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Why should you read "The Master and Margarita"? | null | TED-Ed | The Devil has come to town. But don’t worry – all he wants to do is stage a magic show. This absurd premise forms the central plot of Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece, "The Master and Margarita." Written in Moscow during the 1930s, this surreal blend of political satire, historical fiction, and occult mysticism has earned a legacy as one of the 20th century’s greatest novels– and one of its strangest. The story begins when a meeting between two members of Moscow’s literary elite is interrupted by a strange gentleman named Woland, who presents himself as a foreign scholar invited to give a presentation on black magic. As the stranger engages the two companions in a philosophical debate and makes ominous predictions about their fates, the reader is suddenly transported to 1st century Jerusalem. There a tormented Pontius Pilate reluctantly sentences Jesus of Nazareth to death. With the narrative shifting between the two settings, Woland and his entourage– Azazello, Koroviev, Hella, and a giant cat named Behemoth– are seen to have uncanny magical powers, which they use to stage their performance while leaving a trail of havoc and confusion in their wake. Much of the novel’s dark humor comes not only from this demonic mischief, but also the backdrop against which it occurs. Bulgakov’s story takes place in the same setting where it was written– the USSR at the height of the Stalinist period. There, artists and authors worked under strict censorship, subject to imprisonment, exile, or execution if they were seen as undermining state ideology. Even when approved, their work– along with housing, travel, and everything else– was governed by a convoluted bureaucracy. In the novel, Woland manipulates this system along with the fabric of reality, to hilarious results. As heads are separated from bodies and money rains from the sky, the citizens of Moscow react with petty-self interest, illustrating how Soviet society bred greed and cynicism despite its ideals. And the matter-of-fact narration deliberately blends the strangeness of the supernatural events with the everyday absurdity of Soviet life. So how did Bulgakov manage to publish such a subversive novel under an oppressive regime? Well… he didn’t. He worked on "The Master and Margarita" for over ten years. But while Stalin’s personal favor may have kept Bulgakov safe from severe persecution, many of his plays and writings were kept from production, leaving him safe but effectively silenced. Upon the author’s death in 1940, the manuscript remained unpublished. A censored version was eventually printed in the 1960s, while copies of the unabridged manuscript continued to circulate among underground literary circles. The full text was only published in 1973, over 30 years after its completion. Bulgakov’s experiences with censorship and artistic frustration lend an autobiographical air to the second part of the novel, when we are finally introduced to its namesake. "The Master" is a nameless author who’s worked for years on a novel but burned the manuscript after it was rejected by publishers– just as Bulgakov had done with his own work. Yet the true protagonist is the Master’s mistress Margarita. Her devotion to her lover’s abandoned dream bears a strange connection to the diabolical company’s escapades– and carries the story to its surreal climax. Despite its dark humor and complex structure, "The Master and Margarita" is, at its heart, a meditation on art, love, and redemption, that never loses itself in cynicism. And the book’s long overdue publication and survival against the odds is a testament to what Woland tells the Master: “Manuscripts don’t burn.” |
The amazing brains and morphing skin of octopuses and other cephalopods | {0: 'As a Senior Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Roger Hanlon delves into the undersea world of chameleon-like, color-changing marine animals -- and the practical applications that will emerge when we crack their secrets.'} | TED2019 | This is a strange and wonderful brain, one that gives rise to an idea of a kind of alternative intelligence on this planet. This is a brain that is formed in a very strange body, one that has the equivalent of small satellite brains distributed throughout that body. How different is it from the human brain? Very different, so it seems, so much so that my colleagues and I are struggling to understand how that brain works. But what I can tell you for certain is that this brain is capable of some amazing things. So, who does this brain belong to? Well, join me for a little bit of diving into the ocean, where life began, and let's have a look. You may have seen some of this before, but we're behind a coral reef, and there's this rock out there, a lot of sand, fishes swimming around ... And all of a sudden this octopus appears, and now it flashes white, inks in my face and jets away. In slow motion reverse, you see the ring develop around the eye, and then the pattern develops in the skin. And now watch the 3-D texture of the skin change to really create this beautiful, 3-D camouflage. So there are 25 million color organs called "chromatophores" in the skin, and all those bumps out there, which we call "papillae," and they're all neurally controlled and can change instantaneously. I would argue that dynamic camouflage is a form of "intelligence." The level of complexity of the skin with fast precision change is really quite astonishing. So what can you do with this skin? Well, let's think a little bit about other things besides camouflage that they can do with their skin. Here you see the mimic octopus and a pattern. All of a sudden, it changes dramatically — that's signaling, not camouflage. And then it goes back to the normal pattern. Then you see the broadclub cuttlefish showing this passing cloud display as it approaches a crab prey. And finally, you see the flamboyant cuttlefish in camouflage and it can shift instantly to this bright warning display. What we have here is a sliding scale of expression, a continuum, if you will, between conspicuousness and camouflage. And this requires a lot of control. Well, guess what? Brains are really good for control. The brain of the octopus shown here has 35 lobes to the brain, 80 million tiny cells. And even though that's interesting, what's really odd is that the skin of this animal has many more neurons, as illustrated here, especially in the yellow. There are 300 million neurons in the skin and only 80 million in the brain itself — four times as many. Now, if you look at that, there's actually one of those little satellite brains and the equivalent of the spinal cord for each of the eight arms. This is a very unusual way to construct a nervous system in a body. Well, what is that brain good for? That brain has to outwit other big, smart brains that are trying to eat it, and that includes porpoises and seals and barracudas and sharks and even us humans. So decision-making is one of the things that this brain has to do, and it does a very good job of it. Shown here, you see this octopus perambulating along, and then it suddenly stops and creates that perfect camouflage. And it's really marvelous, because when these animals forage in the wild, they have to make over a hundred camouflaging decisions in a two-hour forage, and they do that twice a day. So, decision-making. They're also figuring out where to go and how to get back home. So it's a decision-making thing. We can test this camouflage, like that cuttlefish you see behind me, where we pull the rug out from under it and give it a checkerboard, and it even uses that strange visual information and does its best to match the pattern with a little ad-libbing. So other cognitive skills are important, too. The squids have a different kind of smarts, if you will. They have an extremely complex, interesting sex life. They have fighting and flirting and courting and mate-guarding and deception. Sound familiar? (Laughter) And it's really quite amazing that these animals have this kind of intuitive ability to do these behaviors. Here you see a male and a female. The male, on the left, has been fighting off other males to pair with the female, and now he's showing a dual pattern. He shows courtship and love on her side, fighting on the other. Watch him when she shifts places — (Laughter) and you see that he has fluidly changed the love-courtship pattern to the side of the female. So this kind of dual signaling simultaneously with a changing behavioral context is really extraordinary. It takes a lot of brain power. Now, another way to look at this is that, hmm, maybe we have 50 million years of evidence for the two-faced male. (Laughter) All right, let's move on. (Laughter) An octopus on a coral reef has a tough job in front it to go to so many places, remember and find its den. And they do this extremely well. They have short- and long-term memory, they learn things in three to five trials — it's a good brain. And the spatial memory is unusually good. They will even end their forage and make a beeline all the way back to their den. The divers watching them are completely lost, but they can get back, so it's really quite refined memory capability. Now, in terms of cognitive skills, look at this sleeping behavior in the cuttlefish. Especially on the right, you see the eye twitching. This is rapid eye movement kind of dreaming that we only thought mammals and birds did. And you see the false color we put in there to see the skin patterning flashing, and this is what's happening a lot. But it's not normal awake behaviors; it's all different. Well, dreaming is when you have memory consolidation, and so this is probably what's happening in the cuttlefish. Now, another form of memory that's really unusual is episodic-like memory. This is something that humans need four years of brain development to do to remember what happened during a particular event, where it happened and when it happened. The "when" part is particularly difficult, and these children can do that. But guess what? We find recently that the wily cuttlefish also has this ability, and in experiments last summer, when you present a cuttlefish with different foods at different times, they have to match that with where it was exactly and when was the last time they saw it. Then they have to guide their foraging to the rate of replenishment of each food type in a different place. Sound complicated? It's so complicated, I hardly understood the experiment. So this is really high-level cognitive processing. Now, speaking of brains and evolution at the moment, you look on the right, there's the pathway of vertebrate brain evolution, and we all have good brains. I think everyone will acknowledge that. But if you look on the left side, some of the evolutionary pathway outlined here to the octopus, they have both converged, if you will, to complex behaviors and some form of intelligence. The last common denominator in these two lines was 600 million years ago, and it was a worm with very few neurons, so very divergent paths but convergence of complicated behavior. Here is the fundamental question: Is the brain structure of an octopus basically different down to the tiniest level from the vertebrate line? Now, we don't know the answer, but if it turns out to be yes, then we have a different evolutionary pathway to create intelligence on planet Earth, and one might think that the artificial intelligence community might be interested in those mechanisms. Well, let's talk genetics just for a moment. We have genomes, we have DNA, DNA is transcripted into RNA, RNA translates that into a protein, and that's how we come to be. Well, the cephalopods do it differently. They have big genomes, they have DNA, they transcript it into RNA, but now something dramatically different happens. They edit that RNA at an astronomical weird rate, a hundredfold more than we as humans or other animals do. And it produces scores of proteins. And guess where most of them are for? The nervous system. So perhaps this is an unorthodox way for an animal to evolve behavioral plasticity. This is a lot of conjecture, but it's food for thought. Now, I'd like to share with you for a moment my experience, and using my smarts and that of my colleagues, to try and get this kind of information. We're diving, we can't stay underwater forever because we can't breathe it, so we have to be efficient in what we do. The total sensory immersion into that world is what helps us understand what these animals are really doing, and I have to tell you that it's really an amazing experience to be down there and having this communication with an octopus and a diver when you really begin to understand that this is a thinking, cogitating, curious animal. And this is the kind of thing that really inspires me endlessly. Let's go back to that smart skin for a few moments. Here's a squid and a camouflage pattern. We zoom down and we see there's beautiful pigments and reflectors. There are the chromatophores opening and closing very quickly. And then, in the next layer of skin, it's quite interesting. The chromatophores are closed, and you see this magical iridescence just come out of the skin. This is also neurally controlled, so it's the combination of the two, as seen here in the high-resolution skin of the cuttlefish, where you get this beautiful pigmentary structural coloration and even the faint blushing that is so beautiful. Well, how can we make use of some of this information? I talked about those skin bumps, the papillae. Here's the giant Australian cuttlefish. It's got smooth skin and a conspicuous pattern. I took five pictures in a row one second apart, and just watch this animal morph — one, two, three, four, five — and now I'm a seaweed. And then we can come right back out of it to see the smooth skin and the conspicuousness. So this is really marvelous, morphing skin. You can see it in more detail here. Periscope up, and you've got those beautiful papillae. And then we look in a little more detail, you can see the individual papillae come up, and there are little ridges on there, so it's a papilla on papilla and so forth. Every individual species out there has more than a dozen shapes and sizes of those bumps to create fine-tuned, neurally controlled camouflage. So now, my colleagues at Cornell, engineers, watched our work and said, "We think we can make some of those." Because in industry and society, this kind of soft materials under control of shape are really very rare. And they went ahead, worked with us and made the first samples of artificial papillae, soft materials, shown here. And you see them blown up into different shapes, And then you can press your finger on them to see that they're a little bit malleable as they are. And so this is an example of how that might work. Well, I want to segue from this into the color of fabrics, and I imagine that could have a lot of applications as well. Just look at this kaleidoscope of color of dynamically controlled pigments and reflectors that we see in the cephalopods. We know enough about the mechanics of how they work that we can begin to translate this not only into fabrics but perhaps even into changeable cosmetics. And moreover, there's been the recent discovery of light-sensing molecules in the skin of octopus which may pave the way to, eventually, smart materials that sense and respond on their own. Well, this form of biotechnology, or biomimicry, if you will, could change the way we look at the world even above water. Take, for example, artificial intelligence that might be inspired by the body-distributed brain and behavior of the octopus or the smart skin of a cuttlefish translated into cutting-edge fashion. Well, how do we get there? Maybe all we have to do is to begin to be a little bit smarter about how smart the cephalopods are. Thank you. (Applause) |
"The Second Coming" | null | TED-Ed | "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? |
The Opposites Game | null | TED-Ed | "The Opposites Game" For Patricia Maisch This day my students and I play the Opposites Game with a line from Emily Dickinson. My life had stood a loaded gun, it goes and I write it on the board, pausing so they can call out the antonyms – My Your Life Death Had stood ? Will sit A Many Loaded Empty Gun ? Gun. For a moment, very much like the one between lightning and its sound, the children just stare at me, and then it comes, a flurry, a hail storm of answers – Flower, says one. No, Book, says another. That's stupid, cries a third, the opposite of a gun is a pillow. Or maybe a hug, but not a book, no way is it a book. With this, the others gather their thoughts and suddenly it’s a shouting match. No one can agree, for every student there’s a final answer. It's a song, a prayer, I mean a promise, like a wedding ring, and later a baby. Or what’s that person who delivers babies? A midwife? Yes, a midwife. No, that’s wrong. You're so wrong you’ll never be right again. It's a whisper, a star, it's saying I love you into your hand and then touching someone's ear. Are you crazy? Are you the president of Stupid-land? You should be, When's the election? It’s a teddy bear, a sword, a perfect, perfect peach. Go back to the first one, it's a flower, a white rose. When the bell rings, I reach for an eraser but a girl snatches it from my hand. Nothing's decided, she says, We’re not done here. I leave all the answers on the board. The next day some of them have stopped talking to each other, they’ve taken sides. There's a Flower club. And a Kitten club. And two boys calling themselves The Snowballs. The rest have stuck with the original game, which was to try to write something like poetry. It's a diamond, it's a dance, the opposite of a gun is a museum in France. It's the moon, it's a mirror, it's the sound of a bell and the hearer. The arguing starts again, more shouting, and finally a new club. For the first time I dare to push them. Maybe all of you are right, I say. Well, maybe. Maybe it's everything we said. Maybe it’s everything we didn't say. It's words and the spaces for words. They're looking at each other now. It's everything in this room and outside this room and down the street and in the sky. It's everyone on campus and at the mall, and all the people waiting at the hospital. And at the post office. And, yeah, it's a flower, too. All the flowers. The whole garden. The opposite of a gun is wherever you point it. Don’t write that on the board, they say. Just say poem. Your death will sit through many empty poems. |
How artificial light affects our health | {0: 'Dragana Rogulja is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.'} | TEDxYouth@Beaconstreet | In case you didn't know, 2015 is the International Year of Light. So, I thought I'd tell you just a little bit about the impact of light on our health. My lab uses fruit flies to study sleep and wake patterns, but what I want to talk today is primarily light and its impact on health. So, of course, we live on this planet that spins around its axis as it's orbiting the Sun. As a consequence of that, one of the basic facts of life on Earth is that you're exposed to light-dark cycles every single day. Here you see the side of the Earth that's facing the Sun, is light, and the other one is dark, and actually, I think we have so much light here that the dark side is kind of washed-out. But if the light was a little bit lower, you could see that there are lights all over the places on Earth, at least where there's solid ground, just not above water. And that's maybe a little bit more clear from this picture which is a composite Google image of Earth from above, at night, and I think that this is a really stunning image. It's stunningly beautiful, but it's also stunning to think about the amount of light that we're enveloping the Earth on, and, at the time of day when, for pretty much all of our evolutionary history, the Earth has been dark. There's this funny story that I don't know if it's true, but I like it, I think it's a good story, where in 1994, in LA, police started getting reports of people seeing a strange white cloud in the sky, and they didn't know what this was. They wondered if they should be worried. It turned out LA had just suffered a major earthquake which resulted in citywide blackouts. So, many people for the first time in many years, or perhaps the first time in their lives, had an unobstructed view of the night sky. In fact, what they were seeing was not a trail from some alien spaceship, but it was a glimpse of our own home galaxy, the Milky Way. This may sound quite incredible to you until I show you this next picture. Here's a picture that this guy, Todd Carlson, from Canada, took of his house, a fairly typical-looking house, a typical-looking sky, at least for those of us living in Boston, or surrounding areas. You can even make out some stars in the sky. In 2003, there was a blackout that affected large parts of the United States and Canada, and Todd Carlson lost his electricity, and he was smart enough to take a picture of his house at that time, and this is what it looked like. And again, here you can see this strange, white cloud in the sky which is the Milky Way. The lights that we are producing as humans, due to our ingenuity, are wiping out, basically, our view of these millions of stars in the sky. So, if we think about that, this is certainly a shame, because there are a few things that are more magnificent than a view of the night sky. But we should also think about what is this doing to our health if we're flooding ourselves with this amount of light pollution? So I want to I tell you that all throughout your bodies, in all of your organs, you have biological clocks that keep you in sync with the light-dark cycles of your environment that result from the Earth's rotation. And in your heads you have a master clock, a main clock that synchronizes all of these other clocks in your bodies. The way that this works is that light travels from a source, such as the Sun, or an artificial light source, through your eyes, and that light information is then conveyed to the brain, to the master clock that's in a part of your brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or the SCN. So in your eyes you of course have cells that help you see the stars, that help you form visible imagery. But you also have cells that are not a part of the visual-forming pathways, but rather their role is to capture light information and basically convey it to the brain, to tell the brain what time of day it is. So, how can I convince you that you have this clock? Well, if I closed you in a dark room where you would have no external source of light, no alarm clocks, no clocks of any kind, you would still retain rhythmic sleep and wake patterns at least for a little while, because your clock was previously trained to light-dark cycles and one of the main functions of the clock is to regulate behavioral rhythmicity. This, of course, is not an experiment that many of you would be willing to subject yourselves to, but, fortunately, there's an experiment that most of us have participated in, which is traveling across time zones. So, I like this quote that says, "When you travel from America to Europe, your soul takes about three days longer to get there." And I know this is certainly true when I travel from here to Serbia, my home country. It does take me several days basically, to feel normal, to feel aligned with the population that's living there. And this is because your clock takes a few days to get realigned with this new schedule. And, if you think about this, this makes sense, right? So, for pretty much all of our history, except for a blink of an eye, in our evolutionary history, nobody had a way of hopping from one continent to the other in a matter of hours. We're changing time zones so quickly, and in this case, nature's not really keeping up with what we are capable of doing. So, what is this clock? And why is it important to think about light? The clock is a molecular oscillator, the details here are not important at all, I don't want you to look at the names of these things on the board, but I want to point out that the clock is essentially the same in animals such as fruit flies, which my lab uses in our studies, and in mammals like mice or humans. And the first glimpses of the clock, the components of the clock, and the way that it ticks were gained in the fly, actually. What I want to stress here is that the clock is tuned by light. Some of the components of this clock are actually degraded, directly degraded by light. So, that results in the state of the clock essentially oscillating throughout the day and night. You can imagine if the composition of the clock, if some of the components are degraded, the composition of the clock will change between day and night. And then the outputs of the clock between day and night will be different. So, for instance, during the day, the state of your clock is such that you are suppressing production of melatonin, which is the hormone that helps you fall asleep, but also has other functions, such as anti-cancer and antioxidant properties. So light. Let's talk about blue light a little bit. When you're outside during the day, you're, of course, exposed to sunlight which consists of different wavelengths of light. But the one that's particularly important is blue light, because of its effect on our clock. Blue light also directly elevates your mood, it boosts your attention and your alertness. So blue light during the day is very, very good, and I'd say that most of us don't spend enough time in a bright light outside. You should be for 30 to 60 minutes outside in bright light, so put some sunscreen on and go outside. The flip side of this is that when you come home at night I would dare guess that pretty much none of us spend the rest