing can be different, and every thing can represent what it feels. So everything can be hacked, all the things, including your body. In this example, we hacked your body so you can measure how you're folding your hands and then using your hand gestures to control something else, so if you don't want to listen to some music thousands of times, you simply can cover your ears to turn it off. So everything can be hacked, and research is important, but the second challenge we have is how can we go from R and D, and prototypes, to real products? How can we make real things that are also interfaces? And you may ask yourself, who would do this? Silicon Valley? Is it through Shenzhen? Now the challenge there is that the world of things is huge. Every year, the apparel industry produces 150 billion garments. In comparison, the technology industry only makes 1.4 billion phones. The world of things is much bigger than the world of technology. The technology world cannot change the world of things. Instead, we need to create technology which changes makers of things, people who make your chairs and clothes and everything else, into makers of smart things, enable them to do that. So to test this challenge, we came up with a very simple idea and challenge: Can a tailor make a wearable? Now we don't want to take a tailor and turn the tailor into an electrical engineer. We still want to have some tailors around. But what we would like to do is create technology which looks, feels and behaves like a raw material used by the tailor to make their clothes. For example, a touch panel made for a tailor would look like this, made out of textiles, so you can cut it with scissors and sew it in. At the same time, it has to retain the performance. The way to make this textile touch panel also requires a very different approach than for making consumer electronics. In our case, we have to go to the mountains of Tokyo to a small factory which was making kimono garments for generations. We worked with my collaborators, who were not engineers. It was an artisan who knows how to make things and an artist who knows how to make things beautiful. Working with them, we created one of the best yarns in the world, which consists of thin metallic alloys wrapped around with polyester fibers and cotton fibers. These yarns were made in the same machines which were making yarns for kimonos for generations. We then took these yarns and gave them to the factory, which is making textiles, and we wove our smart textile using regular machines in a variety of colors and materials, and we gave those textiles to a tailor in Savile Row in London. So tailors are traditionalists, particularly in Savile Row. They don't use computers. They don't use machines. They use hands and they cut. They fit their products on the human body, not on 3-D avatars. Technology is not a part of their vocabulary, but they are modern people. They know how to use technology. So if technology can be formed and shaped like a button, like a textile, like something they can use, they absolutely can make a wearable, a garment which can place a phone call. (Phone rings) So now we've proven that you can actually make a wearable, not by an electronic company, but by a tailor. We worked and collaborated with Levi's, our partners and our neighbors, to make a real product, and this product is this jacket I'm wearing right now. You can buy it. It's on sale. It was made in the same factories which make all their products, and you have noticed I've been controlling my presentation from the sleeve of the jacket. I go like this, it goes forward. Like this, it goes backward. And of course, I can do more things. It's not just to control a presentation. I can now control my navigation, control my music, but most importantly, it stays a jacket, it stays a thing, which makes me look great. (Laughter) (Applause) And that's the most important thing. (Laughter) So OK, we proved we can turn things into interfaces. We proved that these things can be made by makers of things and not by technology companies. I look awesome. Are we done? (Laughter) Not yet. The third challenge: How can we scale? How can we go from one product to many products? And that's what we're working on right now. Let me tell you how we're going to do this. First of all, I want to make myself clear — I am not talking about the Internet of Things. I'm not talking about creating another gadget you get bored with and throw in the back of your drawer and forget about. I am talking about the foundational, important principle which guides my work: "Technology has to make existing things better." It makes them better by connecting them to your digital life and adds new usefulness and new functionality while remaining the same original purpose, not changing it. This jacket I am wearing can control my mobile phone and presentation, but it still remains a jacket. That means that once we start making all things interactive and connected, every thing would have its own set of actuators, displays and sensors specific for those things. A pair of running shoes does not need to have a touch sensor. Why would it have one? If you have a sensor, it should measure your running performance or knee impact, while remaining a great pair of shoes. Makers of things will have to start thinking what kind of digital functionality they have to offer to their consumers. They will have to become service providers, or they may become irrelevant. We will have to provide and create a service ecosystem just like we've done for mobile phones, where you have apps and services and everything else, and sometimes, you're still making a phone call. Now to make this ecosystem possible, we have to avoid fragmentation. We have to avoid different interfaces for different people for different things. We have to create uniform user experience and, for that reason, we have to create a single computing platform which powers all those things. What is the platform going to be? And I think the answer is obvious: it's a cloud, cloud computing. Now you cannot connect things directly to the cloud, obviously. So you have to develop a small device which can be plugged into all the things and make them connected to the cloud to unlock their potential and add new functionality. So let me show, for the first time, the real device which we've built. We are showing this for the first time. That's what it looks like, and it's a small device which will be connected to things we want to make smart and connected and interactive. How is it going to work? So on the back, you have a few electrodes. So when you plug them into different things, like here, the device will recognize where you're plugging them and then reconfigure itself to enable specific functionality for this particular thing. We would like to give this device to makers of things, the people who make your clothing and furniture, so they can use it just like they use a button or a zipper. And what they're going to make with them is up to them. We don't want to dictate the use cases. We would like to let people who make those things — artists and designers, brands and craftsmen — to imagine and create this new world where things are connected and have all this new, exciting digital functionality. We don't need keyboards and screens and mouses to interact with your computer. So I've been working on this idea for 20 years, and now it's taking shape, and as it's taking shape, what we are realizing is that I always thought I was working on computer interfaces, I always thought of myself as an interaction designer, but I'm realizing that I'm not building interfaces. What I realized is that me and my team, we're building a new kind of computer, an ambient computer. Thank you. (Applause) |
How to revive your belief in democracy | {0: 'As CEO of Citizen University, Eric Liu is working to spark a civic revival in the US and beyond.'} | TED2019 | I bring you greetings from the 52nd-freest nation on earth. As an American, it irritates me that my nation keeps sinking in the annual rankings published by Freedom House. I'm the son of immigrants. My parents were born in China during war and revolution, went to Taiwan and then came to the United States, which means all my life, I've been acutely aware just how fragile an inheritance freedom truly is. That's why I spend my time teaching, preaching and practicing democracy. I have no illusions. All around the world now, people are doubting whether democracy can deliver. Autocrats and demagogues seem emboldened, even cocky. The free world feels leaderless. And yet, I remain hopeful. I don't mean optimistic. Optimism is for spectators. Hope implies agency. It says I have a hand in the outcome. Democratic hope requires faith not in a strongman or a charismatic savior but in each other, and it forces us to ask: How can we become worthy of such faith? I believe we are at a moment of moral awakening, the kind that comes when old certainties collapse. At the heart of that awakening is what I call "civic religion." And today, I want to talk about what civic religion is, how we practice it, and why it matters now more than ever. Let me start with the what. I define civic religion as a system of shared beliefs and collective practices by which the members of a self-governing community choose to live like citizens. Now, when I say "citizen" here, I'm not referring to papers or passports. I'm talking about a deeper, broader, ethical conception of being a contributor to community, a member of the body. To speak of civic religion as religion is not poetic license. That's because democracy is one of the most faith-fueled human activities there is. Democracy works only when enough of us believe democracy works. It is at once a gamble and a miracle. Its legitimacy comes not from the outer frame of constitutional rules, but from the inner workings of civic spirit. Civic religion, like any religion, contains a sacred creed, sacred deeds and sacred rituals. My creed includes words like "equal protection of the laws" and "we the people." My roll call of hallowed deeds includes abolition, women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, the Allied landing at Normandy, the fall of the Berlin Wall. And I have a new civic ritual that I'll tell you about in a moment. Wherever on earth you're from, you can find or make your own set of creed, deed and ritual. The practice of civic religion is not about worship of the state or obedience to a ruling party. It is about commitment to one another and our common ideals. And the sacredness of civic religion is not about divinity or the supernatural. It is about a group of unlike people speaking into being our alikeness, our groupness. Perhaps now you're getting a little worried that I'm trying to sell you on a cult. Relax, I'm not. I don't need to sell you. As a human, you are always in the market for a cult, for some variety of religious experience. We are wired to seek cosmological explanations, to sacralize beliefs that unite us in transcendent purpose. Humans make religion because humans make groups. The only choice we have is whether to activate that groupness for good. If you are a devout person, you know this. If you are not, if you no longer go to prayer services or never did, then perhaps you'll say that yoga is your religion, or Premier League football, or knitting, or coding or TED Talks. But whether you believe in a God or in the absence of gods, civic religion does not require you to renounce your beliefs. It requires you only to show up as a citizen. And that brings me to my second topic: how we can practice civic religion productively. Let me tell you now about that new civic ritual. It's called "Civic Saturday," and it follows the arc of a faith gathering. We sing together, we turn to the strangers next to us to discuss a common question, we hear poetry and scripture, there's a sermon that ties those texts to the ethical choices and controversies of our time, but the song and scripture and the sermon are not from church or synagogue or mosque. They are civic, drawn from our shared civic ideals and a shared history of claiming and contesting those ideals. Afterwards, we form up in circles to organize rallies, register voters, join new clubs, make new friends. My colleagues and I started organizing Civic Saturdays in Seattle in 2016. Since then, they have spread across the continent. Sometimes hundreds attend, sometimes dozens. They happen in libraries and community centers and coworking spaces, under festive tents and inside great halls. There's nothing high-tech about this social technology. It speaks to a basic human yearning for face-to-face fellowship. It draws young and old, left and right, poor and rich, churched and unchurched, of all races. When you come to a Civic Saturday and are invited to discuss a question like "Who are you responsible for?" or "What are you willing to risk or to give up for your community?" When that happens, something moves. You are moved. You start telling your story. We start actually seeing one another. You realize that homelessness, gun violence, gentrification, terrible traffic, mistrust of newcomers, fake news — these things aren't someone else's problem, they are the aggregation of your own habits and omissions. Society becomes how you behave. We are never asked to reflect on the content of our citizenship. Most of us are never invited to do more or to be more, and most of us have no idea how much we crave that invitation. We've since created a civic seminary to start training people from all over to lead Civic Saturday gatherings on their own, in their own towns. In the community of Athens, Tennessee, a feisty leader named Whitney Kimball Coe leads hers in an art and framing shop with a youth choir and lots of little flags. A young activist named Berto Aguayo led his Civic Saturday on a street corner in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago. Berto was once involved with gangs. Now, he's keeping the peace and organizing political campaigns. In Honolulu, Rafael Bergstrom, a former pro baseball player turned photographer and conservationist, leads his under the banner "Civics IS Sexy." It is. (Laughter) Sometimes I'm asked, even by our seminarians: "Isn't it dangerous to use religious language? Won't that just make our politics even more dogmatic and self-righteous?" But this view assumes that all religion is fanatical fundamentalism. It is not. Religion is also moral discernment, an embrace of doubt, a commitment to detach from self and serve others, a challenge to repair the world. In this sense, politics could stand to be a little more like religion, not less. Thus, my final topic today: why civic religion matters now. I want to offer two reasons. One is to counter the culture of hyperindividualism. Every message we get from every screen and surface of the modern marketplace is that each of us is on our own, a free agent, free to manage our own brands, free to live under bridges, free to have side hustles, free to die alone without insurance. Market liberalism tells us we are masters beholden to none, but then it enslaves us in the awful isolation of consumerism and status anxiety. (Audience) Yeah! Millions of us are on to the con now. We are realizing now that a free-for-all is not the same as freedom for all. (Applause) What truly makes us free is being bound to others in mutual aid and obligation, having to work things out the best we can in our neighborhoods and towns, as if our fates were entwined — because they are — as if we could not secede from one another, because, in the end, we cannot. Binding ourselves this way actually liberates us. It reveals that we are equal in dignity. It reminds us that rights come with responsibilities. It reminds us, in fact, that rights properly understood are responsibilities. The second reason why civic religion matters now is that it offers the healthiest possible story of us and them. We talk about identity politics today as if it were something new, but it's not. All politics is identity politics, a never-ending struggle to define who truly belongs. Instead of noxious myths of blood and soil that mark some as forever outsiders, civic religion offers everyone a path to belonging based only a universal creed of contribution, participation, inclusion. In civic religion, the "us" is those who wish to serve, volunteer, vote, listen, learn, empathize, argue better, circulate power rather than hoard it. The "them" is those who don't. It is possible to judge the them harshly, but it isn't necessary, for at any time, one of them can become one of us, simply by choosing to live like a citizen. So let's welcome them in. Whitney and Berto and Rafael are gifted welcomers. Each has a distinctive, locally rooted way to make faith in democracy relatable to others. Their slang might be Appalachian or South Side or Hawaiian. Their message is the same: civic love, civic spirit, civic responsibility. Now you might think that all this civic religion stuff is just for overzealous second-generation Americans like me. But actually, it is for anyone, anywhere, who wants to kindle the bonds of trust, affection and joint action needed to govern ourselves in freedom. Now maybe Civic Saturdays aren't for you. That's OK. Find your own ways to foster civic habits of the heart. Many forms of beloved civic community are thriving now, in this age of awakening. Groups like Community Organizing Japan, which uses creative performative rituals of storytelling to promote equality for women. In Iceland, civil confirmations, where young people are led by an elder to learn the history and civic traditions of their society, culminating in a rite-of-passage ceremony akin to church confirmation. Ben Franklin Circles in the United States, where friends meet monthly to discuss and reflect upon the virtues that Franklin codified in his autobiography, like justice and gratitude and forgiveness. I know civic religion is not enough to remedy the radical inequities of our age. We need power for that. But power without character is a cure worse than the disease. I know civic religion alone can't fix corrupt institutions, but institutional reforms without new norms will not last. Culture is upstream of law. Spirit is upstream of policy. The soul is upstream of the state. We cannot unpollute our politics if we clean only downstream. We must get to the source. The source is our values, and on the topic of values, my advice is simple: have some. (Laughter) (Applause) Make sure those values are prosocial. Put them into practice, and do so in the company of others, with a structure of creed, deed and joyful ritual that'll keep all of you coming back. Those of us who believe in democracy and believe it is still possible, we have the burden of proving it. But remember, it is no burden at all to be in a community where you are seen as fully human, where you have a say in the things that affect you, where you don't need to be connected to be respected. That is called a blessing, and it is available to all who believe. Thank you. (Applause) |
The Chinese myth of the immortal white snake | null | TED-Ed | The talented young herbalist named Xu Xian was in trouble. It should have been a victorious moment– he had just opened his very own medicine shop. But he bought his supplies from his former employer, and the resentful man sold him rotten herbs. As Xu Xian wondered what to do with this useless inventory, patients flooded into his shop. A plague had stricken the city, and he had nothing to treat them. Just as he was starting to panic, his wife, Bai Su Zhen, produced a recipe to use the rotten herbs as medicine. Her remedy cured all the plague-afflicted citizens immediately. Xu Xian’s former boss even had to buy back some of the rotten herbs to treat his own family. Shortly after, a monk named Fa Hai approached Xu Xian, warning him that there was a demon in his house. The demon, he said, was Bai Su Zhen. Xu Xian laughed. His kindhearted, resourceful wife was not a demon. Fa Hai insisted. He told Xu Xian to serve his wife realgar wine on the 5th day of the 5th month, when demons’ powers are weakest. If she wasn’t a demon, he explained, it wouldn’t hurt her. Xu Xian dismissed the monk politely, with no intention of serving Bai Su Zhen the wine. But as the day approached, he decided to try it. As soon as the wine touched Bai Su Zhen’s lips, she ran to the bedroom, claiming she wasn’t feeling well. Xu Xian prepared some medicine and went to check on her. But instead of his wife, he found a giant white serpent with a bloody forked tongue in the bed. He collapsed, killed by the shock. When Bai Su Zhen opened her eyes, she realized immediately what must have happened. The truth was that Bai Su Zhen was an immortal snake with formidable magical powers. She had used her powers to take a human form and improve her and her husband’s fortunes. Her magic couldn’t revive Xu Xian, but she had one more idea to save him: an herb that could grant longevity and even bring the dead back to life, guarded by the Old Man of the South Pole in the forbidden peaks of the Kun Lun Mountains. She rode to the mountains on a cloud, then continued on foot passed gateways and arches until she reached one marked “beyond mortals” hanging over a silver bridge. On the other side, two of the Old Man’s disciples guarded the herb. Bai Su Zhen disguised herself as a monk and told them she’d come to invite the Old Man to a gathering of the gods. While they relayed her message, she plucked some leaves from the herb and ran. The servants realized they had been tricked and chased her. Bai Su Zhen coughed up a magic ball and threw it at one. As the other closed in on her, she put the herb under her tongue for safekeeping, but its magic forced both of them into their true forms. As the crane’s long beak clamped around her, the Old Man appeared. Why, he asked, would she risk her life to steal his herb when she was already immortal? Bai Su Zhen explained her love for Xu Xian. Even if he didn’t want to be with her now that he knew she was a demon, she was determined to bring him back to life. The two had a karmic connection dating back more than a thousand years. When Bai Su Zhen was a small snake, a beggar was about to kill her, but a kind passerby rescued her. Her rescuer was Xu Xian in a past life. Touched by her willingness to risk her life for him, the Old Man permitted her to leave the mountain with the immortal herb. Bai Su Zhen returned home to revive Xu Xian. When he opened his eyes, the terrified look frozen on his face became a smile. Demon or not, he was still happy to see his wife. |
The crisis of leadership -- and a new way forward | {0: 'Halla Tómasdóttir is the CEO of The B Team, a group of global leaders working together to transform business for a better world.', 1: 'Bryn Freedman helps those who want to give the "talk of their lives" in a clear, passionate and authentic way.'} | TED Salon U.S. Air Force | Bryn Freedman: So you keep talking about leadership as a real crisis of conformity. Can you explain to us what you mean by that? What do you see as a crisis of conformity? Halla Tómasdóttir: I think it's a crisis of conformity when we continue to do business and lead in the way we always have, yet the evidence is overwhelming that the world needs us to change our ways. So let's look a little bit at that evidence. Science has told us that we're facing a climate crisis, yet 40 percent of board directors don't think climate belongs in the boardroom. And we have kids marching in the streets now, asking us to be accountable for their future. We have a crisis of inequality. We have Yellow Jackets not just in the streets of France, but all over the world, and yet we continue to see examples of businesses and other leaders fueling that anger. BF: Do you think the pitchforks are coming? HT: I definitely think this is not sustainable. And the reason why it's so difficult for us to deal with these complicated crises that are interrelated is that we are at the lowest levels of trust we've ever been at. In the UK, three percent of people trust their government to solve the Brexit crisis, and that was in December. I think it's probably gone down since then. BF: What do you think new leadership actually looks like? HT: We need courageous leaders, yet they have to be humble. And they have to be guided by a moral compass, and the moral compass is the combination of having a social purpose — you can't have your license to operate anymore without a purpose that contributes to society, but what, to me, has been missing from that dialogue is a set of principles. We cannot just define why we exist, we have to define how we're going to do business and how we're going to lead. And to us, that has to be to solve these imminent crises: the climate crisis, the crisis of inequality and the crisis of trust. So at The B Team, we embrace sustainability, equality and accountability as our principles. BF: Do you think this whole question of purpose is really window dressing — they're saying what they think people want to hear, but they're actually not making the fundamental changes that are necessary? HT: A lot of people feel that way, and I think there's a growing momentum behind that. So I think the world is calling for responsible leadership now, and any leader who wants to be around for the 21st century really needs to start thinking courageously and holistically how they're going to be part of the solution and not window-dress anymore. You have to do it for real now. BF: Do you see anybody out there who's doing it in a way that you think is actually effective and has a real, long-term impact? HT: Fortunately, we have some great leaders out there. And just to give one example, Emmanuel Faber, who's one of the newest members of The B Team, he's the CEO of Danone, the world's largest yogurt-maker and major food company — a real global company. He's so committed to sustainability that he's not only changing the ways of his own business, but his entire supply chain. He's so committed to equality that when he took on as CEO and he said gender balance matters, he created a gender-balanced executive team and gave men and women equal maternity and paternity leave. He's so committed to accountability that he turned his US operations into a B Corporation. Now many of you may not know what that is, but that's a company that holds itself responsible for not just profit but its impact on people and the planet, and transparently reports on their performance on all of that. It's the largest B Corp in the world. So to me, that's holistic, courageous leadership, and it's really the vision we all need to hold. BF: Is this "Back to the Future"? I mean, I wonder, when I think about companies — Anheuser-Busch comes to mind in America — a 100-year-old company that invested in its community, that gave a living wage before it ended up, you know, losing and getting sold. Are we really looking now for companies that are global and community citizens, or is that something that is not even useful anymore? HT: Well, you can do this for the reason that it's risky, actually, to continue without doing the right thing now. You can't attract the right talent, you can't attract customers and increasingly, you won't be able to attract capital. You might do it for risk reasons, you might do it for business opportunity reasons, because this is where the growth is, which is why many leaders are doing the right thing. But at the end of the day, we need to ask ourselves: "Who are we holding ourselves accountable for?" And if that isn't the next generation, I don't know who. So I want to just make very clear, because we tend to think about leadership as only those who sit in positions of power. To me, leadership is not at all like that. There's a leader inside every single one of us, and our most important work in life is to release that leader. And I think one of the greatest global examples we have of someone who didn't — no one gave her power — is the 16-year-old girl called Greta Thunberg. She's from Sweden, and a few years ago, she really became — she has Asperger's, and she became passionate about our climate crisis — learned everything about it. And faced with the evidence, she just felt so disappointed in her leadership that she started striking in front of the Swedish parliament. And now she has started a global movement, and hundreds and thousands of school kids are out in the streets asking us to hold ourselves accountable for their future. No one gave her that authority, and she now speaks to the leaders of the world, heads of state, and really is impacting the world. So I really think that when we think about leadership today, it can't be defined to those in positions of power though they have disproportionately greater responsibility. But all of us need to think about, "What am I doing?" "How am I contributing?" And we need to release that leader inside and actually start making the positive impact this world is calling for right now. BF: But we have such hierarchical leadership. I mean, I understand what you're saying — it's nice to release the leader inside — but in these corporations, the truth is, it's extremely hierarchical. What can companies do to create less vertical and more horizontal relationships? HT: Well, I'm a big believer and I've long been passionate about closing the gender gap, and I really believe gender-balanced leadership is the way to go in order to embrace a leadership style that has been shown to be more powerful, and that's when both men and women embrace both masculine and feminine values. It actually is proven in research that that's the most effective leadership style. But I'm increasingly now thinking about how we close the generational gap, because look at these young children in the streets around the world — they're asking us to lead. Kofi Annan used to say, "You're never too young to lead." And then he would add, "Or too old to learn." And I think we have now entered this era where we need the wisdom of those with experience, but we need the digital natives of the young generation to co-mentor or to mentor us just as much as we can help with wisdom from the older people. So it's a new reality, and these old, sort of hierarchical ways to think about things, they're increasingly coming under pressure in this reality. BF: And you've actually called that the hubris syndrome. Can you talk about that? HT: Well, yes, I think hubris is our cancer in leadership. That's when leaders think they know it all, can do it all, have all the answers and don't think they need to surround themselves with people who will make them better, which to me would, in some cases, be more women and younger people and people who are diverse and have different opinions in general. Hubris syndrome is so present in leadership still, and we know many examples of them, I don't need to name them. And the problem with that — (Laughter) Yeah, we know them — all over the world, not just in this country. But that kind of leadership doesn't unleash leaders in others. No one person, or no one sector even has the solutions we now need to come up with — the creativity and collaboration we need. The bold and the brave leadership we need to come up with solutions that cross government, private sector, civil society, young people, older people, people of all different backgrounds coming together is the way to solve the issues that are in front of us. BF: Do you see that kind of leadership coming from the bottom-up or the top-down, or do you think a crisis is going to force us into a reexamination of all of this? HT: Well, as someone who lived through the most infamous financial meltdown in my home country, Iceland, I hope we don't need another one to learn or to wake up. But I do see that we can't choose one or the other. We do have to transform the way we lead — from the top, the boardroom, the CEOs — we really do have to transform that, but increasingly, we will transform that, because we have these social movements coming from the bottom and throughout society. And the solutions exist. The only thing that's missing is will. So if we just all find a way to embrace a moral compass of our own to figure out why we exist and how we're going to lead, and if we embrace courage and humility in equal amounts, each one of us can be part of this 10-year period where we can dramatically transform the world we live in, and make it just, and make it about humanity and not just the financial markets. BF: Well, we have a lot of people here who I bet have questions for you, and we have a few minutes for questions, so is there anybody that would like to ask Halla a question? Audience: Hello, my name is Cheryl. I'm an aspiring leader, and I have a question about how you lead when you have no influence. If I'm just an analyst, and I want to speak to senior management about a change that I feel will affect the whole company, how do I go about changing their minds when they feel as if they've had relationships that are set, that their way of business is set? How do you change minds when you have no influence? HT: Well, thank you very much for that fantastic question. So sometimes people at the top won't listen, but it's interesting that with the low trust we have in society right now, the greatest trust we have is actually between the employee and the employer, according to recent research. So I think that relationship may be the most powerful way to actually transform the way we do things. So I would start by trying to build a coalition for your good idea. And I don't know a single leader today who will not listen to a concern that many of their employees hold. I'll give you an example from another B Team leader, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce. He's really been outspoken on homelessness in San Francisco, on LGBTQI rights, and all of the things that he's been standing up for, he does because his employees care about them. So don't ever think you don't have power if you don't sit in a position of power. Find the way to go convince him ... or her. And Marc, for example, was convinced to close the gender pay gap by two women who worked inside of his organization, who told him, "We have a gender pay gap." He didn't believe it; he said, "Bring me the data." They did, and he was smart enough to know he needed to do something about it, and was one the first tech leaders to step up and do so voluntarily. So don't ever think that you don't have power, even if you don't sit in a position of power, but find other people to support you and make the case. BF: Thank you. Anybody else? Any other questions? Audience: Hi, I'm overwhelmed by fascination with everything you're saying, so thank you. I just wanted to ask how, like, diversity in opinion and thought and also background has impacted your leadership ability. And what do you think is the barricade that is limiting the overflow of diversity in all business settings, and what do you think can impact the change in that setting but also to disrupt the overflow of generations of people staying in place? And what do you think is the next step to breaking several glass ceilings? BF: We're going to do an entire Salon just on that question. (Laughter) HT: I think Bryn said it well, but let me try and touch on it. So the way I see gender, it is a spectrum — you know, men also have gender. We sometimes forget about that. (Laughter) We sometimes forget about that. And I actually played a very masculine woman early in my career, because those were the rules of the game. And I achieved some success with it, but fortunately, I got to a place where I started embracing my feminine side as well. But I would still say that the best leaders embrace both, both women and men. But I see gender, also, as one of the most powerful levers to shift values in culture. So the reason I'm so passionate about women in leadership and believe that balance is needed is because right now, our definition of success is incredibly masculine. It's about financial profit alone or economic growth alone, and we all know that we need more than money. I mean, we need wellness: well-being of people, and there is no future beyond the well-being of our planet. So I think gender may very well be one of the most powerful levers to help all of us shift our economic and social systems to be more welcoming. And the answer to your last part — it's so complicated, but let me try to give you a short one. I believe that the way talent and consumption is shifting is going to increasingly get companies to look at adding difference into their leadership, because sameness is not working — BF: And difference is a superpower. HT: Difference is a superpower. BF: Thank you very much. Halla, thank you so much, I wish we could talk to you all day. (Applause and cheers) HT: Thank you. (Applause) |