of the day when we come home, in darkness, and we're not in tune with the natural light and dark cycles, right? So, what we do normally is we use our computers, smartphones, tablets; we are in rooms that have high amounts of LED light. And, in particular, what's really bad is that these devices are very, very rich in blue light. So, what you're doing, every evening, when you're using these devices is you're essentially tricking your clock into thinking that it's still day. And since the clock during day and blue light suppress melatonin production, you're essentially doing that at night. Now, I'm not naive enough to suggest you never use your computer at night, I know I wouldn't abide by that. But one thing that you can do, is you can turn the brightness of your screen in the evening, you can download programs that filter some of the blue light or you can use glasses that block some of the blue light. I have a little bit of news for you that maybe you'll perceive as bad, but I think it's actually very good, which is that you are very much like these guys. So, this is a close-up of a fruit fly, and you may not like if I tell you that you are like these guys. But think about it for a second, this is very good for us because now we can use these animals as a model system to understand more about sleep biology, and how light influences our clock and our health, and this is what my lab is doing. So, they sleep just like we do, they sleep at night. If we deprive them of sleep, then they crash the next day during the time they would normally be active. If we deprive them of sleep for a long time, they die; so sleep is very important for them. The same genes that regulate sleep in humans regulate sleep in flies. And when they're asleep they're disconnected, at least to a large degree, disconnected from their environment, just like we are. So, if these guys are sleeping, you need a stronger intensity stimulus to get them to react than when they're awake. So same thing that happens to you of course, when you're asleep. Two people in my lab: a postdoc, Iris Titos Vivancos and a PhD student, Michelle Frank, are asking exactly what is this barrier that's established in the brain that prevents sensor information from coming through during sleep? How can your same physical brain exist in two fundamentally different states? So now we're engaged, for instance, here I'm speaking to you, I'm engaged, I'm aware of you, of my surroundings, I'm aware of my internal state; but tonight when I go to sleep, I will be in a completely different state. And another thing that we're asking which is relevant to what I talked about, to light, is how light coming through the eye is regulating sleep and wake patterns? A PhD student in my lab, Bryan Song, is asking exactly this, What Bryan can do is, he can— you can see that flies have these big eyes that take up a large part of their head. What Bryan can do is he can actually trick the cells in the eye into thinking they're seeing light, even when they're not. And this results in animals having trouble falling asleep, so it takes them about an hour and a half longer to fall asleep. You can imagine that now we can use this as a model organism to understand what it is that happens in the brain when it's getting light information and how this is interfacing with sleep and wake centers in the brain. And so one final thing I want to tell you is well, first I want you to think again for a moment about our evolutionary history. We evolved without alarm clocks, without any external source of information of the time of day, and we've developed this way that keeps us in sync with our environment. But what we're exposing ourselves to every day now is very much interfering with that natural system, and I think it's really something to think about. So when people tell you that too much light exposure at night is not good, unfortunately, they are actually right. And the last thing I want to say is please support basic science, because this is important for all of us, and this is the way forward, I think. (Applause) |
Floating cities, the LEGO House and other architectural forms of the future | {0: 'Bjarke Ingels believes that architecture is the art and science of making sure our cities and buildings fit with the way we want to live our lives.'} | TED2019 | My mom has always reminded me that I have the same proportions as a LEGO man. (Laughter) And she does actually have a point. LEGO is a company that has succeeded in making everybody believe that LEGO is from their home country. But it's not, it's from my home country. So you can imagine my excitement when the LEGO family called me and asked us to work with them to design the Home of the Brick. This is the architectural model — we built it out of LEGO, obviously. This is the final result. And what we tried to do was to design a building that would be as interactive and as engaging and as playful as LEGO is itself, with these kind of interconnected playgrounds on the roofscape. You can enter a square on the ground where the citizens of Billund can roam around freely without a ticket. And it's probably one of the only museums in the world where you're allowed to touch all the artifacts. But the Danish word for design is "formgivning," which literally means to give form to that which has not yet been given form. In other words, to give form to the future. And what I love about LEGO is that LEGO is not a toy. It's a tool that empowers the child to build his or her own world, and then to inhabit that world through play and to invite her friends to join her in cohabiting and cocreating that world. And that is exactly what formgivning is. As human beings, we have the power to give form to our future. Inspired by LEGO, we've built a social housing project in Copenhagen, where we stacked blocks of wood next to each other. Between them, they leave spaces with extra ceiling heights and balconies. And by gently wiggling the blocks, we can actually create curves or any organic form, adapting to any urban context. Because adaptability is probably one of the strongest drivers of architecture. Another example is here in Vancouver. We were asked to look at the site where Granville bridge triforks as it touches downtown. And we started, like, mapping the different constraints. There's like a 100-foot setback from the bridge because the city want to make sure that no one looks into the traffic on the bridge. There's a park where we can't cast any shadows. So finally, we're left with a tiny triangular footprint, almost too small to build. But then we thought, like, what if the 100-foot minimum distance is really about minimum distance — once we get 100 feet up in the air, we can grow the building back out. And so we did. When you drive over the bridge, it's as if someone is pulling a curtain aback, welcoming you to Vancouver. Or a like a weed growing through the cracks in the pavement and blossoming as it gets light and air. Underneath the bridge, we've worked with Rodney Graham and a handful of Vancouver artists, to create what we called the Sistine Chapel of street art, an art gallery turned upside down, that tries to turn the negative impact of the bridge into a positive. So even if it looks like this kind of surreal architecture, it's highly adapted to its surroundings. So if a bridge can become a museum, a museum can also serve as a bridge. In Norway, we are building a museum that spans across a river and allows people to sort of journey through the exhibitions as they cross from one side of a sculpture park to the other. An architecture sort of adapted to its landscape. In China, we built a headquarters for an energy company and we designed the facade like an Issey Miyake fabric. It's rippled, so that facing the predominant direction of the sun, it's all opaque; facing away from the sun, it's all glass. On average, it sort of transitions from solid to clear. And this very simple idea without any moving parts or any sort of technology, purely because of the geometry of the facade, reduces the energy consumption on cooling by 30 percent. So you can say what makes the building look elegant is also what makes it perform elegantly. It's an architecture that is adapted to its climate. You can also adapt one culture to another, like in Manhattan, we took the Copenhagen courtyard building with a social space where people can hang out in this kind of oasis in the middle of a city, and we combined it with the density and the verticality of an American skyscraper, creating what we've called a "courtscraper." From New York to Copenhagen. On the waterfront of Copenhagen, we are right now finishing this waste-to-energy power plant. It's going to be the cleanest waste-to-energy power plant in the world, there are no toxins coming out of the chimney. An amazing marvel of engineering that is completely invisible. So we thought, how can we express this? And in Copenhagen we have snow, as you can see, but we have absolutely no mountains. We have to go six hours by bus to get to Sweden, to get alpine skiing. So we thought, let's put an alpine ski slope on the roof of the power plant. So this is the first test run we did a few months ago. And what I like about this is that it also show you the sort of world-changing power of formgivning. I have a five-month-old son, and he's going to grow up in a world not knowing that there was ever a time when you couldn't ski on the roof of the power plant. (Laughter) (Applause) So imagine for him and his generation, that's their baseline. Imagine how far they can leap, what kind of wild ideas they can put forward for their future. So right in front of it, we're building our smallest project. It's basically nine containers that we have stacked in a shipyard in Poland, then we've schlepped it across the Baltic sea and docked it in the port of Copenhagen, where it is now the home of 12 students. Each student has a view to the water, they can jump out the window into the clean port of Copenhagen, and they can get back in. All of the heat comes from the thermal mass of the sea, all the power comes from the sun. This is the first 12 units in Copenhagen, another 60 on their way, another 200 are going to Gothenburg, and we're speaking with the Paris Olympics to put a small floating village on the Seine. So very much this kind of, almost like nomadic, impermanent architecture. And the waterfronts of our cities are experiencing a lot of change. Economic change, industrial change and climate change. This is Manhattan before Hurricane Sandy, and this is Manhattan after Sandy. We got invited by the city of New York to look if we could make the necessary flood protection for Manhattan without building a seawall that would segregate the life of the city from the water around it. And we got inspired by the High Line. You probably know the High Line — it's this amazing new park in New York. It's basically decommissioned train tracks that now have become one of the most popular promenades in the city. So we thought, could we design the necessary flood protection for Manhattan so we don't have to wait until we shut it down before it gets nice? So we sat down with the citizens living along the waterfront of New York, and we worked with them to try to design the necessary flood protection in such a way that it only makes their waterfront more accessible and more enjoyable. Underneath the FDR, we are putting, like, pavilions with pocket walls that can slide out and protect from the water. We are creating little stepped terraces that are going to make the underside more enjoyable, but also protect from flooding. Further north in the East River Park, we are creating rolling hills that protect the park from the noise of the highway, but in turn also become the necessary flood protection that can stop the waves during an incoming storm surge. So in a way, this project that we have called the Dryline, it's essentially the High Line — (Laughter) The High Line that's going to keep Manhattan dry. (Applause) It's scheduled to break ground on the first East River portion at the end of this year. But it has essentially been codesigned with the citizens of Lower Manhattan to take all of the necessary infrastructure for resilience and give it positive social and environmental side effects. So, New York is not alone in facing this situation. In fact, by 2050, 90 percent of the major cities in the world are going to be dealing with rising seas. In Hamburg, they've created a whole neighborhood where the bottom floors are designed to withstand the inevitable flood. In Sweden, they've designed a city where all of the parks are wet gardens, designed to deal with storm water and waste water. So we thought, could we perhaps — Actually, today, three million people are already permanently living on the sea. So we thought, could we actually imagine a floating city designed to incorporate all of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations into a whole new human-made ecosystem. And of course, we have to design it so it can produce its own power, harvesting the thermal mass of the oceans, the force of the tides, of the currents, of the waves, the power of the wind, the heat and the energy of the sun. Also, we are going to collect all of the rain water that drops on this man-made archipelago and deal with it organically and mechanically and store it and clean it. We have to grow all of our food locally, it has to be fish- and plant-based, because you won't have the space or the resources for a dairy diet. And finally, we are going to deal with all the waste locally, with compost, recycling, and turning the waste into energy. So imagine where a traditional urban master plan, you typically draw the street grid where the cars can drive and the building plots where you can put some buildings. This master plan, we sat down with a handful of scientists and basically started with all of the renewable, available natural resources, and then we started channeling the flow of resources through this kind of human-made ecosystem or this kind of urban metabolism. So it's going to be modular, it's going to be buoyant, it's going to be designed to resist a tropical storm. You can prefabricate it at scale, and tow it to dock with others, to form a small community. We're designing these kind of coastal additions, so that even if it's modular and rational, each island can be unique with its own coastal landscape. The architecture has to remain relatively low to keep the center of gravity buoyant. We're going to take all of the agriculture and use it to also create social space so you can actually enjoy the permaculture gardens. We're designing it for the tropics, so all of the roofs are maximized to harvest solar power and to shade from the sun. All the materials are going to be light and renewable, like bamboo and wood, which is also going to create this charming, warm environment. And any architecture is supposed to be able to fit on this platform. Underneath we have all the storage inside the pontoon, almost like a mega version of the student housings that we've already worked with. We have all the storage for the energy that's produced, all of the water storage and remediation. We are sort of dealing with all of the waste and the composting. And we also have some backup farming with aeroponics and hydroponics. So imagine almost like a vertical section through this landscape that goes from the air above, where we have vertical farms; below, we have the aeroponics and the aquaponics. Even further below, we have the ocean farms and where we tie the island to the ground, we're using biorock to create new reefs to regenerate habitat. So think of this small island for 300 people. It can then group together to form a cluster or a neighborhood that then can sort of group together to form an entire city for 10,000 people. And you can imagine if this floating city flourishes, it can sort of grow like a culture in a petri dish. So one of the first places we are looking at placing this, or anchoring this floating city, is in the Pearl River delta. So imagine this kind of canopy of photovoltaics on this archipelago floating in the sea. As you sail towards the island, you will see the maritime residents moving around on alternative forms of aquatic transportation. You come into this kind of community port. You can roam around in the permaculture gardens that are productive landscapes, but also social landscapes. The greenhouses also become orangeries for the cultural life of the city, and below, under the sea, it's teeming with life of farming and science and social spaces. So in a way, you can imagine this community port is where people gather, both by day and by night. And even if the first one is designed for the tropics, we also imagine that the architecture can adapt to any culture, so imagine, like, a Middle Eastern floating city or Southeast Asian floating city or maybe a Scandinavian floating city one day. So maybe just to conclude. The human body is 70 percent water. And the surface of our planet is 70 percent water. And it's rising. And even if the whole world woke up tomorrow and became carbon-neutral over night, there are still island nations that are destined to sink in the seas, unless we also develop alternate forms of floating human habitats. And the only constant in the universe is change. Our world is always changing, and right now, our climate is changing. No matter how critical the crisis is, and it is, this is also our collective human superpower. That we have the power to adapt to change and we have the power to give form to our future. (Applause) |
Why we need darkness | {0: 'Diane Knutson is a former National Park Ranger and the creator of the Lights Out Movement in Rapid City.'} | TEDxRapidCity | This meadowlark perches on a prairie flower singing its mating song. It's customary for meadowlarks to sing toward the rising sun. This one, however, was mistaken by the lights of Rapid City at 2 AM. Despite being 60 miles south of the Rapid City border and well within the boundaries of Wind Cave National Park, this songbird was singing out much too late to attract a mate. Have you ever tried attracting a mate by calling them at 2 AM? (Laughter) My mother told me nothing good happens after midnight. (Laughter) So why was this songbird so confused, mistaking the bright lights of Rapid City for the rising sun at 2 AM? Improper lighting and the over-illumination of residential neighborhoods, business signage, and street lights brighten our night sky, creating an orange hue above the city for miles outside its border. Over 100 years ago, all creatures could look up and see a spectacular starry night sky. But now, eight out of ten children will never see the Milky Way from where they live. Light pollution doesn't only impact our view of the universe, it also impacts our environment, our individual health, and energy consumption. The three main components of light pollution include sky glow as well as glare and light trespass, which I will also explain. Glare is the excessive brightness that causes us visual discomfort. We often illuminate areas in attempt to increase safety. As children, we're afraid of the dark, so we flip on a night switch because "the night is dark and full of terrors." And as adults, we do that now on a much grander scale. A 2015 study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health looked at statistics where researchers studied lights that were turned on at certain hours, dimmed, or turned off completely, and found that it had no impact on traffic collisions or crime. I want you to take a very close look at this picture. Mentally note what you see. With properly shielded lights, we can actually see what was there the entire time. Brighter does not mean safer. The third component of light pollution is light trespass. To understand this, I want you to envision your bedroom. Could you sleep at night with no curtains? Or do you need those blackout shades tucked into every single crevice of that window pane, just in order to get a good night's sleep? If so, that is because of light trespass, the shining of light where it's unneeded, and unintended, and unwanted, from another source originating somewhere other than your own. Now that we've looked at what causes light pollution, let's take a look at where light pollution is. Here is a global map with light pollution depicted by various colors. Let's zoom in to our local area of impact. This is Rapid City. We are on the front lines of a battle of lights versus dark. Zooming in closer to South Dakota, I want you to envision that you're downtown at Main Street Square, you've got your blanket, your chair, you're ready to stargaze. And then you look up, and you realize you can see relatively very few stars. You cannot even see the Big Dipper. So you pack up all your belongings, you get in the car, you drive to the city limits, where now you're in the orange zone, where eight out of ten Americans live, and we have a local observatory. You look up, you still cannot see the Milky Way. You keep on driving, you go deep into the Black Hills National Forest, and then you see it, the sky glow the meadowlark was singing toward. To get to a naturally dark sky, you would have to drive two hours north, to the corner of northwest South Dakota, an area called Slim Buttes, which has a Class 1 dark sky, a naturally lit sky, where the stars from the Milky Way shine so bright it will cast a shadow of you on the ground. Rapid City is a Class 9 sky, the brightest depicted on the map, where light pollution is 100 up to 200 times brighter than our natural darkness. You cannot make out the North Star. But the thing is Rapid City is not alone. Light pollution plagues every modern city and town. The good news, however, is that light pollution could possibly be the simplest problem to solve and could literally be done overnight, simply with the flip of a switch. So if at any point in this presentation you decide that it's important to protect our dark skies, I ask you to turn off your light in front of you, simply by twisting it off. Now just like in real life, here's a hint: You can ask your neighbor to shut off their light as well if their light is trespassing into your area and inhibiting your view of a TEDx presentation. (Laughter) Even if we all turn out our lights, more is needed to be done. One hundred years ago, this is the view from Skyline Drive you would have seen. Today, this is a picture taken this year during the Rapid City Dark Earth Hour. Which one do you prefer? So what are we going to do if we all turn out our lights and it's still bright? We need to protect nocturnal habitats, stargazing opportunities, and our nocturnal plants and animals. Now, bats. There's an idea. I know what we can do. Let's call Batman! He'll know what to do! Send the bat signal! Right? Oh, wait, maybe he didn't get the memo either. So let's shift our focus to nocturnal plants. In the Black Hills, there's a moonflower that blooms only in dark nights. (Music) (Music ends) Earth evolved with bright days and dark nights. Another example of nocturnal life that needs darkness is the owl. Owls see five times brighter than we do as humans because in their eyes they have light detecting rods that are numbered at one million rods per square millimeter. Just because we can see with lights at night doesn't mean other creatures can. But even though we can see with artificial light at night, doesn't mean that it's healthy for us. The American Medical Association states "all creatures need darkness to survive." As light travels through our eye, it goes to a tract of a nucleus cluster of thousands of cells that send messages to our glands. Those glands secrete a naturally occurring hormone called melatonin. The great thing about melatonin is it has great antioxidant qualities that rid our brain and body of free radicals that cause damage to our brain and body. The Journal of Epidemiology Research shows that exposure to artificial light at night has been linked to an increase in Alzheimer's, breast cancer, obesity, and depression. Let's take a look now at what our future holds. The map I showed you of South Dakota is a one from 1997, when in all reality, tonight's dark skies is much more closely, really, like the map of 2025. In only eight years, it's estimated that just eight dark sky places will remain in the United States. So if we can't call Batman, what are we supposed to do? OK, I have another idea, hold on with me, this is a little bit better. Let's join the Dark Side. Maybe Kylo Ren and Darth Vader had it right all along. But all joking aside, there really is something about the color spectrum. This is a color Kelvin chart, rating color by its temperature. The International Dark Sky Association rates colors below 3,000 Kelvins as dark sky friendly because it doesn't impair night vision. What else can we do? Address our fixtures, because dark skies doesn't have to mean dark ground. We can point lights down, where the light is intended. The International Dark Sky Association estimates that all of the outdoor lighting wastes 30 percent of light that goes outward and upward where it is not needed or intended, wasting money and creating more carbon emissions. In addition, this is a sample of a front porch light that could be converted into a full cutoff fixture, reducing glare, sky glow, and light trespass. Streetlights that point light outward and upward could be retrofitted to point the light downward. Paris, the City of Light, took solving light pollution to a whole new level. They enacted a lights-out curfew of 1 AM or one hour past the last employee's departure time. I challenge you to find your reason for #LightsOut. I wish you all a very dark night. (Applause) |