The case for having kids | {0: 'New York Times contributing op-ed writer, recovering attorney, playwright and exhausted dad Wajahat Ali celebrates the diverse narratives of the United States and advocates for a more inclusive cultural landscape.'} | TED2019 | I'm an exhausted dad. Currently owned and dominated by two mini dictators, who rule my life with an iron fist while wearing their Huggies diapers. (Laughter) Now probably because I've been drowning in small people lately, I've been paying close attention to a particular headline. It seems around the world, in developed countries, people are having fewer babies. From North America to Europe to China to Japan, there's actually been a consistent decline in birth rates. In fact, over the past 50 years, the global fertility rate has halved. What the heck is going on? Now, my friends who don't want kids, all point to climate change as a reason for never having babies. And many of you are sitting there right now, saying, "Waj, there's also overpopulation, there's also high birth rates, which still exist in many African and Middle Eastern countries, there's also orphan kids who still need parents, there's also a lack of resources to go around for everyone, and oh, by the way, we have a ginormous carbon footprint that is destroying this planet. I hear you, I hear you. And yet, despite all this chaos, I still think we should have babies. I believe we can and should fight for the earth and humanity, side by side. Now, if I could take it personal for a second, I get it, I get why some of you might be skeptical about having babies. Here's a photo of my wife and me before we had kids. Young, happy, fresh. (Laughter) Here's a photo of me after having kids. A broken, defeated husk of a man. (Laughter) Here's the photo of the car I thought I'd be driving as an adult. A Porsche. Here's what I actually drive. A Honda Odyssey minivan. (Laughter) (Applause) For the minivan. Where there was once hope, now there is convenient space, and good mileage, good mileage. Now, I just want to stress that I'm completely aware of the very dire threats of global warming and climate change. I just want to acknowledge that choosing to have babies is a deeply, profoundly personal choice. And that many who want to are unable. But just for today, let's examine the flip side of the coin. At how not having enough new people is going to be a major problem moving forward. According to the World Health Organization, we need to average about 2.1 children per woman today just so we have enough people to replace the previous generation. A lot of you thought overpopulation was going to be a problem in 100 years — yeah, it might be underpopulation. So a question: what happens if that number dips below 2.1? There's going to be a domino effect. As all of us get older, and live longer, there's going to be a shrinking younger population, which is going to lead to rising labor shortages in the world's biggest economies. I'm talking about United States, China, Japan, Germany. Fewer younger working people means less tax revenue. Less tax revenue means less money and resources to go to safety net programs that all of us are going to depend upon. I'm talking about pensions and health care. It seems every generation is indeed connected. But how the heck did we get here in the first place? Well, in some cases, it was intentional. Let's take the DeLorean to simpler times. Let's stop in China. Somewhere between the death of disco and "Empire Strikes Back" — 1980. In 1980, China decided to implement the one-child policy, largely limiting most parents to having just one kid to combat overpopulation. Check out some good old-fashioned Chinese propaganda, lovely. Now, fast-forward to 2019. Even after ending its one-child policy in 2015, China's birth rates have largely declined. In fact, the falling population in China is removing one of its biggest drivers of growth — people. If trends continue, China's population is actually going to peak in 2029, before entering "unstoppable decline." China's government is so freaked out right now that it's actually doing new propaganda — it's begging couples to have children for the country. Let's take the DeLorean and hop over to Japan, home of my beloved Honda Odyssey minivan. (Laughter) Japan is now producing more adult diapers than infant ones. The number of kids in Japan has fallen for the 37th straight year. And unlike other countries, it has not been able to replace its population numbers through immigrant workers. There will be labor shortages and not enough money to fund the safety-net programs. Now, Japan has introduced two solutions. First, a financial incentive. Some local governments in Japan have offered couples money to have babies, with the money increasing with each additional child being born. This actually worked for one year in 2014 in this town called Ama. It actually raised the birth rate from about 1.66 kids per woman to 1.8. But it did not gain traction across Japan. In 2018, a leader of Japan's ruling party tried a new tack. He told young people, "You're selfish for not having babies." Shockingly, shaming was not a rousing aphrodisiac. Surprise, I know, surprise. Who would have thought? (Laughter) Let's take the DeLorean to Europe, the continent of delicious cheeses I love to eat but cannot pronounce. The UK and much of Western Europe has a birth rate of about 1.7 kids per woman, which at least is better than Hungary, where it hovers around 1.45. Now, Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orbán has proposed a new solution to try to incentivize people to have kids. He said families where the women have four or more kids will no longer pay income tax. Pretty good, right, pretty good. At least it's better than Russia's 2007 proposal, which once offered women in a particular region the opportunity of winning a fridge if they had more kids. (Laughter) Yeah, it didn't work, it didn't work. But hold on, pump the brakes. Orbán is primarily proposing this because he wants to limit the population of Muslims and people of color. He says he doesn't think Hungary's traditions and culture and color has to be "mixed with those of others." Subtle. Unfortunately for Orbán, and much of the EU, the birth rates are not high enough right now to be replenished without immigration. Among EU countries, there is a demographic decline. So it seems, in Europe, karma is going to be brown and Muslim. (Laughter) (Applause) Just saying. The question remains: Why aren't people having enough kids? Why is the birth rate declining in these countries? In some cases, it's because women are more literate, more educated. They have more economic opportunities — applaud. All good things, all good things, yes. (Applause) In India, this has been fantastic, it has actually reduced the birth rate but kept it above that magic 2.1 number. Women also have more access to birth control, more control over their reproductive lives, all good things. But in the United States, in particular, a lot of young people are opting out of having kids, largely cite the same reason: financial concerns. Let's take the DeLorean to my motherland, the United States of America, where the birth rate hit its historic low in 2017. The United States is the most expensive country in the world to give birth. If you do not have insurance, it will cost you 32,000 dollars to have a baby, if everything goes perfectly. That's like buying a brand new Honda Odyssey minivan, OK? So, congratulations, you just had a baby, but the baby's economic productivity is zero, and guess what? The United States is the only industrialized country in the world that does not require employers to offer paid parental leave. "Mom, you just had a baby, congratulations, that's lovely. Get back to work or you're fired, young mom!" My wife and I, both working parents, pay about 3,500 dollars a month — a month — in Virginia for childcare. If you do the math, that's 40,000 dollars a year. That's like buying a brand new, souped-up, Honda Odyssey minivan, OK. I have one, I do not need 10. So here's my bold suggestion. Let's make it easier for people to have babies. It seems in order to invest in our future, we actually have to invest in the present and help those people who want to become parents. Give them affordable health care, give them affordable childcare, give them paid parental leave. Among the EU states in 2017, France reported the highest birth rates. Why? Largely due to its pronatal policies that actually kept women in the workforce. I'm talking about subsidized daycare and paid maternal leave. China and Japan, thank God, are finally wisening up and proposing such policies. This is great. That being said, I know some of you have listened to me and you still think the best investment we can make in the future is not having babies. I respect that. I get where you're coming from. And I know many of you in this audience want to have babies but you are terrified about the future. And as a parent, I feel you. I'm scared about the future. I wrote that last line a month ago. But it really hit home three days ago for me, while I was at TED. Three days ago, my wife calls me, crying. I pick it up in my hotel room. And she said, "I'm calling from the hospital." We had to take my baby daughter Nusayba, who was named after a warrior princess, to the hospital, because she found a bump on the stomach. We got back the results, and there were bumps all around her liver. Today, this morning, we found out that she has stage IV liver cancer. (Audience gasps) It has been a challenging week. It has been a challenging week. And if I may, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the TED staff, everyone, top-down, everyone in the back, in the green room, some of the speakers, word has spread. On behalf of my family, my wife, and my parents — my Pakistani parents said I had to say this — thank you for just being decent and kind this week. So thank you. (Applause) These are my beloveds, my Ibrahim and Nusayba, my babies. I talked to my wife, and despite the terrible news and the fight ahead, we both concluded that we regret nothing. Deciding to have babies was the best decision we ever made. Our babies have brought us so much joy and they've brought the world so much joy, and having kids is a risk, but life is a risk. And yes, I hope you've been paying attention, we need to invest in babies in developed countries if we want to help save our economy and pensions. But that's not the reason you have babies. That's not the main reason. Babies have always represented humanity's best, boldest, most beautiful infinite possibilities. And if we in developed countries, as a whole, opt out, and don't invest in present and future generations, then what the hell's the point? What's the point of being on this absurd journey together? And so, for those who can and who choose to, for those who can and who choose to have kids, may you pass on this beautiful thing called life, with kindness, generosity, decency and love. Thank you. (Applause) |
How your brain's executive function works -- and how to improve it | {0: 'Sabine Doebel studies the developing mind to understand how experience shapes our thinking and executive control skills.'} | TEDxMileHigh | So I have a confession to make. I only recently learned how to drive. And it was really hard. Now, this wasn't an older brain thing. Do you remember what it was like when you first learned how to drive? When every decision you made was so conscious and deliberate? I'd come home from my lessons completely wiped out mentally. Now, as a cognitive scientist I know that this is because I was using a lot of something called executive function. Executive function is our amazing ability to consciously control our thoughts, emotions and actions in order to achieve goals ... like learning how to drive. It's what we use when we need to break away from habit, inhibit our impulses and plan ahead. But we can see it most clearly when things go wrong. Like, have you ever accidentally poured orange juice on your cereal? (Laughter) Or, ever start scrolling on Facebook and suddenly realize you've missed a meeting? (Laughter) Or maybe this one's more familiar: Ever plan to stop at the store on the way home from work and then drive all the way home instead on autopilot? (Laughter) These things happen to everyone. And we usually call it absentmindedness, but what's really happening is we're experiencing a lapse in executive function. So we use executive function every day in all aspects of our lives. And over the past 30 years, researchers have found that it predicts all kinds of good things in childhood and beyond, like social skills, academic achievement, mental and physical health, making money, saving money and even staying out of jail. Sounds great, doesn't it? So it's no surprise that researchers like me are so interested in understanding it and figuring out ways to improve it. But lately, executive function has become a huge self-improvement buzzword. People think you can improve it through brain-training iPhone apps and computer games, or by practicing it in a specific way, like playing chess. And researchers are trying to train it in the lab in the hopes of improving it and other things related to it, like intelligence. Well, I'm here to tell you that this way of thinking about executive function is all wrong. Brain training won't improve executive function in a broad sense because it involves exercising it in a narrow way, outside of the real-world contexts in which we actually use it. So you can master that executive function app on your phone, but that's not going to help you stop pouring OJ on your Cheeerios twice a week. (Laughter) If you really want to improve your executive function in a way that matters for your life, you have to understand how it's influenced by context. Let me show you what I mean. There's a great test that we use in the lab to measure executive function in young children called the "dimensional change card sort." In this task, kids have to sort cards in one way — like by shape — over and over until they build up a habit. And then they're asked to switch and sort the same cards in another way, like by color. Now, really young kids struggle with this. Three- and four-year-olds will usually keep sorting the cards in the old way no matter how many times you remind them of what they should be doing. (Video) Woman: If it's blue, put it here. If it's red, put it here. Here's a blue one. OK, so now we're going to play a different game. We're not going to play the color game anymore. Now we're going to play the shape game, and in the shape game, all the stars go here and all the trucks go here, OK? Stars go here, trucks go here. Where do the stars go? And where do the trucks go? Excellent. OK, stars go here, trucks go here. Here's a truck. (Laughter) Stars go here, trucks go here. Here's a star. (Laughter) SB: So it's really compelling, and it's really obvious when she fails to use her executive function. But here's the thing: we could train her on this task and others like it and eventually she'd improve, but does that mean that she would've improved her executive function outside of the lab? No, because in the real world, she'll need to use executive function to do a lot more than switching between shape and color. She'll need to switch from adding to multiplying or from playing to tidying up or from thinking about her own feelings to thinking about her friend. And success in real-world situations depends on things like how motivated you are and what your peers are doing. And it also depends on the strategies that you execute when you're using executive function in a particular situation. So what I'm saying is that context really matters. Now let me give you an example from my research. I recently brought in a bunch of kids to do the classic marshmallow test, which is a measure of delay of gratification that also likely requires a lot of executive function. So you may have heard about this test, but basically, kids are given a choice. They can have one marshmallow right away, or if they can wait for me to go to the other room and get more marshmallows, they can have two instead. Now, most kids really want that second marshmallow, but the key question is: How long can they wait? (Laughter) Now, I added a twist to look at the effects of context. I told each kid that they were in a group, like the green group, and I even gave them a green T-shirt to wear. And I said, "Your group waited for two marshmallows, and this other group, the orange group, did not." Or I said the opposite: "Your group didn't wait for two marshmallows and this other group did." And then I left the kid alone in the room and I watched on a webcam to see how long they waited. (Laughter) So what I found was that kids who believed that their group waited for two marshmallows were themselves more likely to wait. So they were influenced by a peer group that they'd never even met. (Laughter) Pretty cool, isn't it? Well, so with this result I still didn't know if they were just copying their group or if it was something deeper than that. So I brought in some more kids, and after the marshmallow test, I showed them pictures of pairs of kids, and I told them, "One of these kids likes to have things right away, like cookies and stickers. And the other kid likes to wait so that they can have more of these things." And then I asked them, "Which one of these two kids do you like more and who would you want to play with?" And what I found was that kids who believed that their group waited tended to prefer other kids who liked to wait for things. So learning what their group did made them value waiting more. And not only that, these kids likely used executive function to generate strategies to help themselves wait, like sitting on their hands or turning away from the marshmallow or singing a song to distract themselves. (Laughter) So what this all shows is just how much context matters. It's not that these kids had good executive function or bad, it's that the context helped them use it better. So what does this mean for you and for your kids? Well, let's say that you want to learn Spanish. You could try changing your context and surrounding yourself with other people who also want to learn, and even better if these are people that you really like. That way you'll be more motivated to use executive function. Or let's say that you want to help your child do better on her math homework. You could teach her strategies to use executive function in that particular context, like putting her phone away before she starts studying or planning to reward herself after studying for an hour. Now, I don't want to make it sound like context is everything. Executive function is really complex, and it's shaped by numerous factors. But what I want you to remember is if you want to improve your executive function in some aspect of your life, don't look for quick fixes. Think about the context and how you can make your goals matter more to you, and how you can use strategies to help yourself in that particular situation. I think the ancient Greeks said it best when they said, "Know thyself." And a key part of this is knowing how context shapes your behavior and how you can use that knowledge to change for the better. Thank you. (Applause) |
The Aztec myth of the unlikeliest sun god | null | TED-Ed | Nanahuatl, weakest of the Aztec gods, sickly and covered in pimples, had been chosen to form a new world. There had already been four worlds, each set in motion by its own “Lord Sun," and each, in turn, destroyed: the first by jaguars, the next by winds, the next by rains of fire, and the fourth by floods. To establish the Fifth Sun, Lord Quetzalcoatl, the “Feathered Serpent,” had gone to the underworld and returned with the bones of earlier people, nourishing them with his own blood to create new life. But for them to have a world to live in, another god had to leap into the great bonfire and become the fifth sun. The Lord of Sustenance and the Lord of Fire had chosen Nanahuatl for this task, while the Lord of Rain and the Lord of the Four Quarters had picked their own offering: the proud, rich Tecciztecatl. First, the chosen ones had to complete a four-day fasting and bloodletting ritual. Nanahuatl had nothing but cactus thorns with which to bleed himself, and fir branches to paint with his red offering, but he resolved to try his best. Meanwhile, Tecciztecatl flaunted his riches, using magnificent jade spines and branches adorned with iridescent quetzal feathers for his own blood offering. When four days had passed, the fire was roaring high. Four times proud Tecciztecatl approached the flames, and four times he pulled back in fear. Humble Nanahuatl stepped forward. The other gods painted him chalky white and glued feathers to him. Without hesitation, he threw himself into the flames. A fire-blackened eagle swooped over the fire, grabbed Nanahuatl and carried him into the sky. There, Lord and Lady Sustenance bathed him, sat him on a feathered throne, and wrapped a red band around his head. Inspired by Nanahuatl, Tecciztecatl threw himself into what was left of the fire: cooled ashes. A jaguar jumped over the fire pit, but couldn’t carry Tecciztecatl into the sky. When Tecciztecatl reached the horizon, a band of goddesses dressed him in rags. Still, he shined just as brightly as Nanahuatl. But since he had shown far less bravery and much more pride, one of the gods picked up a rabbit and tossed it in his face, dimming his light. But the fifth world still wasn’t truly established. Nanahuatl, Lord Sun, shined for four days straight without moving through the sky like all the previous suns had moved. Back in their home, Teotihuacan, the gods began to worry. They sent Obsidian Hawk up to ask what was wrong. Nanahuatl replied that just as he had sacrificed himself to become Lord Sun, he now needed the nourishing blood of the other gods in order to move through the sky. Enraged at this suggestion, Lord Dawn stepped up and shot an arrow at Lord Sun. Lord Sun shot back, and his quetzal-feathered arrows struck Lord Dawn in the face, turning him to frost. Before anyone else could act rashly, the other gods turned to each other to discuss what to do. Of course, no one wanted to sacrifice themselves, but nor did anyone want to act like Lord Dawn. Besides, Nanahuatl had held up his end of the bargain to nourish the earth— how could they refuse to nourish him in return? They remembered how even the wimpy Tecciztecatl had eventually managed to emulate Nanahuatl's bravery. At long last, five other gods agreed to sacrifice themselves. One by one, Lord Death stabbed them in the heart with an obsidian knife, offering their bodies to their new Lord Sun. As the last god made the sacrifice, Lord Quetzalcoatl blew the embers of the great fire back to life, and the sun began to move through the sky at last, ushering in the fifth age. Thanks to a pimply weakling whose fortitude inspired all the other gods, the sun moves along its daily path, the rabbit-faced moon following in its wake. |
Sleep is your superpower | {0: 'Matt Walker is a brain scientist trying to understand why we sleep.'} | TED2019 | Thank you very much. Well, I would like to start with testicles. (Laughter) Men who sleep five hours a night have significantly smaller testicles than those who sleep seven hours or more. (Laughter) In addition, men who routinely sleep just four to five hours a night will have a level of testosterone which is that of someone 10 years their senior. So a lack of sleep will age a man by a decade in terms of that critical aspect of wellness. And we see equivalent impairments in female reproductive health caused by a lack of sleep. This is the best news that I have for you today. (Laughter) From this point, it may only get worse. Not only will I tell you about the wonderfully good things that happen when you get sleep, but the alarmingly bad things that happen when you don't get enough, both for your brain and for your body. Let me start with the brain and the functions of learning and memory, because what we've discovered over the past 10 or so years is that you need sleep after learning to essentially hit the save button on those new memories so that you don't forget. But recently, we discovered that you also need sleep before learning to actually prepare your brain, almost like a dry sponge ready to initially soak up new information. And without sleep, the memory circuits of the brain essentially become waterlogged, as it were, and you can't absorb new memories. So let me show you the data. Here in this study, we decided to test the hypothesis that pulling the all-nighter was a good idea. So we took a group of individuals and we assigned them to one of two experimental groups: a sleep group and a sleep deprivation group. Now the sleep group, they're going to get a full eight hours of slumber, but the deprivation group, we're going to keep them awake in the laboratory, under full supervision. There's no naps or caffeine, by the way, so it's miserable for everyone involved. And then the next day, we're going to place those participants inside an MRI scanner and we're going to have them try and learn a whole list of new facts as we're taking snapshots of brain activity. And then we're going to test them to see how effective that learning has been. And that's what you're looking at here on the vertical axis. And when you put those two groups head to head, what you find is a quite significant, 40-percent deficit in the ability of the brain to make new memories without sleep. I think this should be concerning, considering what we know is happening to sleep in our education populations right now. In fact, to put that in context, it would be the difference in a child acing an exam versus failing it miserably — 40 percent. And we've gone on to discover what goes wrong within your brain to produce these types of learning disabilities. And there's a structure that sits on the left and the right side of your brain, called the hippocampus. And you can think of the hippocampus almost like the informational inbox of your brain. It's very good at receiving new memory files and then holding on to them. And when you look at this structure in those people who'd had a full night of sleep, we saw lots of healthy learning-related activity. Yet in those people who were sleep-deprived, we actually couldn't find any significant signal whatsoever. So it's almost as though sleep deprivation had shut down your memory inbox, and any new incoming files — they were just being bounced. You couldn't effectively commit new experiences to memory. So that's the bad that can happen if I were to take sleep away from you, but let me just come back to that control group for a second. Do you remember those folks that got a full eight hours of sleep? Well, we can ask a very different question: What is it about the physiological quality of your sleep when you do get it that restores and enhances your memory and learning ability each and every day? And by placing electrodes all over the head, what we've discovered is that there are big, powerful brainwaves that happen during the very deepest stages of sleep that have riding on top of them these spectacular bursts of electrical activity that we call sleep spindles. And it's the combined quality of these deep-sleep brainwaves that acts like a file-transfer mechanism at night, shifting memories from a short-term vulnerable reservoir to a more permanent long-term storage site within the brain, and therefore protecting them, making them safe. And it is important that we understand what during sleep actually transacts these memory benefits, because there are real medical and societal implications. And let me just tell you about one area that we've moved this work out into, clinically, which is the context of aging and dementia. Because it's of course no secret that, as we get older, our learning and memory abilities begin to fade and decline. But what we've also discovered is that a physiological signature of aging is that your sleep gets worse, especially that deep quality of sleep that I was just discussing. And only last year, we finally published evidence that these two things, they're not simply co-occurring, they are significantly interrelated. And it suggests that the disruption of deep sleep is an underappreciated factor that is contributing to cognitive decline or memory decline in aging, and most recently we've discovered, in Alzheimer's disease as well. Now, I know this is remarkably depressing news. It's in the mail. It's coming at you. But there's a potential silver lining here. Unlike many of the other factors that we know are associated with aging, for example changes in the physical structure of the brain, that's fiendishly difficult to treat. But that sleep is a missing piece in the explanatory puzzle of aging and Alzheimer's is exciting because we may be able to do something about it. And one way that we are approaching this at my sleep center is not by using sleeping pills, by the way. Unfortunately, they are blunt instruments that do not produce naturalistic sleep. Instead, we're actually developing a method based on this. It's called direct current brain stimulation. You insert a small amount of voltage into the brain, so small you typically don't feel it, but it has a measurable impact. Now if you apply this stimulation during sleep in young, healthy adults, as if you're sort of singing in time with those deep-sleep brainwaves, not only can you amplify the size of those deep-sleep brainwaves, but in doing so, we can almost double the amount of memory benefit that you get from sleep. The question now is whether we can translate this same affordable, potentially portable piece of technology into older adults and those with dementia. Can we restore back some healthy quality of deep sleep, and in doing so, can we salvage aspects of their learning and memory function? That is my real hope now. That's one of our moon-shot goals, as it were. So that's an example of sleep for your brain, but sleep is just as essential for your body. We've already spoken about sleep loss and your reproductive system. Or I could tell you about sleep loss and your cardiovascular system, and that all it takes is one hour. Because there is a global experiment performed on 1.6 billion people across 70 countries twice a year, and it's called daylight saving time. Now, in the spring, when we lose one hour of sleep, we see a subsequent 24-percent increase in heart attacks that following day. In the autumn, when we gain an hour of sleep, we see a 21-percent reduction in heart attacks. Isn't that incredible? And you see exactly the same profile for car crashes, road traffic accidents, even suicide rates. But as a deeper dive, I want to focus on this: sleep loss and your immune system. And here, I'll introduce these delightful blue elements in the image. They are called natural killer cells, and you can think of natural killer cells almost like the secret service agents of your immune system. They are very good at identifying dangerous, unwanted elements and eliminating them. In fact, what they're doing here is destroying a cancerous tumor mass. So what you wish for is a virile set of these immune assassins at all times, and tragically, that's what you don't have if you're not sleeping enough. So here in this experiment, you're not going to have your sleep deprived for an entire night, you're simply going to have your sleep restricted to four hours for one single night, and then we're going to look to see what's the percent reduction in immune cell activity that you suffer. And it's not small — it's not 10 percent, it's not 20 percent. There was a 70-percent drop in natural killer cell activity. That's a concerning state of immune deficiency, and you can perhaps understand why we're now finding significant links between short sleep duration and your risk for the development of numerous forms of cancer. Currently, that list includes cancer of the bowel, cancer of the prostate and cancer of the breast. In fact, the link between a lack of sleep and cancer is now so strong that the World Health Organization has classified any form of nighttime shift work as a probable carcinogen, because of a disruption of your sleep-wake rhythms. So you may have heard of that old maxim that you can sleep when you're dead. Well, I'm being quite serious now — it is mortally unwise advice. We know this from epidemiological studies across millions of individuals. There's a simple truth: the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. Short sleep predicts all-cause mortality. And if increasing your risk for the development of cancer or even Alzheimer's disease were not sufficiently disquieting, we have since discovered that a lack of sleep will even erode the very fabric of biological life itself, your DNA genetic code. So here in this study, they took a group of healthy adults and they limited them to six hours of sleep a night for one week, and then they measured the change in their gene activity profile relative to when those same individuals were getting a full eight hours of sleep a night. And there were two critical findings. First, a sizable and significant 711 genes were distorted in their activity, caused by a lack of sleep. The second result was that about half of those genes were actually increased in their activity. The other half were decreased. Now those genes that were switched off by a lack of sleep were genes associated with your immune system, so once again, you can see that immune deficiency. In contrast, those genes that were actually upregulated or increased by way of a lack of sleep, were genes associated with the promotion of tumors, genes associated with long-term chronic inflammation within the body, and genes associated with stress, and, as a consequence, cardiovascular disease. There is simply no aspect of your wellness that can retreat at the sign of sleep deprivation and get away unscathed. It's rather like a broken water pipe in your home. Sleep loss will leak down into every nook and cranny of your physiology, even tampering with the very DNA nucleic alphabet that spells out your daily health narrative. And at this point, you may be thinking, "Oh my goodness, how do I start to get better sleep? What are you tips for good sleep?" Well, beyond avoiding the damaging and harmful impact of alcohol and caffeine on sleep, and if you're struggling with sleep at night, avoiding naps during the day, I have two pieces of advice for you. The first is regularity. Go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time, no matter whether it's the weekday or the weekend. Regularity is king, and it will anchor your sleep and improve the quantity and the quality of that sleep. The second is keep it cool. Your body needs to drop its core temperature by about two to three degrees Fahrenheit to initiate sleep and then to stay asleep, and it's the reason you will always find it easier to fall asleep in a room that's too cold than too hot. So aim for a bedroom temperature of around 65 degrees, or about 18 degrees Celsius. That's going to be optimal for the sleep of most people. And then finally, in taking a step back, then, what is the mission-critical statement here? Well, I think it may be this: sleep, unfortunately, is not an optional lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a nonnegotiable biological necessity. It is your life-support system, and it is Mother Nature's best effort yet at immortality. And the decimation of sleep throughout industrialized nations is having a catastrophic impact on our health, our wellness, even the safety and the education of our children. It's a silent sleep loss epidemic, and it's fast becoming one of the greatest public health challenges that we face in the 21st century. I believe it is now time for us to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep, and without embarrassment or that unfortunate stigma of laziness. And in doing so, we can be reunited with the most powerful elixir of life, the Swiss Army knife of health, as it were. And with that soapbox rant over, I will simply say, good night, good luck, and above all ... I do hope you sleep well. Thank you very much indeed. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) Thank you so much. David Biello: No, no, no. Stay there for a second. Good job not running away, though. I appreciate that. So that was terrifying. Matt Walker: You're welcome. DB: Yes, thank you, thank you. Since we can't catch up on sleep, what are we supposed to do? What do we do when we're, like, tossing and turning in bed late at night or doing shift work or whatever else? MW: So you're right, we can't catch up on sleep. Sleep is not like the bank. You can't accumulate a debt and then hope to pay it off at a later point in time. I should also note the reason that it's so catastrophic and that our health deteriorates so quickly, first, it's because human beings are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent reason. DB: Because we're smart. MW: And I make that point because it means that Mother Nature, throughout the course of evolution, has never had to face the challenge of this thing called sleep deprivation. So she's never developed a safety net, and that's why when you undersleep, things just sort of implode so quickly, both within the brain and the body. So you just have to prioritize. DB: OK, but tossing and turning in bed, what do I do? MW: So if you are staying in bed awake for too long, you should get out of bed and go to a different room and do something different. The reason is because your brain will very quickly associate your bedroom with the place of wakefulness, and you need to break that association. So only return to bed when you are sleepy, and that way you will relearn the association that you once had, which is your bed is the place of sleep. So the analogy would be, you'd never sit at the dinner table, waiting to get hungry, so why would you lie in bed, waiting to get sleepy? DB: Well, thank you for that wake-up call. Great job, Matt. MW: You're very welcome. Thank you very much. |
Digital humans that look just like us | {0: 'Doug Roble has found a career combining the things he loves: math, computers, movies and imagination.'} | TED2019 | Hello. I'm not a real person. I'm actually a copy of a real person. Although, I feel like a real person. It's kind of hard to explain. Hold on — I think I saw a real person ... there's one. Let's bring him onstage. Hello. (Applause) What you see up there is a digital human. I'm wearing an inertial motion capture suit that's figuring what my body is doing. And I've got a single camera here that's watching my face and feeding some machine-learning software that's taking my expressions, like, "Hm, hm, hm," and transferring it to that guy. We call him "DigiDoug." He's actually a 3-D character that I'm controlling live in real time. So, I work in visual effects. And in visual effects, one of the hardest things to do is to create believable, digital humans that the audience accepts as real. People are just really good at recognizing other people. Go figure! So, that's OK, we like a challenge. Over the last 15 years, we've been putting humans and creatures into film that you accept as real. If they're happy, you should feel happy. And if they feel pain, you should empathize with them. We're getting pretty good at it, too. But it's really, really difficult. Effects like these take thousands of hours and hundreds of really talented artists. But things have changed. Over the last five years, computers and graphics cards have gotten seriously fast. And machine learning, deep learning, has happened. So we asked ourselves: Do you suppose we could create a photo-realistic human, like we're doing for film, but where you're seeing the actual emotions and the details of the person who's controlling the digital human in real time? In fact, that's our goal: If you were having a conversation with DigiDoug one-on-one, is it real enough so that you could tell whether or not I was lying to you? So that was our goal. About a year and a half ago, we set off to achieve this goal. What I'm going to do now is take you basically on a little bit of a journey to see exactly what we had to do to get where we are. We had to capture an enormous amount of data. In fact, by the end of this thing, we had probably one of the largest facial data sets on the planet. Of my face. (Laughter) Why me? Well, I'll do just about anything for science. I mean, look at me! I mean, come on. We had to first figure out what my face actually looked like. Not just a photograph or a 3-D scan, but what it actually looked like in any photograph, how light interacts with my skin. Luckily for us, about three blocks away from our Los Angeles studio is this place called ICT. They're a research lab that's associated with the University of Southern California. They have a device there, it's called the "light stage." It has a zillion individually controlled lights and a whole bunch of cameras. And with that, we can reconstruct my face under a myriad of lighting conditions. We even captured the blood flow and how my face changes when I make expressions. This let us build a model of my face that, quite frankly, is just amazing. It's got an unfortunate level of detail, unfortunately. (Laughter) You can see every pore, every wrinkle. But we had to have that. Reality is all about detail. And without it, you miss it. We are far from done, though. This let us build a model of my face that looked like me. But it didn't really move like me. And that's where machine learning comes in. And machine learning needs a ton of data. So I sat down in front of some high-resolution motion-capturing device. And also, we did this traditional motion capture with markers. We created a whole bunch of images of my face and moving point clouds that represented that shapes of my face. Man, I made a lot of expressions, I said different lines in different emotional states ... We had to do a lot of capture with this. Once we had this enormous amount of data, we built and trained deep neural networks. And when we were finished with that, in 16 milliseconds, the neural network can look at my image and figure out everything about my face. It can compute my expression, my wrinkles, my blood flow — even how my eyelashes move. This is then rendered and displayed up there with all the detail that we captured previously. We're far from done. This is very much a work in progress. This is actually the first time we've shown it outside of our company. And, you know, it doesn't look as convincing as we want; I've got wires coming out of the back of me, and there's a sixth-of-a-second delay between when we capture the video and we display it up there. Sixth of a second — that's crazy good! But it's still why you're hearing a bit of an echo and stuff. And you know, this machine learning stuff is brand-new to us, sometimes it's hard to convince to do the right thing, you know? It goes a little sideways. (Laughter) But why did we do this? Well, there's two reasons, really. First of all, it is just crazy cool. (Laughter) How cool is it? Well, with the push of a button, I can deliver this talk as a completely different character. This is Elbor. We put him together to test how this would work with a different appearance. And the cool thing about this technology is that, while I've changed my character, the performance is still all me. I tend to talk out of the right side of my mouth; so does Elbor. (Laughter) Now, the second reason we did this, and you can imagine, is this is going to be great for film. This is a brand-new, exciting tool for artists and directors and storytellers. It's pretty obvious, right? I mean, this is going to be really neat to have. But also, now that we've built it, it's clear that this is going to go way beyond film. But wait. Didn't I just change my identity with the push of a button? Isn't this like "deepfake" and face-swapping that you guys may have heard of? Well, yeah. In fact, we are using some of the same technology that deepfake is using. Deepfake is 2-D and image based, while ours is full 3-D and way more powerful. But they're very related. And now I can hear you thinking, "Darn it! I though I could at least trust and believe in video. If it was live video, didn't it have to be true?" Well, we know that's not really the case, right? Even without this, there are simple tricks that you can do with video like how you frame a shot that can make it really misrepresent what's actually going on. And I've been working in visual effects for a long time, and I've known for a long time that with enough effort, we can fool anyone about anything. What this stuff and deepfake is doing is making it easier and more accessible to manipulate video, just like Photoshop did for manipulating images, some time ago. I prefer to think about how this technology could bring humanity to other technology and bring us all closer together. Now that you've seen this, think about the possibilities. Right off the bat, you're going to see it in live events and concerts, like this. Digital celebrities, especially with new projection technology, are going to be just like the movies, but alive and in real time. And new forms of communication are coming. You can already interact with DigiDoug in VR. And it is eye-opening. It's just like you and I are in the same room, even though we may be miles apart. Heck, the next time you make a video call, you will be able to choose the version of you you want people to see. It's like really, really good makeup. I was scanned about a year and a half ago. I've aged. DigiDoug hasn't. On video calls, I never have to grow old. And as you can imagine, this is going to be used to give virtual assistants a body and a face. A humanity. I already love it that when I talk to virtual assistants, they answer back in a soothing, humanlike voice. Now they'll have a face. And you'll get all the nonverbal cues that make communication so much easier. It's going to be really nice. You'll be able to tell when a virtual assistant is busy or confused or concerned about something. Now, I couldn't leave the stage without you actually being able to see my real face, so you can do some comparison. So let me take off my helmet here. Yeah, don't worry, it looks way worse than it feels. (Laughter) So this is where we are. Let me put this back on here. (Laughter) Doink! So this is where we are. We're on the cusp of being able to interact with digital humans that are strikingly real, whether they're being controlled by a person or a machine. And like all new technology these days, it's going to come with some serious and real concerns that we have to deal with. But I am just so really excited about the ability to bring something that I've seen only in science fiction for my entire life into reality. Communicating with computers will be like talking to a friend. And talking to faraway friends will be like sitting with them together in the same room. Thank you very much. (Applause) |
How do self-driving cars "see"? | null | TED-Ed | It’s late, pitch dark, and a self-driving car winds down a narrow country road. Suddenly, three hazards appear at the same time. What happens next? Before it can navigate this onslaught of obstacles, the car has to detect them— gleaning enough information about their size, shape, and position, so that its control algorithms can plot the safest course. With no human at the wheel, the car needs smart eyes, sensors that’ll resolve these details— no matter the environment, weather, or how dark it is— all in a split-second. That’s a tall order, but there’s a solution that partners two things: a special kind of laser-based probe called LIDAR, and a miniature version of the communications technology that keeps the internet humming, called integrated photonics. To understand LIDAR, it helps to start with a related technology— radar. In aviation, radar antennas launch pulses of radio or microwaves at planes to learn their locations by timing how long the beams take to bounce back. That’s a limited way of seeing, though, because the large beam-size can’t visualize fine details. In contrast, a self-driving car’s LIDAR system, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, uses a narrow invisible infrared laser. It can image features as small as the button on a pedestrian’s shirt across the street. But how do we determine the shape, or depth, of these features? LIDAR fires a train of super-short laser pulses to give depth resolution. Take the moose on the country road. As the car drives by, one LIDAR pulse scatters off the base of its antlers, while the next may travel to the tip of one antler before bouncing back. Measuring how much longer the second pulse takes to return provides data about the antler’s shape. With a lot of short pulses, a LIDAR system quickly renders a detailed profile. The most obvious way to create a pulse of light is to switch a laser on and off. But this makes a laser unstable and affects the precise timing of its pulses, which limits depth resolution. Better to leave it on, and use something else to periodically block the light reliably and rapidly. That’s where integrated photonics come in. The digital data of the internet is carried by precision-timed pulses of light, some as short as a hundred picoseconds. One way to create these pulses is with a Mach-Zehnder modulator. This device takes advantage of a particular wave property, called interference. Imagine dropping pebbles into a pond: as the ripples spread and overlap, a pattern forms. In some places, wave peaks add up to become very large; in other places, they completely cancel out. The Mach-Zehnder modulator does something similar. It splits waves of light along two parallel arms and eventually rejoins them. If the light is slowed down and delayed in one arm, the waves recombine out of sync and cancel, blocking the light. By toggling this delay in one arm, the modulator acts like an on/off switch, emitting pulses of light. A light pulse lasting a hundred picoseconds leads to a depth resolution of a few centimeters, but tomorrow’s cars will need to see better than that. By pairing the modulator with a super- sensitive, fast-acting light detector, the resolution can be refined to a millimeter. That’s more than a hundred times better than what we can make out with 20/20 vision, from across a street. The first generation of automobile LIDAR has relied on complex spinning assemblies that scan from rooftops or hoods. With integrated photonics, modulators and detectors are being shrunk to less than a tenth of a millimeter, and packed into tiny chips that’ll one day fit inside a car’s lights. These chips will also include a clever variation on the modulator to help do away with moving parts and scan at rapid speeds. By slowing the light in a modulator arm only a tiny bit, this additional device will act more like a dimmer than an on/off switch. If an array of many such arms, each with a tiny controlled delay, is stacked in parallel, something novel can be designed: a steerable laser beam. From their new vantage, these smart eyes will probe and see more thoroughly than anything nature could’ve imagined— and help navigate any number of obstacles. All without anyone breaking a sweat— except for maybe one disoriented moose. |
Could a tattoo help you stay healthy? | {0: 'A creator of color-changing tattoo inks and shape-shifting molecular machines, Carson Bruns uses nanoscience to invent new materials and technologies.'} | TEDxMileHigh | I'd like to introduce you to an interesting person named Ötzi. He lives in Italy at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology because he's a mummy. This is an artist's rendition of what he might have looked like when he was alive 5,300 years ago. You want to see what he looks like today? (Laughter) OK, brace yourselves, gross mummy pic coming at you. So, he's not as handsome as he used to be, but he's actually in great shape for a mummy because he was discovered frozen in ice. Ötzi is the oldest mummy that's been discovered with preserved skin. 5,300 years is super old, older than the Egyptian pyramids, and Ötzi's skin is covered in 61 black tattoos, all lines and crosses on parts of his body where he might have experienced pain. So scientists think that they might have been used to mark sites for some kind of therapy, like acupuncture. So clearly, if the oldest skin we've seen is all tattooed up, tattooing is a very ancient practice. But fast-forward to today and tattoos are everywhere. Almost one in four Americans has a tattoo, it's a multibillion-dollar industry, and whether you love tattoos or hate them, this talk will change the way you think about them. So, why are tattoos so popular? Unlike Ötzi, most of us today use tattoos for some kind of self-expression. Personally, I love tattoos because I love art and there is something so wonderful to me, almost romantic, about the way a tattoo as an art form cannot be commodified. Right? Your tattoo lives and dies with you. It can't be bought or sold or traded, so its only value is really personal to you, and I love that. Now, I tend to gravitate towards really colorful tattoos because I'm obsessed with color. I teach a whole course on it at my university. But my very first tattoo was an all-black tattoo like Ötzi's. Yep, I did that clichéd thing that young people do sometimes and I got a tattoo in a language I can't even read. (Laughter) OK, but I was 19 years old, I had just returned from my first trip overseas, I was in Japan in the mountains meditating in Buddhist monasteries, and it was a really meaningful experience to me, so I wanted to commemorate it with this Japanese and Chinese character for "mountain." Now, here's what blows my mind. My 14-year-old tattoo and Ötzi's 5,300-year-old tattoos are made of the same exact stuff: soot, that black powdery carbon dust that gets left behind in the fireplace when you burn stuff. And if you zoom way, way in on either my tattoo or Ötzi's tattoos, you'll find that they all look something like this. A tattoo is nothing more than a bunch of tiny pigment particles, soot in this case, that get trapped in the dermis, which is the layer of tissue right underneath the surface of the skin. So in over five thousand years, we've done very little to update tattoo technology, apart from getting access to more colors and slightly more efficient methods of installation. While I'm an artist, I'm also a scientist, and I direct a laboratory that researches nanotechnology, which is the science of building things with ultratiny building blocks, thousands of times smaller even than the width of a human hair. And I began to ask myself, how could nanotechnology serve tattooing? If tattoos are just a bunch of particles in the skin, could we swap those particles out for ones that do something more interesting? Here's my big idea: I believe that tattoos can give you superpowers. (Laughter) Now, I don't mean they're going to make us fly, but I do think that we can have superpowers in the sense that tattoos can give us new abilities that we don't currently possess. By upgrading the particles, we can engineer tattooing so that it will change not only the appearance of our skin, but also the function of our skin. Let me show you. This is a diagram of a microcapsule. It's a tiny hollow particle with a protective outer shell, about the size of a tattoo pigment, and you can fill the inside with practically whatever you want. So what if we put interesting materials inside of these microcapsules and made tattoo inks with them? What sorts of things could we make a tattoo do? What problems could we solve? What human limitations could we overcome? Well, here's one idea: one of our weaknesses as humans is that we can't see ultraviolet, or UV, light. That's the high-energy part of sunlight that causes sunburn and increases our risk of skin cancer. Many animals and insects can actually see UV light, but we can't. If we could, we'd be able to see sunscreen when it was applied on our skin. Unfortunately, most of us don't wear sunscreen, and those of us who do can't really tell when it wears off, because it's invisible. It's the main reason we treat over five million cases of preventable skin cancer every year in the US alone, costing our economy over five billion dollars annually. So how could we overcome this human weakness with a tattoo? Well, if the problem is that we can't see UV rays, maybe we can make a tattoo detect them for us. So I thought, why don't we take some microcapsules, load it up with a UV-sensitive, color-changing dye, and make a tattoo ink out of that? Now, one of the troubles of being a tattoo technologist is finding willing test subjects. (Laughter) And when it came time to test this tattoo ink, I thought it best not to torture my poor graduate students. So I decided to tattoo a couple of spots on my own arm instead. And It actually worked. Check it out! I call these tattoos solar freckles because they're powered by sunshine. And right now, they're invisible, but as soon as I expose them to a UV light, acting as the Sun — there they are, blue spots. Now, I'm not wearing sunscreen in this video, but if I was, those blue spots would not appear, and then when my sunscreen wore off later, the solar freckles would reappear in UV light and I would know that it was time to reapply sunscreen. So these tattoos act as a real-time, naked-eye indicator of your skin's UV exposure. And of course, I think there are lots of really cool, artistic things you could do with a color-changing tattoo like this, but I hope that it will also help us solve a big problem in skin protection. (Applause) Let me give you another example. Normal human body temperature is about 97 to 99 degrees Fahrenheit, and if you fall outside of that range, you need to seek medical attention right away. Now, the problem is that humans can't detect our own body temperature without a thermometer. Sure, you could try the old hand-on-the-forehead trick, but there's zero scientific evidence to back that up. (Laughter) So what if we could create a tattooable thermometer that you could access anytime? Well, remember how the solar freckles used a UV-sensitive dye inside of the microcapsules of the tattoo ink? Well, you could also put heat-sensitive dyes inside of microcapsules and you could make different tattoo inks that change color at different temperatures. Suppose it was 96, 98, and a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. If you place those inks side by side, now you have a temperature scale tuned to the human body. In this video, you can see the different patches of tattoos disappearing sequentially as the pigskin we tested them on is heated up. So if you were to place a tattoo like this in a location that was stable to external temperature fluctuations — maybe inside of the mouth, perhaps on the back of the lip? — then you'd be able to read your body temperature anytime by just glancing at your tattoo in the mirror. Amazing, right? (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) Another limitation that we have as humans is that our skin doesn't conduct electricity, and that can be a good thing, but not necessarily — (Laughter) if you have an electronic biomedical implant, like a pacemaker for example. Right now, if you have a pacemaker, you need surgery every five or 10 years to replace the battery when it dies. And wouldn't it be nice if, instead, we could simply recharge the battery through a patch of conducting skin? Well, if you were to try to tackle that problem with a tattoo, the first step would be to make a tattoo that conducts electricity. So we've been working on a conducting tattoo ink in my lab. And right now, we're able to increase the conductivity of skin over 300-fold with our conducting tattoo ink. Now, we have a long way to go before we reach the conductivity of something like a copper wire, but we're making progress and I'm really excited about this because I think that it could open up a whole new world of possibility for tattoos. I envision a future where tattoos enable us — tattooable wires and tattooable electronics enable us to merge our technologies with our bodies so that they feel more like extensions of ourselves rather than external devices. So these are a few examples of the new abilities that we can gain by using nanotechnology to upgrade our tattoos, but this really is only the beginning. I believe the sky is the limit for what we can do with high-tech tattoos. In the future, tattoos will not only be beautiful, they'll be functional too. Thank you. (Applause) |
Why should you read "Crime and Punishment"? | null | TED-Ed | What drives someone to kill in cold blood? What goes through the murderer’s mind? And what kind of a society breeds such people? Over 150 years ago Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky took these questions up in what would become one of the best-known works of Russian literature: "Crime and Punishment." First serialized in a literary magazine in 1866, the novel tells the story of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a young law student in Saint Petersburg. Raskolnikov lives in abject poverty, and at the start of the story has run out of funds to continue his studies. Letters from his rural home only add to his distress when he realizes how much his mother and sister have sacrificed for his success. Increasingly desperate after selling the last of his valuables to an elderly pawnbroker, he resolves on a plan to murder and rob her. But the impact of carrying out this unthinkable act proves to be more than he was prepared for. Though the novel is sometimes cited as one of the first psychological thrillers, its scope reaches far beyond Raskolnikov’s inner turmoil. From dank taverns to dilapidated apartments and claustrophobic police stations, the underbelly of 19th century Saint Petersburg is brought to life by Dostoyevsky’s searing prose. We’re introduced to characters such as Marmeladov, a miserable former official who has drank his family into ruin, and Svidrigailov, an unhinged and lecherous nobleman. As Raskolnikov’s own family arrives in town, their moral innocence stands in stark contrast to the depravity of those around them, even as their fates grow increasingly intertwined. This bleak portrait of Russian society reflects the author’s own complex life experiences and evolving ideas. As a young writer who left behind a promising military career, Fyodor had been attracted to ideas of socialism and reform, and joined a circle of intellectuals to discuss radical texts banned by the Imperial government. Upon exposure, members of this group, including Dostoyevsky, were arrested. Many were sentenced to death, only to be subjected to a mock execution and last-minute pardon from the Tsar. Dostoyevsky spent the next four years in a Siberian labor camp before being released in 1854. The experience left him with a far more pessimistic view of social reform, and his focus shifted toward spiritual concerns. In the 1864 novella "Notes from Underground," he expounded on his belief that utopian Western philosophies could never satisfy the contradictory yearnings of the human soul. "Crime and Punishment" was conceived and completed the following year, picking up on many of the same themes. In many ways, the novel follows a common narrative thread where a promising youth is seduced and corrupted by the dangers of urban life. But its social critique cuts far deeper. Raskolnikov rationalizes that his own advancement at the cost of the exploitative pawnbroker’s death would be a net benefit to society. In doing so, he echoes the doctrines of egoism and utilitarianism embraced by many of Dostoyevsky’s contemporary intellectuals. And in believing that his intelligence allows him to transcend moral taboos, Raskolnikov cuts himself off from his own humanity. Yet although the book is deeply concerned with morality, "Crime and Punishment" never comes across as merely moralizing, with each character given their own distinctive and convincing voice. One of the most remarkable things about "Crime and Punishment" is its ability to thrill despite the details of the central murder being revealed in the first act. Raskolnikov’s crime is clear. But it’s only through Dostoyevsky’s gripping account of the ensuing social and psychological turmoil that we learn the true nature of his punishment– and the possibility of redemption. |
Where did English come from? | null | TED-Ed | When we talk about English, we often think of it as a single language but what do the dialects spoken in dozens of countries around the world have in common with each other, or with the writings of Chaucer? And how are any of them related to the strange words in Beowulf? The answer is that like most languages, English has evolved through generations of speakers, undergoing major changes over time. By undoing these changes, we can trace the language from the present day back to its ancient roots. While modern English shares many similar words with Latin-derived romance languages, like French and Spanish, most of those words were not originally part of it. Instead, they started coming into the language with the Norman invasion of England in 1066. When the French-speaking Normans conquered England and became its ruling class, they brought their speech with them, adding a massive amount of French and Latin vocabulary to the English language previously spoken there. Today, we call that language Old English. This is the language of Beowulf. It probably doesn't look very familiar, but it might be more recognizable if you know some German. That's because Old English belongs to the Germanic language family, first brought to the British Isles in the 5th and 6th centuries by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. The Germanic dialects they spoke would become known as Anglo-Saxon. Viking invaders in the 8th to 11th centuries added more borrowings from Old Norse into the mix. It may be hard to see the roots of modern English underneath all the words borrowed from French, Latin, Old Norse and other languages. But comparative linguistics can help us by focusing on grammatical structure, patterns of sound changes, and certain core vocabulary. For example, after the 6th century, German words starting with "p," systematically shifted to a "pf" sound while their Old English counterparts kept the "p" unchanged. In another split, words that have "sk" sounds in Swedish developed an "sh" sound in English. There are still some English words with "sk," like "skirt," and "skull," but they're direct borrowings from Old Norse that came after the "sk" to "sh" shift. These examples show us that just as the various Romance languages descended from Latin, English, Swedish, German, and many other languages descended from their own common ancestor known as Proto-Germanic spoken around 500 B.C.E. Because this historical language was never written down, we can only reconstruct it by comparing its descendants, which is possible thanks to the consistency of the changes. We can even use the same process to go back one step further, and trace the origins of Proto-Germanic to a language called Proto-Indo-European, spoken about 6000 years ago on the Pontic steppe in modern day Ukraine and Russia. This is the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European family that includes nearly all languages historically spoken in Europe, as well as large parts of Southern and Western Asia. And though it requires a bit more work, we can find the same systematic similarities, or correspondences, between related words in different Indo-European branches. Comparing English with Latin, we see that English has "t" where Latin has "d", and "f" where latin has "p" at the start of words. Some of English's more distant relatives include Hindi, Persian and the Celtic languages it displaced in what is now Britain. Proto-Indo-European itself descended from an even more ancient language, but unfortunately, this is as far back as historical and archeological evidence will allow us to go. Many mysteries remain just out of reach, such as whether there might be a link between Indo-European and other major language families, and the nature of the languages spoken in Europe prior to its arrival. But the amazing fact remains that nearly 3 billion people around the world, many of whom cannot understand each other, are nevertheless speaking the same words shaped by 6000 years of history. |
What you should know about vaping and e-cigarettes | {0: 'Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin is focused on developing a bio-behavioral understanding of substance use behaviors in adult and adolescent substance users.'} | TEDMED 2018 | "It gets easier, right?" These are the words I often hear from young parents who are new to the game of worrying about their children. I tell them that it doesn't. It gets different, but there's always something to worry about as parents. I remember how I would lie half-awake at night listening to my son breathe when he was young and had asthma, and then, when he was a teen, until I heard the front door chime open, and I knew that he was home safe. Worrying about our kids comes with the territory. Now, many of these worries are about basic issues, like what they eat, where they are, who they're with. But we also need to keep an eye on new behaviors and fads. The latest craze is something that may not yet be on everyone's radar as a serious health concern, and that is the newfound popularity of vaping, or inhaling sweet aerosols produced by vaporizing e-liquids in e-cigarettes. E-cigarettes, or "vapes," as they are commonly called, are flying off the shelves like candy. This year, the e-cigarette market is expected to drive 26 billion dollars in sales worldwide. Over the next six years, that volume is expected to double. We have a lot of serious concerns about the health impact of vaping, and unfortunately, not nearly enough answers. This becomes even more concerning when you think of who uses e-cigarettes. E-cigarette use, at least in the US, has grown rapidly among youth and young adults — our kids, our most vulnerable population. There was a 900 percent growth in the use of e-cigarettes by youth between 2012 and 2015. The most recent estimates suggest that approximately 3.6 million high school and middle school students have used e-cigarettes in the US. Now, e-cigarettes were originally created to offer smokers a cleaner form of nicotine to help with their cigarette addiction. In the US, these devices come under the FDA's jurisdiction as a tobacco product. But the science on these devices has not been able to keep up with the rapid market growth, so regulations on the components of these devices and e-liquids are lagging. Current regulations do restrict sales of these devices to anyone under the age of 18, but these do not seem to have had much of an impact on the explosion in the use of these devices by teens. You know, the first time I heard of and saw an e-cigarette, I knew right away that teens would love it. These devices are technology on a stick, a perfect fit for the smartphone generation — small, rechargeable, easy to use, easy to modify, nice smelling — some even sync with your smartphone to let you know how much you have vaped. Even I was very drawn to these very clever devices. And since I had spent a long time researching teen and adult addictions, I immediately realized that these devices fit perfectly into the teen psyche. Teens are impulsive, and they love to try new things. They're also craving independence, and they love to make things their own. E-cigarettes meet these needs perfectly by allowing them the chance to both innovate and personalize their vape experience. They can choose from over 15,000 different e-liquid flavors and multiple nicotine concentrations. They can even create their own nicotine flavor combination. They can change how much vapor is produced from these devices by modifying the puff volume and the constituents and the power and temperature of the devices. They can even use these devices for "cloud chasing." Cloud chasing, also called vape tricks or smoke tricks, involves producing large vape clouds with quirky shapes and names, like rings, dragons, ghosts ... Cloud chasers can even participate in cloud competitions and win prizes for creating the most innovative shaped clouds. Teens can also change the strength and throat hit from the vapor by either vaporizing the e-liquid at higher temperatures or dripping the e-liquid directly onto a heated coil. They can even use these devices for marijuana vaping. And since the devices use lower temperatures and do not combust or burn the marijuana, they can do this very discreetly, without the distinctive smell of burnt marijuana. So they can really make these vape experiences their own, which may explain the astounding rise in the use of these devices by youth. E-cigarettes are technically a very simple device. There is a receptacle for the e-liquid which can be a tank, a pod or a plug. There is a battery that charges the coil, which then vaporizes the e-liquid. And then there is a mouthpiece, where the user can actually draw from the e-cigarette. In 2017, there were 466 e-cigarette devices in the marketplace. These range from cigarette-like devices which are also called "cigalikes" to tank systems, which are also called "pens." And then there are modified devices, which are also called "mods." Mods look nothing like a cigarette, and they come in various shapes and sizes, with different kinds of attachments and user adjustments. They're very popular for cloud chasing. The most recent entrance into the marketplace are the pod devices, which contain the e-liquid in a pod. These are very popular, by the way, among teens. An example of this is the Juul, which not only looks like a USB device but can also be plugged into a USB outlet to charge. Many teens do not even think that these are e-cigarettes, which has led to the use of terms like "juuling" instead of "vaping." Many of these devices are so discreet and produce so little vapor that teens are using them in classrooms and hiding them in objects like Sharpie pens, their clothes, their books. Now, many teens think that these devices produce water vapor, and therefore, they are safe to use. But this could not be further from the truth. What is produced is not even a vapor, it's an aerosol, and let me tell you, the difference is quite pronounced. Aerosols contain many finely suspended particles of liquids and gases that are created from whatever is in the e-liquid. So an aerosol could contain propylene glycol and glycerin, which are solvents in the e-liquid. Now, these solvents are known to be safe for edible use, so for use in products that you eat, but we know very little about their safety following long-term inhalational exposure. The e-liquids can also contain alcohol, sometimes in high levels, and inhaling alcohol is known to have toxic effects on the brain. I told you earlier that the e-liquids contain over 15,000 different flavors. Here are some examples, some with very catchy but familiar names like "Skittles" and "Fruit Loops," and others with more exotic names like "Dragon's Milk" and "Tiger's Blood" and "Unicorn Puke." The e-liquid or the aerosol can also contain metallic particles like chromium, cadmium and lead. These are generated from the heating coil in the devices and are also known to have many toxic effects on vital organs. So no, let me make this very clear: what is produced is definitely not water vapor. Exposure of the teen brain to nicotine through e-cigarettes is also very concerning. The teen brain is very sensitive to even low levels of nicotine and gets very easily addicted. In fact, we have known for a long time that 90 percent of smokers start smoking cigarettes prior to the age of 18. Those who start early are more addicted and have a harder time quitting smoking. In other words, and to quote a past FDA commissioner, "Nicotine addiction ... is a pediatric disease." E-cigarettes can expose teens to a lot of nicotine. Many of these devices contain the amount of nicotine that is in a full pack of cigarettes. The more recent pod devices contain a nicotine salt, which has a smoother taste and is much easier to use and can produce rapid increases in brain nicotine levels. Teens who use e-cigarettes regularly report symptoms of craving — feeling anxious when they don't have their e-cigarettes. All these are hallmarks of a behavioral addiction. E-cigarettes are not only addictive but they also affect many other organs in the body. So nicotine, which is in e-cigarettes, for example, binds to a receptor called the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, which plays a key role in the functioning of almost all organ systems in the human body. And chronic exposure to nicotine changes the functioning of these systems. So as an example, chronic exposure to nicotine decreases the flexibility of the blood vessels and changes how the heart responds to acute challenges like stress. The teen brain is not only sensitive to the addictive effects of nicotine but also to its toxic effects. In adolescent animals, nicotine is a very well-established neurotoxin, and it decreases learning, memory and attention processes and increases hyperactivity symptoms. Teens who use tobacco products are more likely to use marijuana and alcohol and also develop depression and anxiety as a teen or as an adult. So nicotine addiction through e-cigarettes could be leading them down the path of other addictions and other mental health problems. Now, in adolescent animals, nicotine also produces epigenetic changes, or heritable changes in gene expression, for example, in the genes involved in asthma. So teens who use nicotine may not only be harming themselves but they could be harming their future generations. You know, the very existence of e-cigarettes could have led to an entire generation of nicotine-addicted youth. Easy access to these devices could have led to more experimentation with marijuana and many other vaporizable substances by youth. While there is no doubt that providing smokers with a cleaner form of nicotine is and should continue to be a critical goal, we still do not know if these devices help smokers quit smoking, and we know very little about the long-term effects of these devices. What we do know is that youth — lots of youth — are using these devices. In fact, the FDA commissioner recently used the term "epidemic" to describe e-cigarette use in the US. While trying to solve one huge public health problem, cigarette smoking, we may have created another colossal one. Our lack of vigilance in the earlier years around cigarette smoking led to a cigarette epidemic and many, many cigarette-related diseases. We do not want to repeat the same mistakes with e-cigarettes. So now is the time for action, for regulations that address the appeal and access of these devices to youth. Do smokers really need 15,000 kid-friendly flavors to quit smoking? Do they need so many different kinds of devices? Is it a good idea to have devices which are so easy to hide and so easy to use? We recently heard that the FDA plans to introduce stricter regulations on sales of these devices that contain e-liquid flavors in retail locations like convenience stores and gas stations, and also introduce stricter regulations on sales of devices to minors over the internet. Is this going to be sufficient to change this rapid increase in youth uptake? We need to ask and answer such critical questions. Now is also the time for a serious public education campaign. Teens and their parents need to know that while e-cigarettes may contain less toxins than cigarettes, they're certainly not benign. Exposure of their bodies to the chemicals produced by these devices could be changing them in ways they may not like and setting them up for future unknown toxicities and health problems. You know, when I said earlier that e-cigarettes were a perfect fit for the smartphone generation, I was not kidding. We live in a technology-crazed world, where the latest device and technology gets a lot of attention just because it is technology and because it is the latest thing. More and more over the next few years and for the rest of our lives, we are going to see technologies coming into the marketplace that may not raise any health flags at first, simply because they don't look unhealthy or they're not a medical device. For example, we could see devices that may make it easier to go longer without sleep or help us lose weight — a personal goal of mine — or achieve any number of other goals that we as consumers are very, very interested in. But many of these devices may come with unacceptable risks to our own health. So if we want to protect our health and the health of our children, perhaps we should get out of the habit of automatically celebrating such new technology and get into the habit of looking at them with a critical eye, perhaps even through a medical lens. Because, you know something? Our health, the health of our children and our future generations is far too valuable to let it go up in smoke — or even in aerosol. Thank you. (Applause) |