¿Cómo podríamos viajar más rápido que la velocidad de la luz? | {0: 'Dr. Miguel Alcubierre is a theoretical physicist and the Director of the Nuclear Sciences Institute at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).'} | TEDxCuauhtémoc | I want to ask you something: When was the last time you watched the stars? I know most people forget they exist specially in this polluted city which is sometimes foggy, we never see them. But since I was a kid, maybe not that young, maybe 12 or 13 years, I've been captivated by stars and would watch them whenever possible. My dad gave me a small telescope by the time I was 14 and I spent hours watching planets and stars and always wondering: What is out there? Is there someone watching me back with a telescope, wondering what is out here? This allure went on for years and at some point I decided to be an astronomer. In Mexico, in order to be an astronomer you need to be a physicist. So I studied physics. I never got to be an astronomer, now I'm something in between, half an astrophysicist, half a physicist but this idea of stars and the possibility of reaching them remained with me. When I started my major in physics I realized something many of you have heard of, even if you are not totally clear about it: that more than 100 years ago, in 1905, this guy named Albert Einstein, discovered that light speed is the fastest in the universe. That might not say you a lot because light speed is huge. Light moves up to 186,000 mi/s so high a speed that we can phone call someone in India or Japan with no problem at all. Even astronauts who went to the moon 40 years ago were interviewed and the President could talk to them with no evident delay even though the astronauts were in the moon, thing is that light speed is huge and the universe gigantic. We cannot travel faster than light speed and that is a severe problem to reach for the stars. Sun is 8 light-minutes away, that is, it takes 8 minutes for light to get here from the Sun, from the Sun to us. If the Sun exploded right now, nobody would notice up until eight minutes later. The closest star after the Sun is Alfa Centauri, it takes four years for light to travel and it's right besides the Sun. We live in a galaxy that is a star spiral called Milky Way. The center of our galaxy was 30,000 light years away, it takes 30,000 light years for light to travel from the center of the galaxy to us, and two million years in traveling from Andromeda galaxy that is one of our neighbor galaxies. The universe is huge, vast, if we ever want to reach the stars the light limit is very serious, a very serious problem, but why? Why we cannot travel faster than light? And it's not because Einstein said so, that is no how science works. In science there is no authority principle; it's not because some famous guy says so. There are reasons, theoretical reasons, observational reasons, experiments show it, it is a verified fact, but why? Basically, the answer is that theory of relativity prevents it, so I will tell you a bit, a very quick course: Relativity in a couple of minutes. Don't be afraid, I'll give a general overview, normally it takes six months to teach this to sixth and seventh graders of physics major. So right now I will explain it in two minutes and for non-physicists. So, don't worry. Relativity is an old concept though it wasn't called like that. The concept can be traced back from Galileo Galilei around 1620, in the 17th century. Galileo was the first one to realize something interesting, when it comes to movement, when I move, my movement is always relative to something else. Movement is said to be relative, here on the stage, my movement is relative to the floor. The measurement of your car speed is relative to the street, actually planes speed measurement is made relative to the air, not the floor. You might have noticed this while watching a movie. A plane speed measurement is relative to the air, and the Earth spins around the Sun, etc. If you were somewhere in space in the middle of nowhere it would be useless to ask if you are moving or not because there is no reference to compare your position, so movement is relative, speeds are relative, because they are always measured in relation to something else. This was discovered by Galileo 400 years ago. That was an interesting fact for all physic studies made after Galileo. Newton and all great advances of the 18th and 19th centuries agreed with Galileo. Speed is relative, that's fine, speeds aren't absolute. But by the end of 19th century something strange happened, many physicists studying light discovered that light is quite weird, light speed is indeed absolute and though Galileo stated that speeds were relative, that's not the case of light, it's always the same number no matter who measures it, or how fast is going whoever is measuring, no matter how fast the lightbulb sending out the light is moving. The measurement always yields the same number and this was a problem. This might not seem interesting to you but physicists of the 19th century were going crazy. Problem was: either Galileo was wrong and speeds were indeed absolute, which was apparently nonsense; or those who were measuring light speed were wrong and didn't know how to measure. But nobody was wrong which was even worst. Decades went by, until in 1905 this guy appeared, a man called Albert Einstein, who devoted his life to bringing together Galileo's idea that speeds were relative and the apparently real fact shown by the experiments, that there was an absolute speed, light speed. Long story short, because math is complicated, part of Einstein genius was realizing there was a solution. There was a logical solution to the problem and that logical solution derived in what we now know as Einstein's theory of relativity. It's a very interesting theory that changes what we understand by space and time, for instance, nobody tells us that space is relative distances, object lengths depend on their movement; if an object moves fast, they shrink. Time is also relative, any watch ticking relative to my movement, would delay this we have measured many times, even worst: simultaneity is relative; when I say two things happen exactly at once, someone moving in relation to me would disagree. One of us sees something first and worst: we might be moving on opposed directions and watch things backwards: first this one, then that one. So the conclusion is that sometimes, the order in time of different things is not absolute, the order of time can change, one thing before, other thing after but this brings up another huge problem, if time order is not well defined, what about causality? If something causes something else that something should had happened first, but if we disagree on what happened first, where does that leaves causality? Another crisis. Part of what Einstein did was realizing that there was solution, a solution to protect causality was thinking that light speed is not absolute, but the maximum speed of universe. If nothing can travel faster than light we protect causality. If something could travel faster than light then we could travel to the past, we would be able to see the effect before the cause, which is not the proper way. So light speed is the maximum speed and that is to protect causality. So far as of the beginning of the 20th century, light speed was the fastest and if that was all left to say, my talk would be done and off we go. But, fortunately that's not the case. In 1916, Einstein developed a second theory, also called relativity and that's why people get confused this one is called general relativity, and it's a theory about gravity. Einstein tried to understand gravity, which we already understood a bit since Newton; but he noticed some problems, gravity was thought of by Newton as instantaneous, if someone moved the Sun, Earth would immediately react, this would go against the fact that nothing can travel faster than light, so Einstein began to develop a new gravity theory, it took him 10 years, an amazing achievement for someone as smart of Einstein, was based on a beautiful thing: the Equivalence Principle, also discovered by Galileo: all objects fall at the same speed if two things were dropped at once, they would fall at the same time, a bowling ball or a ping pong ball would fall just the same, the heavier one does not fall faster, in case you were wondering. That means, from another point of view, that the trajectory of an object when there is gravity, does not depend on the object. All objects follow the same trajectory curved trajectories, you've seen that, I throw objects and they move in parables and ellipses but if those trajectories are curve and nondependent of the object then trajectory is a property of space, but they are curve, then space must be curve. Einstein concluded that gravity is a space deformation. An interesting and beautiful thing, and what is beautiful about it is that I can cheat, I can use space deformation to cheat on Einstein himself, so I use Einstein to cheat on Einstein. I can imagine ways to distort space to work around the statement "nothing can go faster than light" and, technically, I could reach a faraway star and then come back in time for dinner. I will share with you two possibilities, that are allowed on Einstein theory, one is beautiful and its technical name is Einstein-Rosen bridge, sounds technical because Einstein and another scientist called Rosen had this idea in 1935. But in literature and on sci-fi movies it is called a Wormhole. If you like science fiction then you might have seen it recently, in the movie Interstellar. On the movie, they travel through a wormhole. A wormhole is like a tunnel, I enter here and I end up in Alpha Centauri, but traveling a shorter distance, like a shortcut in space. These structures — here is a beautiful diagram of a wormhole in two dimensions — are allowed by the Einstein's theory, because this theory allows these tunnels, one thing is that the theory allows it and another is having an idea of how to do that. Nobody knows how to make a wormhole, but at least theory allows it. Another idea, and I'll let you think about it, another idea is that it is not necessary to make holes in space, an idea that thought by some guy not so long ago, in 1994, this guy on the picture, and the idea is different; instead of making holes in space let's use another property of space. Space can bended, twisted and expanded, maybe you heard about how universe expands, galaxies move away from one another not because they are drifting away from a center where an explosion occurred, no. The way we understand it in physics is that galaxies are still, and what is growing bigger is space; space is expanding. So I can use this idea in a small scale. Imagine I'm standing here and somehow I can expand the space behind me. I would start to drift away from that wall, and if at the same time I shrink the space in front of me I would become closer to the wall in front of me. If I combine the expansion and contraction, I could move from here to that wall without moving, because the space made all the moving. This is called warp drive or drive through distortion and it's another way to travel faster than light, actually you could travel as fast as you wish. These are two ideas on how we could travel faster than light. But there is a price to pay. Such is life, whenever you find something cool it's too expensive. We have a similar case here: from those two ideas, both worm holes and warp propulsion require, whenever we do the math of something called negative energy, which might not be crystal clear for you, but remember what Einstein said: "mass and energy are equivalent", the same thing. Remember nuclear reactors and atomic bombs, mass and energy are the same. So negative energy equals negative mass, and I'd never went to buy minus 9 pounds of tortilla. There are no negative masses, without negative masses there are no negative energies and without negative energies none of this is possible, No holes in space-time, no warp propulsion, and that's a problem. Negative energy is not forbidden, physics laws don't forbid it, but we've never seen it. It's one of those things that simply do not exist. So, with this initial question: Can we travel faster than light? will we someday travel the stars and get back in time for dinner? In 1905 Einstein told us it was not possible, that light speed was a limit, but sometimes, using Einstein's other theory, general relativity, we can cheat and bend the space, expand it, compress it, make holes on it, and travel faster than light, however, the price of it is finding energies or negative masses, though they might not exist. So we are a bit stuck, but such is science and that's part of my message, science moves forward by making questions, and sometimes we find answers, sometimes we find answers we don't like, that aren't what we wanted, but universe is not how we want it. It is what it is and we sometimes find out that we don't have enough information, to answer the question, and that is our current situation. Currently, we do not have all the information. Luckily, in 20, 30 or 100 years someone will come and find the answer and tell us for once if we can reach the stars faster than light speed. Before I go I will ask you to do something, tonight, if clouds allow it, please go out and take a look of the stars and think, what is out there? Thank you so much. (Applause) |
"Everything happens for a reason" -- and other lies I've loved | {0: 'Kate Bowler is reexamining her perspective on the "prosperity gospel": the belief that good things happen to good people.'} | TEDMED 2018 | There is some medical news that nobody, absolutely nobody, is prepared to hear. I certainly wasn't. It was three years ago that I got a call in my office with the test results of a recent scan. I was 35 and finally living the life I wanted. I married my high school sweetheart and had finally gotten pregnant after years of infertility. And then suddenly we had a Zach, a perfect one-year-old boy/dinosaur, depending on his mood. And having a Zach suited me perfectly. I had gotten the first job I applied for in academia, land of a thousand crushed dreams. And there I was, working at my dream job with my little baby and the man I had imported from Canada. (Laughter) But a few months before, I'd started feeling pain in my stomach and had gone to every expert to find out why. No one could tell me. And then, out of the blue, some physician's assistant called me at work to tell me that I had stage IV cancer, and that I was going to need to come to the hospital right away. And all I could think of to say was, "But I have a son. I can't end. This world can't end. It has just begun." And then I called my husband, and he rushed to find me and I said all the true things that I have known. I said, "I have loved you forever, I have loved you forever. I am so sorry. Please take care of our son." And then as I began the walk to the hospital, it crossed my mind for the first time, "Oh. How ironic." I had just written a book called "Blessed." (Laughter) I am a historian and an expert in the idea that good things happen to good people. I research a form of Christianity nicknamed "the prosperity gospel," for its very bold promise that God wants you to prosper. I never considered myself a follower of the prosperity gospel. I was simply an observer. The prosperity gospel believes that God wants to reward you if you have the right kind of faith. If you're good and faithful, God will give you health and wealth and boundless happiness. Life is like a boomerang: if you're good, good things will always come back to you. Think positively. Speak positively. Nothing is impossible if you believe. I got interested in this very American theology when I was 18 or so, and by 25 I was traveling the country interviewing its celebrities. I spent a decade talking to televangelists with spiritual guarantees for divine money. I interviewed countless megachurch pastors with spectacular hair about how they live their best lives now. I visited with people in hospital waiting rooms and plush offices. I held hands with people in wheelchairs, praying to be cured. I earned my reputation as destroyer of family vacations for always insisting on being dropped off at the fanciest megachurch in town. If there was a river running through the sanctuary, an eagle flying freely in the auditorium, or an enormous spinning golden globe, I was there. When I first started studying this, the whole idea of being "blessed" wasn't what it is today. It was not, like it is now, an entire line of "#blessed" home goods. It was not yet a flood of "#blessed" vanity license plates and T-shirts and neon wall art. I had no idea that "blessed" would become one of the most common cultural cliches, one of the most used hashtags on Instagram, to celebrate barely there bikini shots, as if to say, "I am so blessed. Thank you, Jesus, for this body." (Laughter) I had not yet fully grasped the way that the prosperity gospel had become the great civil religion, offering another transcendent account of the core of the American Dream. Rather than worshipping the founding of America itself, the prosperity gospel worshipped Americans. It deifies and ritualizes their hungers, their hard work and moral fiber. Americans believe in a gospel of optimism, and they are their own proof. But despite telling myself, "I'm just studying this stuff, I'm nothing like them," when I got my diagnosis, I suddenly understood how deeply invested I was in my own Horatio Alger theology. If you live in this culture, whether you are religious or not, it is extremely difficult to avoid falling into the trap of believing that virtue and success go hand in hand. The more I stared down my diagnosis, the more I recognized that I had my own quiet version of the idea that good things happen to good people. Aren't I good? Aren't I special somehow? I have committed zero homicides to date. (Laughter) (Applause) So why is this happening to me? I wanted God to make me good and to reward my faith with just a few shining awards along the way. OK, like, a lot of shining awards. (Laughter) I believed that hardships were only detours on what I was certain would be my long, long life. As is this case with many of us, it's a mindset that served me well. The gospel of success drove me to achieve, to dream big, to abandon fear. It was a mindset that served me well until it didn't, until I was confronted with something I couldn't manage my way out of; until I found myself saying into the phone, "But I have a son," because it was all I could think of to say. That was the most difficult moment to accept: the phone call, the walk to the hospital, when I realized that my own personal prosperity gospel had failed me. Anything I thought was good or special about me could not save me — my hard work, my personality, my humor, my perspective. I had to face the fact that my life is built with paper walls, and so is everyone else's. It is a hard thought to accept that we are all a breath away from a problem that could destroy something irreplaceable or alter our lives completely. We know that in life there are befores and afters. I am asked all the time to say that I would never go back, or that I've gained so much in perspective. And I tell them no, before was better. A few months after I got sick, I wrote about this and then I sent it off to an editor at the "New York Times." In retrospect, taking one of the most vulnerable moments of your life and turning into an op-ed is not an amazing way to feel less vulnerable. (Laughter) I got thousands of letters and emails. I still get them every day. I think it is because of the questions I asked. I asked: How do you live without quite so many reasons for the bad things that happen? I asked: Would it be better to live without outrageous formulas for why people deserve what they get? And what was so funny and so terrible was, of course, I thought I asked people to simmer down on needing an explanation for the bad things that happened. So what did thousands of readers do? Yeah, they wrote to defend the idea that there had to be a reason for what happened to me. And they really want me to understand the reason. People want me to reassure them that my cancer is all part of a plan. A few letters even suggested it was God's plan that I get cancer so I could help people by writing about it. People are certain it is a test of my character or proof of something terrible I've done. They want me to know without a doubt that there is a hidden logic to this seeming chaos. They tell my husband, while I'm still in the hospital, that everything happens for a reason, and then stammer awkwardly when he says, "I'd love to hear it. I'd love to hear the reason my wife is dying." And I get it. We all want reasons. We want formulas to predict whether our hard work will pay off, whether our love and support will always make our partners happy and our kids love us. We want to live in a world in which not one ounce of our hard work or our pain or our deepest hopes will be for nothing. We want to live in a world in which nothing is lost. But what I have learned in living with stage IV cancer is that there is no easy correlation between how hard I try and the length of my life. In the last three years, I've experienced more pain and trauma than I ever thought I could survive. I realized the other day that I've had so many abdominal surgeries that I'm on my fifth belly button, and this last one is my least favorite. (Laughter) But at the same time, I've experienced love, so much love, love I find hard to explain. The other day, I was reading the findings of the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, and yes, there is such a thing. People were interviewed about their brushes with death in all kinds of circumstances: car accidents, labor and delivery, suicides. And many reported the same odd thing: love. I'm sure I would have ignored it if it hadn't reminded me of something I had experienced, something I felt uncomfortable telling anyone: that when I was sure that I was going to die, I didn't feel angry. I felt loved. It was one of the most surreal things I have experienced. In a time in which I should have felt abandoned by God, I was not reduced to ashes. I felt like I was floating, floating on the love and prayers of all those who hummed around me like worker bees, bringing me notes and socks and flowers and quilts embroidered with words of encouragement. But when they sat beside me, my hand in their hands, my own suffering began to feel like it had revealed to me the suffering of others. I was entering a world of people just like me, people stumbling around in the debris of dreams they thought they were entitled to and plans they didn't realize they had made. It was a feeling of being more connected, somehow, with other people, experiencing the same situation. And that feeling stayed with me for months. In fact, I'd grown so accustomed to it that I started to panic at the prospect of losing it. So I began to ask friends, theologians, historians, nuns I liked, "What I am I going to do when that loving feeling is gone?" And they knew exactly what I was talking about, because they had either experienced it themselves or they'd read about it in great works of Christian theology. And they said, "Yeah, it'll go. The feelings will go. And there will be no formula for how to get it back." But they offered me this little piece of reassurance, and I clung to it. They said, "When the feelings recede like the tides, they will leave an imprint." And they do. And it is not proof of anything, and it is nothing to boast about. It was just a gift. So I can't respond to the thousands of emails I get with my own five-step plan to divine health and magical floating feelings. I see that the world is jolted by events that are wonderful and terrible, gorgeous and tragic. I can't reconcile the contradiction, except that I am beginning to believe that these opposites do not cancel each other out. Life is so beautiful, and life is so hard. Today, I am doing quite well. The immunotherapy drugs appear to be working, and we are watching and waiting with scans. I hope I will live a long time. I hope I will live long enough to embarrass my son and to watch my husband lose his beautiful hair. And I think I might. But I am learning to live and to love without counting the cost, without reasons and assurances that nothing will be lost. Life will break your heart, and life may take everything you have and everything you hope for. But there is one kind of prosperity gospel that I believe in. I believe that in the darkness, even there, there will be beauty, and there will be love. And every now and then, it will feel like more than enough. Thank you. (Applause) |