Why do people join cults? | null | TED-Ed | When Reverend Jim Jones founded the Peoples Temple in 1955, few could have imagined its horrifying end. This progressive religious movement rose in popularity and gained support from some of San Francisco's most prominent politicians. But in 1977, amidst revelations of brainwashing and abuse, Jones moved with several hundred followers to establish the commune of Jonestown in Guyana. Billed as a utopian paradise, the colony was more like a prison camp, and when a congressional delegation arrived to investigate its conditions, Jones executed his final plan. On November 18, 1978, 909 men, women, and children died after being forced to drink poisoned Flavor Aid. That grizzly image has since been immortalized as shorthand slang for single-minded cult-like thinking, "They drank the Kool-aid." Today, there are thousands of cults around the world. It's important to note two things about them. First, not all cults are religious. Some are political, therapy-based, focused on self-improvement, or otherwise. And on the flip side, not all new religions are what we're referring to as cults. So what exactly defines our modern understanding of cults, and why do people join them? Broadly speaking, a cult is a group or movement with a shared commitment to a usually extreme ideology that's typically embodied in a charismatic leader. And while few turn out as deadly as Jonestown or Heaven's Gate, which ended in a mass suicide of 39 people in 1997, most cults share some basic characteristics. A typical cult requires a high level of commitment from its members and maintains a strict hierarchy, separating unsuspecting supporters and recruits from the inner workings. It claims to provide answers to life's biggest questions through its doctrine, along with the required recipe for change that shapes a new member into a true believer. And most importantly, it uses both formal and informal systems of influence and control to keep members obedient, with little tolerance for internal disagreement or external scrutiny. You might wonder whether some of these descriptions might also apply to established religions. In fact, the world "cultus" originally described people who cultivated the worship of certain gods by performing rituals and maintaining temples. But in time, it came to mean excessive devotion. Many religions began as cults, but integrated into the fabric of the larger society as they grew. A modern cult, by contrast, separates its members from others. Rather than providing guidelines for members to live better lives, a cult seeks to directly control them, from personal and family relationships, to financial assets and living arrangements. Cults also demand obedience to human leaders who tend to be highly persuasive people with authoritarian and narcissistic streaks motivated by money, sex, power, or all three. While a cult leader uses personal charisma to attract initial followers, further expansion works like a pyramid scheme, with early members recruiting new ones. Cults are skilled at knowing whom to target, often focusing on those new to an area, or who have recently undergone some personal or professional loss. Loneliness and a desire for meaning make one susceptible to friendly people offering community. The recruitment process can be subtle, sometimes taking months to establish a relationship. In fact, more than two-thirds of cult members are recruited by a friend, family member, or co-worker whose invitations are harder to refuse. Once in the cult, members are subjected to multiple forms of indoctrination. Some play on our natural inclination to mimic social behaviors or follow orders. Other methods may be more intense using techniques of coercive persuasion involving guilt, shame, and fear. And in many cases, members may willingly submit out of desire to belong and to attain the promised rewards. The cult environment discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts when everyone around you is modeling absolute faith. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps you trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit you've been deceived. And though most cults don't lead members to their death, they can still be harmful. By denying basic freedoms of thought, speech, and association, cults stunt their members' psychological and emotional growth, a particular problem for children, who are deprived of normal developmental activities and milestones. Nevertheless, many cult members eventually find a way out, whether through their own realizations, the help of family and friends, or when the cult falls apart due to external pressure or scandals. Many cults may be hard to identify, and for some, their beliefs, no matter how strange, are protected under religious freedom. But when their practices involve harassment, threats, illegal activities, or abuse, the law can intervene. Believing in something should not come at the cost of your family and friends, and if someone tells you to sacrifice your relationships or morality for the greater good, they're most likely exploiting you for their own. |
An athlete uses physics to shatter world records | null | TED-Ed | In the early 1960s, Dick Fosbury tried his hand at almost every sport, but never excelled at anything, until, at the age of 16, he turned to the high jump. But when he couldn't compete against the strong athletes at his college using the standard high jump techniques of the time, Fosbury tried to jump a different way: backwards. Instead of jumping with his face towards the bar, bringing each leg over in the traditional straddle method, he jumped with his back towards the bar. Fosbury improved his record by over half a foot, and left his coaches amazed by this strange new style of high jumping. During the next few years, Fosbury perfected his high jump style, won the U.S. National trials, and assured his place in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico. In the Olympic Games, Fosbury amazed the world with his new technique, winning a gold metal with an Olympic record leap of 2.24 meters. By the next Olympic Games, almost all of the competing of high jumpers had adopted what came to be known as the Fosbury Flop. What's the secret behind the technique? It lies in a physics concept called the center of mass. For every object, we can locate the average position of all of its mass by taking into account how the mass is spread around the object. For instance, the center of mass of a flat, rectangular object of uniform density will be in the intersection of both diagonals, in equal distance from each corner. We can find the center of mass for other objects by similar calculations, or by finding the object's balancing point, which lies right underneath its center of mass. Try balancing a broom by holding it and slowly bringing your hands together until they meet. This balancing point lies right underneath the broom's center of mass. We humans also have a center of mass. When most people stand up, their center of mass is around the belly, but what happens to your center of mass when you lift your hands in the air? Your center of mass moves upwards. It moves all the time as you move through the day, based on how your body is positioned. It can even move outside of your body. When you bend forward, your center of mass is located below your bent belly in a place where there is no mass at all. Weird to think about, but that's the average position of all your mass. Many objects' center of mass are outside their bodies. Think of doughnuts or boomerangs. Now look at the Fosbury Flop, and follow the position of the center of mass of the jumper. The jumper runs very fast, so he can divert his horizontal velocity to vertical velocity, and jumps. Wait for it...there. Look at the jumper's center of mass as his body bends backward. It's below the bar. That is the secret behind the jump. With the old, pre-Fosbury techniques, the jumper had to apply enough force to lift his center of mass above the bar by a few inches in order to clear it. The Fosbury Flopper doesn't have to do that. The genius of the Fosbury Flop is that the jumper can apply the same amount of force, but raise his body much higher than before. That means he can raise the bar so high that even when his center of mass can't go any higher, his arching body can. Fosbury's technique brought the high jump to new heights by splitting the jumper's body away from his center of mass, giving it that much more room to clear higher and higher bars. So the Fosbury Flop may be sports history's only great leap forward, that is also a great leap backward. |
How AI could become an extension of your mind | {0: 'TED Fellow Arnav Kapur invents wearable AI devices that augment human cognition and give voice to those who have lost their ability to speak.'} | TED2019 | Ever since computers were invented, we've been trying to make them smarter and more powerful. From the abacus, to room-sized machines, to desktops, to computers in our pockets. And are now designing artificial intelligence to automate tasks that would require human intelligence. If you look at the history of computing, we've always treated computers as external devices that compute and act on our behalf. What I want to do is I want to weave computing, AI and internet as part of us. As part of human cognition, freeing us to interact with the world around us. Integrate human and machine intelligence right inside our own bodies to augment us, instead of diminishing us or replacing us. Could we combine what people do best, such as creative and intuitive thinking, with what computers do best, such as processing information and perfectly memorizing stuff? Could this whole be better than the sum of its parts? We have a device that could make that possible. It's called AlterEgo, and it's a wearable device that gives you the experience of a conversational AI that lives inside your head, that you could talk to in likeness to talking to yourself internally. We have a new prototype that we're showing here, for the first time at TED, and here's how it works. Normally, when we speak, the brain sends neurosignals through the nerves to your internal speech systems, to activate them and your vocal cords to produce speech. One of the most complex cognitive and motor tasks that we do as human beings. Now, imagine talking to yourself without vocalizing, without moving your mouth, without moving your jaw, but by simply articulating those words internally. Thereby very subtly engaging your internal speech systems, such as your tongue and back of your palate. When that happens, the brain sends extremely weak signals to these internal speech systems. AlterEgo has sensors, embedded in a thin plastic, flexible and transparent device that sits on your neck just like a sticker. These sensors pick up on these internal signals sourced deep within the mouth cavity, right from the surface of the skin. An AI program running in the background then tries to figure out what the user's trying to say. It then feeds back an answer to the user by means of bone conduction, audio conducted through the skull into the user's inner ear, that the user hears, overlaid on top of the user's natural hearing of the environment, without blocking it. The combination of all these parts, the input, the output and the AI, gives a net subjective experience of an interface inside your head that you could talk to in likeness to talking to yourself. Just to be very clear, the device does not record or read your thoughts. It records deliberate information that you want to communicate through deliberate engagement of your internal speech systems. People don't want to be read, they want to write. Which is why we designed the system to deliberately record from the peripheral nervous system. Which is why the control in all situations resides with the user. I want to stop here for a second and show you a live demo. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to ask Eric a question. And he's going to search for that information without vocalizing, without typing, without moving his fingers, without moving his mouth. Simply by internally asking that question. The AI will then figure out the answer and feed it back to Eric, through audio, through the device. While you see a laptop in front of him, he's not using it. Everything lives on the device. All he needs is that sticker device to interface with the AI and the internet. So, Eric, what's the weather in Vancouver like, right now? What you see on the screen are the words that Eric is speaking to himself right now. This is happening in real time. Eric: It's 50 degrees and rainy here in Vancouver. Arnav Kapur: What happened is that the AI sent the answer through audio, through the device, back to Eric. What could the implications of something like this be? Imagine perfectly memorizing things, where you perfectly record information that you silently speak, and then hear them later when you want to, internally searching for information, crunching numbers at speeds computers do, silently texting other people. Suddenly becoming multilingual, so that you internally speak in one language, and hear the translation in your head in another. The potential could be far-reaching. There are millions of people around the world who struggle with using natural speech. People with conditions such as ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, stroke and oral cancer, amongst many other conditions. For them, communicating is a painstakingly slow and tiring process. This is Doug. Doug was diagnosed with ALS about 12 years ago and has since lost the ability to speak. Today, he uses an on-screen keyboard where he types in individual letters using his head movements. And it takes several minutes to communicate a single sentence. So we went to Doug and asked him what were the first words he'd like to use or say, using our system. Perhaps a greeting, like, "Hello, how are you?" Or indicate that he needed help with something. What Doug said that he wanted to use our system for is to reboot the old system he had, because that old system kept on crashing. (Laughter) We never could have predicted that. I'm going to show you a short clip of Doug using our system for the first time. (Voice) Reboot computer. AK: What you just saw there was Doug communicating or speaking in real time for the first time since he lost the ability to speak. There are millions of people who might be able to communicate in real time like Doug, with other people, with their friends and with their families. My hope is to be able to help them express their thoughts and ideas. I believe computing, AI and the internet would disappear into us as extensions of our cognition, instead of being external entities or adversaries, amplifying human ingenuity, giving us unimaginable abilities and unlocking our true potential. And perhaps even freeing us to becoming better at being human. Thank you so much. (Applause) Shoham Arad: Come over here. OK. I want to ask you a couple of questions, they're going to clear the stage. I feel like this is amazing, it's innovative, it's creepy, it's terrifying. Can you tell us what I think ... I think there are some uncomfortable feelings around this. Tell us, is this reading your thoughts, will it in five years, is there a weaponized version of this, what does it look like? AK: So our first design principle, before we started working on this, was to not render ethics as an afterthought. So we wanted to bake ethics right into the design. We flipped the design. Instead of reading from the brain directly, we're reading from the voluntary nervous system that you deliberately have to engage to communicate with the device, while still bringing the benefits of a thinking or a thought device. The best of both worlds in a way. SA: OK, I think people are going to have a lot more questions for you. Also, you said that it's a sticker. So right now it sits just right here? Is that the final iteration, what the final design you hope looks like? AK: Our goal is for the technology to disappear completely. SA: What does that mean? AK: If you're wearing it, I shouldn't be able to see it. You don't want technology on your face, you want it in the background, to augment you in the background. So we have a sticker version that conforms to the skin, that looks like the skin, but we're trying to make an even smaller version that would sit right here. SA: OK. I feel like if anyone has any questions they want to ask Arnav, he'll be here all week. OK, thank you so much, Arnav. AK: Thanks, Shoham. |
Can a black hole be destroyed? | null | TED-Ed | Black holes are among the most destructive objects in the universe. Anything that gets too close to the central singularity of a black hole, be it an asteroid, planet, or star, risks being torn apart by its extreme gravitational field. And if the approaching object happens to cross the black hole’s event horizon, it’ll disappear and never re-emerge, adding to the black hole’s mass and expanding its radius in the process. There is nothing we could throw at a black hole that would do the least bit of damage to it. Even another black hole won’t destroy it– the two will simply merge into a larger black hole, releasing a bit of energy as gravitational waves in the process. By some accounts, it’s possible that the universe may eventually consist entirely of black holes in a very distant future. And yet, there may be a way to destroy, or “evaporate,” these objects after all. If the theory is true, all we need to do is to wait. In 1974, Stephen Hawking theorized a process that could lead a black hole to gradually lose mass. Hawking radiation, as it came to be known, is based on a well-established phenomenon called quantum fluctuations of the vacuum. According to quantum mechanics, a given point in spacetime fluctuates between multiple possible energy states. These fluctuations are driven by the continuous creation and destruction of virtual particle pairs, which consist of a particle and its oppositely charged antiparticle. Normally, the two collide and annihilate each other shortly after appearing, preserving the total energy. But what happens when they appear just at the edge of a black hole’s event horizon? If they’re positioned just right, one of the particles could escape the black hole’s pull while its counterpart falls in. It would then annihilate another oppositely charged particle within the event horizon of the black hole, reducing the black hole’s mass. Meanwhile, to an outside observer, it would look like the black hole had emitted the escaped particle. Thus, unless a black hole continues to absorb additional matter and energy, it’ll evaporate particle by particle, at an excruciatingly slow rate. How slow? A branch of physics, called black hole thermodynamics, gives us an answer. When everyday objects or celestial bodies release energy to their environment, we perceive that as heat, and can use their energy emission to measure their temperature. Black hole thermodynamics suggests that we can similarly define the “temperature” of a black hole. It theorizes that the more massive the black hole, the lower its temperature. The universe’s largest black holes would give off temperatures of the order of 10 to the -17th power Kelvin, very close to absolute zero. Meanwhile, one with the mass of the asteroid Vesta would have a temperature close to 200 degrees Celsius, thus releasing a lot of energy in the form of Hawking Radiation to the cold outside environment. The smaller the black hole, the hotter it seems to be burning– and the sooner it’ll burn out completely. Just how soon? Well, don’t hold your breath. First of all, most black holes accrete, or absorb matter and energy, more quickly than they emit Hawking radiation. But even if a black hole with the mass of our Sun stopped accreting, it would take 10 to the 67th power years– many many magnitudes longer than the current age of the Universe— to fully evaporate. When a black hole reaches about 230 metric tons, it’ll have only one more second to live. In that final second, its event horizon becomes increasingly tiny, until finally releasing all of its energy back into the universe. And while Hawking radiation has never been directly observed, some scientists believe that certain gamma ray flashes detected in the sky are actually traces of the last moments of small, primordial black holes formed at the dawn of time. Eventually, in an almost inconceivably distant future, the universe may be left as a cold and dark place. But if Stephen Hawking was right, before that happens, the normally terrifying and otherwise impervious black holes will end their existence in a final blaze of glory. |
The difference between healthy and unhealthy love | {0: 'By educating young people about the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships, Katie Hood hopes to derail abusive behavior before it starts and impact the relationship health of an entire generation.'} | TED2019 | So when you think about a child, a close friend, or a romantic partner, the word "love" probably comes to mind, and instantly other emotions rush in: joy and hope, excitement, trust and security, and yes, sometimes sadness and disappointment. There might not be a word in the dictionary that more of us are connected to than love. Yet, given its central importance in our lives, isn't it interesting that we're never explicitly taught how to love? We build friendships, navigate early romantic relationships, get married and bring babies home from the hospital with the expectation that we'll figure it out. But the truth is, we often harm and disrespect the ones we love. It can be subtle things like guilting a friend into spending time with you or sneaking a peak at your partner's texts or shaming a child for their lack of effort at school. 100 percent of us will be on the receiving end of unhealthy relationship behaviors and 100 percent of us will do unhealthy things. It's part of being human. In its worst form, the harm we inflict on loved ones shows up as abuse and violence, and relationship abuse is something that one in three women and one in four men will experience in their lifetime. Now, if you're like most people, when you hear those stats, you'll go, "Oh, no, no, no, that would never happen to me." It's instinctual to move away from the words "abuse" and "violence," to think that they happen to someone else somewhere else. But the truth is, unhealthy relationships and abuse are all around us. We just call them different things and ignore the connection. Abuse sneaks up on us disguised in unhealthy love. I work for an organization called One Love started by a family whose daughter Yeardley was killed by her ex-boyfriend. This was a tragedy no one saw coming, but when they looked back, they realized the warning signs were there just no one understood what they were seeing. Called crazy or drama or too much drinking, his actions weren't understood to be what they really were, which was clear signs of danger. Her family realized that if anyone had been educated about these signs, her death could have been prevented. So today we're on a mission to make sure that others have the information that Yeardley and her friends didn't. We have three main goals: give all of us a language for talking about a subject that's quite awkward and uncomfortable to discuss; empower a whole front line, namely friends, to help; and, in the process, improve all of our ability to love better. To do this, it's always important to start by illuminating the unhealthy signs that we frequently miss, and our work really focuses on creating content to start conversations with young people. As you'd expect, most of our content is pretty serious, given the subject at hand, but today I'm going to use one of our more light-hearted yet still thought-provoking pieces, "The Couplets," to illuminate five markers of unhealthy love. The first is intensity. (Video) Blue: I haven't seen you in a couple days. I've missed you. Orange: I've missed you too. (#thatslove) Blue: I haven't seen you in five minutes. It feels like a lifetime. What have you been doing without me for five whole minutes? Orange: It's been three minutes. (#thatsnotlove) Katie Hood: Anybody recognize that? I don't know. I do. Abusive relationships don't start out abusive. They start out exciting and exhilarating. There's an intensity of affection and emotion, a rush. It feels really good. You feel so lucky, like you've hit the jackpot. But in unhealthy love, these feelings shift over time from exciting to overwhelming and maybe a little bit suffocating. You feel it in your gut. Maybe it's when your new boyfriend or girlfriend says "I love you" faster than you were ready for or starts showing up everywhere, texting and calling a lot. Maybe they're impatient when you're slow to respond, even though they know you had other things going on that day. It's important to remember that it's not how a relationship starts that matters, it's how it evolves. It's important in the early days of a new relationship to pay attention to how you're feeling. Are you comfortable with the pace of intimacy? Do you feel like you have space and room to breathe? It's also really important to start practicing using your voice to talk about your own needs. Are your requests respected? A second marker is isolation. (Video) Orange 2: Want to hang out? Orange 1: Me and my boyfriend always have Monday Funday. Orange 2: Want to hang out? Orange 1: Me and my boyfriend always have Monday Funday. Orange 2: Tomorrow? Orange 1: It's our Tuesday Snooze Day. Orange 2: Wednesday? Orange 1: No Friends Day. KH: If you ask me, isolation is one of the most frequently missed and misunderstood signs of unhealthy love. Why? Because every new relationship starts out with this intense desire to spend time together, it's easy to miss when something shifts. Isolation creeps in when your new boyfriend or girlfriend starts pulling you away from your friends and family, your support system, and tethering you more tightly to them. They might say things like, "Why do you hang out with them? They're such losers" about your best friends, or, "They want us to break up. They're totally against us" about your family. Isolation is about sowing seeds of doubt about everyone from your prerelationship life. Healthy love includes independence, two people who love spending time together but who stay connected to the people and activities they cared about before. While at first you might spend every waking minute together, over time maintaining independence is key. You do this by making plans with friends and sticking to them and encouraging your partner to do the same. A third marker of unhealthy love is extreme jealousy. (Video) Blue 2: What are you so happy about? Blue 1: She just started following me on Instagram! Blue 2: What are you so nervous about? Blue 1: She, she just started following me, like, everywhere. (#thatsnotlove) KH: As the honeymoon period begins to fade, extreme jealousy can creep in. Your partner might become more demanding, needing to know where you are and who you're with all the time, or they might start following you everywhere, online and off. Extreme jealousy also brings with it possessiveness and mistrust, frequent accusations of flirting with other people or cheating, and refusal to listen to you when you tell them they have nothing to worry about and that you only love them. Jealousy is a part of any human relationship, but extreme jealousy is different. There's a threatening, desperate and angry edge to it. Love shouldn't feel like this. A fourth marker is belittling. (Video) Blue: Wanna hang out? Orange: I gotta study. Blue: You'll get an A anyway, A for amazing. (#thatslove) Blue: Wanna hang out? Orange: I gotta study. Blue: You'll get an F anyway, F for, F for... stupid. (#thatsnotlove) KH: Yeah, hmm. In unhealthy love, words are used as weapons. Conversations that used to be fun and lighthearted turn mean and embarrassing. Maybe your partner makes fun of you in a way that hurts, or maybe they tell stories and jokes for laughs at your expense. When you try to explain that your feelings have been hurt, they shut you down and accuse you of overreacting. "Why are you so sensitive? What's your problem. Give me a break." You are silenced by these words. It seems pretty obvious, but your partner should have your back. Their words should build you up, not break you down. They should keep your secrets and be loyal. They should make you feel more confident, not less. Finally, a fifth marker: volatility. (Video) Orange 1: I'd be sad if we broke up. Orange 2: I'd be sad too. (#thatslove) Orange 1: I'd so depressed if we ever broke up. I'd throw myself off this step. I would! Don't try to stop me! (#thatsnotlove) KH: Frequent breakups and makeups, high highs and low lows: as tension rises, so does volatility. Tearful, frustrated fights followed by emotional makeups, hateful and hurtful comments like, "You're worthless, I'm not even sure why I'm with you!" followed quickly by apologies and promises it will never happen again. By this point, you've been so conditioned to this relationship roller coaster that you may not realize how unhealthy and maybe even dangerous your relationship has become. It can be really hard to see when unhealthy love turns towards abuse, but it's fair to say that the more of these markers your relationship might have, the more unhealthy and maybe dangerous your relationship could be. And if your instinct is to break up and leave, which is advice so many of us give our friends when they're in unhealthy relationships, that's not always the best advice. Time of breakup can be a real trigger for violence. If you fear you might be headed towards abuse or in abuse, you need to consult with experts to get the advice on how to leave safely. But it's not just about romantic relationships and it's not just about violence. Understanding the signs of unhealthy love can help you audit and understand nearly every relationship in your life. For the first time, you might understand why you're disappointed in a friendship or why every interaction with a certain family member leaves you discouraged and anxious. You might even begin to see how your own intensity and jealousy is causing problems with colleagues at work. Understanding is the first step to improving, and while you can't make every unhealthy relationship healthy — some you're going to have to leave behind — you can do your part every day to do relationships better. And here's the exciting news: it's actually not rocket science. Open communication, mutual respect, kindness, patience — we can practice these things every day. And while practice will definitely make you better, I have to promise you it's also not going to make you perfect. I do this for a living and every day I think and talk about healthy relationships, and still I do unhealthy things. Just the other day as I was trying to shuttle my four kids out the door amidst quarreling, squabbling and complaints about breakfast, I completely lost it. With an intentionally angry edge, I screamed, "Everybody just shut up and do what I say! You are the worst! I am going to take away screen time and dessert and anything else you could possibly ever enjoy in life!" (Laughter) Anybody been there? (Applause) Volatility, belittling. My oldest son turned around and looked at me, and said, "Mom, that's not love." (Laughter) For a minute, I really wanted to kill him for calling me out. Trust me. But then I gathered myself and I thought, you know what, I'm actually proud. I'm proud that he has a language to make me pause. I want all of my kids to understand what the bar should be for how they're treated and to have a language and a voice to use when that bar is not met versus just accepting it. For too long, we've treated relationships as a soft topic, when relationship skills are one of the most important and hard to build things in life. Not only can understanding unhealthy signs help you avoid the rabbit hole that leads to unhealthy love, but understanding and practicing the art of being healthy can improve nearly every aspect of your life. I'm completely convinced that while love is an instinct and an emotion, the ability to love better is a skill we can all build and improve on over time. Thank you. (Applause) |