How light technology is changing medicine | null | TED-Ed | It’s an increasingly common sight in hospitals around the world: a nurse measures our height, weight, blood pressure, and attaches a glowing plastic clip to our finger. Suddenly, a digital screen reads out the oxygen level in our bloodstream. How did that happen? How can a plastic clip learn something about our blood… without a blood sample? Here’s the trick: our bodies are translucent, meaning they don’t completely block and reflect light. Rather, they allow some light to actually pass through our skin, muscles, and blood vessels. Don’t believe it? Hold a flashlight to your thumb. Light, it turns out, can help probe the insides of our bodies. Consider that medical fingerclip— it’s called a pulse oximeter. When you inhale, your lungs transfer oxygen into hemoglobin molecules, and the pulse oximeter measures the ratio of oxygenated to oxygen-free hemoglobin. It does this by using a tiny red LED light on one side of the fingerclip, and a small light detector on the other. When the LED shines into your finger, oxygen-free hemoglobin in your blood vessels absorbs the red light more strongly than its oxygenated counterpart. So the amount of light that makes it out the other side depends on the concentration ratio of the two types of hemoglobin. But any two patients will have different-sized blood vessels in their fingers. For one patient, a saturation reading of ninety-five percent corresponds to a healthy oxygen level, but for another with smaller arteries, the same reading could dangerously misrepresent the actual oxygen level. This can be accounted for with a second infrared wavelength LED. Light comes in a vast spectrum of wavelengths, and infrared light lies just beyond the visible colors. All molecules, including hemoglobin, absorb light at different efficiencies across this spectrum. So contrasting the absorbance of red to infrared light provides a chemical fingerprint to eliminate the blood vessel size effect. Today, an emerging medical sensor industry is exploring all-new degrees of precision chemical fingerprinting, using tiny light-manipulating devices no larger than a tenth of a millimeter. This microscopic technology, called integrated photonics, is made from wires of silicon that guide light— like water in a pipe— to redirect, reshape, even temporarily trap it. A ring resonator device, which is a circular wire of silicon, is a light trapper that enhances chemical fingerprinting. When placed close to a silicon wire, a ring siphons off and temporarily stores only certain waves of light— those whose periodic wavelength fits a whole number of times along the ring’s circumference. It’s the same effect at work when we pluck guitar strings. Only certain vibrating patterns dominate a string of a particular length, to give a fundamental note and its overtones. Ring resonators were originally designed to efficiently route different wavelengths of light— each a channel of digital data— in fiber optics communication networks. But some day this kind of data traffic routing may be adapted for miniature chemical fingerprinting labs, on chips the size of a penny. These future labs-on-a-chip may easily, rapidly, and non-invasively detect a host of illnesses, by analyzing human saliva or sweat in a doctor’s office or the convenience of our homes. Human saliva in particular mirrors the composition of our bodies’ proteins and hormones, and can give early-warning signals for certain cancers and infectious and autoimmune diseases. To accurately identify an illness, labs-on-a-chip may rely on several methods, including chemical fingerprinting, to sift through the large mix of trace substances in a sample of spit. Various biomolecules in saliva absorb light at the same wavelength— but each has a distinct chemical fingerprint. In a lab-on-a-chip, after the light passes through a saliva sample, a host of fine-tuned rings may each siphon off a slightly different wavelength of light and send it to a partner light detector. Together, this bank of detectors will resolve the cumulative chemical fingerprint of the sample. From this information, a tiny on-chip computer, containing a library of chemical fingerprints for different molecules, may figure out their relative concentrations, and help diagnose a specific illness. From globe-trotting communications to labs-on-a-chip, humankind has repurposed light to both carry and extract information. Its ability to illuminate continues to astonish us with new discoveries. |
"All the World's a Stage" | null | TED-Ed | “All the World’s a Stage” from "As You Like It" by William Shakespeare All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms; And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lin’d, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. |
The lies our culture tells us about what matters -- and a better way to live | {0: 'Writer and thinker David Brooks has covered business, crime and politics over a long career in journalism. '} | TED2019 | So, we all have bad seasons in life. And I had one in 2013. My marriage had just ended, and I was humiliated by that failed commitment. My kids had left home for college or were leaving. I grew up mostly in the conservative movement, but conservatism had changed, so I lost a lot of those friends, too. And so what I did is, I lived alone in an apartment, and I just worked. If you opened the kitchen drawers where there should have been utensils, there were Post-it notes. If you opened the other drawers where there should have been plates, I had envelopes. I had work friends, weekday friends, but I didn't have weekend friends. And so my weekends were these long, howling silences. And I was lonely. And loneliness, unexpectedly, came to me in the form of — it felt like fear, a burning in my stomach. And it felt a little like drunkenness, just making bad decisions, just fluidity, lack of solidity. And the painful part of that moment was the awareness that the emptiness in my apartment was just reflective of the emptiness in myself, and that I had fallen for some of the lies that our culture tells us. The first lie is that career success is fulfilling. I've had a fair bit of career success, and I've found that it helps me avoid the shame I would feel if I felt myself a failure, but it hasn't given me any positive good. The second lie is I can make myself happy, that if I just win one more victory, lose 15 pounds, do a little more yoga, I'll get happy. And that's the lie of self-sufficiency. But as anybody on their deathbed will tell you, the things that make people happy is the deep relationships of life, the losing of self-sufficiency. The third lie is the lie of the meritocracy. The message of the meritocracy is you are what you accomplish. The myth of the meritocracy is you can earn dignity by attaching yourself to prestigious brands. The emotion of the meritocracy is conditional love, you can "earn" your way to love. The anthropology of the meritocracy is you're not a soul to be purified, you're a set of skills to be maximized. And the evil of the meritocracy is that people who've achieved a little more than others are actually worth a little more than others. And so the wages of sin are sin. And my sins were the sins of omission— not reaching out, failing to show up for my friends, evasion, avoiding conflict. And the weird thing was that as I was falling into the valley — it was a valley of disconnection — a lot of other people were doing that, too. And that's sort of the secret to my career; a lot of the things that happen to me are always happening to a lot of other people. I'm a very average person with above average communication skills. (Laughter) And so I was detached. And at the same time, a lot of other people were detached and isolated and fragmented from each other. Thirty-five percent of Americans over 45 are chronically lonely. Only eight percent of Americans report having meaningful conversation with their neighbors. Only 32 percent of Americans say they trust their neighbors, and only 18 percent of millennials. The fastest-growing political party is unaffiliated. The fastest-growing religious movement is unaffiliated. Depression rates are rising, mental health problems are rising. The suicide rate has risen 30 percent since 1999. For teen suicides over the last several years, the suicide rate has risen by 70 percent. Forty-five thousand Americans kill themselves every year; 72,000 die from opioid addictions; life expectancy is falling, not rising. So what I mean to tell you, I flew out here to say that we have an economic crisis, we have environmental crisis, we have a political crisis. We also have a social and relational crisis; we're in the valley. We're fragmented from each other, we've got cascades of lies coming out of Washington ... We're in the valley. And so I've spent the last five years — how do you get out of a valley? The Greeks used to say, "You suffer your way to wisdom." And from that dark period where I started, I've had a few realizations. The first is, freedom sucks. Economic freedom is OK, political freedom is great, social freedom sucks. The unrooted man is the adrift man. The unrooted man is the unremembered man, because he's uncommitted to things. Freedom is not an ocean you want to swim in, it's a river you want to get across, so you can commit and plant yourself on the other side. The second thing I learned is that when you have one of those bad moments in life, you can either be broken, or you can be broken open. And we all know people who are broken. They've endured some pain or grief, they get smaller, they get angrier, resentful, they lash out. As the saying is, "Pain that is not transformed gets transmitted." But other people are broken open. Suffering's great power is that it's an interruption of life. It reminds you you're not the person you thought you were. The theologian Paul Tillich said what suffering does is it carves through what you thought was the floor of the basement of your soul, and it carves through that, revealing a cavity below, and it carves through that, revealing a cavity below. You realize there are depths of yourself you never anticipated, and only spiritual and relational food will fill those depths. And when you get down there, you get out of the head of the ego and you get into the heart, the desiring heart. The idea that what we really yearn for is longing and love for another, the kind of thing that Louis de Bernières described in his book, "Captain Corelli's Mandolin." He had an old guy talking to his daughter about his relationship with his late wife, and the old guy says, "Love itself is whatever is leftover when being in love is burned away. And this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it. We had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches, we discovered that we are one tree and not two." That's what the heart yearns for. The second thing you discover is your soul. Now, I don't ask you to believe in God or not believe in God, but I do ask you to believe that there's a piece of you that has no shape, size, color or weight, but that gives you infinite dignity and value. Rich and successful people don't have more of this than less successful people. Slavery is wrong because it's an obliteration of another soul. Rape is not just an attack on a bunch of physical molecules, it's an attempt to insult another person's soul. And what the soul does is it yearns for righteousness. The heart yearns for fusion with another, the soul yearns for righteousness. And that led to my third realization, which I borrowed from Einstein: "The problem you have is not going to be solved at the level of consciousness on which you created it. You have to expand to a different level of consciousness." So what do you do? Well, the first thing you do is you throw yourself on your friends and you have deeper conversations that you ever had before. But the second thing you do, you have to go out alone into the wilderness. You go out into that place where there's nobody there to perform, and the ego has nothing to do, and it crumbles, and only then are you capable of being loved. I have a friend who said that when her daughter was born, she realized that she loved her more than evolution required. (Laughter) And I've always loved that. (Applause) Because it talks about the peace that's at the deep of ourself, our inexplicable care for one another. And when you touch that spot, you're ready to be rescued. The hard thing about when you're in the valley is that you can't climb out; somebody has to reach in and pull you out. It happened to me. I got, luckily, invited over to a house by a couple named Kathy and David, and they were — They had a kid in the DC public school, his name's Santi. Santi had a friend who needed a place to stay because his mom had some health issues. And then that kid had a friend and that kid had a friend. When I went to their house six years ago, I walk in the door, there's like 25 around the kitchen table, a whole bunch sleeping downstairs in the basement. I reach out to introduce myself to a kid, and he says, "We don't really shake hands here. We just hug here." And I'm not the huggiest guy on the face of the earth, but I've been going back to that home every Thursday night when I'm in town, and just hugging all those kids. They demand intimacy. They demand that you behave in a way where you're showing all the way up. And they teach you a new way to live, which is the cure for all the ills of our culture which is a way of direct — really putting relationship first, not just as a word, but as a reality. And the beautiful thing is, these communities are everywhere. I started something at the Aspen Institute called "Weave: The Social Fabric." This is our logo here. And we plop into a place and we find weavers anywhere, everywhere. We find people like Asiaha Butler, who grew up in — who lived in Chicago, in Englewood, in a tough neighborhood. And she was about to move because it was so dangerous, and she looked across the street and she saw two little girls playing in an empty lot with broken bottles, and she turned to her husband and she said, "We're not leaving. We're not going to be just another family that abandon that." And she Googled "volunteer in Englewood," and now she runs R.A.G.E., the big community organization there. Some of these people have had tough valleys. I met a woman named Sarah in Ohio who came home from an antiquing trip and found that her husband had killed himself and their two kids. She now runs a free pharmacy, she volunteers in the community, she helps women cope with violence, she teaches. She told me, "I grew from this experience because I was angry. I was going to fight back against what he tried to do to me by making a difference in the world. See, he didn't kill me. My response to him is, 'Whatever you meant to do to me, screw you, you're not going to do it.'" These weavers are not living an individualistic life, they're living a relationist life, they have a different set of values. They have moral motivations. They have vocational certitude, they have planted themselves down. I met a guy in Youngstown, Ohio, who just held up a sign in the town square, "Defend Youngstown." They have radical mutuality, and they are geniuses at relationship. There's a woman named Mary Gordon who runs something called Roots of Empathy. And what they do is they take a bunch of kids, an eighth grade class, they put a mom and an infant, and then the students have to guess what the infant is thinking, to teach empathy. There was one kid in a class who was bigger than the rest because he'd been held back, been through the foster care system, seen his mom get killed. And he wanted to hold the baby. And the mom was nervous because he looked big and scary. But she let this kid, Darren, hold the baby. He held it, and he was great with it. He gave the baby back and started asking questions about parenthood. And his final question was, "If nobody has ever loved you, do you think you can be a good father?" And so what Roots of Empathy does is they reach down and they grab people out of the valley. And that's what weavers are doing. Some of them switch jobs. Some of them stay in their same jobs. But one thing is, they have an intensity to them. I read this — E.O. Wilson wrote a great book called "Naturalist," about his childhood. When he was seven, his parents were divorcing. And they sent him to Paradise Beach in North Florida. And he'd never seen the ocean before. And he'd never seen a jellyfish before. He wrote, "The creature was astonishing. It existed beyond my imagination." He was sitting on the dock one day and he saw a stingray float beneath his feet. And at that moment, a naturalist was born in the awe and wonder. And he makes this observation: that when you're a child, you see animals at twice the size as you do as an adult. And that has always impressed me, because what we want as kids is that moral intensity, to be totally given ourselves over to something and to find that level of vocation. And when you are around these weavers, they see other people at twice the size as normal people. They see deeper into them. And what they see is joy. On the first mountain of our life, when we're shooting for our career, we shoot for happiness. And happiness is good, it's the expansion of self. You win a victory, you get a promotion, your team wins the Super Bowl, you're happy. Joy is not the expansion of self, it's the dissolving of self. It's the moment when the skin barrier disappears between a mother and her child, it's the moment when a naturalist feels just free in nature. It's the moment where you're so lost in your work or a cause, you have totally self-forgotten. And joy is a better thing to aim for than happiness. I collect passages of joy, of people when they lose it. One of my favorite is from Zadie Smith. In 1999, she was in a London nightclub, looking for her friends, wondering where her handbag was. And suddenly, as she writes, "... a rail-thin man with enormous eyes reached across a sea of bodies for my hand. He kept asking me the same thing over and over, 'Are you feeling it?' My ridiculous heels were killing me, I was terrified that I might die, yet I felt simultaneously overwhelmed with delight that 'Can I Kick It?' should happen to be playing on this precise moment in the history of the world on the sound system, and it was now morphing into 'Teen Spirit.' I took the man's hand, the top of my head blew away, we danced, we danced, we gave ourselves up to joy." And so what I'm trying to describe is two different life mindsets. The first mountain mindset, which is about individual happiness and career success. And it's a good mindset, I have nothing against it. But we're in a national valley, because we don't have the other mindset to balance it. We no longer feel good about ourselves as a people, we've lost our defining faith in our future, we don't see each other deeply, we don't treat each other as well. And we need a lot of changes. We need an economic change and environmental change. But we also need a cultural and relational revolution. We need to name the language of a recovered society. And to me, the weavers have found that language. My theory of social change is that society changes when a small group of people find a better way to live, and the rest of us copy them. And these weavers have found a better way to live. And you don't have to theorize about it. They are out there as community builders all around the country. We just have to shift our lives a little, so we can say, "I'm a weaver, we're a weaver." And if we do that, the hole inside ourselves gets filled, but more important, the social unity gets repaired. Thank you very much. (Applause) |
The healing power of reading | {0: 'Michelle Kuo believes in the power of reading to connect us with one another, creating a shared universe.'} | TEDxTaipei | I want to talk today about how reading can change our lives and about the limits of that change. I want to talk to you about how reading can give us a shareable world of powerful human connection. But also about how that connection is always partial. How reading is ultimately a lonely, idiosyncratic undertaking. The writer who changed my life was the great African American novelist James Baldwin. When I was growing up in Western Michigan in the 1980s, there weren't many Asian American writers interested in social change. And so I think I turned to James Baldwin as a way to fill this void, as a way to feel racially conscious. But perhaps because I knew I wasn't myself African American, I also felt challenged and indicted by his words. Especially these words: "There are liberals who have all the proper attitudes, but no real convictions. When the chips are down and you somehow expect them to deliver, they are somehow not there." They are somehow not there. I took those words very literally. Where should I put myself? I went to the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest regions in the United States. This is a place shaped by a powerful history. In the 1960s, African Americans risked their lives to fight for education, to fight for the right to vote. I wanted to be a part of that change, to help young teenagers graduate and go to college. When I got to the Mississippi Delta, it was a place that was still poor, still segregated, still dramatically in need of change. My school, where I was placed, had no library, no guidance counselor, but it did have a police officer. Half the teachers were substitutes and when students got into fights, the school would send them to the local county jail. This is the school where I met Patrick. He was 15 and held back twice, he was in the eighth grade. He was quiet, introspective, like he was always in deep thought. And he hated seeing other people fight. I saw him once jump between two girls when they got into a fight and he got himself knocked to the ground. Patrick had just one problem. He wouldn't come to school. He said that sometimes school was just too depressing because people were always fighting and teachers were quitting. And also, his mother worked two jobs and was just too tired to make him come. So I made it my job to get him to come to school. And because I was crazy and 22 and zealously optimistic, my strategy was just to show up at his house and say, "Hey, why don't you come to school?" And this strategy actually worked, he started to come to school every day. And he started to flourish in my class. He was writing poetry, he was reading books. He was coming to school every day. Around the same time that I had figured out how to connect to Patrick, I got into law school at Harvard. I once again faced this question, where should I put myself, where do I put my body? And I thought to myself that the Mississippi Delta was a place where people with money, people with opportunity, those people leave. And the people who stay behind are the people who don't have the chance to leave. I didn't want to be a person who left. I wanted to be a person who stayed. On the other hand, I was lonely and tired. And so I convinced myself that I could do more change on a larger scale if I had a prestigious law degree. So I left. Three years later, when I was about to graduate from law school, my friend called me and told me that Patrick had got into a fight and killed someone. I was devastated. Part of me didn't believe it, but part of me also knew that it was true. I flew down to see Patrick. I visited him in jail. And he told me that it was true. That he had killed someone. And he didn't want to talk more about it. I asked him what had happened with school and he said that he had dropped out the year after I left. And then he wanted to tell me something else. He looked down and he said that he had had a baby daughter who was just born. And he felt like he had let her down. That was it, our conversation was rushed and awkward. When I stepped outside the jail, a voice inside me said, "Come back. If you don't come back now, you'll never come back." So I graduated from law school and I went back. I went back to see Patrick, I went back to see if I could help him with his legal case. And this time, when I saw him a second time, I thought I had this great idea, I said, "Hey, Patrick, why don't you write a letter to your daughter, so that you can keep her on your mind?" And I handed him a pen and a piece of paper, and he started to write. But when I saw the paper that he handed back to me, I was shocked. I didn't recognize his handwriting, he had made simple spelling mistakes. And I thought to myself that as a teacher, I knew that a student could dramatically improve in a very quick amount of time, but I never thought that a student could dramatically regress. What even pained me more, was seeing what he had written to his daughter. He had written, "I'm sorry for my mistakes, I'm sorry for not being there for you." And this was all he felt he had to say to her. And I asked myself how can I convince him that he has more to say, parts of himself that he doesn't need to apologize for. I wanted him to feel that he had something worthwhile to share with his daughter. For every day the next seven months, I visited him and brought books. My tote bag became a little library. I brought James Baldwin, I brought Walt Whitman, C.S. Lewis. I brought guidebooks to trees, to birds, and what would become his favorite book, the dictionary. On some days, we would sit for hours in silence, both of us reading. And on other days, we would read together, we would read poetry. We started by reading haikus, hundreds of haikus, a deceptively simple masterpiece. And I would ask him, "Share with me your favorite haikus." And some of them are quite funny. So there's this by Issa: "Don't worry, spiders, I keep house casually." And this: "Napped half the day, no one punished me!" And this gorgeous one, which is about the first day of snow falling, "Deer licking first frost from each other's coats." There's something mysterious and gorgeous just about the way a poem looks. The empty space is as important as the words themselves. We read this poem by W.S. Merwin, which he wrote after he saw his wife working in the garden and realized that they would spend the rest of their lives together. "Let me imagine that we will come again when we want to and it will be spring We will be no older than we ever were The worn griefs will have eased like the early cloud through which morning slowly comes to itself" I asked Patrick what his favorite line was, and he said, "We will be no older than we ever were." He said it reminded him of a place where time just stops, where time doesn't matter anymore. And I asked him if he had a place like that, where time lasts forever. And he said, "My mother." When you read a poem alongside someone else, the poem changes in meaning. Because it becomes personal to that person, becomes personal to you. We then read books, we read so many books, we read the memoir of Frederick Douglass, an American slave who taught himself to read and write and who escaped to freedom because of his literacy. I had grown up thinking of Frederick Douglass as a hero and I thought of this story as one of uplift and hope. But this book put Patrick in a kind of panic. He fixated on a story Douglass told of how, over Christmas, masters give