The mysterious science of pain | null | TED-Ed | In 1995, the British Medical Journal published an astonishing report about a 29-year-old builder. He accidentally jumped onto a 15-centimeter nail, which pierced straight through his steel-toed boot. He was in such agonizing pain that even the smallest movement was unbearable. But when the doctors took off his boot, they faced a surprising sight: the nail had never touched his foot at all. For hundreds of years, scientists thought that pain was a direct response to damage. By that logic, the more severe an injury is, the more pain it should cause. But as we’ve learned more about the science of pain, we’ve discovered that pain and tissue damage don’t always go hand in hand, even when the body’s threat signaling mechanisms are fully functioning. We’re capable of experiencing severe pain out of proportion to an actual injury, and even pain without any injury, like the builder, or the well-documented cases of male partners of pregnant women experiencing pain during the pregnancy or labor. What’s going on here? There are actually two phenomena at play: the experience of pain, and a biological process called nociception. Nociception is part of the nervous system’s protective response to harmful or potentially harmful stimuli. Sensors in specialized nerve endings detect mechanical, thermal, and chemical threats. If enough sensors are activated, electrical signals shoot up the nerve to the spine and on to the brain. The brain weighs the importance of these signals and produces pain if it decides the body needs protection. Typically, pain helps the body avoid further injury or damage. But there are a whole set of factors besides nociception that can influence the experience of pain— and make pain less useful. First, there are biological factors that amplify nociceptive signals to the brain. If nerve fibers are activated repeatedly, the brain may decide they need to be more sensitive to adequately protect the body from threats. More stress sensors can be added to nerve fibers until they become so sensitive that even light touches to the skin spark intense electrical signals. In other cases, nerves adapt to send signals more efficiently, amplifying the message. These forms of amplification are most common in people experiencing chronic pain, which is defined as pain lasting more than 3 months. When the nervous system is nudged into an ongoing state of high alert, pain can outlast physical injury. This creates a vicious cycle in which the longer pain persists, the more difficult it becomes to reverse. Psychological factors clearly play a role in pain too, potentially by influencing nociception and by influencing the brain directly. A person’s emotional state, memories, beliefs about pain and expectations about treatment can all influence how much pain they experience. In one study, children who reported believing they had no control over pain actually experienced more intense pain than those who believed they had some control. Features of the environment matter too: In one experiment, volunteers with a cold rod placed on the back of their hand reported feeling more pain when they were shown a red light than a blue one, even though the rod was the same temperature each time. Finally, social factors like the availability of family support can affect perception of pain. All of this means that a multi-pronged approach to pain treatment that includes pain specialists, physical therapists, clinical psychologists, nurses and other healthcare professionals is often most effective. We’re only beginning to uncover the mechanisms behind the experience of pain, but there are some promising areas of research. Until recently, we thought the glial cells surrounding neurons were just support structures, but now we know they have a huge role in influencing nociception. Studies have shown that disabling certain brain circuits in the amygdala can eliminate pain in rats. And genetic testing in people with rare disorders that prevent them from feeling pain have pinpointed several other possible targets for drugs and perhaps eventually gene therapy. |
How to build your confidence -- and spark it in others | {0: 'An activist, educator and writer, Brittany Packnett uses every platform she has to teach truth that provokes people to action -- for the sake of freedom and justice.'} | TED2019 | So when I was a little girl, a book sat on the coffee table in our living room, just steps from our front door. And the living room is a first impression. Ours had white carpet and a curio of my mother's most treasured collectibles. That room represented the sacrifices of generations gone by who, by poverty or by policy, couldn't afford a curio of collectibles let alone a middle class house to put them in. That room had to stay perfect. But I would risk messing up that perfect room every day just to see that book. On the cover sat a woman named Septima Clark. She sat in perfect profile with her face raised to the sky. She had perfect salt-and-pepper cornrows platted down the sides of her head, and pride and wisdom just emanated from her dark skin. Septima Clark was an activist and an educator, a woman after whom I'd eventually model my own career. But more than all the words she ever spoke, that single portrait of Septima Clark, it defined confidence for me before I ever even knew the word. It may sound simple, but confidence is something that we underestimate the importance of. We treat it like a nice-to-have instead of a must-have. We place value on knowledge and resources above what we deem to be the soft skill of confidence. But by most measures, we have more knowledge and more resources now than at any other point in history, and still injustice abounds and challenges persist. If knowledge and resources were all that we needed, we wouldn't still be here. And I believe that confidence is one of the main things missing from the equation. I'm completely obsessed with confidence. It's been the most important journey of my life, a journey that, to be honest, I'm still on. Confidence is the necessary spark before everything that follows. Confidence is the difference between being inspired and actually getting started, between trying and doing until it's done. Confidence helps us keep going even when we failed. The name of the book on that coffee table was "I Dream A World," and today I dream a world where revolutionary confidence helps bring about our most ambitious dreams into reality. That's exactly the kind of world that I wanted to create in my classroom when I was a teacher, like a Willy Wonka world of pure imagination, but make it scholarly. All of my students were black or brown. All of them were growing up in a low-income circumstance. Some of them were immigrants, some of them were disabled, but all of them were the very last people this world invites to be confident. That's why it was so important that my classroom be a place where my students could build the muscle of confidence, where they could learn to face each day with the confidence you need to redesign the world in the image of your own dreams. After all, what are academic skills without the confidence to use those skills to go out and change the world. Now is when I should tell you about two of my students, Jamal and Regina. Now, I've changed their names, but their stories remain the same. Jamal was brilliant, but unfocused. He would squirm in his chair during independent work, and he would never stay still for more than three or four minutes. Students like Jamal can perplex brand new teachers because they're not quite sure how to support young people like him. I took a direct approach. I negotiated with Jamal. If he could give me focused work, then he could do it from anywhere in the classroom, from our classroom rug, from behind my desk, from inside his classroom locker, which turned out to be his favorite place. Jamal's least favorite subject was writing, and he never wanted to read what he had written out loud in class, but we were still making progress. One day, I decided to host a mock 2008 presidential election in my classroom. My third graders had to research and write a stump speech for their chosen candidate: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or John McCain. The heavy favorites were obvious, but one student chose John McCain. It was Jamal. Jamal finally decided to read something that he had written out loud in class, and sure enough, Jamal stunned all of us with his brilliance. Just like Jamal's dad, John McCain was a veteran, and just like Jamal's dad protected him, Jamal believed that John McCain would protect the entire country. And he wasn't my candidate of choice, but it didn't matter, because the entire class erupted into applause, a standing ovation for our brave friend Jamal who finally showed up as his most confident self for the first time that year. And then there was Regina. Regina was equally as brilliant, but active. She'd inevitably finish her work early, and then she'd get on about the business of distracting other students. (Laughter) Walking, talking, passing those notes that teachers hate but kids love. You look like you passed a lot of them. (Laughter) Despite my high ideals for our classroom, I would too often default to my baser instincts, and I would choose compliance over confidence. Regina was a glitch in my intended system. A good teacher can correct misbehavior but still remain a student's champion. But on one day in particular, I just plain old chose control. I snapped, and my approach didn't communicate to Regina that she was being a distraction. My approach communicated to Regina that she herself was a distraction. I watched the light go out from her eyes, and that light sparked joy in our classroom. I had just extinguished it. The entire class became irritable, and we didn't recover for the rest of the day. I think about the day often, and I have literally prayed that I did not do irreparable harm, because as a woman who used to be a little girl just like Regina, I know that I could have started the process of killing her confidence forever. A lack of confidence pulls us down from the bottom and weighs us down from the top, crushing us between a flurry of can'ts, won'ts and impossibles. Without confidence, we get stuck, and when we get stuck, we can't even get started. Instead of getting mired in what can get in our way, confidence invites us to perform with certainty. We all operate a little differently when we're sure we can win versus if we just hope we will. Now, this can be a helpful check. If you don't have enough confidence, it could be because you need to readjust your goal. If you have too much confidence, it could be because you're not rooted in something real. Not everyone lacks confidence. We make it easier in this society for some people to gain confidence because they fit our preferred archetype of leadership. We reward confidence in some people and we punish confidence in others, and all the while far too many people are walking around every single day without it. For some of us, confidence is a revolutionary choice, and it would be our greatest shame to see our best ideas go unrealized and our brightest dreams go unreached all because we lacked the engine of confidence. That's not a risk I'm willing to take. So how do we crack the code on confidence? In my estimation, it takes at least three things: permission, community and curiosity. Permission births confidence, community nurtures it and curiosity affirms it. In education, we've got a saying, that you can't be what you can't see. When I was a little girl, I couldn't show confidence until someone showed me. My family used to do everything together, including the mundane things, like buying a new car, and every time we did this, I'd watch my parents put on the exact same performance. We'd enter the dealership, and my dad would sit while my mom shopped. When my mom found a car that she liked, they'd go in and meet with the dealer, and inevitably, every time the dealer would turn his attention and his body to my dad, assuming that he controlled the purse strings and therefore this negotiation. "Rev. Packnett," they'd say, "how do we get you into this car today?" My dad would inevitably respond the same way. He'd slowly and silently gesture toward my mother and then put his hands right back in his lap. It might have been the complete shock of negotiating finances with a black woman in the '80s, but whatever it was, I'd watch my mother work these car dealers over until they were basically giving the car away for free. (Laughter) She would never crack a smile. She would never be afraid to walk away. I know my mom just thought she was getting a good deal on a minivan, but what she was actually doing was giving me permission to defy expectations and to show up confidently in my skill no matter who doubts me. Confidence needs permission to exist and community is the safest place to try confidence on. I traveled to Kenya this year to learn about women's empowerment among Maasai women. There I met a group of young women called Team Lioness, among Kenya's first all-female community ranger groups. These eight brave young women were making history in just their teenage years, and I asked Purity, the most verbose young ranger among them, "Do you ever get scared?" I swear to you, I want to tattoo her response all over my entire body. She said, "Of course I do, but I call on my sisters. They remind me that we will be better than these men and that we will not fail." Purity's confidence to chase down lions and catch poachers, it didn't come from her athletic ability or even just her faith. Her confidence was propped up by sisterhood, by community. What she was basically saying was that if I am ever in doubt, I need you to be there to restore my hope and to rebuild my certainty. In community, I can find my confidence and your curiosity can affirm it. Early in my career, I led a large-scale event that did not go exactly as planned. I'm lying to you. It was terrible. And when I debriefed the event with my manager, I just knew that she was going to run down the list of every mistake I had ever made, probably from birth. But instead, she opened with a question: What was your intention? I was surprised but relieved. She knew that I was already beating myself up, and that question invited me to learn from my own mistakes instead of damage my already fragile confidence. Curiosity invites people to be in charge of their own learning. That exchange, it helped me approach my next project with the expectation of success. Permission, community, curiosity: all of these are the things that we will need to breed the confidence that we'll absolutely need to solve our greatest challenges and to build the world we dream, a world where inequity is ended and where justice is real, a world where we can be free on the outside and free on the inside because we know that none of us are free until all of us are free. A world that isn't intimidated by confidence when it shows up as a woman or in black skin or in anything other than our preferred archetypes of leadership. A world that knows that that kind of confidence is exactly the key we need to unlock the future that we want. I have enough confidence to believe that that world will indeed come to pass, and that we are the ones to make it so. Thank you so much. (Applause) |
The next global agricultural revolution | {0: 'TED Fellow Bruce Friedrich plans to compete with the meat industry on its own terms -- by creating alternatives to conventional meat that taste the same or better and cost less. '} | TED2019 | In 2019, humanity received a warning: 30 of the world's leading scientists released the results of a massive three-year study into global agriculture and declared that meat production is destroying our planet and jeopardizing global health. One of the study's authors explained that "humanity now poses a threat to the stability of the planet ... [This requires] nothing less than a new global agricultural revolution." As somebody who's spent the last two decades advocating a shift away from industrial meat production, I wanted to believe that this clarion call was going to make a difference. The thing is, I've seen this sort of thing again and again and again for decades. Here's 2018 from the journal "Nature," 2017 from "Bioscience Journal," 2016 from the National Academy of Sciences. The main point of these studies tends to be climate change. But antibiotic resistance represents just as big of a threat. We are feeding massive doses of antibiotics to farm animals. These antibiotics are then mutating into superbugs that threaten to render antibiotics obsolete within all of our lifetimes. You want a scare? Google: "the end of working antibiotics." I'm going to get one thing out of the way: I am not here to tell anybody what to eat. Individual action is great, but antibiotic resistance and climate change — they require more. Besides, convincing the world to eat less meat hasn't worked. For 50 years, environmentalists, global health experts and animal activists have been begging the public to eat less meat. And yet, per capita meat consumption is as high as it's been in recorded history. The average North American last year ate more than 200 pounds of meat. And I didn't eat any. (Laughter) Which means somebody out there ate 400 pounds of meat. (Laughter) On our current trajectory, we're going to need to be producing 70 to 100 percent more meat by 2050. This requires a global solution. What we need to do is we need to produce the meat that people love, but we need to produce it in a whole new way. I've got a couple of ideas. Idea number one: let's grow meat from plants. Instead of growing plants, feeding them to animals, and all of that inefficiency, let's grow those plants, let's biomimic meat with them, let's make plant-based meat. Idea number two: for actual animal meat, let's grow it directly from cells. Instead of growing live animals, let's grow the cells directly. It takes six weeks to grow a chicken to slaughter weight. Grow the cells directly, you can get that same growth in six days. This is what that looks like at scale. It's your friendly neighborhood meat brewery. (Laughter) I want to make two points about this. The first one is, we believe we can do it. In recent years, some companies have been producing meat from plants that consumers cannot distinguish from actual animal meat, and there are now dozens of companies growing actual animal meat directly from cells. This plant-based and cell-based meat gives consumers everything that they love about meat — the taste, the texture and so on — but with no need for antibiotics and with a fraction of the adverse impact on the climate. And because these two technologies are so much more efficient, at production scale these products will be cheaper. But one quick point about that — it's not going to be easy. These plant-based companies have spent small fortunes on their burgers, and cell-based meat has not yet been commercialized at all. So we're going to need all hands on deck to make these the global meat industry. For starters, we need the present meat industry. We don't want to disrupt the meat industry, we want to transform it. We need their economies of scale, their global supply chain, their marketing expertise and their massive consumer base. We also need governments. Governments spend tens of billions of dollars every single year on research and development focused on global health and the environment. They should be putting some of that money into optimizing and perfecting the production of plant-based and cell-based meat. Look, tens of thousands of people died from antibiotic-resistant superbugs in North America just last year. By 2050, that number is going to be 10 million per year globally. And climate change represents an existential threat to huge portions of our global family, including some of the poorest people on the face of the planet. Climate change, antibiotic resistance — these are global emergencies. Meat production is exacerbating these emergencies on a global scale. But we are not going to decrease meat consumption unless we give consumers alternatives that cost the same or less and that taste the same or better. We have the solution. Let's make meat from plants. Let's grow it directly from cells. It's past time that we mobilize the resources that are necessary to create the next global agricultural revolution. Thank you. (Applause) |
Sloths! The strange life of the world's slowest mammal | {0: 'In books, TV shows and even an annual sloth calendar, Lucy Cooke shares unexpected truths about animals.'} | TEDWomen 2018 | Hello. Well, I'm here to talk to you about my animal muse: the sloth. (Laughter) I've been documenting the strange lives of the world's slowest mammal for the last 10 years. I still remember the first time I saw one. I was fascinated by their freaky biology. I mean, what's not to love about an animal that's born with a fixed grin on its face? (Laughter) And the need to hug. Audience: Awww. But sloths are massively misunderstood. They've been saddled with a name that speaks of sin and damned for their languorous lifestyle, which people seem to think has no place amongst the fittest in the fast-paced race for survival. Well, I'm here to tell you that we've got this animal all wrong — and how understanding the truth about the sloth may help save us and this planet we both call home. I traced sloth-based slander back to a Spanish conquistador called Valdés, who gave the first description of a sloth in his encyclopedia of the New World. He said the sloth was "the stupidest animal that can be found in the world ... I have never seen such an ugly animal or one that is more useless." (Laughter) Tell us what you really think, Valdés. (Laughter) I'd like to have a word about Valdés's drawing skills. (Laughter) I mean, what is that? (Laughter) I've never seen an illustration of a sloth that's more useless. (Laughter) But I mean, on the plus side, he has given the sloth a remarkably humanlike face, and sloths do have remarkably humanlike faces. This sloth I photographed in Costa Rica, I think looks a lot like Ringo Starr. (Laughter) But then, sloths do bear an uncanny resemblance to the The Beatles. (Laughter) Particularly pleased with Paul, actually, on there. But like The Beatles, sloths are also extremely successful. They come from an ancient line of mammals, and there were once dozens of species including the giant ground sloth, which was the size of a small elephant and one of the only animals big enough to eat avocado pits whole and disperse them. So ... (Laughter) Some of you have worked it out already. (Laughter) That means that without sloths, there might be no avocado on toast today, leaving hipsters everywhere totally bereft at breakfast. (Laughter) (Applause) Today, there are six surviving species, and they fall into two groups. You've got your Bradypus three-toed sloths, they're the ones with the Beatles haircuts and the Mona Lisa smiles. Then, there are the two-toed sloths. They look a little bit more like a cross between a Wookiee and a pig. They live in the jungles of Central and South America, and they're extremely prolific. There was a survey that was done in the 1970s in a Panamanian tropical forest that found that sloths were the most numerically abundant large animal. They took up one quarter of the mammalian biomass. Now, that's an awful lot of sloths and suggests they're doing something very right indeed. So what if, rather than deriding the sloth for being different, we tried to learn from it instead? We humans are obsessed with speed. Busyness is a badge of honor, and convenience trumps quality in our quest for quick. Our addiction to the express life is choking us and the planet. We idolize animals like the cheetah, the "Ferrari of the animal kingdom," capable of doing naught to 60 in three seconds flat. Well, so what? (Laughter) (Applause) So what? The sloth, on the other hand, can reach a leisurely 17 feet a minute with the wind behind it. (Laughter) But being fast is costly. The cheetah is speedy, but at the expense of strength. They can't risk getting in a fight, so they lose one in nine kills to tougher predators like hyenas. No wonder they're laughing. (Laughter) The sloth, on the other hand, has taken a more stealthy approach to dinner. They survive by capturing and consuming static leaves. (Laughter) But you see, leaves don't want to be eaten any more than antelope do, so they're loaded full of toxins and very hard to digest. So in order to consume them, the sloth has also had to become an athlete — a digesting athlete. (Laughter) The sloth's secret weapon is a four-chambered stomach and plenty of time. They have the slowest digestion rate of any mammal. And it can take up to a month to process a single leaf, which gives their liver plenty of time to process those toxins. So, sloths aren't lazy. No, they're busy. Digesting. (Laughter) Yeah, really busy. (Laughter) Hard at work, that sloth, very hard at work. And of course, leaves have little calorific value, so sloths have evolved to spend as little energy as possible. They do about 10 percent of the work of a similar-sized mammal and survive on as little as 100 calories a day, thanks to some ingenious adaptations. The Bradypus, three-toed sloths, they've got more neck bones than any other mammal, even a giraffe. Which means they can turn their head through 270 degrees and graze all around them, without having to actually bother with the effort of moving their body. (Laughter) It also means that they are surprisingly good swimmers. Sloths can bob along in water three times faster than they can move on land, kept afloat by ... trapped wind. (Laughter) So — (Laughter) sloths are the only mammal that we know of that don't do flatulence. When they need to expel gas, it's actually reabsorbed into their bloodstream and expelled orally as a sort of mouth fart. (Laughter) Turning their lives upside down saves further energy. They have about half the skeletal muscle of a terrestrial mammal. They don't really have so many of the extensor muscles that are the weight-bearing muscles; instead, they rely on retractor muscles to pull themselves along. They have long, hooked claws and a high fatigue resistance, so they can literally hook on and hang like a happy, hairy hammock for hours on end. And sloths can do almost anything in this inverted position. They sleep, eat and even give birth. Their throat and blood vessels are uniquely adapted to pump blood and to swallow food against the force of gravity. They have sticky bits on their ribs that prevent their enormous stomach from crushing their lungs. And their fur grows the opposite direction, so they can drip dry after a tropical drenching. The only problem is, if you turn a sloth the other way up, gravity removes its dignity. Audience: Awww. They can't hold themselves upright. And so they drag their bodies along as if mountaineering on a flat surface. And I think this is why the early explorers like Valdés thought so poorly of them, because they were observing sloths the wrong way up and out of context. I've spent many happy hours mesmerized by moving sloths. Their lack of muscle hasn't impeded their strength or agility. Nature's zen masters of mellow move like "Swan Lake" in slow mo — (Laughter) with the core control of a tai chi master. This one has fallen asleep mid-move, which is not uncommon. (Laughter) But you're probably wondering: How does a dangling bag of digesting leaves avoid being eaten? Good question. Well, this is one of the sloth's main predators. It's the harpy eagle. It can fly at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour, has talons the size of a grizzly bear's, razor-sharp eyesight, and that ring of feathers focuses sound so that it can hear the slightest leaf rustle. The sloth, on the other hand, has poor hearing, bad eyesight, and running from danger is clearly not an option. No, they survive by wearing an invisibility cloak worthy of Harry Potter. Their fur has grooves that attract moisture and act as tiny hydroponic gardens for algae, and they also attract a host of invertebrates. So they are their own slow-moving, miniature ecosystem. They become one with the trees. And we think that their movements are so slow, they slip under the radar of the monstrous harpy as it's flying about the canopy, scanning for action. Sloths are stealth ninjas, and they rarely leave the safety of the canopy — except to defecate, which they do about once a week at the base of a tree. Now, this risky and energetic behavior has long been a mystery, and there are lots of theories as to why they do it. But I think they're leaving surreptitious scented messages for potential mates. Because, you see, sloths are generally silent, solitary creatures, except for when the female is in heat. She will climb to the top of a tree and scream for sex. In D-sharp. (Laughter) Don't believe me? (Sound of sloth scream) D-sharp. This and only this note will get the male's attention. It mimics the sound of the kiskadee flycatcher. So the female remains covert, even when yodeling for sex at the top of her lungs. Her clandestine booty calls will carry for miles across the canopy, and males will beat a slow path towards her. (Laughter) I think scented messages in her dung will help send Romeo up the right tree so that he doesn't waste precious energy scaling the wrong one. Sex, by the way, is the only thing that sloths do swiftly. I've seen them do it in the wild, and it's over and done with in a matter of seconds. But then, why waste precious energy on it, particularly after that journey? (Laughter) Unlike other mammals, sloths don't also waste time maintaining a constant warm body temperature. Energy from the sun is free, so they bask in the sun like lizards and wear an unusually thick coat for the tropics to keep that heat in. Sloths have a freakishly low metabolism. And we think that this might be one of the reasons that they can sometimes recover from injuries that would kill most animals. This sloth recovered from a double amputation, and I've known sloths that have managed to survive even power line electrocutions. And we now think that a low metabolism may well be key to surviving extinction. Researchers at Kansas University who were studying mollusks found that a high metabolism predicted which species of mollusk had gone extinct. Sloths have been around on this planet in one shape or another for over 40 million years. The secret to their success is their slothful nature. They are energy-saving icons. And I founded the Sloth Appreciation Society to both promote and protect their slow, steady, sustainable lives. I'm a pretty speedy character. I'm sure you've guessed. And the sloths have taught me a lot about slowing down. And I think that the planet would benefit if we all took a slowly digested leaf out of their book. How about we all embrace our inner sloth by slowing down, being more mindful, reducing wasteful convenience, being economical with our energy, recycling creatively and reconnecting with nature. Otherwise, I fear, it will be us humans that turn out to be "the stupidest animals that can be found in the world." Thank you very much. May the sloth be with you! (Applause) |
Can you spot the problem with these headlines? (Level 1) | null | TED-Ed | "New drug may cure cancer." "Aspirin may reduce risk of heart attacks." "Eating breakfast can help you lose weight." Health headlines like these flood the news, often contradicting each other. So how can you figure out what’s a genuine health concern or a truly promising remedy, and what’s less conclusive? In medicine, there’s often a disconnect between news headlines and the scientific research they cover. That’s because a headline is designed to catch attention— it’s most effective when it makes a big claim. By contrast, many scientific studies produce meaningful results when they focus on a narrow, specific question. The best way to bridge this gap is to look at the original research behind a headline. We’ve come up with a simplified research scenario for each of these three headlines to test your skills. Keep watching for the explanation of the first study; then pause at the headline to figure out the flaw. Assume all the information you need to spot the flaw is included. Let’s start with this hypothetical scenario: a study using mice to test a new cancer drug. The study includes two groups of mice, one treated with the drug, the other with a placebo. At the end of the trial, the mice that receive the drug are cured, while those that received the placebo are not. Can you spot the problem with this headline: "Study shows new drug could cure cancer" Since the subjects of the study were mice, we can’t draw conclusions about human disease based on this research. In real life, early research on new drugs and therapies is not conducted on humans. If the early results are promising, clinical trials follow to determine if they hold up in humans. Now that you’ve warmed up, let’s try a trickier example: a study about the impact of aspirin on heart attack risk. The study randomly divides a pool of men into two groups. The members of one group take aspirin daily, while the others take a daily placebo. By the end of the trial, the control group suffered significantly more heart attacks than the group that took aspirin. Based on this situation, what’s wrong with the headline: "Aspirin may reduce risk of heart attacks" In this case, the study shows evidence that aspirin reduces heart attacks in men, because all the participants were men. But the conclusion “aspirin reduces risk of heart attacks” is too broad; we can’t assume that results found in men would also apply to women. Studies often limit participants based on geographic location, age, gender, or many other factors. Before these findings can be generalized, similar studies need to be run on other groups. If a headline makes a general claim, it should draw its evidence from a diverse body of research, not one study. Can you take your skills from the first two questions to the next level? Try this example about the impact of eating breakfast on weight loss. Researchers recruit a group of people who had always skipped breakfast and ask them to start eating breakfast everyday. The participants include men and women of a range of ages and backgrounds. Over a year-long period, participants lose an average of five pounds. So what’s wrong with the headline: "Eating breakfast can help you lose weight" The people in the study started eating breakfast and lost weight— but we don’t know that they lost weight because they started eating breakfast; perhaps having their weight tracked inspired them to change their eating habits in other ways. To rule out the possibility that some other factor caused weight loss, we would need to compare these participants to a group who didn’t eat breakfast before the study and continued to skip it during the study. A headline certainly shouldn’t claim the results of this research are generally applicable. And if the study itself made such a claim without a comparison group, then you should question its credibility. Now that you’ve battle-tested your skills on these hypothetical studies and headlines, you can test them on real-world news. Even when full papers aren’t available without a fee, you can often find summaries of experimental design and results in freely available abstracts, or even within the text of a news article. Individual studies have results that don’t necessarily correspond to a grabby headline. Big conclusions for human health issues require lots of evidence accumulated over time. But in the meantime, we can keep on top of the science, by reading past the headlines. |
The anti-CEO playbook | {0: 'Hamdi Ulukaya is a pioneer of the natural food movement and the founder of Chobani, one of the fastest-growing food companies of the last decade.'} | TED2019 | A cold January day of 2005, I took one of my most important drives of my life. I was on this road in upstate New York, trying to find this old factory. The day before, I received a flyer in the mail that said, "Fully equipped yogurt plant for sale." I threw it in the garbage can. And 20 minutes later, I picked it up and called the number. The plant was 85 years old, and it was closing. So I decided to go see it. At this time, I wasn't sure where this road or my life was going. I owned a small cheese shop but really hated business. But the hills and the roads and the smells are all familiar. I grew up in Turkey, in a similar environment, near the Kurdish mountains. My family made cheese and yogurt; I grew up listening to shepherd's stories. We didn't have much, but we had the moon and the stars, simple food, each other. Eventually, I came to America. I didn't even know New York had farms. I made it to upstate, and I never left. Now I'm lost. I passed the road sign that said "Dead end." Then soon after, there it was: the factory. The smell hit me first. It was a like a milk container left out in the sun. The walls were so thick, paints were peeling, there were cracks everywhere. The factory was so old, the owners thought it was worthless. I thought they left a zero off, I couldn't believe the price. As I entered in, I stopped noticing things. All I could see were the people. There were 55 of them. Just quiet. Their only job was to break the plant apart and close it forever. I was met with a guy named Rich, the production manager. He offered to take me around, show me around. He didn't say much, but around every corner, he would point out some stories. Rich worked there for 20 years. His father made yogurt before him, and his grandfather made cream cheese before that. You could tell that Rich felt guilty that this factory was closing on his watch. What hit me the hardest at that time was that this wasn't just an old factory. This was a time machine. This is where people built lives, they left for wars, they bragged about home runs and report cards. But now, it was closing. And the company wasn't just giving up on yogurt, it was giving up on them. As if they were not good enough. And I was shocked how these people were behaving. There was no anger, there were no tears. Just silence. With grace, they were closing this factory. I was so angry that the CEO was far away, in a tower or somewhere, looking at the spreadsheets and closing the factory. Spreadsheets are lazy. They don't tell you about people, they don't tell you about communities. But unfortunately, this is how too many business decisions are made today. I was never the same person after what I saw. On my way back home, I called Mario, my lawyer. I called Mario, I said, "Mario, I want to buy this place." Mario said, "Hamdi, one of the largest food companies in the world is closing this place, and they're getting out of the yogurt business. Who the hell are you to make it work?" I said, "You're right." But the next day, I called him again, and I said, "Mario, really, I really want to buy this place." He said, "Hamdi, you have no money. (Laughter) You haven't even paid me in six months." (Laughter) Which was true. (Laughter) But I got a loan, another loan. By August 2005, I had the keys for this factory. The first thing I did was to hire four of the original 55 people. I had Maria, the office manager. I had Frank, the wastewater guy. I had Mike, the maintenance guy. And Rich, who showed me the plant, the production guy. And we had our first board meeting. Mike says, "Hamdi, what are we going to do now?" They look at me as if I have the magic answer. So I said, "Mike, we're going to go to Ace Hardware store, and we're going to get some paints. And we're going to paint the walls outside." Mike wasn't impressed. He looked at me. He said, "Hamdi, that's fine, we’ll do that, but tell me you have more ideas than that." (Laughter) I said, "I do. We'll paint the walls white." (Laughter) Honest to God, that was the only idea I had. (Laughter) But we painted those walls that summer. I sometimes wonder what they would have said to me if I told them, "See these walls we're painting? In two years, we're going to launch a yogurt here that Americans have never seen and never tasted before. It will be delicious, it will be natural. And we're going to call it 'Chobani' — it means 'shepherd' in Turkish." And if I said, "We are going to hire all of the 55 employees back, or most of them back. And then 100 more after, and then 100 more after, and then 1,000 more after that." But if I told them, "You see that town over there? Every person we hire, 10 more local jobs will be created. The town will come back to life, the trucks will be all over the roads. And the first money we make, we're going to build one of the best Little League baseball fields for our children. And five years after that, we're going to be the number one Greek yogurt brand in the country." Would they have believed me? Of course not. But that's exactly what happened. (Applause) In painting those walls, we got to know each other. We believed in each other. And we figured it out together. Five years, me and all my colleagues, we never left the factory. We worked day and night, through the holidays, to fix that plant. The best part of Chobani for me is this: the same exact people who were given up on were the ones who built it back 100 times better than before. And they all have a financial stake in the company today. (Applause) And all this time, I kept wondering — you see, I'm not a businessman, I don't come from that tradition — I just kept wondering: What is this all about? Corporate America says it's about profits. Mainstream business says it's about money. The CEO playbook says it's about shareholders. And so much is sacrificed for it — it's factories, communities, jobs. But not by CEOs. CEOs have their employees suffer for them. But yet, the CEOs's pay goes up and up and up. And so many people are left behind. I'm here to tell you: no more. It's not right, it's never been right. It's time to admit that the playbook that guided businesses and CEOs for the last 40 years is broken. (Applause) It tells you everything about business except how to be a noble leader. We need a new playbook. We need a new playbook that sees people again. That sees above and beyond profits. In the movies, they have a name for people who take a different path to do things right. They call them "antiheroes." I think we need the same idea in business. We need anti-CEOs, and we need an anti-CEO playbook. So let me tell you about what this anti-CEO playbook is all about. An anti-CEO playbook is about gratitude. Today's business book says: business exists to maximize profit for the shareholders. I think that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life. (Laughter) In reality, business should take care of their employees first. (Applause) You know, a few years ago, when we announced that we are giving shares to all our 2,000 employees, some people said it's PR, some said it's a gift. I said, it's not a gift. I watched it, I've been part of it. They earned it with their talent and with their hard work, and I don't see any other way. The new way of business — it's your employees you take care of first. Not the profits. The new anti-CEO playbook is about community. Today, the businesses that have it all ask communities, "What kind of tax breaks and incentives can you give me?" The reality is, businesses should go to the struggling communities and ask, "How can I help you?" (Applause) When we wanted to build our second yogurt plant, Idaho was on nobody's radar screen. It was too rural, too far away, didn't have much incentives. So I went there. I met with the local people, I met with the farmers. We shook hands, we broke bread. I said, "I want to build it right here." I don't need to see financial studies. And the result — its community is thriving. There's new schools that open every year. New food companies are coming up every year. And they told me, "You're not going to find any trained workers here." I said, "It's OK, we'll teach them." We partnered with the local community college, and while we were building the plant, we trained hundreds of hundreds of people for advanced manufacturing. And today, our factory is one of the largest yogurt plants in the world. (Applause) The new way of business — communities. Go search for communities that you can be part of. Ask for permission. And be with them, open the walls and succeed together. The anti-CEO playbook is about responsibility. Today's playbook says, the businesses should stay out of politics. The reality is businesses, as citizens, must take a side. When we were growing in New York and looking for more people to hire, I remembered that in Utica, an hour away, there were refugees from Southeast Asia and Africa, who were looking for a place to work. "They don't speak English," someone told me. I said, "I don't really, either. Let's get translators." (Laughter) "They don't have transportation." I said, "Let's get buses, it's not a rocket science." Today, in one of America's rural areas, 30 percent of the Chobani workforce are immigrants and refugees. (Applause) (Cheers) And it changed us for better. The new way of business — it's business, not government, in the best position to make a change in today's world: in gun violence, in climate change, in income inequality, in refugees, in race. It's business that must take a side. (Applause) And lastly, an anti-CEO playbook is about accountability. Today's playbook says, the CEO reports to the corporate boards. In my opinion, CEO reports to consumer. In the first few years of Chobani, the 1-800 number on the cup was my personal number. (Laughter) When somebody called and wrote, I responded personally. Sometimes I made changes based on what I heard, because consumer is in power. That's the reason the business exists. It's you — every single one of you is in power to make changes today. If you don't like the brand and the companies, what they are doing with their business, you can throw them into the garbage can. And if you see the ones that are doing it right, you can reward them. In the end, this is all in our responsibility. The new way of business — it's the consumer we report to, not to the corporate boards. You see, if you are right with your people, if you are right with your community, if you are right with your product, you will be more profitable, you will be more innovative, you will have more passionate people working for you and a community that supports you. And that's what the anti-CEO playbook is all about. The treasure that I found in that factory — dignity of work, strength of character, human spirit — is what we need to unleash all across the world. Brothers and sisters, there are people and places all around the world left out and left behind. But their spirit is still strong. They just want another chance, they want someone to give them a chance again, not to just build it back, but build it better than before. And this is the difference between return on investment and return on kindness. This is the difference between profit and true wealth. And if it can happen in a small town in upstate New York and Idaho, it can happen in every city and town and village across the world. This is not the time to build walls, this is a time to start painting the walls. I leave the colors all up to you. Thank you so much. (Applause) |
Why incompetent people think they're amazing | null | TED-Ed | Are you as good at things as you think you are? How good are you at managing money? What about reading people's emotions? How healthy are you compared to other people you know? Are you better than average at grammar? Knowing how competent we are and how are skill stack up against other people's is more than a self-esteem boost. It helps us figure out when we can forge ahead on our own decisions and instincts and when we need, instead, to seek out advice. But psychological research suggests that we're not very good at evaluating ourselves accurately. In fact, we frequently overestimate our own abilities. Researchers have a name for this phenomena, the Dunning-Kruger effect. This effect explains why more than 100 studies have shown that people display illusory superiority. We judge ourselves as better than others to a degree that violates the laws of math. When software engineers at two companies were asked to rate their performance, 32% of the engineers at one company and 42% at the other put themselves in the top 5%. In another study, 88% of American drivers described themselves as having above average driving skills. These aren't isolated findings. On average, people tend to rate themselves better than most in disciplines ranging from health, leadership skills, ethics, and beyond. What's particularly interesting is that those with the least ability are often the most likely to overrate their skills to the greatest extent. People measurably poor at logical reasoning, grammar, financial knowledge, math, emotional intelligence, running medical lab tests, and chess all tend to rate their expertise almost as favorably as actual experts do. So who's most vulnerable to this delusion? Sadly, all of us because we all have pockets of incompetence we don't recognize. But why? When psychologists Dunning and Kruger first described the effect in 1999, they argued that people lacking knowledge and skill in particular areas suffer a double curse. First, they make mistakes and reach poor decisions. But second, those same knowledge gaps also prevent them from catching their errors. In other words, poor performers lack the very expertise needed to recognize how badly they're doing. For example, when the researchers studied participants in a college debate tournament, the bottom 25% of teams in preliminary rounds lost nearly four out of every five matches. But they thought they were winning almost 60%. WIthout a strong grasp of the rules of debate, the students simply couldn't recognize when or how often their arguments broke down. The Dunning-Kruger effect isn't a question of ego blinding us to our weaknesses. People usually do admit their deficits once they can spot them. In one study, students who had initially done badly on a logic quiz and then took a mini course on logic were quite willing to label their original performances as awful. That may be why people with a moderate amount of experience or expertise often have less confidence in their abilities. They know enough to know that there's a lot they don't know. Meanwhile, experts tend to be aware of just how knowledgeable they are. But they often make a different mistake: they assume that everyone else is knowledgeable, too. The result is that people, whether they're inept or highly skilled, are often caught in a bubble of inaccurate self-perception. When they're unskilled, they can't see their own faults. When they're exceptionally competent, they don't perceive how unusual their abilities are. So if the Dunning-Kruger effect is invisible to those experiencing it, what can you do to find out how good you actually are at various things? First, ask for feedback from other people, and consider it, even if it's hard to hear. Second, and more important, keep learning. The more knowledgeable we become, the less likely we are to have invisible holes in our competence. Perhaps it all boils down to that old proverb: When arguing with a fool, first make sure the other person isn't doing the same thing. |
How I turned my Tourette's tics into art | {0: "Jess Thom is a comedian known for Touretteshero, a project aimed at increasing awareness of Tourette's Syndrome."} | TEDxAlbertopolis | Hello (biscuit) I'm Jess Thom, (biscuit) I'm an artist (biscuit) and part-time superhero. (biscuit, biscuit) I have Tourette's syndrome (biscuit) a neurological condition (biscuit) that causes involuntary (biscuit) movements and noises called tics. (biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit) There are three things (biscuit) you need to know straight away. (biscuit) Firstly, (biscuit) you're going to hear the words "biscuit" and "hedgehog" a lot in the next few minutes. (Laughter) (biscuit, biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit) Secondly, (biscuit) several times a day, (biscuit) my ticks suddenly intensify (biscuit) to a point where I completely lose control (biscuit) of my body and speech. These episodes, which I call ticcing fits (biscuit) look seizure like, and need similar management. If this happens while I'm speaking, (biscuit) my support worker will come and help me (biscuit) and Daniel will take over. (biscuit, hedgehog) Finally, (biscuit, biscuit) if I tic something funny (biscuit) you're absolutely allowed to laugh. (biscuit) In fact, it'll be a bit odd if you don't. (biscuit, hedgehog) I'm going to start by giving you a brief introduction to Tourette's, (biscuit) one of the most misunderstood conditions on the planet. (biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit) Lot's of people have heard of Tourette's (biscuit) but most of what they know is based on myths and stereotypes. Let's get some of these out of the way now. (biscuit) Swearing. Tourette's is often characterized as the swearing disease. But in fact, coprolalia (biscuit) the (biscuit) the technical name (biscuit) for ticced, for ticced, for obscene tics (biscuit) affects only 10% of people with the condition. (biscuit) I'm one of them (biscuit) but (biscuit) but for me tic swearing makes up only a tiny fraction of what I say involuntarily. (hedgehog, biscuit) Tourette's isn't a rare condition. (biscuit, hedgehog) It's estimated to effect (biscuit) 300,000 people in the UK alone. (biscuit) It impacts each person differently. (biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit, cat sex pajamas, biscuit) So (biscuit) (Laughter) (Aladdin, biscuit, Aladdin died) He doesn't really, don't worry. (biscuit, biscuit) (Laughter) (hedgehog, biscuit) Some people's tics (biscuit, biscuit) will be barely noticeable, (biscuit) while others will behave in a way that makes them stand out. (biscuit) Everyone with Tourette's (biscuit) will have multiple motor tics, and at least one vocal tic. (biscuit) These (biscuit) these can be as simple as blinking. or as complex as jumping, or saying things like: "The history of Iguanas can be written in a tea pot." (biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit) Tourette's isn't saying what's on your mind. (biscuit) I don't think about biscuits nearly as much as I talk about them. (Laughter) (biscuit, hedgehog) (Aladdin, biscuit, hedgehog) (Applause) (biscuit) Anything (biscuit) I've ever known or experienced has the potential to become a tic. (biscuit, hedgehog) Search (biscuit) search for Tourette's online (biscuit) and you'll get simplistic definitions (biscuit) that never really convey (biscuit) the experience of having it. (biscuit) My sister found a description in the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine. (biscuit) It says: "Tourette's is (biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit, biscuit) expl (biscuit, biscuit, biscuit, biscuit) explo (biscuit) Explosive, occasionally obscene verbal ejaculations and gestures." It goes on: "There may be a witty, innovatory, phantasmagorical picture with mimicry, antics (biscuit) and playfulness." That's the Tourette's I recognize. (hedgehog, biscuit) I've had tics since I was six. (biscuit, hey, biscuit) As a child (biscuit) they were milder and less noticeable. (biscuit) Then in my early twenties, (biscuit) they began to intensify, and have a bigger impact on my life. In 2010 I co-founded (biscuit) Touretteshero. (biscuit, hey, biscuit) An organization (biscuit) that celebrates the humor and creativity of Tourette's. (biscuit) Before starting Touretteshero, (biscuit) I found it hard to talk about Tourette's without tears. A single phrase shifted my thinking. (biscuit) My friend Matthew (biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit) described my tics (biscuit) as a crazy language-generating machine. (biscuit) He told me (biscuit) not doing something creative with them (biscuit) would be wasteful. This ide (biscuit) this idea took root and it helped me to see my tics as my power rather than my problem. (biscuit) Through Touretteshero, (biscuit) I can recast the symptoms of my condition (biscuit) as springboards for creativity. (biscuit, hedgehog) On the website (biscuit) I invite (biscuit, biscuit, biscuit) on the website (biscuit) I share over 5,000 of my vocal tics (biscuit) and invite anyone to make art in response. (biscuit, hedgehog) I propose (biscuit) that humor and creativity (biscuit) are key tools (biscuit) in encouraging people to think more deeply about an often (biscuit) mocked condition. (biscuit) Put simply, (biscuit) Touretteshero's mission is to change the world, one tic at a time. (hedgehog, biscuit, biscuit, biscuit) Since the outset (biscuit) one of the big aims (biscuit, biscuit, biscuit) has been to use the creativity and spontaneity of Tourette's (biscuit) to capture the imaginations (biscuit) of scientists and academics (biscuit) and encourage (biscuit) new generations of researchers (biscuit) to take an interest in the condition. (Aladdin, biscuit) and (Aladdin, biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit) I believe (biscuit) that innovative approaches (biscuit, biscuit) have an important role to play (biscuit) in promoting increased (biscuit, biscuit) increased discussion and that collaboration across disciplines (biscuit) offers opportunities for new understanding and thinking. (biscuit) It's easy to see (biscuit) how vocal tics with their vivid imagery (biscuit) can be illustrated. (biscuit, biscuit) Or how the movements of motor tics could be choreographed into dance. But what about the most distressing and debilitating aspects of Tourette's? (biscuit) Can these be given over for transformation? (biscuit, hedgehog) I don't just think they can, to me it's really important that they are. (biscuit) By far, one of the most difficult aspects of Tourette's for me (biscuit) is my ticcing fits. (biscuit) While these aren't a classic par (biscuit, biscuit) while these aren't part of the classic presentation, (biscuit) they are experienced by others with the condition. (hedgehog, biscuit) These episodes (biscuit) have been happening on and off for several years. (biscuit, biscuit) But since October 2011, they've been a feature of my daily life. (biscuit, biscuit) They happen several times (biscuit) in any 24 hours period (biscuit) and could last from just a few minutes, to several hours. (hedgehog, biscuit) They can happen anywhere (biscuit, biscuit) regardless of where I am, or what I'm doing. (biscuit) Whether I'm at work, on a bus (biscuit, haa) or fast asleep. I've had fits in front of sunsets and in the pouring rain. (biscuit) To.. (biscuit) To... (biscuit) To explain what happens during these episodes (biscuit) I often use the analogy of a fruit machine. (biscuit) A number of different things (biscuit) can happen but the mix of what turns up in each fit is completely random. (biscuit) The key elements (biscuit) are loss of speech, (biscuit) fast, frequent movement of my arms, legs and stomach, (biscuit, biscuit) Dystonic tics that make (biscuit) that make my muscles go tense (biscuit) and my body lock up, (biscuit) a deeply unpleasant choking tic (biscuit) and a very painful gaping of my jaw. (cat sex pajamas, hello, biscuit, biscuit) (Laughs) (hello, hedgehog, biscuit, biscuit) I'm imagining you all in bikinis. (hedgehog) (Laughter) (biscuit) Not really. (hedgehog, biscuit) My support workers record (biscuit) information about each fit. (biscuit, hedgehog) Where it hap... (biscuit) The start and end time, (biscuit, biscuit) the severity, where it happened and what elements were present. (biscuit) I gave a year's worth of this data (biscuit) to doctor (biscuit) Thomas (biscuit) Doctor Thomas Mitchell and Professor Joseph Hyde. (biscuit) Tom's a music technologist and lecturer (biscuit) at UWE (biscuit, hey, biscuit, biscuit) and Joe's (Batman's cousin) (biscuit) and (biscuit, biscuit, biscuit) and (biscuit) and Joe's a composer (biscuit) and (biscuit) and professor of creative music technology at Bath Spa University. They have turned this data (biscuit) into a sound piece (biscuit) by attributing sonic characteristics to the information generated by my (biscuit) by my fits. (biscuit, hedgehog) Here is an extract from this (biscuit) from this piece that represents two months (hedgehog, Aladdin) (Various sounds) (Various sounds) (bop, bop, bop, clink) (Various sounds) (biscuit) (Various sounds) (tada!) (Various sounds) (biscuit) (Various sounds) (biscuit, brup brup) (Various sounds) (ting!, hedgehog, biscuit, biscuit) (Various sounds) (hedgehog, biscuit, yay) (Various sounds) (hedgehog, Aladdin) (Various sounds) (biscuit, biscuit) (Various sounds) (biscuit, biscuit, cats) (Various sounds) (bop bop, sexy cat, biscuit) (Various sounds) (hedgehog) (Various sounds) (biscuit, hedgehog, dada!) (Various sounds) (biscuit) (Sounds end) (biscuit, biscuit) this (biscuit) this collaboration (biscuit, biscuit) is an expression of an idea (biscuit) at the heart of Tourette's syndrome. (biscuit, biscuit) But even the most challenging aspects of the condition (biscuit) have created potential. Utilizing this can help unlock new ways (biscuit) of seeing and understanding (biscuit) complex experiences. But most importantly, it can help open minds. (biscuit) My challenge to you (biscuit) is to make good use of your own powers. My invitation is to enjoy and share in mine. (biscuit) Together (biscuit) we can change attitudes (biscuit) and replace misconceptions (biscuit) with understanding. (biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit, Aladdin, biscuit) We can encourage more people, we can make interesting art along the way, (biscuit) and we can encourage more people to contributing to (biscuit) to unraveling (biscuit, biscuit) the mysteries of Tourette's (biscuit) the mind (biscuit) and the alchemy of chaos. And the biscuits (hedgehog) (Laughter) (biscuit, hedgehog, Aladdin) (Applause) (biscuit) (Applause) |
What surviving the Columbine shooting taught me about pain | {0: 'Austin Eubanks was a nationally recognized speaker on addiction recovery.'} | TEDxMileHigh | Do you remember where you were on June 12th, 2016? A few of you might, but I'm betting the vast majority probably don't. On June 12th, 2016, a lone gunman walked into Pulse Nightclub, killing 46 people in the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history. Now let's go back about a decade. How about August 29th, 2005. Do you remember where you were? We've got a few heads nodding out there. That was Hurricane Katrina. Over 1,800 dead in the costliest natural disaster ever to hit the North American continent. Now let's go back another few years and go for 100 percent recognition. Do you remember where you were on September 11th, 2001? Everybody's head nodding now. The September 11th attacks left over 3,000 dead in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. Do you remember how you felt? Were you confused? Afraid? Did you feel sick? Were you vulnerable? Every time this happens, we're becoming more and more desensitized. We frequently see news coverage of mass shootings, natural disasters that result in enormous loss of life, terrorist attacks, and then we change the channel to watch something more friendly. This is the society that we live in today, but the impact of these traumatic events are no less serious on those who are directly affected, and now the impact of emotional pain on our society is more problematic than ever. Do you remember where you were on April 20th, 1999? Two students walked into Columbine High School armed with shotguns, semi-automatic rifles, and a bevy of homemade explosives, killing 12 students and a teacher, in what was, at the time, the worst high school shooting in U.S. history. I remember where I was. I had just walked into the library with my best friend in order to meet others preparing to go to lunch. Moments later, a teacher ran through the same doors we'd just entered yelling for everyone to get under the tables; that somebody had a gun. I remember how I felt. I was confused. I was afraid. I felt sick. And I was vulnerable. And just minutes later, I was playing dead underneath a table next to a pool of blood. I had just been shot, and I had witnessed my best friend murdered right in front of me as we were huddled together waiting for help to come. I was broken. I was in shock, and I was in pain. But my understanding of pain that day was nothing like my understanding of pain today. What's the first thing you think of when you think of pain? Is it a broken arm? Headache? Sprained ankle? Maybe a gunshot wound? Those are the things that I used to associate with pain, and they're pretty in line with the medical definition of pain: A variably unpleasant sensation associated with actual or potential tissue damage and mediated by specific nerve fibers to the brain where its conscious appreciation may be modified by various factors. Do you notice anything missing from that definition? Do you see any mention of the emotional components of pain? Me neither. In 1996, the American Pain Society introduced the phrase, "Pain is the fifth vital sign," meaning that when you walked into an emergency room, the initial assessment of your condition was based on five data points: pulse rate, temperature, respiration rate, blood pressure, and pain. This was brought about by a cultural movement that was adamant that we were under-treating pain. And patient satisfaction surveys were put in place in order to track the outcome and effectiveness of this new implementation. And what better way to promote these new policies than to tie physician and hospital compensation to patient satisfaction? A recent survey by the industry group Physicians Practice reports that three out of ten doctors are paid bonuses based upon patient satisfaction surveys, and hospitals with better scores receive bigger payments from insurers. Naturally, administrators and physicians began to support this new movement with the goal being to get everyone's pain to zero on the scale. That was the mark. The ethical dilemma immediately became, "Do I issue this person narcotics in order to keep them happy, or deny them, and potentially hurt my compensation, the revenue of the hospital, or at worst, open myself up to a grievance for under-treating pain that could potentially result in the loss of my job?" I have experience with pain. Less than an hour after scrambling out the back door of the Columbine High School library, I was medicated on a variety of substances that were intended to sedate and to relieve pain. I was 17 years old and I'd never drank a beer or smoked weed, much less anything harder. I had no idea of what these medications were even supposed to do. All I knew at age 17 was that a lot of highly educated people had prescribed me medications that were intended to make me feel better and they were working, only not in the fashion that they were intended. Now if you only remember one thing from my talk today, let it be this: Opioids are profoundly more effective at relieving the symptoms of emotional pain than they are at relieving the symptoms of physical pain. I often think back to my pain that day and if I were to rate it on the pain scale, my physical pain would've been a three or a four, and that was likely the response I offered when I was asked. But my emotional pain was an absolute ten. I was in agony beyond comprehension. But that was never asked; it was never talked about. Acute physical pain ends relatively quick; complex emotional pain does not. My physical pain had subsided in just a matter of days but my emotional pain was just as debilitating as it was lying in the hospital bed that day, so I continued taking the medication that was prescribed for my pain. I was addicted before I even knew what was happening. A recent survey by the American Society of Addiction Medicine reports that 86 percent of heroin users began by taking prescription opioids. And in 2012 alone, over 259 million opioid prescriptions were filled in the U.S. That is more than enough to give every American adult their own bottle of pills. I very quickly began drug-seeking in order to soothe my emotional pain and it was only a matter of months before the prescriptions had turned to alcohol, marijuana, and elicit narcotics. And as addiction always does, over the course of the next decade, my tolerance continued to build, my life continued to be unmanageable, and my emotional pain stayed unresolved. It was like I had pressed a pause button on my emotional growth. I was managing my pain in the only way I knew how, and I wasn't alone. I believe that emotional pain is what's driving the addiction epidemic. Think of someone you know who struggles with addiction. I'm betting you can point to an element of unaddressed or unresolved emotional pain in that person. Now think of a time you were in intense emotional pain and how desperate you were to stop it. What if you had been offered an immediate route to feeling better. Imagine for a moment breaking your leg in an avalanche. Now that injury alone can be a fairly traumatic experience, but it's manageable. With short term pain management, most would make a full recovery. But now imagine sustaining that exact same injury, only this time your close friend was skiing next to you, and they didn't make it out of the avalanche alive. It seems so crystal clear to me that there would be two very different pain management strategies for what would appear to be an identical physiological injury, only there's not. Emotional pain is toxic, it's pervasive, and society has programmed us to avoid it. We medicate with alcohol and drugs, sex and pornography, even television and technology, and oftentimes, we're doing this without even knowing it. Our society is literally being defined by this pain. And now, more and more people are dying every month because they're looking for solace in the only way they know how. It's the way they were programmed. Everyone has pain; it's unavoidable. And I have a simple summary for how we got here. We built a society that is filled with emotional pain and trauma. We combined that with a healthcare system that's intended to primarily treat physiological symptoms, and then we put Big Pharma in the driver's seat, aimed directly at profits with regulations that are easy to manipulate. And now we're in the midst of what the former Surgeon General called the worst public health crisis the nation has ever seen - two years ago. It has since worsened, and what was then the addiction epidemic is now commonly referred to as the addiction pandemic. And here's a glimpse of where we're at today. The New York Times reported last month that overdose deaths rose by 19 percent in 2016, and preliminary data for 2017 shows that this trend is only worsening. We've now far surpassed the worst years ever recorded for deaths caused by guns, AIDS, and automobile accidents. This data is appalling to me. There are people in our society today who will still write this off under the guise of, "They're just a bunch of junkies." Well, I'm here to tell you ... they're not. They're fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, they're children, sometimes not even in their teens. They're people just like you and me, trying to cope in the only way they know how, and they're dying by the thousands every single month at an ever-increasing rate. Addiction is the only disease where we commonly wait until it's at the highest levels of acuity before we try to do something about it. And by then, it's often too late. We have to start sooner. We have to practice early interventions. We have to educate youth with real world methods. We have to stop thinking that people can be rehabilitated in thirty days, and then we have to improve accessibility to long-term treatment. We have to eliminate the stigma associated with addiction and most importantly, we have to reform a broken healthcare system that is slowly coming to terms with the fact that they are responsible for this pandemic. (Applause) (Cheers) It took me over a decade of active addiction and many more in recovery before I finally learned the difference between feeling better and actually being better. Because I had to learn to lean into the pain. I had to quit looking for the fast road to relief. I had to do the emotional work that needed to be done no matter how much it hurt. And after multiple attempts at short-term treatment, I finally found a willingness to do whatever it took, and I stayed in a continuum of care for 14 consecutive months in order to figure it out. I had to go through the stages of grief that I should've been going through at age 17, at age 29. But I refused to keep running, and it worked. (Applause) Fortunately for us, there is such a thing as post-traumatic growth, and you're witnessing that on the stage before you today. Post-traumatic growth is defined as the positive psychological change that can occur in a person after they've experienced a traumatic life event. It implies that by finding a way to endure through significant suffering, you can actually have meaningful development of personal character and elevate yourself to a higher level of functioning. But achieving post-traumatic growth requires that you lean into the pain. You can't run from it. You can't medicate it. So now I have a challenge for you. Take an audit of your current level of emotional pain. Do you have grief or heartache that you aren't dealing with? Has something traumatic happened to you that you haven't healed from? If so, take a step towards addressing this pain. Call a friend, talk to a therapist, just speak your truth to a stranger. Take one small step to shed light on this darkness because I've seen what darkness can do. I've seen it in hospital rooms when just one more didn't end up the way it was intended. I've seen it in jails with people who were born addicted and never had a chance to learn anything else. I've seen it at funerals for children who died before they ever had a chance to truly live. And I've seen it from underneath a table in the library of my high school. I want to leave you all with something that I wish I had known at age 17. Whoever you are, whatever you're going through, in whatever way you might be going through it, just know this: in order to heal it, you have to feel it. We're not going to solve the addiction pandemic overnight but we will make progress when people start to understand the difference between physical and emotional pain, and then choose to do something about it. In recovery, we often say, you keep what you have by giving it away. Find the courage to lean into the pain, and you can be a force in helping others. Thank you. (Applause) |
The Infinite Hotel Paradox | null | TED-Ed | In the 1920's, the German mathematician David Hilbert devised a famous thought experiment to show us just how hard it is to wrap our minds around the concept of infinity. Imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and a very hardworking night manager. One night, the Infinite Hotel is completely full, totally booked up with an infinite number of guests. A man walks into the hotel and asks for a room. Rather than turn him down, the night manager decides to make room for him. How? Easy, he asks the guest in room number 1 to move to room 2, the guest in room 2 to move to room 3, and so on. Every guest moves from room number "n" to room number "n+1". Since there are an infinite number of rooms, there is a new room for each existing guest. This leaves room 1 open for the new customer. The process can be repeated for any finite number of new guests. If, say, a tour bus unloads 40 new people looking for rooms, then every existing guest just moves from room number "n" to room number "n+40", thus, opening up the first 40 rooms. But now an infinitely large bus with a countably infinite number of passengers pulls up to rent rooms. countably infinite is the key. Now, the infinite bus of infinite passengers perplexes the night manager at first, but he realizes there's a way to place each new person. He asks the guest in room 1 to move to room 2. He then asks the guest in room 2 to move to room 4, the guest in room 3 to move to room 6, and so on. Each current guest moves from room number "n" to room number "2n" — filling up only the infinite even-numbered rooms. By doing this, he has now emptied all of the infinitely many odd-numbered rooms, which are then taken by the people filing off the infinite bus. Everyone's happy and the hotel's business is booming more than ever. Well, actually, it is booming exactly the same amount as ever, banking an infinite number of dollars a night. Word spreads about this incredible hotel. People pour in from far and wide. One night, the unthinkable happens. The night manager looks outside and sees an infinite line of infinitely large buses, each with a countably infinite number of passengers. What can he do? If he cannot find rooms for them, the hotel will lose out on an infinite amount of money, and he will surely lose his job. Luckily, he remembers that around the year 300 B.C.E., Euclid proved that there is an infinite quantity of prime numbers. So, to accomplish this seemingly impossible task of finding infinite beds for infinite buses of infinite weary travelers, the night manager assigns every current guest to the first prime number, 2, raised to the power of their current room number. So, the current occupant of room number 7 goes to room number 2^7, which is room 128. The night manager then takes the people on the first of the infinite buses and assigns them to the room number of the next prime, 3, raised to the power of their seat number on the bus. So, the person in seat number 7 on the first bus goes to room number 3^7 or room number 2,187. This continues for all of the first bus. The passengers on the second bus are assigned powers of the next prime, 5. The following bus, powers of 7. Each bus follows: powers of 11, powers of 13, powers of 17, etc. Since each of these numbers only has 1 and the natural number powers of their prime number base as factors, there are no overlapping room numbers. All the buses' passengers fan out into rooms using unique room-assignment schemes based on unique prime numbers. In this way, the night manager can accommodate every passenger on every bus. Although, there will be many rooms that go unfilled, like room 6, since 6 is not a power of any prime number. Luckily, his bosses weren't very good in math, so his job is safe. The night manager's strategies are only possible because while the Infinite Hotel is certainly a logistical nightmare, it only deals with the lowest level of infinity, mainly, the countable infinity of the natural numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on. Georg Cantor called this level of infinity aleph-zero. We use natural numbers for the room numbers as well as the seat numbers on the buses. If we were dealing with higher orders of infinity, such as that of the real numbers, these structured strategies would no longer be possible as we have no way to systematically include every number. The Real Number Infinite Hotel has negative number rooms in the basement, fractional rooms, so the guy in room 1/2 always suspects he has less room than the guy in room 1. Square root rooms, like room radical 2, and room pi, where the guests expect free dessert. What self-respecting night manager would ever want to work there even for an infinite salary? But over at Hilbert's Infinite Hotel, where there's never any vacancy and always room for more, the scenarios faced by the ever-diligent and maybe too hospitable night manager serve to remind us of just how hard it is for our relatively finite minds to grasp a concept as large as infinity. Maybe you can help tackle these problems after a good night's sleep. But honestly, we might need you to change rooms at 2 a.m. |