slaves gin as a way to prove to them that they can't handle freedom. Because slaves would be stumbling on the fields. Patrick said he related to this. He said that there are people in jail who, like slaves, don't want to think about their condition, because it's too painful. Too painful to think about the past, too painful to think about how far we have to go. His favorite line was this line: "Anything, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me." Patrick said that Douglass was brave to write, to keep thinking. But Patrick would never know how much he seemed like Douglass to me. How he kept reading, even though it put him in a panic. He finished the book before I did, reading it in a concrete stairway with no light. And then we went on to read one of my favorite books, Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead," which is an extended letter from a father to his son. He loved this line: "I'm writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life ... you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle." Something about this language, its love, its longing, its voice, rekindled Patrick's desire to write. And he would fill notebooks upon notebooks with letters to his daughter. In these beautiful, intricate letters, he would imagine him and his daughter going canoeing down the Mississippi river. He would imagine them finding a mountain stream with perfectly clear water. As I watched Patrick write, I thought to myself, and I now ask all of you, how many of you have written a letter to somebody you feel you have let down? It is just much easier to put those people out of your mind. But Patrick showed up every day, facing his daughter, holding himself accountable to her, word by word with intense concentration. I wanted in my own life to put myself at risk in that way. Because that risk reveals the strength of one's heart. Let me take a step back and just ask an uncomfortable question. Who am I to tell this story, as in this Patrick story? Patrick's the one who lived with this pain and I have never been hungry a day in my life. I thought about this question a lot, but what I want to say is that this story is not just about Patrick. It's about us, it's about the inequality between us. The world of plenty that Patrick and his parents and his grandparents have been shut out of. In this story, I represent that world of plenty. And in telling this story, I didn't want to hide myself. Hide the power that I do have. In telling this story, I wanted to expose that power and then to ask, how do we diminish the distance between us? Reading is one way to close that distance. It gives us a quiet universe that we can share together, that we can share in equally. You're probably wondering now what happened to Patrick. Did reading save his life? It did and it didn't. When Patrick got out of prison, his journey was excruciating. Employers turned him away because of his record, his best friend, his mother, died at age 43 from heart disease and diabetes. He's been homeless, he's been hungry. So people say a lot of things about reading that feel exaggerated to me. Being literate didn't stop him form being discriminated against. It didn't stop his mother from dying. So what can reading do? I have a few answers to end with today. Reading charged his inner life with mystery, with imagination, with beauty. Reading gave him images that gave him joy: mountain, ocean, deer, frost. Words that taste of a free, natural world. Reading gave him a language for what he had lost. How precious are these lines from the poet Derek Walcott? Patrick memorized this poem. "Days that I have held, days that I have lost, days that outgrow, like daughters, my harboring arms." Reading taught him his own courage. Remember that he kept reading Frederick Douglass, even though it was painful. He kept being conscious, even though being conscious hurts. Reading is a form of thinking, that's why it's difficult to read because we have to think. And Patrick chose to think, rather than to not think. And last, reading gave him a language to speak to his daughter. Reading inspired him to want to write. The link between reading and writing is so powerful. When we begin to read, we begin to find the words. And he found the words to imagine the two of them together. He found the words to tell her how much he loved her. Reading also changed our relationship with each other. It gave us an occasion for intimacy, to see beyond our points of view. And reading took an unequal relationship and gave us a momentary equality. When you meet somebody as a reader, you meet him for the first time, newly, freshly. There is no way you can know what his favorite line will be. What memories and private griefs he has. And you face the ultimate privacy of his inner life. And then you start to wonder, "Well, what is my inner life made of? What do I have that's worthwhile to share with another?" I want to close on some of my favorite lines from Patrick's letters to his daughter. "The river is shadowy in some places but the light shines through the cracks of trees ... On some branches hang plenty of mulberries. You stretch your arm straight out to grab some." And this lovely letter, where he writes, "Close your eyes and listen to the sounds of the words. I know this poem by heart and I would like you to know it, too." Thank you so much everyone. (Applause) |
This one weird trick will help you spot clickbait | null | TED-Ed | One simple vitamin can reduce your risk of heart disease. Eating chocolate reduces stress in students. New drug prolongs lives of patients with rare disease. Health headlines like these are published every day, sometimes making opposite claims from each other. There can be a disconnect between broad, attention-grabbing headlines and the often specific, incremental results of the medical research they cover. So how can you avoid being misled by grabby headlines? The best way to assess a headline’s credibility is to look at the original research it reports on. We’ve come up with a hypothetical research scenario for each of these three headlines. Keep watching for the explanation of the first example; then pause at the headline to answer the question. These are simplified scenarios. A real study would detail many more factors and how it accounted for them, but for the purposes of this exercise, assume all the information you need is included. Let’s start by considering the cardiovascular effects of a certain vitamin, Healthium. The study finds that participants taking Healthium had a higher level of healthy cholesterol than those taking a placebo. Their levels became similar to those of people with naturally high levels of this kind of cholesterol. Previous research has shown that people with naturally high levels of healthy cholesterol have lower rates of heart disease. So what makes this headline misleading: "Healthium reduces risk of heart disease." The problem with this headline is that the research didn’t actually investigate whether Healthium reduces heart disease. It only measured Healthium’s impact on levels of a particular kind of cholesterol. The fact that people with naturally high levels of that cholesterol have lower risk of heart attacks doesn’t mean that the same will be true of people who elevate their cholesterol levels using Healthium. Now that you’ve cracked the case of Healthium, try your hand at a particularly alluring mystery: the relationship between eating chocolate and stress. This hypothetical study recruits ten students. Half begin consuming a daily dose of chocolate, while half abstain. As classmates, they all follow the same schedule. By the end of the study, the chocolate eaters are less stressed than their chocolate-free counterparts. What’s wrong with this headline: "Eating chocolate reduces stress in students" It’s a stretch to draw a conclusion about students in general from a sample of ten. That’s because the fewer participants are in a random sample, the less likely it is that the sample will closely represent the target population as a whole. For example, if the broader population of students is half male and half female, the chance of drawing a sample of 10 that’s skewed 70% male and 30% is about 12%. In a sample of 100 that would be less than a .0025% chance, and for a sample of 1000, the odds are less than 6 x 10^-36. Similarly, with fewer participants, each individual’s outcome has a larger impact on the overall results— and can therefore skew big-picture trends. Still, there are a lot of good reasons for scientists to run small studies. By starting with a small sample, they can evaluate whether the results are promising enough to run a more comprehensive, expensive study. And some research requires very specific participants that may be impossible to recruit in large numbers. The key is reproducibility— if an article draws a conclusion from one small study, that conclusion may be suspect— but if it’s based on many studies that have found similar results, it’s more credible. We’ve still got one more puzzle. In this scenario, a study tests a new drug for a rare, fatal disease. In a sample of 2,000 patients, the ones who start taking the drug upon diagnosis live longer than those who take the placebo. This time, the question is slightly different. What’s one more thing you’d like to know before deciding if the headline, "New drug prolongs lives of patients with rare disease", is justified? Before making this call, you’d want to know how much the drug prolonged the patients’ lives. Sometimes, a study can have results that, while scientifically valid, don’t have much bearing on real world outcomes. For example, one real-life clinical trial of a pancreatic cancer drug found an increase in life expectancy— of ten days. The next time you see a surprising medical headline, take a look at the science it’s reporting on. 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. It’s exciting to see scientific research covered in the news, and important to understand the studies’ findings. |
An ingenious proposal for scaling up marine protection | {0: "Maria Damanaki is The Nature Conservancy's Global Ambassador for the Ocean, leading the organization's response to the challenges facing marine ecosystems. She co-chairs the UN Community of Ocean Action on Marine and Coastal Ecosystem Management and serves on the Board of the Oxford Martin School’s Program on Sustainable Oceans."} | TED2019 | Ah, earth's oceans. They are beautiful, inspiring, life-sustaining. They are also, as you're probably quite aware, more or less screwed. In the Seychelles, for example, human activities and climate change have left corals bleached. Overfishing has caused fish stocks to plummet. Biodiversity is in peril. So what can we do? Well, some form of protection, obviously. Nature is very resilient. When marine areas are strategically protected, entire ecosystems can bounce back. However, creating marine protected areas isn't easy. First, you have the issue of figuring out where to protect. This coral reef overlaps with that international fishing route, intersects with this fish hatchery. Everything is interconnected. And marine protection plans must take into account how one area affects another. Then, there's the issue of getting everyone on board. Coastal economies often rely on fishing and tourism. If people think they can't do their work, there's no chance of getting the local buy-in you need for the area to be successful. Marine protected areas must also be enforced. That means the government itself must be deeply invested in the plan. Token support will not cut it. And finally, conservation requires money. A lot of it. Governments in island and coastal nations may want to protect their waters, but often these nations have very high debt and can't afford to prioritize conservation. If we rely on philanthropic dollars alone to fund marine protection, we might get a small marine-protected area here, another little one there. But we need more marine protected areas faster, to have lasting impact. So what exactly does smart ocean conservation look like? How do we get the money, government support and careful planning that takes into account both local economies and complex ecosystems? We want to share with you an audacious idea from The Nature Conservancy. It seeks to address all of these things in one fell swoop. They've realized that debt held by island and coastal nations is the very thing that will enable them to achieve their conservation goals. TNC's idea is to restructure this debt, to generate the funds and political will to protect reefs, mangroves and fisheries. For example, if you refinance your house to take advantage of a better interest rate, maybe you use the savings to insulate your attic. That's what Blue Bonds for Conservation do for entire coastal countries. Refinance the debt, then use the savings to create marine protected areas. Of course, sovereign debt restructuring is more complicated than that, but you get the basic idea. If investors put in 40 million dollars now, it can unlock as much as 1.6 billion for ocean conservation. And this is how the work gets done. Step one: negotiate the deal. A coastal nation commits to protect at least 30 percent of its ocean areas. In exchange, The Nature Conservancy bring investors, public funders and international development organizations to the table to restructure a portion of the nation's debt, leading to lower interest rates and longer repayment periods. Step two: create a marine plan. Simultaneously, The Nature Conservancy works with marine scientists, government leaders and local stakeholders to create a detailed conservation plan that integrates the needs of the ocean with the needs of the people. Step three: activate for longevity. TNC establishes an independently run conservation trust fund. The savings from the debt restructure goes into it to support new marine protected areas. The trust then holds the government accountable for its commitments, ensuring that the Blue Bonds finance real protection efforts. Could this plan work? It already has. In 2016, TNC helped create a national conservation plan in the Seychelles. TNC restructured 22 million dollars of the government's debt. And in exchange, the government agreed to protect 30 percent of its marine areas. Today, the Seychelles is on track to protect 400,000 square kilometers of ocean. That's an area roughly the size of Germany. The Seychelles is protecting its coral reefs, it's replenishing its fisheries, it's improving its resilience to climate change. At the same time, it's strengthening its economy. This success is making other governments take note. Many want to be part of this. There's an opportunity to scale this up, dramatically. And fast. TNC has identified 20 more nations where such a plan should be possible. But to execute, they need seed capital. And to put in place local teams who can develop conservation plans, work with all the stakeholders and structure the deals. If they get the support they need over the next five years, they could protect four million square kilometers of ocean. That's 10 Germanies. This would increase the amount of protected areas in all of the world's oceans by an incredible 15 percent. It would allow vast tracks of the world's coral reefs to replenish and give safe harbor to countless species. This would be truly incredible. And it's really just the beginning. Because there aren't 20 countries in the world where this kind of debt conversion would work. There are almost 100. With this approach, everyone wins. Governments, local citizens, funders, and most importantly, our oceans. So in fact, we all win. Ah, earth's oceans. [The Audacious Project] |
The most detailed map of galaxies, black holes and stars ever made | {0: 'Using all the techniques known to astronomy -- mathematics, computers and data from telescopes on the ground and in space -- Juna Kollmeier seeks to understand how the universe formed by mapping stars, galaxies and black holes at scale.'} | TED2019 | When I was a kid, I was afraid of the dark. The darkness is where the monsters are. And I had this little night light outside of my bedroom so that it would never get too dark. But over time, my fear of the dark turned to curiosity. What is out there in the "dark-dark?" And it turns out that trying to understand the darkness is something that's fascinated humans for thousands of years, maybe forever. And we know this because we find their ancient relics of their attempts to map the sky. This tusk is over 30,000 years old. Some people think that it's a carving of Orion or maybe a calendar. We don't know. The Fuxi star map is over 6,000 years old, and it's from a neolithic tomb in ancient China. And that little pile of clamshells underneath the dead guy's foot in the middle — that's supposed to be the Big Dipper. Maybe. The Nebra disk is uncontroversial. You don't have to be an astronomer to know that you're looking at the Moon phases or the Sun in eclipse. And that little group of seven stars, that's the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters. But in any case, the point is clear: astronomers have been mapping the sky for a long time. Why? It's our calling card as a species in the galaxy to figure things out. We know our planet, we cure our diseases, we cook our food, we leave our planet. But it's not easy. Understanding the universe is battle. It is unrelenting, it is time-varying, and it is one we are all in together. It is a battle in the darkness against the darkness. Which is why Orion has weapons. In any case, if you're going to engage in this battle, you need to know the battlefield. So at its core, mapping the sky involves three essential elements. You've got objects that are giving off light, you've got telescopes that are collecting that light, and you've got instruments that are helping you understand what that light is. Many of you have mapped the Moon phases over time with your eyes, your eyes being your more basic telescope. And you've understood what that means with your brains, your brains being one of your more basic instruments. Now, if you and a buddy get together, you would spend over 30 years, you would map 1,000 stars extremely precisely. You would move the front line to the battle. And that's what Tycho Brahe and his buddy, or his assistant, really, Johannes Kepler did back in the 1600s. And they moved the line, figured out how planets worked, how they moved around the Sun. But it wasn't until about 100 years ago that we realized it's a big universe. It seems like the universe is just infinite, which it is, but the observable universe is finite. Which means we can win the battle. But if you're going to map the universe, you're not going to do it with one or two of your besties. Mapping the universe takes an army, an army of curious, creative, craftspeople who, working together, can accomplish the extraordinary. I lead this army of creatives, in the fifth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, SDSS. And this is how astronomers have managed to shepherd individual curiosity through its industrial age, preserving the individual ability to make discoveries but putting into place mega machinery to truly advance the frontier. In SDSS, we divide the sky into three mappers: one for the stars, one for the black holes and one for the galaxies. My survey has two hemispheres, five telescopes, or 11, depending on how you count, 10 spectrographs and millions of objects. It's a monster. So let's go through the mappers. The Milky Way galaxy has 250 billion plus or minus a few hundred billion stars. That is not a number that you hold in your head. That is a number that doesn't make practical sense to pretty much anybody. You never get 250 billion jelly beans in your hand. You know? We're nowhere near mapping all of those stars yet. So we have to choose the most interesting ones. In SDSS-V, we're mapping six million stars where we think we can measure their age. Because if you can measure the age of a star, that's like having six million clocks spread all throughout the Milky Way. And with that information, we can unravel the history and fossil record of our galaxy and learn how it formed. I'm just going to cut right to the chase here. Black holes are among the most perplexing objects in the universe. Why? Because they are literally just math incarnate, in a physical form, that we barely understand. It's like the number zero being animated and walking around the corridors here. That would be super weird. These are weirder. And it's not just like a basketball that you smoosh down into a little point and it's super dense and that's weird. No, smooshed basketballs have a surface. These things don't have surfaces, and we know that now. Because we've seen it. Or the lack of it. What's really interesting about black holes is that we can learn a lot about them by studying the material just as it passes through that point of no information return. Because at that point, it's emitting lots of X-rays and optical and UV and radio waves. We can actually learn how these objects grow. And in SDSS, we're looking at over half a million supermassive black holes, to try to understand how they formed. Like I said, we live in the Milky Way, you guys are all familiar with that. The Milky Way is a completely average galaxy. Nothing funny going on. But it's ours, which is great. We think that the Milky Way, and all the Milky Ways, have this really disturbing past of literally blowing themselves apart. It's like every average guy you know has a history as a punk rock teenager. That's very bizarre. Stars are blowing up in these systems, black holes are growing at their centers and emitting a tremendous amount of energy. How does that happen, how does this transformation happen? And at SDSS, we're going to the bellies of the beast and zooming way in, to look at these processes where they are occurring in order to understand how Sid Vicious grows up into Ward Cleaver. My arsenal. These are my two big telescopes. The Apache Point Observatory hosts the Sloan telescope in New Mexico, and the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile hosts the two-and-a-half-meter telescope, the du Pont. Two and a half meters is the size of our mirror, which was huge for Tycho and Kepler. But it's actually not so big today. There are way bigger telescopes out there. But in SDSS we use new instruments on these old telescopes to make them interesting. We capture light from all of those objects into our aperture, and that light is then focused at the focal plane, where our instruments sit and process that light. What's new in SDSS-V is that we're making the focal plane entirely robotic. That's right: robots. (Laughter) So I'm going to show them to you, but they're fierce and terrifying, and I want you all to just take a breath. (Exhales) Trigger warning. And with no apologies to all the Blade Runners among you, here they are. (Laughter) I have 1,000 of these, 500 in the focal plane of each telescope in each hemisphere. And this is how they move on the sky. So these are our objects and a star field, so you've got stars, galaxies, black holes. And our robots move to those objects as we pass over them in order to capture the light from those stars and galaxies and black holes, and yes, it is weird to capture black hole light, but we've already gone over that black holes are weird. One more thing. Stars are exploding all the time, like this one did back in 1987 in our cosmic backyard. Black holes are growing all the time. There is a new sky every night. Which means we can't just map the sky one time. We have to map the sky multiple times. So in SDSS-V, we're going back to each part of the sky multiple times in order to see how these objects change over time. Because those changes in time encode the physics, and they encode how these objects are growing and changing. Mow the sky. OK, let me just recap. Global survey, two hemispheres, five telescopes, 10 spectrographs, millions of objects, mow the sky, creative army, robots, yeah. So you're thinking, "Wow. She must have this industrial machine going, no room for the individual, curious, lone wolf genius," right? And you'd be 100 percent wrong. Meet Hanny's Voorwerp. Hanny van Arkel was a Dutch schoolteacher who was analyzing the public versions of the SDSS data, when she found this incredibly rare type of object, which is now a subject of major study. She was able to do this because SDSS, since its beginning and by mandate from the Sloan Foundation, has made its data both publicly available and usable to a broad range of audiences. She's a citizen — yeah, clap for that. Clap for that. (Applause) Hanny is a citizen scientist, or as I like to call them, "citizen warriors." And she shows that you don't have to be a fancy astrophysicist to participate. You just have to be curious. A few years ago, my four-year-old asked, "Can moons have moons?" And I set about to answer this question because even though many four-year-olds over all of time have probably asked this question, many experts, including myself, didn't know the answer. These are the moons in our solar system that can host hypothetical submoons. And that just goes to show you that there are so many basic questions left to be understood. And this brings me to the most important point about SDSS. Because, yeah, the stars, the galaxies, the black holes, the robots — that's all super cool. But the coolest thing of all is that eensy-weensy creatures on a rubble pile around a totally average star in a totally average galaxy can win the battle to understand their world. Every dot in this video is a galaxy. Every dot. (Cheers) (Applause) I'm showing here the number of galaxies that astronomers have mapped in large surveys since about 1980. You can see SDSS kick in around Y2K. If we stay on this line, we will map every large galaxy in the observable universe by 2060. Think about that. Think about it: we've gone from arranging clamshells to general relativity to SDSS in a few thousand years — and if we hang on 40 more, we can map all the galaxies. But we have to stay on the line. Will that be our choice? There are dark forces in this world that will rob our entire species of our right to understand our universe. Don't be afraid of the dark. Fight back. Join us. Thank you. (Applause) |