How I define beauty | {0: 'Winnie Harlow (born Chantelle Brown-Young) is a Canadian fashion model and activist. '} | TEDxTeen | I wanted to start off by asking a question to everyone in the room, and you can take a minute to think about this question. I wanted to ask what do you find most beautiful? And not in the world, like butterflies and flowers, but in a person. What do you find the most attractive in a person? Is it eyes? Do you like pretty eyes? Blue eyes? Curly hair? Long nails? Big feet? Some people like big feet. What is it about people that we find attractive? I think that the way that we think of beauty comes from different things like: social media, the Internet, magazines, especially, if that's coming from a model. I feel like those are kind of what define beauty today. And personally to me, I feel that beauty is in everything. Some people may say that big feet are not cute, but there's going to be a pair of shoes that will look better on my size 9 feet than a size 6 foot. So, I find that there could be beauty in everything. For example, I love your dreads! They are amazing. Your gorgeous hair, Talia. Oh, my god! I wish I could get mine to be that big. Sir, with the shiny bold head, I think that this is amazing. That sheen, perfect! As you can see, I find beauty in everything. And, of course: "I find beauty in everything" is super duper cliche. Like beauty in everything. I don't think everyone thinks that there is beauty in everything, but the reason why I feel that there is beauty in everything is because when I was young, I was picked on for something that today I feel is amazing. One thing about me connects millions of people around the world. And that is something I think you can probably see, it's my skin condition, it's called vitiligo. And vitiligo is basically my immune system that feels that my melanin which is what makes color in your skin, thinks that my melanin is a disease, something similar to the common cold, so it fights it off, and that makes my skin turn white. I was singled out because of this skin condition. I was bullied. I was alienated. Even by people who didn't mean to alienate me. For example: we would, like everyone does, take family pictures, and my mom would bring a little top of makeup, and it was her makeup. My mom is not the same skin color as me, she's much darker than I am. So, could you imagine me having a dark paste of face, and the rest of me as like brown, white? I obviously didn't feel comfortable, but my mom was trying to make me feel comfortable. I was alienated. In school, I changed school in about grade 3, grade 2 and it's already hard to make friends when you change school especially at such a young age, but luckily I found two girls who were willing to play with me. They didn't really know who I was, but they wanted to play, they wanted to check me out and see if I was one of the cool kids. And after a few weeks of being in that school and having those friends, all of the sudden, I didn't have them. And I was kind of confused as to why I was struggling to make friends. I finally did and now, where did they go? They would avoid me at recess, they would avoid me at lunch, and I finally went up to them one day and was like, "Guys, what's going on? Why aren't you talking to me anymore?" They said to me, "We can't talk to you anymore, sorry. Our parents said that we might catch your skin condition." Can you imagine how that made me feel in grade 2, grade 3? That hurt. I was alienated, I was embarrassed, to be honest. I didn't know what this skin condition was in grade 2 or grade 3. I wasn't asked if I wanted this skin condition. I didn't ask for it, yet I was alienated for it. But here's the thing, when I got a little bit older, I didn't want to be in that position anymore, I didn't want to be bullied. So rather that taking myself out of the position, what did I do? I became the bully. And it's not better on one side than the other. I can tell you, because I've been on both sides. I didn't want to be bullied anymore so I kind of took lead with those people who were bullying and I said, "Cool, those are going to be my friends now because I don't want to be bullied, or on this side of the spectrum. So I guess the only side is to be on this side, this must be the good side." So I decided to go to that side. I would pick on kids. I would be like, "So ugly your hair!" "Ugh, who did that?" "Rude, right?" But I came to a realization that I was trying to put myself into a mold that I didn't fit. I mean, who's to say that I'm supposed to fit in a mold anyway? I can make my own. So, I decided that I was going to take myself away from this side and away from this side, and make my own side, and fit myself a new mold. And that mold is so cliche, but I feel that there is beauty in everything. So, I just want to put this idea in your head, that it takes one person to realize that there is beauty in everything. And you don't have to be on one side of the spectrum or the other side of the spectrum, or fit into someone's mold, your mom's mold, whoever's mold that you are trying to fit into. Be your own person. Know for yourself what beauty is rather than looking to a magazine or to even me for what beauty is. Know it in your heart, and make your own mold for what beauty is. (Applause) |
My identity is a superpower -- not an obstacle | {0: 'America Ferrera believes stories have the power to make people better. She uses her voice to speak up for more humanity and justice in the world.'} | TED2019 | On the red tiles in my family's den I would dance and sing to the made-for-TV movie "Gypsy," starring Bette Midler. (Singing) "I had a dream. A wonderful dream, papa." I would sing it with the urgency and the burning desire of a nine-year-old who did, in fact, have a dream. My dream was to be an actress. And it's true that I never saw anyone who looked like me in television or in films, and sure, my family and friends and teachers all constantly warned me that people like me didn't make it in Hollywood. But I was an American. I had been taught to believe that anyone could achieve anything, regardless of the color of their skin, the fact that my parents immigrated from Honduras, the fact that I had no money. I didn't need my dream to be easy, I just needed it to be possible. And when I was 15, I got my first professional audition. It was a commercial for cable subscriptions or bail bonds, I don't really remember. (Laughter) What I do remember is that the casting director asked me, "Could you do that again, but just this time, sound more Latina." "Um, OK. So you want me to do it in Spanish?" I asked. "No, no, do it in English, just sound Latina." "Well, I am a Latina, so isn't this what a Latina sounds like?" There was a long and awkward silence, and then finally, "OK, sweetie, never mind, thank you for coming in, bye!" It took me most of the car ride home to realize that by "sound more Latina" she was asking me to speak in broken English. And I couldn't figure out why the fact that I was an actual, real-life, authentic Latina didn't really seem to matter. Anyway, I didn't get the job. I didn't get a lot of the jobs people were willing to see me for: the gang-banger's girlfriend, the sassy shoplifter, pregnant chola number two. (Laughter) These were the kinds of roles that existed for someone like me. Someone they looked at and saw as too brown, too fat, too poor, too unsophisticated. These roles were stereotypes and couldn't have been further from my own reality or from the roles I dreamt of playing. I wanted to play people who were complex and multidimensional, people who existed in the center of their own lives. Not cardboard cutouts that stood in the background of someone else's. But when I dared to say that to my manager — that's the person I pay to help me find opportunity — his response was, "Someone has to tell that girl she has unrealistic expectations." And he wasn't wrong. I mean, I fired him, but he wasn't wrong. (Laughter) (Applause) Because whenever I did try to get a role that wasn't a poorly written stereotype, I would hear, "We're not looking to cast this role diversely." Or, "We love her, but she's too specifically ethnic." Or, "Unfortunately, we already have one Latino in this movie." I kept receiving the same message again and again and again. That my identity was an obstacle I had to overcome. And so I thought, "Come at me, obstacle. I'm an American. My name is America. I trained my whole life for this, I'll just follow the playbook, I'll work harder." And so I did, I worked my hardest to overcome all the things that people said were wrong with me. I stayed out of the sun so that my skin wouldn't get too brown, I straightened my curls into submission. I constantly tried to lose weight, I bought fancier and more expensive clothes. All so that when people looked at me, they wouldn't see a too fat, too brown, too poor Latina. They would see what I was capable of. And maybe they would give me a chance. And in an ironic twist of fate, when I finally did get a role that would make all my dreams come true, it was a role that required me to be exactly who I was. Ana in "Real Women Have Curves" was a brown, poor, fat Latina. I had never seen anyone like her, anyone like me, existing in the center of her own life story. I traveled throughout the US and to multiple countries with this film where people, regardless of their age, ethnicity, body type, saw themselves in Ana. A 17-year-old chubby Mexican American girl struggling against cultural norms to fulfill her unlikely dream. In spite of what I had been told my whole life, I saw firsthand that people actually did want to see stories about people like me. And that my unrealistic expectations to see myself authentically represented in the culture were other people’s expectations, too. "Real Women Have Curves" was a critical, cultural and financial success. "Great," I thought, "We did it! We proved our stories have value. Things are going to change now." But I watched as very little happened. There was no watershed. No one in the industry was rushing to tell more stories about the audience that was hungry and willing to pay to see them. Four years later, when I got to play Ugly Betty, I saw the same phenomenon play out. "Ugly Betty" premiered in the US to 16 million viewers and was nominated for 11 Emmys in its first year. (Applause) But in spite of "Ugly Betty's" success, there would not be another television show led by a Latina actress on American television for eight years. It's been 12 years since I became the first and only Latina to ever win an Emmy in a lead category. That is not a point of pride. That is a point of deep frustration. Not because awards prove our worth, but because who we see thriving in the world teaches us how to see ourselves, how to think about our own value, how to dream about our futures. And anytime I begin to doubt that, I remember that there was a little girl, living in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. And somehow, she got her hands on some DVDs of an American television show in which she saw her own dream of becoming a writer reflected. In her autobiography, Malala wrote, "I had become interested in journalism after seeing how my own words could make a difference and also from watching the "Ugly Betty" DVDs about life at an American magazine." (Applause) For 17 years of my career, I have witnessed the power our voices have when they can access presence in the culture. I've seen it. I've lived it, we've all seen it. In entertainment, in politics, in business, in social change. We cannot deny it — presence creates possibility. But for the last 17 years, I've also heard the same excuses for why some of us can access presence in the culture and some of us can't. Our stories don't have an audience, our experiences won't resonate in the mainstream, our voices are too big a financial risk. Just a few years ago, my agent called to explain to me why I wasn't getting a role in a movie. He said, "They loved you and they really, really do want to cast diversely, but the movie isn't financeable until they cast the white role first." He delivered the message with a broken heart and with a tone that communicated, "I understand how messed up this is." But nonetheless, just like hundreds of times before, I felt the tears roll down my face. And the pang of rejection rise up in me and then the voice of shame scolding me, "You are a grown woman, stop crying over a job." I went through this process for years of accepting the failure as my own and then feeling deep shame that I couldn't overcome the obstacles. But this time, I heard a new voice. A voice that said, "I'm tired. I've had enough." A voice that understood my tears and my pain were not about losing a job. They were about what was actually being said about me. What had been said about me my whole life by executives and producers and directors and writers and agents and managers and teachers and friends and family. That I was a person of less value. I thought sunscreen and straightening irons would bring about change in this deeply entrenched value system. But what I realized in that moment was that I was never actually asking the system to change. I was asking it to let me in, and those aren't the same thing. I couldn't change what a system believed about me, while I believed what the system believed about me. And I did. I, like everyone around me, believed that it wasn't possible for me to exist in my dream as I was. And I went about trying to make myself invisible. What this revealed to me was that it is possible to be the person who genuinely wants to see change while also being the person whose actions keep things the way they are. And what it's led me to believe is that change isn't going to come by identifying the good guys and the bad guys. That conversation lets us all off the hook. Because most of us are neither one of those. Change will come when each of us has the courage to question our own fundamental values and beliefs. And then see to it that our actions lead to our best intentions. I am just one of millions of people who have been told that in order to fulfill my dreams, in order to contribute my talents to the world I have to resist the truth of who I am. I for one, am ready to stop resisting and to start existing as my full and authentic self. If I could go back and say anything to that nine-year-old, dancing in the den, dreaming her dreams, I would say, my identity is not my obstacle. My identity is my superpower. Because the truth is, I am what the world looks like. You are what the world looks like. Collectively, we are what the world actually looks like. And in order for our systems to reflect that, they don't have to create a new reality. They just have to stop resisting the one we already live in. Thank you. (Applause) |
What prosecutors and incarcerated people can learn from each other | {0: 'Jarrell Daniels brings policy makers together with community members to improve social challenges, particularly among youth.'} | TED Salon: Education Everywhere | When I look in the mirror today, I see a justice and education scholar at Columbia University, a youth mentor, an activist and a future New York state senator. (Cheering) I see all of that and a man who spent a quarter of his life in state prison — six years, to be exact, starting as a teenager on Rikers Island for an act that nearly cost a man his life. But what got me from there to here wasn't the punishment I faced as a teenager in adult prison or the harshness of our legal system. Instead, it was a learning environment of a classroom that introduced me to something I didn't think was possible for me or our justice system as a whole. A few weeks before my release on parole, a counselor encouraged me to enroll in a new college course being offered in the prison. It was called Inside Criminal Justice. That seems pretty straightforward, though, right? Well, it turns out, the class would be made up of eight incarcerated men and eight assistant district attorneys. Columbia University psychology professor Geraldine Downey and Manhattan Assistant DA Lucy Lang co-taught the course, and it was the first of its kind. I can honestly say this wasn't how I imagined starting college. My mind was blown from day one. I assumed all the prosecutors in the room would be white. But I remember walking into the room on the first day of class and seeing three black prosecutors and thinking to myself, "Wow, being a black prosecutor — that's a thing!" (Laughter) By the end of the first session, I was all in. In fact, a few weeks after my release, I found myself doing something I prayed I wouldn't. I walked right back into prison. But thankfully, this time it was just as a student, to join my fellow classmates. And this time, I got to go home when class was over. In the next session, we talked about what had brought each of us to this point of our lives and into the classroom together. I eventually got comfortable enough to reveal my truth to everyone in the room about where I came from. I talked about how my sisters and I watched our mother suffer years of abuse at the hands of our stepfather, escaping, only to find ourselves living in a shelter. I talked about how I swore an oath to my family to keep them safe. I even explained how I didn't feel like a teenager at 13, but more like a soldier on a mission. And like any soldier, this meant carrying an emotional burden on my shoulders, and I hate to say it, but a gun on my waist. And just a few days after my 17th birthday, that mission completely failed. As my sister and I were walking to the laundromat, a crowd stopped in front of us. Two girls out of nowhere attacked my sister. Still confused about what was happening, I tried to pull one girl away, and just as I did, I felt something brush across my face. With my adrenaline rushing, I didn't realize a man had leaped out of the crowd and cut me. As I felt warm blood ooze down my face, and watching him raise his knife toward me again, I turned to defend myself and pulled that gun from my waistband and squeezed the trigger. Thankfully, he didn't lose his life that day. My hands shaking and heart racing, I was paralyzed in fear. From that moment, I felt regret that would never leave me. I learned later on they attacked my sister in a case of mistaken identity, thinking she was someone else. It was terrifying, but clear that I wasn't trained, nor was I qualified, to be the soldier that I thought I needed to be. But in my neighborhood, I only felt safe carrying a weapon. Now, back in the classroom, after hearing my story, the prosecutors could tell I never wanted to hurt anyone. I just wanted us to make it home. I could literally see the gradual change in each of their faces as they heard story after story from the other incarcerated men in the room. Stories that have trapped many of us within the vicious cycle of incarceration, that most haven't been able to break free of. And sure — there are people who commit terrible crimes. But the stories of these individuals' lives before they commit those acts were the kinds of stories these prosecutors had never heard. And when it was their turn to speak — the prosecutors — I was surprised, too. They weren't emotionless drones or robocops, preprogrammed to send people to prison. They were sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. But most of all, they were good students. They were ambitious and motivated. And they believed that they could use the power of law to protect people. They were on a mission that I could definitely understand. Midway through the course, Nick, a fellow incarcerated student, poured out his concern that the prosecutors were tiptoeing around the racial bias and discrimination within our criminal justice system. Now, if you've ever been to prison, you would know it's impossible to talk about justice reform without talking about race. So we silently cheered for Nick and were eager to hear the prosecutors' response. And no, I don't remember who spoke first, but when Chauncey Parker, a senior prosecutor, agreed with Nick and said he was committed to ending the mass incarceration of people of color, I believed him. And I knew we were headed in the right direction. We now started to move as a team. We started exploring new possibilities and uncovering truths about our justice system and how real change happens for us. For me, it wasn't the mandatory programs inside of the prison. Instead, it was listening to the advice of elders — men who have been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison. These men helped me reframe my mindset around manhood. And they instilled in me all of their aspirations and goals, in the hopes that I would never return to prison, and that I would serve as their ambassador to the free world. As I talked, I could see the lights turning on for one prosecutor, who said something I thought was obvious: that I had transformed despite my incarceration and not because of it. It was clear these prosecutors hadn't thought much about what happens to us after they win a conviction. But through the simple process of sitting in a classroom, these lawyers started to see that keeping us locked up didn't benefit our community or us. Toward the end of the course, the prosecutors were excited, as we talked about our plans for life after being released. But they hadn't realized how rough it was actually going to be. I can literally still see the shock on one of the junior ADA's face when it hit her: the temporary ID given to us with our freedom displayed that we were just released from prison. She hadn't imagined how many barriers this would create for us as we reenter society. But I could also see her genuine empathy for the choice we had to make between coming home to a bed in a shelter or a couch in a relative's overcrowded apartment. What we learned in the class worked its way into concrete policy recommendations. We presented our proposals to the state Department of Corrections commissioner and to the Manhattan DA, at our graduation in a packed Columbia auditorium. As a team, I couldn't have imagined a more memorable way to conclude our eight weeks together. And just 10 months after coming home from prison, I again found myself in a strange room, invited by the commissioner of NYPD to share my perspective at a policing summit. And while speaking, I recognized a familiar face in the audience. It was the attorney who prosecuted my case. Seeing him, I thought about our days in the courtroom seven years earlier, as I listened to him recommend a long prison sentence, as if my young life was meaningless and had no potential. But this time, the circumstances were different. I shook off my thoughts and walked over to shake his hand. He looked happy to see me. Surprised, but happy. He acknowledged how proud he was about being in that room with me, and we began a conversation about working together to improve the conditions of our community. And so today, I carry all of these experiences with me, as I develop the Justice Ambassadors Youth Council at Columbia University, bringing young New Yorkers — some who have already spent time locked up and others who are still enrolled in high school — together with city officials. And in this classroom, everyone will brainstorm ideas about improving the lives of our city's most vulnerable youth before they get tried within the criminal justice system. This is possible if we do the work. Our society and justice system has convinced us that we can lock up our problems and punish our way out of social challenges. But that's not real. Imagine with me for a second a future where no one can become a prosecutor, a judge, a cop or even a parole officer without first sitting in a classroom to learn from and connect with the very people whose lives will be in their hands. I'm doing my part to promote the power of conversations and the need for collaborations. It is through education that we will arrive at a truth that is inclusive and unites us all in the pursuit of justice. For me, it was a brand-new conversation and a new kind of classroom that showed me how both my mindset and our criminal justice system could be transformed. They say the truth shall set you free. But I believe it's education and communication. Thank you. (Applause) |
The Chinese myth of the white snake and the meddling monk | null | TED-Ed | Xu Xian had just received yet another invitation to the opening ceremony of the new Jin Shan Temple. His wife, Bai Su Zhen, had warned him not to attend. Since she was in fact a benevolent white snake spirit in human form, their marriage had already weathered attacks by meddling monks. But devout Buddhist that he was, Xu Xian felt obligated to make an appearance. What they didn’t know was that these invitations had come from none other than Fa Hai– the misguided monk who had tried to separate the young lovers, almost killing Xu Xian in the process. The monk confronted Xu Xian, telling him that because he consorted with a demon, he must remain at the monastery and cleanse his soul. Xu Xian protested, but Fa Hai would not let him escape. At home, Bai Su Zhen was uneasy. Her husband had departed so quickly that she hadn’t been able to tell him she was pregnant with his child. And now he had been gone so long she sensed something must be wrong. She made her way to the temple, and upon encountering Fa Hai the monk threw his prayer mat, which erupted into fire and smoke. Weakened from her pregnancy, Bai Su Zhen desperately summoned a fleet of shrimp soldiers and crab generals to subdue the monk, and waves to put out the blaze. But the water also flooded the surrounding area, drowning many innocent villagers. For the first time, Bai Su Zhen had harmed humans, and she fell out of the gods’ favor. With their blessing retracted, Fa Hai attempted to trap her in his magical alms bowl. But just when all hope seemed lost, a bright glow came from within her belly, saving her from the mad monk’s magic. The couple fled home, grateful to the mysterious power that had saved them, and soon after, Bai Su Zhen gave birth to their son, Xu Shi Lin. Yet despite this joyous occasion, Xu Xian was uneasy. He was shaken by his wife’s accidental act of destruction, and he feared the misfortune it might bring upon their home. Not a month later, Fa Hai appeared at their doorstep. He offered Xu Xian an alms bowl to ensure good fortune for his newborn son. Still wary of the monk, but also remembering Bai Su Zhen’s destructive act, Xu Xian accepted the gift. But as soon as the bowl entered their home, it flew to Bai Su Zhen’s head and trapped her inside. Against the family’s wishes, Fa Hai buried the bowl beneath the Lei Feng Pagoda. And when Xu Xian begged him to release his wife, the monk sternly replied: “She will be free when the iron tree blooms.” Overcome with guilt, Xu Xian ran away to a monastery, leaving Shi Lin in the care of his aunt. But there was something neither of them knew. The boy was the reincarnation of Wen Qu Xing, the wisdom god, sent to the family to reward Xu Xian’s devotion. It was this power that had protected Bai Su Zhen at the temple, and as he grew, so did his wisdom. At age 19, Shi Lin went to the capital city to take the nation-wide imperial exam and obtained the highest score in all the empire. The Emperor himself bestowed Shi Lin’s prize: an ornate hat decorated with jewel-encrusted flowers. But though he returned home in glory, the fate of his parents still weighed heavy on his mind. Coaxing his father from exile, Shi Lin took him to visit the Lei Feng Pagoda to pay respects to his mother. Kneeling before it, he placed his jeweled prize on the iron tree as an offering. Suddenly, the ground opened and Bai Su Zhen stepped out. With her sins absolved by the tribute of a god, and a blossom on the iron tree, Shi Lin had freed his mother, and reunited his family– both mortal and divine. |
"To Make Use of Water" | {0: 'Spoken word poet Safia Elhillo draws on the universal themes of love, culture, and the Wu-Tang Clan.'} | TED-Ed | My name is Safia Elhillo, and this poem is called "to make use of water." dilute i forget the arabic word for economy i forget the english word for عسل forget the arabic word for incense & english word for مسكين arabic word for sandwich english for صيدلية & مطعم & وله /stupid girl, atlantic got your tongue/ blur back home we are plagued by a politeness so dense even the doctors cannot call things what they are my grandfather’s left eye swirled thick with smoke what my new mouth can call glaucoma while the arabic still translates to the white water swim i want to go home dissolve i want to go home drown half don’t even make it out or across you get to be ungrateful you get to be homesick from safe inside your blue american passport do you even understand what was lost to bring you here |
These bacteria eat plastic | {0: 'Bacteria, bugs, germs -- Morgan Vague loves to get in the dirt (literally) to explore solutions to pressing problems.'} | TEDxMtHood | Plastics: you know about them, you may not love them, but chances are you use them every single day. By 2050, researchers estimate that there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Despite our best efforts, only nine percent of all plastic we use winds up being recycled. And even worse, plastic is incredibly tough and durable and researchers estimate that it can take anywhere from 500 to 5,000 years to fully break down. It leaches harmful chemical contaminants into our oceans, our soil, our food, our water, and into us. So how did we wind up with so much plastic waste? Well, it's simple. Plastic is cheap, durable, adaptable, and it's everywhere. But the good news is there's something else that's cheap, durable, adaptable and everywhere. And my research shows it may even be able to help us with our plastic pollution problem. I'm talking about bacteria. Bacteria are microscopic living beings invisible to the naked eye that live everywhere, in all sorts of diverse and extreme environments, from the human gut, to soil, to skin, to vents in the ocean floor, reaching temperatures of 700 degrees Fahrenheit. Bacteria live everywhere, in all sorts of diverse and extreme environments. And as such, they have to get pretty creative with their food sources. There's also a lot of them. Researchers estimate that there are roughly five million trillion trillion — that's a five with 30 zeros after it — bacteria on the planet. Now, considering that we humans produce 300 million tons of new plastic each year, I'd say that our plastic numbers are looking pretty comparable to bacteria's. So, after noticing this and after learning about all of the creative ways that bacteria find food, I started to think: could bacteria in plastic-polluted environments have figured out how to use plastic for food? Well, this is the question that I decided to pursue a couple of years ago. Now, fortunately for me, I'm from one of the most polluted cities in America, Houston, Texas. (Laughs) In my hometown alone, there are seven EPA-designated Superfund sites. These are sites that are so polluted, that the government has deemed their cleanup a national priority. So I decided to trek around to these sites and collect soil samples teeming with bacteria. I started toying with a protocol, which is fancy science talk for a recipe. And what I was trying to cook up was a carbon-free media, or a food-free environment. An environment without the usual carbons, or food, that bacteria, like us humans, need to live. Now, in this environment, I would provide my bacteria with a sole carbon, or food, source. I would feed my bacteria polyethylene terephthalate, or PET plastic. PET plastic is the most widely produced plastic in the world. It's used in all sorts of food and drink containers, with the most notorious example being plastic water bottles, of which we humans currently go through at a rate of one million per minute. So, what I would be doing, is essentially putting my bacteria on a forced diet of PET plastic and seeing which, if any, might survive or, hopefully, thrive. See, this type of experiment would act as a screen for bacteria that had adapted to their plastic-polluted environment and evolved the incredibly cool ability to eat PET plastic. And using this screen, I was able to find some bacteria that had done just that. These bacteria had figured out how to eat PET plastic. So how do these bacteria do this? Well, it's actually pretty simple. Just as we humans digest carbon or food into chunks of sugar that we then use for energy, so too do my bacteria. My bacteria, however, have figured out how to do this digestion process to big, tough, durable PET plastic. Now, to do this, my bacteria use a special version of what's called an enzyme. Now, enzymes are simply compounds that exist in all living things. There are many different types of enzymes, but basically, they make processes go forward, such as the digestion of food into energy. For instance, we humans have an enzyme called an amylase that helps us digest complex starches, such as bread, into small chunks of sugar that we can then use for energy. Now, my bacteria have a special enzyme called a lipase that binds to big, tough, durable PET plastic and helps break it into small chunks of sugar that my bacteria can then use for energy. So basically, PET plastic goes from being a big, tough, long-lasting pollutant to a tasty meal for my bacteria. Sounds pretty cool, right? And I think, given the current scope of our plastic pollution problem, I think it sounds pretty useful. The statistics I shared with you on just how much plastic waste has accumulated on our planet are daunting. They're scary. And I think they highlight that while reducing, reusing and recycling are important, they alone are not going to be enough to solve this problem. And this is where I think bacteria might be able to help us out. But I do understand why the concept of bacterial help might make some people a little nervous. After all, if plastic is everywhere and these bacteria eat plastic, isn't there a risk of these bacteria getting out in the environment and wreaking havoc? Well, the short answer is no, and I'll tell you why. These bacteria are already in the environment. The bacteria in my research are not genetically modified frankenbugs. These are naturally occurring bacteria that have simply adapted to their plastic-polluted environment and evolved the incredibly gnarly ability to eat PET plastic. So the process of bacteria eating plastic is actually a natural one. But it's an incredibly slow process. And there remains a lot of work to be done to figure out how to speed up this process to a useful pace. My research is currently looking at ways of doing this through a series of UV, or ultraviolet, pretreatments, which basically means we blast PET plastic with sunlight. We do this because sunlight acts a bit like tenderizer on a steak, turning the big, tough, durable bonds in PET plastic a bit softer and a bit easier for my bacteria to chew on. Ultimately, what my research hopes to do is create an industrial-scale contained carbon-free system, similar to a compost heap, where these bacteria can thrive in a contained system, where their sole food source is PET plastic waste. Imagine one day being able to dispose of all of your plastic waste in a bin at the curb that you knew was bound for a dedicated bacteria-powered plastic waste facility. I think with some hard work this is an achievable reality. Plastic-eating bacteria is not a cure-all. But given the current statistics, it's clear that we humans, we could use a little help with this problem. Because people, we possess a pressing problem of plastic pollution. And bacteria might be a really important part of the solution. Thank you. (Applause) |
The lovable (and lethal) sea lion | null | TED-Ed | Sunning themselves on rocks or waddling awkwardly across the beach, it’s easy to think of these immobile mammals less as sea lions, and more as sea house cats. But don’t be fooled by their beachside behavior. Under the waves, sea lions are incredible endurance hunters. Hurtling around at speeds from 4 to 18 miles an hour and hunting for up to 30 hours at a time, these majestic mammals live up to their name. And thanks to a suite of physical adaptations, finely tuned over millions of years, they make for resourceful foragers. To find their favorite food, sea lions hunt much deeper than many of their semi-aquatic peers. With some species diving to depths of nearly 400 meters, they’re able to cope with the mounting pressure by collapsing their pliable rib cage, and compressing a pair of springy lungs. This pushes air up through the smaller airways, collapsing rings of cartilage as oxygen travels out from the lungs, to be held in the larger, upper airways. Upon surfacing, this air will be used to re-inflate the lungs, but for now their heart slows down to preserve oxygen. Blood flow is redirected towards only the most essential organs like the heart, lungs, and brain, which rely on reserve oxygen stored in blood and muscle. Once they arrive at their hunting ground, sea lions depend on their superior vision to find their prey. Most mammal eyes have a structure called a lens– a transparent, convex structure whose shape refracts light to enable sight. In humans, this lens is curved to process light waves traveling through air. But sea lions need to see their best at hundreds of meters deep. To accommodate, their eyes have a much rounder lens to refract light underwater, as well as teardrop-shaped pupils which can expand to 25 times their original size. This lets in as much light as possible, helping them pinpoint their prey in even the dimmest conditions. But once they’ve closed in, they rely on something akin to a sixth sense to actually catch their meal. Their whiskers, or vibrissae, are composed of keratin and full of nerve fibers that run deep into the connective tissue of their face. Sea lions have full directional control over these whiskers, which can lie flat against their face, or stick out at a 90-degree angle. When properly tuned, these whiskers can sense the slim trails of moving water fish leave in their wake. And they’re precise enough to let blindfolded sea lions tell the difference between objects less than two centimeters different in size. With these tools a healthy sea lion can catch generous helpings of fish such as anchovy, mackerel, and squid on every outing. And with their exceptional memories, they can remember multiple hunting grounds, including those they haven’t visited in decades. This memory also extends to breeding territories and birthing areas, as well as which neighbors are friend and foe. There’s even evidence that sea lions can remember how to perform tasks after 10 years with no practice in between, letting them navigate old stomping grounds with ease. Yet despite these incredible adaptations, there are changes unfolding in their habitats too rapidly for sea lions to handle. As climate change warms the oceans, certain toxic algae species thrive. This algae is harmless to the fish who eat it, but for the sea lions which ingest those fish, the algae’s domoic acid can trigger seizures and brain damage. Changing ocean conditions keep this algae blooming year round, causing more and more sea lions to wash up on beaches. This tragic discovery is just one of the many ways the health of aquatic animal communities can help us better understand Earth’s oceans. These red flags help us take action to protect ourselves and other maritime mammals. And the more we can learn about the changing ocean that sea lions inhabit, the better equipped we’ll be to help these clever creatures thrive. |
How to deconstruct racism, one headline at a time | {0: "Baratunde Thurston is an Emmy-nominated writer, activist and comedian who addresses serious issues with depth, wit and calls to action. He believes the stories we tell help shape the world in which we live. Also, he's from the future."} | TED2019 | My parents gave me an extraordinary name: Baratunde Rafiq Thurston. Now, Baratunde is based on a Yoruba name from Nigeria, but we're not Nigerian. (Laughter) That's just how black my mama was. (Laughter) "Get this boy the blackest name possible. What does the book say?" (Laughter) Rafiq is an Arabic name, but we are not Arabs. My mom just wanted me to have difficulty boarding planes in the 21st century. (Laughter) She foresaw America's turn toward nativism. She was a black futurist. (Laughter) Thurston is a British name, but we are not British. Shoutout to the multigenerational, dehumanizing economic institution of American chattel slavery, though. Also, Thurston makes for a great Starbucks name. Really expedites the process. (Laughter) My mother was a renaissance woman. Arnita Lorraine Thurston was a computer programmer, former domestic worker, survivor of sexual assault, an artist and an activist. She prepared me for this world with lessons in black history, in martial arts, in urban farming, and then she sent me in the seventh grade to the private Sidwell Friends School, where US presidents send their daughters, and where she sent me looking like this. (Laughter) I had two key tasks going to that school: don't lose your blackness and don't lose your glasses. This accomplished both. (Laughter) Sidwell was a great place to learn the arts and the sciences, but also the art of living amongst whiteness. That would prepare me for life later at Harvard, or doing corporate consulting, or for my jobs at "The Daily Show" and "The Onion." I would write down many of these lessons in my memoir, "How to Be Black," which if you haven't read yet, makes you a racist, because — (Laughter) you've had plenty of time to read the book. But America insists on reminding me and teaching me what it means to be black in America. It's December 2018, I'm with my fiancé in the suburbs of Wisconsin. We are visiting her parents, both of whom are white, which makes her white. That's how it works. I don't make the rules. (Laughter) She's had some drinks, so I drive us in her parents' car, and we get pulled over by the police. I'm scared. I turn on the flashing lights to indicate compliance. I pull over slowly under the brightest streetlight I can find in case I need witnesses or dashcam footage. We get out my identification, the car registration, lay it out in the open, roll down the windows, my hands are placed on the steering wheel, all before the officer exits the vehicle. This is how to stay alive. As we wait, I think about these headlines — "Police shoot another unarmed black person" — and I don't want to join them. The good news is, our officer was friendly. She told us our tags were expired. So to all the white parents out there, if your child is involved with a person whose skin tone is rated Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson or darker — (Laughter) you need to get that car inspected, update the paperwork every time we visit. That's just common courtesy. (Laughter) (Applause) I got lucky. I got a law enforcement professional. I survived something that should not require survival. And I think about this series of stories — "Police shoot another unarmed black person" — and that season when those stories popped up everywhere. I would scroll through my feed and I would see a baby announcement photo. I'd see an ad for a product I had just whispered to a friend about yesterday. I would see a video of a police officer gunning down someone who looked just like me. And I'd see a think piece about how millennials have replaced sex with avocado toast. (Laughter) It was a confusing time. Those stories kept popping up, but in 2018, those stories got changed out for a different type of story, stories like, "White Woman Calls Cops On Black Woman Waiting For An Uber." That was Brooklyn Becky. Then there was, "White Woman Calls Police On Eight-Year-Old Black Girl Selling Water." That was Permit Patty. Then there was, "Woman Calls Police On Black Family BBQing At Lake In Oakland." That was now infamous BBQ Becky. And I contend that these stories of living while black are actually progress. We used to find out after the extrajudicial police killings. Now, we're getting video of people calling 911. We're moving upstream, closer to the problem and closer to the solution. So I started a collection of as many of these stories as I could find. I built an evolving, still-growing database at baratunde.com/livingwhileblack. Seeking understanding, I realized the process was really diagramming sentences to understand these headlines. And I want to thank my Sidwell English teacher Erica Berry and all English teachers. You have given us tools to fight for our own freedom. What I found was a process to break down the headline and understand the consistent layers in each one: a subject takes an action against a target engaged in some activity, so that "White Woman Calls Police On Eight-Year-Old Black Girl" is the same as "White Man Calls Police On Black Woman Using Neighborhood Pool" is the same as "Woman Calls Cops On Black Oregon Lawmaker Campaigning In Her District." They're the same. Diagramming the sentences allowed me to diagram the white supremacy which allowed such sentences to be true, and I will pause to define my terms. When I say "white supremacy," I'm not just talking about Nazis or white power activists, and I'm definitely not saying that all white people are racist. What I'm referring to is a system of structural advantage that favors white people over others in social, economic and political arenas. It's what Bryan Stevenson at the Equal Justice Initiative calls the narrative of racial difference, the story we told ourselves to justify slavery and Jim Crow and mass incarceration and beyond. So when I saw this pattern repeating, I got angry, but I also got inspired to create a game, a game of words that would allow me to transform this traumatic exposure into more of a healing experience. I'm going to talk you through the game. The first level is a training level, and I need your participation. Our objective: to determine if this is real or fake. Did this happen or not? Here is the example: "Catholic University Law Librarian Calls Police On Student For 'Being Argumentative.'" Clap your hands if you think this is real. (Applause) Clap your hands if you think this is fake. (Applause) The reals have it, unfortunately, and a point of information, being argumentative in a law library is the exact right place to do that. (Laughter) This student should be promoted to professor. Training level complete, so we move on to the real levels. Level one, our objective is simple: reverse the roles. That means "Woman Calls Cops On Black Oregon Lawmaker" becomes "Black Oregon Lawmaker Calls Cops On Woman." That means "White Man Calls Police On Black Woman Using Neighborhood Pool" becomes "Black Woman Calls Police On White Man Using Neighborhood Pool." How do you like them reverse racist apples? That's it, level one complete, and so we level up to level two, where our objective is to increase the believability of the reversal. Let's face it, a black woman calling police on a white man using a pool isn't absurd enough, but what if that white man was trying to touch her hair without asking, or maybe he was making oat milk while riding a unicycle, or maybe he's just talking over everyone in a meeting. (Laughter) We've all been there, right? Seriously, we've all been there. So that's it, level two complete. But it comes with a warning: simply reversing the flow of injustice is not justice. That is vengeance, that is not our mission, that's a different game so we level up to level three, where the objective is to change the action, also known as "calling the police is not your only option OMG, what is wrong with you people!" (Applause) And I need to pause the game to remind us of the structure. A subject takes an action against a target engaged in some activity. "White Woman Calls Police On Black Real Estate Investor Inspecting His Own Property." "California Safeway Calls Cops On Black Woman Donating Food To The Homeless." "Gold Club Twice Calls Cops On Black Women For Playing Too Slow." In all these cases, the subject is usually white, the target is usually black, and the activities are anything, from sitting in a Starbucks to using the wrong type of barbecue to napping to walking "agitated" on the way to work, which I just call "walking to work." (Laughter) And, my personal favorite, not stopping his dog from humping her dog, which is clearly a case for dog police, not people police. All of these activities add up to living. Our existence is being interpreted as crime. Now, this is the obligatory moment in the presentation where I have to say, not everything is about race. Crime is a thing, should be reported, but ask yourself, do we need armed men to show up and resolve this situation, because when they show up for me, it's different. We know that police officers use force more with black people than with white people, and we are learning the role of 911 calls in this. Thanks to preliminary research from the Center for Policing Equity, we're learning that in some cities, most of the interactions between cops and citizens is due to 911 calls, not officer-initiated stops, and most of the violence, the use of force by police on citizens, is in response to those calls. Further, when those officers responding to calls use force, that increases in areas where the percentage of the white population has also increased, aka gentrification, aka unicycles and oat milk, aka when BBQ Becky feels threatened, she becomes a threat to me in my own neighborhood, which forces me and people like me to police ourselves. We quiet ourselves, we walk on eggshells, we maybe pull over to the side of the road under the brightest light we can find so that our murder might be caught cleanly on camera, and we do this because we live in a system in which white people can too easily call on deadly force to ensure their comfort. (Applause) The California Safeway didn't just call cops on black woman donating food to homeless. They ordered armed, unaccountable men upon her. They essentially called in a drone strike. This is weaponized discomfort, and it is not new. From 1877 to 1950, there were at least 4,400 documented racial terror lynchings of black people in the United States. They had headlines as well. "Rev. T.A. Allen was lynched in Hernando, Mississippi for organizing local sharecroppers." "Oliver Moore was lynched in Edgecomb County, North Carolina, for frightening a white girl." "Nathan Bird was lynched near Luling, Texas, for refusing to turn his son over to a mob." We need to change the action, whether that action is "lynches" or "calls police." And now that I have shortened the distance between those two, let's get back to our game, to our mission. Our objective in level three is to change the action. So what if, instead of "Calls Cops On Black Woman Donating Food To Homeless," that California Safeway simply thanks her. Thanking is far cheaper than bringing law enforcement to the scene. (Applause) Or, instead, they could give the food they would have wasted to her, upped their civic cred. Or, the white woman who called the police on the eight-year-old black girl, she could have bought all the inventory from that little black girl, support a small business. And the white woman who called the police on the black real estate investor, we would all be better off, the cops agree, if she had simply ignored him and minded her own damn business. (Laughter) Minding one's own damn business is an excellent choice, excellent choice. Choose it more often. Level three is complete, but there is a final bonus level, where the objective is inclusion. We have also seen headlines like this: "Powerful Man Masturbates In Front Of Young Women Visiting His Office." What an odd choice for powerful man to make. So many other actions available to him. (Laughter) Like, such as, "listens to," "mentors," "inspired by, starts joint venture, everybody rich now." (Laughter) I want to live in that world of everybody rich now, but because of his poor choice, we are all in a poorer world. Doesn't have to be this way. This word game reminded me that there is a structure to white supremacy, as there is to misogyny, as there is to all systemic abuses of power. Structure is what makes them systemic. I'm asking people here to see the structure, where the power is in it, and even more importantly to see the humanity of those of us made targets by this structure. I am here because I was loved and invested in and protected and lucky, because I went to the right schools, I'm semifamous, mostly happy, meditate twice a day, and yet, I walk around in fear, because I know that someone seeing me as a threat can become a threat to my life, and I am tired. I am tired of carrying this invisible burden of other people's fears, and many of us are, and we shouldn't have to, because we can change this, because we can change the action, which changes the story, which changes the system that allows those stories to happen. Systems are just collective stories we all buy into. When we change them, we write a better reality for us all to be a part of. I am asking us to use our power to choose. I am asking us to level up. Thank you. I am Baratunde Rafiq Thurston. (Applause) |
"The Nutritionist" | null | TED-Ed | Hi I'm Andrea Gibson and this is my poem "The Nutritionist." The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables Said if I could get down 13 turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives. The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight Said for 20 dollars she’d tell me what to do I handed her the twenty, she said “stop worrying darling, you will find a good man soon.” The first psychotherapist said I should spend 3 hours a day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and my ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet. The yogi told me to stretch everything but truth, said focus on the outbreaths, said everyone finds happiness if they can care more about what they can give than what they get. The pharmacist said klonopin, lamictil, lithium, Xanax. The doctor said an antipsychotic might help me forget what the trauma said The trauma said don’t write this poem. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones But my bones said “Tyler Clementi dove into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.” My bones said “write the poem.” To the lamplight. Considering the river bed. To the chandelier of your fate hanging by a thread. To everyday you could not get out of bed. To the bulls eye of your wrist To anyone who has ever wanted to die. I have been told, sometimes, the most healing thing we can do- Is remind ourselves over and over and over Other people feel this too The tomorrow that has come and gone And it has not gotten better When you are half finished writing that letter to your mother that says “I swear to God I tried” But when I thought I hit bottom, it started hitting back There is no bruise like the bruise loneliness kicks into your spine So let me tell you I know there are days it looks like the whole world is dancing in the streets when you break down like the doors of their looted buildings You are not alone and wondering who will be convicted of the crime of insisting you keep loading your grief into the chamber of your shame You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside Some days I know my smile looks like the gutter of a falling house But my hands are always holding tight to the ripchord of believing A life can be rich like the soil Make food of decay Turn wound into highway Pick me up in a truck with that bumper sticker that says “it is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society” I have never trusted anyone with the pulled back bow of my spine the way I trust the ones who come undone at the throat Screaming for their pulse to find the fight to pound Four nights before Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington bridge I was sitting in a hotel room in my own town Calculating exactly what I had to swallow to keep a bottle of sleeping pills down What I know about living is the pain is never just ours Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo So I keep a listening for the moment when the grief becomes a window When I can see what I couldn’t see before, through the glass of my most battered dream, I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds. So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin, don’t try to put me back in just say here we are together at the window aching for it to all get better but knowing there is a chance our hearts may have only just skinned their knees knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming let me say right now for the record, I’m still gonna be here asking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet you- you stay here with me, okay? You stay here with me. Raising your bite against the bitter dark Your bright longing Your brilliant fists of loss Friend if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other, my god that’s plenty my god that’s enough my god that is so so much for the light to give each of us at each other’s backs whispering over and over and over “Live” “Live” “Live” |
The story we tell about millennials -- and who we leave out | {0: 'Reniqua Allen is a journalist who produces and writes for various outlets on issues of race, opportunity, politics and popular culture. '} | TED Salon Doha Debates | So on the surface, Troy is the kind of millennial that think pieces are made of. He's arrogant, self-centered and convinced that he is smarter than people give him credit for. His favorite topics of conversation are girls, sneakers and cars — not a surprise for someone who was a teenager just a few years ago. But Troy's mannerisms — they reveal the patterns of someone who is scared, troubled and unsure of the future. Now Troy also embodies the many positive qualities his generation is known for. An entrepreneurial spirit, an independent streak and a dedication to his parents. He believes in hard work and has tried gigs in both the licit and underground economies, but he hasn't had any luck and is just trying to find his way and still dances between both worlds. When I met Troy a few years ago, he had been employed as a golf caddy at a local country club, carrying bags for rich men and women who often never even acknowledged his existence. Before that, he sold sneakers on Facebook. He even tried selling candy bars and water bottles, but he wasn't making enough money to help his parents out or save up for a car any time soon. So Troy saw how hard his immigrant mother from Jamaica worked and how little she got back in return, and he vowed — Troy vowed to take a different path. So he ended up selling drugs. And then he got caught, and right now, he's trying to figure out his next steps. In a country where money equals power, quick money, at least for a while, gives young men and women like him a sense of control over their lives, though he said he mainly did it because he wanted stability. "I wanted a good life," he told me. "I got greedy and I got caught." Yet the amazing thing about Troy is that he still believes in the American dream. He still believes that with hard work, despite being arrested, that he can move on up. Now, I don't know if Troy's dreams came true. He disappeared from the program for troubled youth that he was involved in and slipped through the cracks, but on that day that we spoke, I could tell that more than anything, Troy was happy that someone listened to his dreams and asked him about his future. So I think about Troy and his optimism when I think of the reality that so many young, black millennials face when it comes to realizing their dreams. I think about all the challenges that so many black millennials have to endure in a world that tells them they can anything they want to be if they work hard, but actually doesn't sit down to listen to their dreams or hear stories about their struggle. And we really need to listen to this generation if we hope to have a healthy and civil society going forward, because millienials of color, they make up a fair chunk of the US and the world population. Now when we talk about millennials, a group that is often labeled as entitled, lazy, overeducated, noncommittal and narcissistic, the conversations often swirl around avocado toast, overpriced lattes and fancy jobs abroad — you probably have heard all these things before. But millennials are not a monolith. Actress Lena Dunham may be the media's representation of this generation, but Troy and other voices like his are also part of the story. In fact, millennials are the largest and most diverse adult population in this country. 44 percent of all American millennials are nonwhite, but often, you wouldn't even know it at all. Now sure, there are similarities within this population born between 1981 and 1996. Perhaps many of us do love avocado toast and lattes — I know I do, right? But there are also extreme differences, often between millennials of color and white millennials. In fact, all too often, it seems as though we're virtually living in different worlds. Now black millennials, a group that I have researched for a book I recently wrote, are the perfect example of the blind spot that we have when it comes to this group. For example, we have lower rates of homeownership, we have higher student debt, we get ID'd more at voter registration booths, we are incarcerated at higher rates ... we make less money, we have higher numbers of unemployment — even when we do go to college, I should say — and we get married at lower rates. And honestly, that's really just the beginning. Now, none of these struggles are particularly new, right? Young black people in America have been fighting, really fighting hard to get their stories told for centuries. After the Civil War in the 1800s, Reconstruction failed to deliver the equality that the end of slavery should have heralded, so young people moved to the North and the West to escape discriminatory Jim Crow policies. Then, as segregation raged in much of the country, young black people helped spearhead civil rights campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s. After that, some people embraced black power and then became Black Panthers and then the next generation, they turned to hip-hop to make sure their voices were heard. And then Barack Obama, hopeful that he, too, may bring about change. And when that failed, when we realized we were still brutalized and battered, we had to let the world know that our lives still mattered. Now, when technology allows more video of our pain and struggle to be broadcast to the world, we wonder, like, what is next? Our country feels more polarized than ever, yet we are still being told to pull up our pants, be respectable, be less angry, smile more and work harder. Even the attitudes of millennials themselves are overdue for an update. Research done by the Washington Post in 2015 about this supposedly "woke" group found that 31 percent of white millennials think that blacks are lazier than whites, and 23 percent say they're not as intelligent. These are, like, surprising things to me, and shocking. And these responses are not that much different than generations in the past, and it shows that unfortunately, this generation is repeating the same old stereotypes and tropes of the past. Now, a study conducted by David Binder Research and MTV in 2014 — it found that 84 percent of young millennials were taught by their families that everyone should be equal. This is a really great thing, a really positive step. But only 37 percent in that group actually talked about race with their families. So I could understand why things may be confusing to some. There are definitely black millennials who are succeeding. Marvel's "Black Panther," directed by black millennial Ryan Coogler and showcasing many others, broke all sorts of records. There's a crop of television shows by creatives like Donald Glover, Lena Waithe and Issa Rae. Beyoncé is, like, the queen, right? She is, like, everything. Young black authors are winning awards, Serena Williams is still dominating on the tennis court despite all her haters, and there's a crop of new politicians and activists running for office. So I don't want to, like, kill these moments of black joy that I too revel in, but I want to make it clear that these wins are too few and far between for a people that's been here for over 400 years. Like, that's insane, right? And most people still don't really understand the full picture, right? Our stories are still misunderstood, our bodies are still taken advantage of, and our voices? Our voices are silenced in a world that still shows little concern for our everyday struggles. So our stories need to be told in a multitude of ways by a range of voices talking about diverse and nuanced topics, and they really need to be listened to. And it is not just here in America, right? It's all around the world. Millennials make up 27 percent of the world's population. That's around two billion people. And with countries like India, China, Indonesia and Brazil, along with the United States, accounting for 50 percent of the world's millennials, it's clear that the white, often male, heterosexual narrative of the millennial is only telling half the story. Now, there's many people trying to broaden the palette. They're fighting to get their stories told and bust the millennial stereotype. Whether it's students in South Africa protesting statues of Cecil Rhodes, Michaela Coel making us laugh from the UK, or Uche Eze, who's framing views about Nigerian life, online. But I want to make it clear — I want to make it really clear to everyone that just because things look more equal than they did in the 20th century, doesn't mean that things are equitable at all. It doesn't mean our experiences are equitable, and it certainly doesn't mean that a post-racial society, that thing that we talked about so much, ever became close to being a reality. I think of Joelle, a middle-class 20-something who did everything the "right way," but she couldn't go to her dream school, because it was simply too expensive. Or Jalessa, who knows she can't be mediocre at her job the same way that her white peers can. Or Trina, who knows that people judge her unconventional family choices in a different way than if she were a white woman. Or actor AB, who knows that the roles he takes and gets in Hollywood are different because of his skin color. And then there's Simon. So Simon, by all means, would be an example of someone who's made it. He's a CFO at a tech company in San Francisco, he has a degree from MIT and he's worked at some of the hottest tech companies in the world. But when I asked Simon if he had achieved the American dream, it took him a while to respond. While acknowledging that he had a really comfortable life, he admitted that under different circumstances, he might have chosen a different path. Simon really loves photography, but that was never a real option for him. "My parents weren't able to subsidize me through that sort of thing," Simon said. "Maybe that's something my children could do." So it's these kinds of stories — the quieter, more subtle ones — that reveal the often unique and untold stories of black millennials that show how even dreaming may differ between communities. So we really need to listen and hear the stories of this generation, now more than ever, as the baby boomers age and millennials come to prominence. We can talk all we want to about pickling businesses in Brooklyn or avocado toast, but leaving out the stories and the voices of black millennials, large swaths of the population — it will only increase divisions. So stories of black millennials, brown millennials and all millennials of color really need to be told, and they also need to be listened to. We'd be a far better-off country and world. Thank you. (Applause) |
What it takes to launch a telescope | {0: 'TED Fellow Erika Hamden builds telescopes, with a focus on the ultraviolet, and develops sensor technology to make telescopes more efficient.'} | TED2019 | I'm an astronomer who builds telescopes. I build telescopes because, number one, they are awesome. But number two, I believe if you want to discover a new thing about the universe, you have to look at the universe in a new way. New technologies in astronomy — things like lenses, photographic plates, all the way up to space telescopes — each gave us new ways to see the universe and directly led to a new understanding of our place in it. But those discoveries come with a cost. It took thousands of people and 44 years to get the Hubble Space Telescope from an idea into orbit. It takes time, it takes a tolerance for failure, it takes individual people choosing every day not to give up. I know how hard that choice is because I live it. The reality of my job is that I fail almost all the time and still keep going, because that's how telescopes get built. The telescope I helped build is called the faint intergalactic-medium red-shifted emission balloon, which is a mouthful, so we call it "FIREBall." And don't worry, it is not going to explode at the end of this story. I've been working on FIREBall for more than 10 years and now lead the team of incredible people who built it. FIREBall is designed to observe some of the faintest structures known: huge clouds of hydrogen gas. These clouds are giant. They are even bigger than whatever you're thinking of. They are huge, huge clouds of hydrogen that we think flow into and out of galaxies. I work on FIREBall because what I really want is to take our view of the universe from one with just light from stars to one where we can see and measure every atom that exists. That's all that I want to do. (Laughter) But observing at least some of those atoms is crucial to our understanding of why galaxies look the way they do. I want to know how that hydrogen gas gets into a galaxy and creates a star. My work on FIREBall started in 2008, working not on the telescope but on the light sensor, which is the heart of any telescope. This new sensor was being developed by a team that I joined at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And our goal was to prove that this sensor would work really well to detect that hydrogen gas. In my work on this, I destroyed several very, very, very expensive sensors before realizing that the machine I was using created a plasma that shorted out anything electrical that we put in it. We used a different machine, there were other challenges, and it took years to get it right. But when that first sensor worked, it was glorious. And our sensors are now 10 times better than the previous state of the art and are getting put into all kinds of new telescopes. Our sensors will give us a new way to see the universe and our place in it. So, sensors done, time to build a telescope. And FIREBall is weird as far as telescopes go, because it's not in space, and it's not on the ground. Instead, it hangs on a cable from a giant balloon and observes for one night only from 130,000 feet in the stratosphere, at the very edge of space. This is partly because the edge of space is much cheaper than actual space. (Laughter) So building it, of course, more failures: mirrors that failed, scratched mirrors that had to be remade; cooling system failures, an entire system that had to be remade; calibration failures, we ran tests again and again and again and again; failures when you literally least expect them: we had an adorable but super angry baby falcon that landed on our spectrograph tank one day. (Laughter) Although to be fair, this was the greatest day in the history of this project. (Laughter) I really loved that falcon. But falcon damage fixed, we got it built for an August 2017 launch attempt — and then failed to launch, due to six weeks of continuous rain in the New Mexico desert. (Laughter) Our spirits dampened, we showed up again, August 2018, year 10. And on the morning of September 22nd, we finally got the telescope launched. (Applause) I have put so much of myself — my whole life — into this project, and I, like, still can't believe that that happened. And I have this picture that's taken right around sunset on that day of our balloon, FIREBall hanging from it, and the nearly full moon. And I love this picture. God, I love it. But I look at it, and it makes me want to cry, because when fully inflated, these balloons are spherical, and this one isn't. It's shaped like a teardrop. And that's because there is a hole in it. Sometimes balloons fail, too. FIREBall crash-landed in the New Mexico desert, and we didn't get the data that we wanted. And at the end of that day, I thought to myself, "Why am I doing this?" And I've thought a lot about why since that day. And I've realized that all of my work has been full of things that break and fail, that we don't understand and they fail, that we just get wrong the first time, and so they fail. I think about the thousands of people who built Hubble and how many failures they endured. There were countless failures, heartbreaking failures, even when it was in space. And none of those failures were a reason for them to give up. I think about why I love my job. I want to know what is happening in the universe. You all want to know what's happening in the universe, too. I want to know what's going on with that hydrogen. And so I've realized that discovery is mostly a process of finding things that don't work, and failure is inevitable when you're pushing the limits of knowledge. And that's what I want to do. So I'm choosing to keep going. And our team is going to do what everyone who has ever built anything before us has done: we're going to try again, in 2020. And it might feel like a failure today — and it really does — but it's only going to stay a failure if I give up. Thank you very much. (Applause) |
Subsets and Splits