"Three Months After" | null | TED-Ed | I'm Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz and this is "Three Months After." To want to disappear is different from wanting to die. To disappear and to not have to explain to anyone, to talk to anyone. To move to somewhere where no one knows you, where you don't have to look at a single laughing face. To elope with this grief who is not your enemy This grief who maybe now is your best friend. This grief who is your husband, the thing you curl into every night, falling asleep in its arms. Who wakes up early to make you your cold thankless breakfast. To go to that place where every surface is a blade. A sharp thing on which to hang your sorry flesh to feel something, anything, other than this. |
The mysterious microbes living deep inside the earth -- and how they could help humanity | {0: "Karen Lloyd investigates novel types of microbes in Earth's deep surface biosphere, collecting them from remote places such as Arctic fjords, volcanoes in Costa Rica, even deep in mud near the Marianas Trench."} | TED2019 | It may seem like we're all standing on solid earth right now, but we're not. The rocks and the dirt underneath us are crisscrossed by tiny little fractures and empty spaces. And these empty spaces are filled with astronomical quantities of microbes, such as these ones. The deepest that we found microbes so far into the earth is five kilometers down. So like, if you pointed yourself at the ground and took off running into the ground, you could run an entire 5K race and microbes would line your whole path. So you may not have ever thought about these microbes that are deep inside earth's crust, but you probably thought about the microbes living in our guts. If you add up the gut microbiomes of all the people and all the animals on the planet, collectively, this weighs about 100,000 tons. This is a huge biome that we carry in our bellies every single day. We should all be proud. (Laughter) But it pales in comparison to the number of microbes that are covering the entire surface of the earth, like in our soils, our rivers and our oceans. Collectively, these weigh about two billion tons. But it turns out that the majority of microbes on earth aren't even in oceans or our guts or sewage treatment plants. Most of them are actually inside the earth's crust. So collectively, these weigh 40 billion tons. This is one of the biggest biomes on the planet, and we didn't even know it existed until a few decades ago. So the possibilities for what life is like down there, or what it might do for humans, are limitless. This is a map showing a red dot for every place where we've gotten pretty good deep subsurface samples with modern microbiological methods, and you may be impressed that we're getting a pretty good global coverage, but actually, if you remember that these are the only places that we have samples from, it looks a little worse. If we were all in an alien spaceship, trying to reconstruct a map of the globe from only these samples, we'd never be able to do it. So people sometimes say to me, "Yeah, there's a lot of microbes in the subsurface, but ... aren't they just kind of dormant?" This is a good point. Relative to a ficus plant or the measles or my kid's guinea pigs, these microbes probably aren't doing much of anything at all. We know that they have to be slow, because there's so many of them. If they all started dividing at the rate of E. coli, then they would double the entire weight of the earth, rocks included, over a single night. In fact, many of them probably haven't even undergone a single cell division since the time of ancient Egypt. Which is just crazy. Like, how do you wrap your head around things that are so long-lived? But I thought of an analogy that I really love, but it's weird and it's complicated. So I hope that you can all go there with me. Alright, let's try it. It's like trying to figure out the life cycle of a tree ... if you only lived for a day. So like if human life span was only a day, and we lived in winter, then you would go your entire life without ever seeing a tree with a leaf on it. And there would be so many human generations that would pass by within a single winter that you may not even have access to a history book that says anything other than the fact that trees are always lifeless sticks that don't do anything. Of course, this is ridiculous. We know that trees are just waiting for summer so they can reactivate. But if the human life span were significantly shorter than that of trees, we might be completely oblivious to this totally mundane fact. So when we say that these deep subsurface microbes are just dormant, are we like people who die after a day, trying to figure out how trees work? What if these deep subsurface organisms are just waiting for their version of summer, but our lives are too short for us to see it? If you take E. coli and seal it up in a test tube, with no food or nutrients, and leave it there for months to years, most of the cells die off, of course, because they're starving. But a few of the cells survive. If you take these old surviving cells and compete them, also under starvation conditions, against a new, fast-growing culture of E. coli, the grizzled old tough guys beat out the squeaky clean upstarts every single time. So this is evidence there's actually an evolutionary payoff to being extraordinarily slow. So it's possible that maybe we should not equate being slow with being unimportant. Maybe these out-of-sight, out-of-mind microbes could actually be helpful to humanity. OK, so as far as we know, there are two ways to do subsurface living. The first is to wait for food to trickle down from the surface world, like trying to eat the leftovers of a picnic that happened 1,000 years ago. Which is a crazy way to live, but shockingly seems to work out for a lot of microbes in earth. The other possibility is for a microbe to just say, "Nah, I don't need the surface world. I'm good down here." For microbes that go this route, they have to get everything that they need in order to survive from inside the earth. Some things are actually easier for them to get. They're more abundant inside the earth, like water or nutrients, like nitrogen and iron and phosphorus, or places to live. These are things that we literally kill each other to get ahold of up at the surface world. But in the subsurface, the problem is finding enough energy. Up at the surface, plants can chemically knit together carbon dioxide molecules into yummy sugars as fast as the sun's photons hit their leaves. But in the subsurface, of course, there's no sunlight, so this ecosystem has to solve the problem of who is going to make the food for everybody else. The subsurface needs something that's like a plant but it breathes rocks. Luckily, such a thing exists, and it's called a chemolithoautotroph. (Laughter) Which is a microbe that uses chemicals — "chemo," from rocks — "litho," to make food — "autotroph." And they can do this with a ton of different elements. They can do this with sulphur, iron, manganese, nitrogen, carbon, some of them can use pure electrons, straight up. Like, if you cut the end off of an electrical cord, they could breathe it like a snorkel. (Laughter) These chemolithoautotrophs take the energy that they get from these processes and use it to make food, like plants do. But we know that plants do more than just make food. They also make a waste product, oxygen, which we are 100 percent dependent upon. But the waste product that these chemolithoautotrophs make is often in the form of minerals, like rust or pyrite, like fool's gold, or carminites, like limestone. So what we have are microbes that are really, really slow, like rocks, that get their energy from rocks, that make as their waste product other rocks. So am I talking about biology, or am I talking about geology? This stuff really blurs the lines. (Laughter) So if I'm going to do this thing, and I'm going to be a biologist who studies microbes that kind of act like rocks, then I should probably start studying geology. And what's the coolest part of geology? Volcanoes. (Laughter) This is looking inside the crater of Poás Volcano in Costa Rica. Many volcanoes on earth arise because an oceanic tectonic plate crashes into a continental plate. As this oceanic plate subducts or gets moved underneath this continental plate, things like water and carbon dioxide and other materials get squeezed out of it, like ringing a wet washcloth. So in this way, subduction zones are like portals into the deep earth, where materials are exchanged between the surface and the subsurface world. So I was recently invited by some of my colleagues in Costa Rica to come and work with them on some of the volcanoes. And of course I said yes, because, I mean, Costa Rica is beautiful, but also because it sits on top of one of these subduction zones. We wanted to ask the very specific question: Why is it that the carbon dioxide that comes out of this deeply buried oceanic tectonic plate is only coming out of the volcanoes? Why don't we see it distributed throughout the entire subduction zone? Do the microbes have something to do with that? So this is a picture of me inside Poás Volcano, along with my colleague Donato Giovannelli. That lake that we're standing next to is made of pure battery acid. I know this because we were measuring the pH when this picture was taken. And at some point while we were working inside the crater, I turned to my Costa Rican colleague Carlos Ramírez and I said, "Alright, if this thing starts erupting right now, what's our exit strategy?" And he said, "Oh, yeah, great question, it's totally easy. Just turn around and enjoy the view." (Laughter) "Because it will be your last." (Laughter) And it may sound like he was being overly dramatic, but 54 days after I was standing next to that lake, this happened. Audience: Oh! Freaking terrifying, right? (Laughs) This was the biggest eruption this volcano had had in 60-some-odd years, and not long after this video ends, the camera that was taking the video is obliterated and the entire lake that we had been sampling vaporizes completely. But I also want to be clear that we were pretty sure this was not going to happen on the day that we were actually in the volcano, because Costa Rica monitors its volcanoes very carefully through the OVSICORI Institute, and we had scientists from that institute with us on that day. But the fact that it erupted illustrates perfectly that if you want to look for where carbon dioxide gas is coming out of this oceanic plate, then you should look no further than the volcanoes themselves. But if you go to Costa Rica, you may notice that in addition to these volcanoes there are tons of cozy little hot springs all over the place. Some of the water in these hot springs is actually bubbling up from this deeply buried oceanic plate. And our hypothesis was that there should be carbon dioxide bubbling up with it, but something deep underground was filtering it out. So we spent two weeks driving all around Costa Rica, sampling every hot spring we could find — it was awful, let me tell you. And then we spent the next two years measuring and analyzing data. And if you're not a scientist, I'll just let you know that the big discoveries don't really happen when you're at a beautiful hot spring or on a public stage; they happen when you're hunched over a messy computer or you're troubleshooting a difficult instrument, or you're Skyping your colleagues because you are completely confused about your data. Scientific discoveries, kind of like deep subsurface microbes, can be very, very slow. But in our case, this really paid off this one time. We discovered that literally tons of carbon dioxide were coming out of this deeply buried oceanic plate. And the thing that was keeping them underground and keeping it from being released out into the atmosphere was that deep underground, underneath all the adorable sloths and toucans of Costa Rica, were chemolithoautotrophs. These microbes and the chemical processes that were happening around them were converting this carbon dioxide into carbonate mineral and locking it up underground. Which makes you wonder: If these subsurface processes are so good at sucking up all the carbon dioxide coming from below them, could they also help us with a little carbon problem we've got going on up at the surface? Humans are releasing enough carbon dioxide into our atmosphere that we are decreasing the ability of our planet to support life as we know it. And scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs are working on methods to pull carbon dioxide out of these point sources, so that they're not released into the atmosphere. And they need to put it somewhere. So for this reason, we need to keep studying places where this carbon might be stored, possibly in the subsurface, to know what's going to happen to it when it goes there. Will these deep subsurface microbes be a problem because they're too slow to actually keep anything down there? Or will they be helpful because they'll help convert this stuff to solid carbonate minerals? If we can make such a big breakthrough just from one study that we did in Costa Rica, then imagine what else is waiting to be discovered down there. This new field of geo-bio-chemistry, or deep subsurface biology, or whatever you want to call it, is going to have huge implications, not just for mitigating climate change, but possibly for understanding how life and earth have coevolved, or finding new products that are useful for industrial or medical applications. Maybe even predicting earthquakes or finding life outside our planet. It could even help us understand the origin of life itself. Fortunately, I don't have to do this by myself. I have amazing colleagues all over the world who are cracking into the mysteries of this deep subsurface world. And it may seem like life buried deep within the earth's crust is so far away from our daily experiences that it's kind of irrelevant. But the truth is that this weird, slow life may actually have the answers to some of the greatest mysteries of life on earth. Thank you. (Applause) |
How close are we to eradicating HIV? | null | TED-Ed | The world is getting closer to achieving one of the most important public health goals of our time: eradicating HIV. And to do this, we won’t even have to cure the disease. We simply have to stop HIV from being transmitted until eventually it fizzles out. Once, this goal would have seemed impossible. HIV has caused millions of deaths and is one of the most devastating diseases that humanity has ever known. But we’re now at a point where new advances such as one-pill, once-a-day medications are helping us tackle HIV in effective ways. HIV is a retrovirus– meaning it integrates copies of itself into an infected cell’s DNA, allowing it to replicate and infect other cells. HIV has evolved numerous ways to evade the human immune system, which makes it difficult to cure. But by developing ways to block HIV replication, we can stop the spread of HIV itself. That’s where antiretrovirals– a.k.a. ARVs– come in. ARVs are a group of drugs which work in different ways to combat HIV. Some block HIV’s access into immune cells, and others work by stopping the virus itself from replicating. ARVs also work preventatively in people who don’t have HIV. This type of approach is called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. PrEP works by accumulating in a person’s body and preventing HIV from establishing itself. That means an HIV-negative person who may be at risk of contracting the disease can take certain ARVs to protect themselves, before they become exposed. Here’s where it gets especially interesting: In people with HIV, ARVs can also dramatically reduce HIV transmission. This is called “Treatment as Prevention.” On a global scale, this has the potential to end the HIV epidemic. It’s based on the idea that someone with HIV who takes ARV’s can lower the virus level in their bodies until it becomes undetectable. That doesn’t mean the virus is gone; it could still be lurking within cells, ready to reactivate if treatment stops. But so long as it’s kept dormant with drugs, HIV remains undetectable. And when HIV is undetectable, it’s untransmittable, too. In theory this means that by testing everyone who’s at risk of HIV and treating those who test positive, we could stop transmission and eventually eradicate HIV. In the real world, however, things are more complex. Many at-risk HIV negative people across the world do not have access to PrEP or ARVs, and those who are HIV positive may experience challenges to taking ARVs. These problems are often greatest in countries where the burden of HIV is highest. Getting these medications depends on access to a functioning healthcare system– and this isn’t something everyone has. That’s part of the reason why stopping the spread of HIV for good will require a significant investment of resources to improve those systems. One study carried out by the UNAIDS estimated that between 20-30 billion dollars per year would be needed to achieve a nearly 90% reduction in new HIV infections by 2030. This investment would ensure more people would get tested in the first place, and more would be able to access and maintain treatment. Achieving this goal and improving healthcare in general is in everyone’s best interest, from individual people to society as a whole. We have roadmaps that could allow us to bring the HIV epidemic to an end in the near future, with the possibility of eradicating the disease altogether several generations in the future. In the period from 1996 to 2017 we almost halved the number of new HIV infections, and for the millions of people who still live with the virus, ARV treatments enable most to lead long and healthy lives. With continued and increased investments, we can get transmission rates low enough to end HIV once and for all. A world without HIV is no longer inconceivable: it’s closer than ever. |
3 steps to turn everyday get-togethers into transformative gatherings | {0: 'Priya Parker teaches people to gather better at home, at work, at school and in our communities.'} | TED2019 | When I was a child, every other Friday, I would leave my mother and stepfather's home — an Indian and British, atheist, Buddhist, agnostic, vegetarian, new age-y sometimes, Democratic household. And I would go 1.4 miles to my father and stepmother's home and enter a white, Evangelical Christian, conservative, Republican, twice-a-week-churchgoing, meat-eating family. It doesn't take a shrink to explain how I ended up in the field of conflict resolution. (Laughter) Whether I was facilitating dialogues in Charlottesville or Istanbul or Ahmedabad, the challenge was always the same: despite all odds, and with integrity, how do you get people to connect meaningfully, to take risks, to be changed by their experience? And I would witness extraordinarily beautiful electricity in those rooms. And then I would leave those rooms and attend my everyday gatherings like all of you — a wedding or a conference or a back-to-school picnic — and many would fall flat. There was a meaning gap between these high-intensity conflict groups and my everyday gatherings. Now, you could say, sure, somebody's birthday party isn't going to live up to a race dialogue, but that's not what I was responding to. As a facilitator, you're taught to strip everything away and focus on the interaction between people, whereas everyday hosts focus on getting the things right — the food, the flowers, the fish knives — and leave the interaction between people largely to chance. So I began to wonder how we might change our everyday gatherings to focus on making meaning by human connection, not obsessing with the canapés. And I set out and interviewed dozens of brave and unusual hosts — an Olympic hockey coach, a Cirque du Soleil choreographer, a rabbi, a camp counselor— to better understand what creates meaningful and even transformative gatherings. And I want to share with you some of what I learned today about the new rules of gathering. So when most people plan a gathering, they start with an off-the-rack format. Birthday party? Cake and candles. Board meeting? One brown table, 12 white men. (Laughter) Assuming the purpose is obvious, we skip too quickly to form. This not only leads to dull and repetitive gatherings, it misses a deeper opportunity to actually address our needs. The first step of creating more meaningful everyday gatherings is to embrace a specific disputable purpose. An expectant mother I know was dreading her baby shower. The idea of "pin the diaper on the baby" games and opening gifts felt odd and irrelevant. So she paused to ask: What is the purpose of a baby shower? What is my need at this moment? And she realized it was to address her fears of her and her husband's — remember that guy? — transition to parenthood. And so she asked two friends to invent a gathering based on that. And so on a sunny afternoon, six women gathered. And first, to address her fear of labor — she was terrified — they told her stories from her life to remind her of the characteristics she already carries — bravery, wonder, faith, surrender — that they believed would carry her and help her in labor as well. And as they spoke, they tied a bead for each quality into a necklace that she could wear around her neck in the delivery room. Next, her husband came in, and they wrote new vows, family vows, and spoke them aloud, first committing to keep their marriage central as they transitioned to parenthood, but also future vows to their future son of what they wanted to carry with them from each of their family lines and what would stop with this generation. Then more friends came along, including men, for a dinner party. And in lieu of gifts, they each brought a favorite memory from their childhood to share with the table. Now, you might be thinking this is a lot for a baby shower, or it's a little weird or it's a little intimate. Good. It's specific. It's disputable. It's specific to them, just as your gathering should be specific to you. The next step of creating more meaningful everyday gatherings is to cause good controversy. You may have learned, as I did, never to talk about sex, politics or religion at the dinner table. It's a good rule in that it preserves harmony, or that's its intention. But it strips away a core ingredient of meaning, which is heat, burning relevance. The best gatherings learn to cultivate good controversy by creating the conditions for it, because human connection is as threatened by unhealthy peace as by unhealthy conflict. I was once working with an architecture firm, and they were at a crossroads. They had to figure out whether they wanted to continue to be an architecture firm and focus on the construction of buildings or pivot and become the hot new thing, a design firm, focusing on beyond the construction of spaces. And there was real disagreement in the room, but you wouldn't know, because no one was actually speaking up publicly. And so we hosted good controversy. After a lunch break, all the architects came back, and we hosted a cage match. They walked in, we took one architect, put him in one corner to represent architecture, the other one to represent design. We threw white towels around their necks, stolen from the bathroom — sorry — played Rocky music on an iPad, got each a Don King-like manager to rev them up and prepare them with counterarguments, and then basically made them each argue the best possible argument of each future vision. The norm of politeness was blocking their progress. And we then had everybody else physically choose a side in front of their colleagues. And because they were able to actually show where they stood, they broke an impasse. Architecture won. So that's work. What about a hypothetical tense Thanksgiving dinner? Anyone? (Laughter) So first, ask the purpose. What does this family need this year? If cultivating good heat is part of it, then try for a night banning opinions and asking for stories instead. Choose a theme related to the underlying conflict. But instead of opinions, ask everybody to share a story from their life and experience that nobody around the table has ever heard, to difference or to belonging or to a time I changed my mind, giving people a way in to each other without burning the house down. And finally, to create more meaningful everyday gatherings, create a temporary alternative world through the use of pop-up rules. A few years ago, I started noticing invitations coming with a set of rules. Kind of boring or controlling, right? Wrong. In this multicultural, intersectional society, where more of us are gathered and raised by people and with etiquette unlike our own, where we don't share the etiquette, unspoken norms are trouble, whereas pop-up rules allow us to connect meaningfully. They're one-time-only constitutions for a specific purpose. So a team dinner, where different generations are gathering and don't share the same assumptions of phone etiquette: whoever looks at their phone first foots the bill. (Laughter) Try it. (Applause) For an entrepreneurial advice circle of just strangers, where the hosts don't want everybody to just listen to the one venture capitalist in the room — (Laughter) knowing laugh — (Laughter) you can't reveal what you do for a living. For a mom's dinner, where you want to upend the norms of what women who also happen to be mothers talk about when they gather, if you talk about your kids, you have to take a shot. (Laughter) That's a real dinner. Rules are powerful, because they allow us to temporarily change and harmonize our behavior. And in diverse societies, pop-up rules carry special force. They allow us to gather across difference, to connect, to make meaning together without having to be the same. When I was a child, I navigated my two worlds by becoming a chameleon. If somebody sneezed in my mother's home, I would say, "Bless you," in my father's, "God bless you." To protect myself, I hid, as so many of us do. And it wasn't until I grew up and through conflict work that I began to stop hiding. And I realized that gatherings for me, at their best, allow us to be among others, to be seen for who we are, and to see. The way we gather matters because how we gather is how we live. Thank you. (Applause) |
Can dogs sniff out malaria? | {0: 'Professor James Logan leads an internationally renowned research program at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, presents television programs and has a passion for science and natural history.'} | TEDxLondon | Malaria is still one of the biggest killers on the planet. Despite us making significant progress in the last 20 years, half the world's population is still at risk from this disease. In fact, every two minutes a child dies from Malaria. Our progress has undoubtedly stalled. Now, we face many challenges when it comes to tackling Malaria. But one of the problems that we have is actually finding people who are infected with Malaria in the first place. So for example, if people have some level of immunity to the disease, then they can develop an infection and become infectious and still pass it on, but not actually develop any symptoms, and that can be a big problem because how do you find those people - it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. Now, scientists have been trying to solve this problem for some years, but what I want to talk to you about today is that the solution to this problem may have been right under our noses this whole time. That was a bit of a heavy start with lots of really important and serious statistics. So I want us all to just relax a little bit now, help me to relax a little bit as well. So why don't we all take a nice deep breath in. (Inhaling) Wow! And sigh. Okay, I'm going to get blown away there. (Laughter) Okay, now I want you to do it again, but this time I want you to do it just through your nose, and I want you to really sense the environment around you. And in fact, I want you to really smell the person who's sitting next to you, even if you don't know them. I don't care! Lean in. Get your nose right into their armpit. Stop being so British about it. Get your nose into the armpit, have a good old sniff. See what you can smell. (Laughter) Now, each and everyone of us would have had a very different sensory experience there. Some of us will have smelt something rather pleasant, perhaps somebody's perfume. But some of us might've smelt something a little bit less pleasant, perhaps - perhaps somebody's bad breath or body odour. Maybe you even smelled your own body odour. But there's probably a good reason that some of us don't like certain body smells. Throughout history, there had been many examples of diseases being associated with a smell. So for example, typhoid apparently smells like baked brown bread. Well, that's quite a nice smell, isn't it? But it starts to get a little bit worse. TB smells like stale beer, and yellow fever smells like the inside of a butcher shop, like raw meat. And in fact, when you look at the sort of words used to describe diseases, you tend to find these words: rotting, foul, putrid or pungent. So it's no surprise then, that smell and body odour gets a bit of a bad reputation. If I was to say to you: 'You smell', you're going to take that not exactly as a compliment, are you? But you do smell, you've just found that out, you do smell. It's a scientific fact. I'd quite like to turn that on its head. What if we could actually think about smell in a positive way? What if we could put it to good use? What if we could detect the chemicals that are given off by our bodies when we're ill and use that to diagnose people? Now, we'd need to develop good sensors that would allow us to do this. But it turns out that the world's best sensors actually already exist. And they're called 'animals'. Now, animals are built to smell. They live their everyday lives according to their nose. They sense the environments, which tells them really important information about how to stay alive, essentially. Just imagine a mosquito. Imagine you're a mosquito, and you've just flown in from outside and you've entered this room. You're going to be entering a really complex world. You're going to be bombarded with smells from everywhere. We've just found out that we're really smelly beasts. Each one of us is producing 500-600 different volatile chemicals. It's not just one chemical like BO, lots and lots of chemicals. But it's not just you, it's these seats you're sitting on, the carpet, the glue that holds the carpet to the floor, the paint on the walls, the trees outside, everything around you is producing an odour, and it's a really complex world that the mosquito has to fly through, and it has to find you within that really complex world. And each and every one of you will know - C'mon, hands up, who always get bitten by mosquitoes? And hands up, who never get bitten? There's always one or two really annoying people that never get bitten. But the mosquito has a really hard job to find you, and that's all to do with the way you smell. People who don't attract mosquitoes smell repellent, and what we know is - (Laughter) I should clarify: repellent to mosquitoes, not to people. And what we know now is that is actually controlled by our genes. But mosquitoes are able to do that because they have a highly sophisticated sense of smell, and they're able to see through all this sort of odour sludge to find you, that individual, and bite you as a blood meal. But what would happen if one of you was infected with malaria? Well, let's just have a quick look at the malaria life cycle. So it's quite complex, but basically what happens is: a mosquito has to bite somebody to become infected. Once it bites an infected person, the parasites travel through the mouth part into the gut, and then bursts through the gut, creates cysts, and then the parasites replicate, and then they make a journey from the gut all the way to the salivary glands, where they are then injected back into another person when the mosquito bites because it injects saliva as it bites. Then inside the human it goes through a whole other cycle, a whole other part of the life cycle. So it goes through a liver stage, changes shape and then comes out into the bloodstream again, and eventually that person will become infectious. Now, one thing we know about the parasite world is that they are incredibly good at manipulating their hosts to enhance their own transmission, to make sure that they get passed onwards. If this was to happen in the malaria system, it might make sense that it would be something to do with odour that they manipulate because odour is the key, odour's the thing that links us between mosquitoes; that's how they find us. This is what we call the malaria manipulation hypothesis, and it's something that we've been working on over the last few years. So one of the first things that we wanted to do in our study was to find out whether an infection with malaria actually makes you more attractive to mosquitoes or not. So in Kenya with our colleagues, we designed an experiment where we had participants, children in Kenya, sleep inside tents. The odour from the tent was blown into a chamber which contained mosquitoes. And the mosquitoes would behaviourally respond - they would fly towards or fly away from the odours depending on whether they liked them or not. Now, some of the participants were infected with malaria and some of them were uninfected. But importantly, none of the children had any symptoms whatsoever. Now, when we found and saw the results, it was really quite staggering. People who were infected with malaria were significantly more attractive than people who were uninfected. Let me explain this graph. We have a number of mosquitoes attracted to the child, and we have two sets of data: before treatment and after treatment. On the far left hand side, that bar represents somebody - or a group of people who are uninfected. And as we move towards the right hand side these people have become infected, and they're moving towards the stage that they're infectious. So right at the stage when people are infectious is when they are significantly more attractive. In this study then what we did is we obviously gave the children treatment to clear the parasites, and then we tested them again. And what we found was that highly attractive trait that was there disappeared after they had cleared the infection, so it wasn't just that the people were more attractive, it was that the parasite was manipulating its host in some way to make it more attractive to mosquitoes, standing out like a beacon to attract more mosquitoes so that it could continue its life cycle. The next thing we wanted to do was find out what it was the mosquito was actually smelling. What was it detecting? So to do that we had to collect the body odour from the participants. And we did this by wrapping bags around their feet, which allowed us to collect the volatile odours from their feet. And feet's really important to mosquitoes. They really love the smell of feet. (Laughter) Especially cheesy feet. Anybody got cheesy feet out there? Mosquitoes love that smell. So we focused on the feet and we collected the body odour. Now, when it comes to mosquitoes and olfaction, their sense of smell, it's very complex. It would be really nice if there was just one chemical that they detected, but it's not that simple. They have to detect a number of chemicals in the right concentration, the right ratios, the right combinations of chemicals. So you can sort of think about it like a musical composition. So, you know, if you get the note wrong or you play it too loud or too soft, it doesn't sound right. Or a recipe, if you get an ingredient wrong, or you cook it too long or too little, it doesn't taste right. Well, smell is the same, it's made up of a suite of chemicals in the right combination. Now, our machines in the lab are not particularly good at picking out this sort of signal; it's quite complex. But animals can. And what we do in my laboratory is we connect microelectrodes to the antenna of a mosquito - imagine how fiddly that is. (Laughter) But what we also do is connect them to individual cells within the antenna, which is incredible. You definitely don't want to sneeze when you're doing this experiment, that's for sure. But what this does is it allows us to measure the electrical response of the smell receptors in the antennae, and so that we can see what a mosquito is smelling. I'm going to show you what this looks like: here's an insect's cell, and it's responding; it will respond in a second when I press this button. You'll see it sort of ticking over with this response. An odour will be blown over the cell, and it will sort of go a bit crazy, sort of blow a raspberry. Then it will go back to its resting potential when we stop the odour. (Clicking) Okay, there we go. So you can go home now and say that you've now seen an insect smelling and even hearing an insect smelling. It's a weird concept, isn't it? But this works really well, and this allows us to see what the insect is detecting. Now, using this method with our malaria samples, we were able to find out what the mosquito was detecting. And we found the malaria associated compounds were a group of compounds, mainly aldehydes, a group of compounds that smelled, that signified the malaria at signal here. So now we know what the smell of malaria is, and we've used the mosquito as a bio-sensor to tell us what the smell of malaria actually is. Now, I'd like to imagine that you could, I don't know, put a harness on a little mosquito and, you know, put it on a lead and take it out and see if we can sniff people in a community - that goes on in my head - and see whether we could actually find people with malaria. But, of course, that's not really possible. But there is an animal that we can do that with. Awww. (Laughter) Yes. Now, dogs have an incredible sense of smell, but there's something a little bit more special about them, they have an ability to learn. And most of you will be familiar with this concept at airports, where dogs will go down a line and sniff out your luggage or yourself for drugs and explosives or even food as well. So we wanted to know: Could we actually train dogs to learn the smell of malaria? And so we've been working with a charity called Medical Detection Dogs to see whether we can train them to learn the smell of malaria. And we went out to the Gambia and did some more odour collection on children that were infected and uninfected. But this time we collected their odour by making them wear socks, nylon stockings to collect their body odour, and we brought them back to the UK, and then we handed them to this charity to run the experiment. Now, I could show you a graph and tell you about how that experiment works, but it'd be a bit dull, wouldn't it? Now, they do say never work with children or animals live. But we're going to break that rule today. So, please welcome onto the stage, Freya (Applause) and her trainer, (Applause) Mark, and Sarah. Of course this is the real star of the show. Okay so, now what I'm going to ask is if you can all just be a little bit quiet, don't move around too much. This is a very strange environment for Freya. She's having a good look at you guys now. So let's stay as calm as possible; that would be great. So what we're going to do here is we're going to ask Freya to move down this line of contraptions here. And in each one of these contraptions we have a pot. In the pot is a sock that's been worn by a child in The Gambia. Now, three of the socks had been worn by children who were uninfected, and just one of the socks was worn by a child who was infected with malaria. So just as you'd see an airport, imagine these were people, and the dog is going to go down and have a good sniff. And let's see if you can see when she senses the malaria. And if she senses it in there. This is a really tough test for her in this very strange environment. So I'm going to hand over now to Mark. (Laughter) Number three. Okay, there we go. (Applause) I didn't know which pot that was in. Mark didn't know which pot that was in. This was a blind test, genuinely. Sarah, was that correct? That was correct. Well done, Freya! That is fantastic. (Applause) Whew! That is really wonderful. Okay, that's brilliant. Now what we're going to do is Sarah's going to change the pots around a little bit; she's going to take the one with malaria away. And we're just going to have four pots that are containing socks from children that had no malaria. So in theory, Freya should go down the line and not stop at all. This is really important because we also need to know people who are not infected; she needs to be able to do that correctly as well. This is a really tough test. These socks have been in the freezer for a couple of years now. And this is a tiny bit of a sock as well, so imagine if this was a whole person and they were giving off a big signal. So this is really quite incredible. Okay, over to you, Mark. Brilliant! Fantastic! (Applause) Really super! Thank you so much, guys. Big round of applause for Freya, Mark and Sarah! Well done, guys. (Applause) What a good girl. She's going to get a treat later. Fantastic. So, you've just seen that for your own eyes. That was a real live demonstration. I was quite nervous about it. I'm so glad that it worked. (Laughter) But it is really incredible, and when we do this, what we find is that these dogs can correctly tell us when somebody's infected with malaria 81% of the time. It's incredible! 92% of the time, they can tell us correctly when somebody does not have an infection. And those numbers are actually above the criteria set by the World Health Organization for a diagnostic. So we really are looking at deploying dogs in countries, and particularly at ports of entry, to detect people who have malaria. This could be a reality. But we can't deploy dogs everywhere. So what we're also looking to do and working on at the moment is the development of technology, wearable tech that would empower the individual to allow them to self-diagnose. Imagine a patch that you wear on the skin that would detect in your sweat when you're infected with malaria and change colour. Or something a little bit more technical perhaps, a smartwatch that would alert you when you're infected with malaria. And if we can do this digitally, and we can collect data, imagine the amount of data that we can collect on a global scale. This could completely revolutionise the way that we track the spread of diseases, the way that we target our control efforts and respond to disease outbreaks, ultimately helping to lead to the eradication of malaria, and even beyond malaria for other diseases that we already know have a smell. If we can harness the power of nature to find out what those smells are, we could do this and make this a reality. Now, as scientists, we're tasked with coming up with new ideas, new concepts, new technologies, to tackle some of the world's greatest problems. But what never ceases to amaze me is that often, nature has already done this for us. And the answer is right under our nose. Thank you. (Applause) (Cheers) |
"The Road Not Taken" | null | TED-Ed | "The Road Not Taken" By Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. |
Ugly History: Witch Hunts | null | TED-Ed | In the German town of Nördlingen in 1593, an innkeeper named Maria Höll found herself accused of witchcraft. She was arrested for questioning, and denied the charges. She continued to insist she wasn’t a witch through 62 rounds of torture before her accusers finally released her. Rebekka Lemp, accused a few years earlier in the same town, faced a worse fate. She wrote to her husband from jail worrying that she would confess under torture, even though she was innocent. After giving a false confession, she was burned at the stake in front of her family. Höll and Lemp were both victims of the witch hunts that occurred in Europe and the American colonies from the late 15th century until the early 18th century. These witch hunts were not a unified initiative by a single authority, but rather a phenomenon that occurred sporadically and followed a similar pattern each time. The term “witch” has taken on many meanings, but in these hunts, a witch was someone who allegedly gained magical powers by obeying Satan rather than God. This definition of witchcraft spread through churches in Western Europe starting at the end of the 15th century. It really gained traction after the pope gave a friar and professor of theology named Heinrich Kraemer permission to conduct inquisitions in search of witches in 1485. His first, in the town of Innsbruck, didn’t gain much traction with the local authorities, who disapproved of his harsh questioning of respectable citizens and shut down his trials. Undeterred, he wrote a book called the "Malleus Maleficarum," or "Hammer of Witches." The text argued for the existence of witches and suggested ruthless tactics for hunting and prosecuting them. He singled out women as easier targets for the devil’s influence, though men could also be witches. Kraemer’s book spurred others to write their own books and give sermons on the dangers of witchcraft. According to these texts, witches practiced rituals including kissing the Devil’s anus and poisoning or bewitching targets the devil singled out for harm. Though there was no evidence to support any of these claims, belief in witches became widespread. A witch hunt often began with a misfortune: a failed harvest, a sick cow, or a stillborn child. Community members blamed witchcraft, and accused each other of being witches. Many of the accused were people on the fringes of society: the elderly, the poor, or social outcasts, but any member of the community could be targeted, even occasionally children. While religious authorities encouraged witch hunts, local secular governments usually carried out the detainment and punishment of accused witches. Those suspected of witchcraft were questioned and often tortured— and under torture, thousands of innocent people confessed to witchcraft and implicated others in turn. Because these witch hunts occurred sporadically over centuries and continents the specifics varied considerably. Punishments for convicted witches ranged from small fines to burning at the stake. The hunt in which Höll and Lemp were accused dragged on for nine years, while others lasted just months. They could have anywhere from a few to a few hundred victims. The motivations of the witch hunters probably varied as well, but it seems likely that many weren’t consciously looking for scapegoats— instead, they sincerely believed in witchcraft, and thought they were doing good by rooting it out in their communities. Institutions of power enabled real harm to be done on the basis of these beliefs. But there were dissenters all along– jurists, scholars, and physicians countered books like Kraemer’s "Hammer of Witches" with texts objecting to the cruelty of the hunts, the use of forced confessions, and the lack of evidence of witchcraft. From the late 17th through the mid-18th century, their arguments gained force with the rise of stronger central governments and legal norms like due process. Witch hunting slowly declined until it disappeared altogether. Both the onset and demise of these atrocities came gradually, out of seemingly ordinary circumstances. The potential for similar situations, in which authorities use their powers to mobilize society against a false threat, still exists today— but so does the capacity of reasoned dissent to combat those false beliefs. |
The true power of a good outfit | {0: 'Lucy Clayton is curator and co-host of the Dress: Fancy podcast, exploring the social significance and psychology of people in costume. Her career in fashion has taken her from Next to New York and, more recently, Community Clothing, a social enterprise with a mission to sustain and create jobs in the UK textile and garment manufacturing industry.'} | TEDxExeter | I'm going to talk about political protest and papier mache. (Laughter) But for any of this to make sense, I first need to confess something to you, something that might not be obvious just by looking at me. My name's Lucy, and I'm a sensible grown-up. I work hard. I'm a decent mother and a responsible member of my community. But I much prefer dressing up as someone else. You see, I have always loved fancy dress. And since this picture - (Laughter) But since this picture was taken, I've ramped things up a bit. I've commissioned made-to-measure armor from a workshop in the Ukraine, imported professional Hollywood blood. I've nurtured a collection of 36 tiaras. I've had a fake wedding, complete with fake bridesmaids, fake vicar, fake husband. I hospitalized myself once after an incident with a Roman toga and some very hot glue. (Laughter) And I once sent my son to school looking like this. (Laughter) Now, the kind of fancy dress that I love is not the same as cosplay with its discipline and immersiveness and accuracy. They're the real deal. But what I adore is the peculiar eccentricity of cardboard cut-outs, dodgy sewing, stapled seams. It's kitchen-table couture. The for-one-night-only aspect, falling into bed drunk and danced out and still wearing the face paint. And there's nothing disciplined about that. So in order to have more fancy dress in my life - because, honestly, it's awful - you can't do it in supermarkets or on average Wednesdays. So I created a podcast about it. The only podcast about fashion, fantasy, and fancy dress. Or costumes, as they prefer to call it in the US. It's a place to explore the elaborate themes, intricacies, and influence of costume in real life. Because I'm interested in the distinction between the performative and the personal. Ordinary people in extraordinary outfits. And what struck me more than any other subject we've encountered on the show is the way people use costume as a tool for protest. Now, you might be thinking, "What does dressing up have to do with the important business of politics?" (Laughter) And it does seem counterintuitive. Why dress silly in order to be taken seriously? But from caped crusaders to modern suffragettes, people are getting creative with costume to express their outrage and garner global attention. And it's working. It's worth saying here that fashion is often treated as a flimsy, generally female distraction from the real issues of the day, and despite being a three-trillion-dollar industry, it's often marginalized or dismissed in commentary about current affairs. And yet, every day each one of us uses what we wear as a tool for constructing our sense of self, for literally fashioning our identities. If fashion is considered frivolous, then fancy dress is really frivolous. Right? But actually, it allows us to express the most extreme version of ourselves. It allows us to be something other. Something in-between, something in development. And historically, it's always had a relationship with hot topics. Here's a gown by Worth worn by Mrs. Vanderbilt in 1883, representing the spirit of electricity. More recently, there's been a decidedly less beautiful trend for dressing as the Millennial's favorite, the avocado. (Laughter) Sorry. (Laughter) Over the years, fancy dress has playfully depicted controversial moments, from this matchgirl factory-strike dress to Urban Outfitter's Halloween "Influencer" costume. It's satire and disruption and provocation. So I'm going to take us beyond slogan T-shirts to look at the ways bonkers subversive garments are being used to take on the establishment. Here, we can see an anarchic continuity from gunpowder plot through to Occupy Wall Street. These masks taken from the comic book "V for Vandetta," are used as a public face of the anonymous movement. They're a variation on a Guy Folks theme, and they hark back to ancient carnivals and masquerades where the usual societal rules don't apply, and everything is temporarily topsy-turvy. Here, "Handmaid's Tale" costumes are appropriated for demonstrations against the Trump administration, and we saw a lot at the Kavanaugh hearings - taking a moment in fiction from Margaret Atwood's 1985 dystopia, and applying it to a very current conflict, lines of silent, highly visible women outside courtrooms and the Capitol. Hilariously, later, in a complete misjudgment of the cultural mood, the retailer Yandy prompted wide-spread disgust when they launched a sexy version of the Handmaid. (Laughter) I don't think they'd read the novel. (Laughter) Elsewhere, the visual language of the suffragettes is borrowed from new battle, purple for dignity, white for purity, green for hope. Powerful Pantones and a pre-hashtag way of building momentum. Sentiments like "Same shit, different century" are rendered ever so lady-like. (Laughter) The campaign group Fathers for Justice uses a range of costumes in their stunts from Batman to Santa. Clear statements in a contentious debate. By using classic icons of good, by hijacking the visual grammar of superheroism, they're trying to invoke an almost an instinctive, nostalgic, sympathetic response in the viewer. The Pink Pussyhat Project took a traditional domestic skill and rendered it the opposite of calm or comforting. This open-source knitting pattern, this moment of craftivism - originally conceived the people who wanted to march but couldn't - was quickly embraced by women's activists all over the world. Sarah Mower called it a global cheerful symbol of feminist defiance in British Vogue, and it's considered so important a moment in fashion history that the V&A's brilliantly titled Rapid Response Collection have already acquired one. Now, imagine if you took the costumes away in all these examples. If they were just standing there in jeans and anoraks. What does that do the occasion, the atmosphere, the news cycle? Each of these examples uses cultural referencing to make a statement without saying a word. It's free speech without speech, the messages writ large on the body. And how do you express your feelings about issues that are so complex, so shifting, so delicate, so divisive that sometimes language eludes even the very best of us? I just love her face in that picture. (Laughter) At a time when the words of experts are ridiculed and critics are trolled, when fake news rebrands truth as fiction, perhaps we need tools that are beyond language to securely assert our values. I think there's a link between fancy dress and ambition. It's why we love it growing up. You can be a ballet dancer and a firefighter, all in the same afternoon. But for the game to work, you have to do more than just put the clothes on. You need to aspire into those costumes. Fancy dress isn't just a tool to passively join in, but an opportunity to project our future selves, our hopes. And I believe there's a relationship between the way we dress and how brave we feel. I know that because it took me weeks to decide what to wear today. (Laughter) Perhaps, dressing up gives us courage to behave in ways we wouldn't otherwise. Here are some extreme illustrations of that. During the American Civil War, Frances Clayton dressed as a male soldier, becoming Jack Williams. She fought with the Missouri Regiment in 17 battles before her identity was revealed. She used uniform first to disguise her gender, second as armor, a layering of costume that allowed her to elude the male gaze and instead train her eye to fight alongside them. Which, I wonder, was the more dangerous? By wearing her warrior status, Frances was dressing up in order to be allowed in. A whole life born out of those clothes. The women of the 18th century often used the masquerades as an opportunity to elope or escape. Being masked and unchaperoned gave them an unusual freedom, a socially sanctioned moment of disguise to pursue a life beyond the one ascribed to them. The mask made them dangerous and daring. We know how extreme the psychology of this can be because the worst imaginable atrocities have been committed masked and in a kind of costume. A corrupt courage. Cloaked and criminal. A group united as a chilling icon of hatred. Costume isn't intrinsically innocent. And a disguise can free an innermost evil, too. Costume for unity can be seen in a completely different way here: where it says, "She is getting married, so we're having organized compulsory fun." (Laughter) We've all been there. Or here, at the State of the Union, where it says we are part of an empowered tradition honoring the suffragettes' legacy. Simply put, when an activist puts their identity alongside a placard, they show that they, as an individual, express a view. If they want to connect it with a wider movement, they can use a signifier, like the suffragette colors or the "hi-viz" vests of the French "Gilets jaunes." It's tribal. Whereas in fancy dress, the costume subsumes the individual entirely into the view they're expressing. It's as if, bizarrely, when someone is concealed, their true values become completely visible. The arresting protest images I've shown you today, and of course there are many more, all, unequivocally, communicate collective hopes. By protesting in costume, these people are giving voice to their democratic right to imagine a potential future, to identify with each other, and to express their freedom. So costume has real potential to challenge and confront, for disruption and dissent. By dressing outside ourselves, we trick the eye, attract the focus, demand recognition. We creatively tell the people in power that we're not comfortable conforming, that the collective issue is bigger than our personal perspective. Fancy dress is not bound by who you are or how you identify but by the message you want to embody. And those messages aren't constrained by the limits of your experience or your environment. Only by your imagination. And we have to imagine our utopias before we can build them. It is imagination that sells thousands of cheap and cheerful Marilyn Monroe dresses every year. Imagination that sends kids to school clutching Harry Potter wands, and sales figures for grotesque rubber presidential candidate masks have correctly predicted U.S. election outcomes since Nixon. Isn't he handsome there? (Laughter) Unlike any other kind of getting dressed, fancy dress is fundamentally about infinite possibility. That's why we keep it alive, even when technology offers up far more sophisticated vehicles for experimenting or escapism. We still throw another party, hand down our treasured dressing-up boxes, those time capsules of ideas and interpretations. So if dressing together as one brilliant rainbow crew gives you a sense of strength and belonging, a palette just about big enough to celebrate your pride, then use all the colors. Or if you wake up one morning thinking Brexit is a job for Wonderwoman ... (Laughter) you might be right. Or if you're moved to rise up in solidarity in a crowd of pink hats that say in glorious, loving shorthand how your body is equal, how it is not there for grabbing, how it belongs fiercely to yourself, then get knitting. Just as children dressing as astronauts aren't trying out a future career, they're playing with an alternative reality. So we can use the freedom of fancy dress to communicate an imagined, better version of our lives. Because fancy dress says, "This tawdry reality isn't good enough for me." Think of it as dressing up for the job you want, not the job you have. Or for turning one night only into a blueprint for a magical tomorrow, too. Lets remember, fancy dress has a grown-up role to play beyond stag parties and Halloweens. Its principles even have a place at the State Opening of Parliament and the State of the Union. From full get-up to subtle signifiers, this is about being emboldened. Massive movements are born of micro demonstrations. Things that seem trivial or frivolous can be potent symbols of what you stand for, or what you won't stand for. There's real power in putting on those knitted ears, in choosing to wear a cape for good versus evil. Fancy dress has a unifying quality that we can use to fight for change, armed only with glue guns and gumption. And if costume makes up braver, it gives us the courage to explore imaginative alternatives. The courage not just to turn up but to be noticed. So I hope we never grow out of it. Thank you. (Applause) (Cheers) (Whistles) |
Why we get mad -- and why it's healthy | {0: 'Dr. Ryan Martin is the chair of the psychology department at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.'} | TEDxFondduLac | Alright, so I want you to imagine that you get a text from a friend, and it reads ... "You will NOT believe what just happened. I'm SO MAD right now!" So you do the dutiful thing as a friend, and you ask for details. And they tell you a story about what happened to them at the gym or at work or on their date last night. And you listen and you try to understand why they're so mad. Maybe even secretly judge whether or not they should be so mad. (Laughter) And maybe you even offer some suggestions. Now, in that moment, you are doing essentially what I get to do every day, because I'm an anger researcher, and as an anger researcher, I spend a good part of my professional life — who am I kidding, also my personal life — studying why people get mad. I study the types of thoughts they have when they get mad, and I even study what they do when they get mad, whether it's getting into fights or breaking things, or even yelling at people in all caps on the internet. (Laughter) And as you can imagine, when people hear I'm an anger researcher, they want to talk to me about their anger, they want to share with me their anger stories. And it's not because they need a therapist, though that does sometimes happen, it's really because anger is universal. It's something we all feel and it's something they can relate to. We've been feeling it since the first few months of life, when we didn't get what we wanted in our cries of protests, things like, "What do you mean you won't pick up the rattle, Dad, I want it!" (Laughter) We feel it throughout our teenage years, as my mom can certainly attest to with me. Sorry, Mom. We feel it to the very end. In fact, anger has been with us at some of the worst moments of our lives. It's a natural and expected part of our grief. But it's also been with us in some of the best moments of our lives, with those special occasions like weddings and vacations often marred by these everyday frustrations — bad weather, travel delays — that feel horrible in the moment, but then are ultimately forgotten when things go OK. I have a lot of conversations with people about their anger and it's through those conversations that I've learned that many people, and I bet many people in this room right now, you see anger as a problem. You see the way it interferes in your life, the way it damages relationships, maybe even the ways it's scary. And while I get all of that, I see anger a little differently, and today, I want to tell you something really important about your anger, and it's this: anger is a powerful and healthy force in your life. It's good that you feel it. You need to feel it. But to understand all that, we actually have to back up and talk about why we get mad in the first place. A lot of this goes back to the work of an anger researcher named Dr. Jerry Deffenbacher, who wrote about this back in 1996 in a book chapter on how to deal with problematic anger. Now, for most of us, and I bet most of you, it feels as simple as this: I get mad when I'm provoked. You hear it in the language people use. They say things like, "It makes me so mad when people drive this slow," or, "I got mad because she left the milk out again." Or my favorite, "I don't have an anger problem — people just need to stop messing with me." (Laughter) Now, in the spirit of better understanding those types of provocations, I ask a lot of people, including my friends and colleagues and even family, "What are the things that really get to you? What makes you mad?" By the way, now is a good time to point out one of the advantages of being an anger researcher is that I've spent more than a decade generating a comprehensive list of all the things that really irritate my colleagues. Just in case I need it. (Laughter) But their answers are fascinating, because they say things like, "when my sports team loses," "people who chew too loudly." That is surprisingly common, by the way. "People who walk too slowly," that one's mine. And of course, "roundabouts." Roundabouts — (Laughter) I can tell you honestly, there is no rage like roundabout rage. (Laughter) Sometimes their answers aren't minor at all. Sometimes they talk about racism and sexism and bullying and environmental destruction — big, global problems we all face. But sometimes, their answers are very specific, maybe even oddly specific. "That wet line you get across your shirt when you accidentally lean against the counter of a public bathroom." (Laughter) Super gross, right? (Laughter) Or "Flash drives: there's only two ways to plug them in, so why does it always take me three tries?" (Laughter) Now whether it's minor or major, whether it's general or specific, we can look at these examples and we can tease out some common themes. We get angry in situations that are unpleasant, that feel unfair, where our goals are blocked, that could have been avoided, and that leave us feeling powerless. This is a recipe for anger. But you can also tell that anger is probably not the only thing we're feeling in these situations. Anger doesn't happen in a vacuum. We can feel angry at the same time that we're scared or sad, or feeling a host of other emotions. But here's the thing: these provocations — they aren't making us mad. At least not on their own, and we know that, because if they were, we'd all get angry over the same things, and we don't. The reasons I get angry are different than the reasons you get angry, so there's got to be something else going on. What is that something else? Well, we know what we're doing and feeling at the moment of that provocation matters. We call this the pre-anger state — are you hungry, are you tired, are you anxious about something else, are you running late for something? When you're feeling those things, those provocations feel that much worse. But what matters most is not the provocation, it's not the pre-anger state, it's this: it's how we interpret that provocation, it's how we make sense of it in our lives. When something happens to us, we first decide, is this good or bad? Is it fair or unfair, is it blameworthy, is it punishable? That's primary appraisal, it's when you evaluate the event itself. We decide what it means in the context of our lives and once we've done that, we decide how bad it is. That's secondary appraisal. We say, "Is this the worst thing that's ever happened, or can I cope with this? Now, to illustrate that, I want you to imagine you are driving somewhere. And before I go any further, I should tell you, if I were an evil genius and I wanted to create a situation that was going to make you mad, that situation would look a lot like driving. (Laughter) It's true. You are, by definition, on your way somewhere, so everything that happens — traffic, other drivers, road construction — it feels like it's blocking your goals. There are all these written and unwritten rules of the road, and those rules are routinely violated right in front of you, usually without consequence. And who's violating those rules? Anonymous others, people you will never see again, making them a very easy target for your wrath. (Laughter) So you're driving somewhere, thus teed up to be angry, and the person in front of you is driving well below the speed limit. And it's frustrating because you can't really see why they're driving so slow. That's primary appraisal. You've looked at this and you've said it's bad and it's blameworthy. But maybe you also decide it's not that big a deal. You're not in a hurry, doesn't matter. That's secondary appraisal — you don't get angry. But now imagine you're on your way to a job interview. What that person is doing, it hasn't changed, right? So primary appraisal doesn't change; still bad, still blameworthy. But your ability to cope with it sure does. Because all of a sudden, you're going to be late to that job interview. All of a sudden, you are not going to get your dream job, the one that was going to give you piles and piles of money. (Laughter) Somebody else is going to get your dream job and you're going to be broke. You're going to be destitute. Might as well stop now, turn around, move in with your parents. (Laughter) Why? "Because of this person in front of me. This is not a person, this is a monster." (Laughter) And this monster is here just to ruin your life. (Laughter) Now that thought process, it's called catastrophizing, the one where we make the worst of things. And it's one of the primary types of thoughts that we know is associated with chronic anger. But there's a couple of others. Misattributing causation. Angry people tend to put blame where it doesn't belong. Not just on people, but actually inanimate objects as well. And if you think that sound ridiculous, think about the last time you lost your car keys and you said, "Where did those car keys go?" Because you know they ran off on their own. (Laughter) They tend to overgeneralize, they use words like "always," "never," "every," "this always happens to me," "I never get what I want" or "I hit every stoplight on the way here today." Demandingness: they put their own needs ahead of the needs of others: "I don't care why this person is driving so slow, they need to speed up or move over so I can get to this job interview." And finally, inflammatory labeling. They call people fools, idiots, monsters, or a whole bunch of things I've been told I'm not allowed to say during this TED Talk. (Laughter) So for a long time, psychologists have referred to these as cognitive distortions or even irrational beliefs. And yeah, sometimes they are irrational. Maybe even most of the time. But sometimes, these thoughts are totally rational. There is unfairness in the world. There are cruel, selfish people, and it's not only OK to be angry when we're treated poorly, it's right to be angry when we're treated poorly. If there's one thing I want you to remember from my talk today, it's this: your anger exists in you as an emotion because it offered your ancestors, both human and nonhuman, with an evolutionary advantage. Just as your fear alerts you to danger, your anger alerts you to injustice. It's one of the ways your brain communicates to you that you have had enough. What's more, it energizes you to confront that injustice. Think for a second about the last time you got mad. Your heart rate increased. Your breathing increased, you started to sweat. That's your sympathetic nervous system, otherwise known as your fight-or-flight system, kicking in to offer you the energy you need to respond. And that's just the stuff you noticed. At the same time, your digestive system slowed down so you could conserve energy. That's why your mouth went dry. And your blood vessels dilated to get blood to your extremities. That's why your face went red. It's all part of this complex pattern of physiological experiences that exist today because they helped your ancestors deal with cruel and unforgiving forces of nature. And the problem is that the thing your ancestors did to deal with their anger, to physically fight, they are no longer reasonable or appropriate. You can't and you shouldn't swing a club every time you're provoked. (Laughter) But here's the good news. You are capable of something your nonhuman ancestors weren't capable of. And that is the capacity to regulate your emotions. Even when you want to lash out, you can stop yourself and you can channel that anger into something more productive. So often when we talk about anger, we talk about how to keep from getting angry. We tell people to calm down or relax. We even tell people to let it go. And all of that assumes that anger is bad and that it's wrong to feel it. But instead, I like to think of anger as a motivator. The same way your thirst motivates you to get a drink of water, the same way your hunger motivates you to get a bite to eat, your anger can motivate you to respond to injustice. Because we don't have to think too hard to find things we should be mad about. When we go back to the beginning, yeah, some of those things, they're silly and not worth getting angry over. But racism, sexism, bullying, environmental destruction, those things are real, those things are terrible, and the only way to fix them is to get mad first and then channel that anger into fighting back. And you don't have to fight back with aggression or hostility or violence. There are infinite ways that you can express your anger. You can protest, you can write letters to the editor, you can donate to and volunteer for causes, you can create art, you can create literature, you can create poetry and music, you can create a community that cares for one another and does not allow those atrocities to happen. So the next time you feel yourself getting angry, instead of trying to turn it off, I hope you'll listen to what that anger is telling you. And then I hope you'll channel it into something positive and productive. Thank you. (Applause) |
My life as a work of art | {0: 'Inspired by art in all its forms, Daniel Lismore combines multiple inspirations from around the world into vibrant expressions of cultural appreciation.'} | TED2019 | My day starts just like yours. (Laughter) When I wake up in the morning, I check my phone, and then I have a cup of coffee. But then my day truly starts. It may not be like yours, because I live my life as an artwork. Picture yourself in a giant jewelry box with all the beautiful things that you have ever seen in your life. Then imagine that your body is a canvas. And on that canvas, you have a mission to create a masterpiece using the contents of your giant jewelry box. Once you've created your masterpiece, you might think, "Wow, I created that. This is who I am today." Then you would pick up your house keys, walk out the door into the real world, maybe take public transport to the center of the town ... Possibly walk along the streets or even go shopping. That's my life, every day. When I walk out the door, these artworks are me. I am art. I have lived as art my entire adult life. Living as art is how I became myself. I was brought up in a small village called Fillongley, in England, and it was last mentioned in the "Domesday Book," so that's the mentality. (Laughter) I was raised by my grandparents, and they were antiques dealers, so I grew up surrounded by history and beautiful things. I had the most amazing dress-up box. So as you can imagine, it started then. I moved to London when I was 17 to become a model. And then I went to study photography. I wasn't really happy with myself at the time, so I was always looking for escapism. I studied the works of David LaChapelle and Steven Arnold, photographers who both curated and created worlds that were mind-blowing to me. So I decided one day to cross over from the superficial fashion world to the superficial art world. (Laughter) I decided to live my life as a work of art. I spend hours, sometimes months, making things. My go-to tool is a safety pin, like this — (Laughter) They're never big enough. (Laughter) And I use my fabrics time and time again, so I recycle everything that I use. When I get dressed I'm guided by color, texture and shape. I rarely have a theme. I find beautiful objects from all over the world, and I curate them into 3-D tapestries over a base layer that covers my whole body shape ... because I'm not very happy with my body. (Laughs) I ask myself, "Should I take something off or should I put something on? 100 pieces, maybe?" And sometimes, I do that. I promise you it's not too uncomfortable — well, just a little — (Laughter) I might have a safety pin poking at me sometimes when I'm having a conversation with you, so I'll kind of go off — (Laughter) It usually takes me about 20 minutes to get ready, which nobody ever believes. It's true — sometimes. So, it's my version of a t-shirt and jeans. (Laughter) When I get dressed, I build like an architect. I carefully place things till I feel they belong. Then, I get a lot of my ideas from lucid dreaming. I actually go to sleep to come up with my ideas, and I've taught myself to wake up to write them down. I wear things till they fall apart, and then, I give them a new life. The gold outfit, for example — it was the outfit that I wore to the Houses of Parliament in London. It's made of armor, sequins and broken jewelry, and I was the first person to wear armor to Parliament since Oliver Cromwell banned it in the 17th century. Things don't need to be expensive to be beautiful. Try making outfits out of bin liners or trash you found out on the streets. You never know, they might end up on the pages of "Vogue." There's over 6,000 pieces in my collection, ranging from 2,000-year-old Roman rings to ancient Buddhist artifacts. I believe in sharing what I do and what I have with others, so I decided to create an art exhibition, which is currently traveling to museums around the world. It contains an army of me — life-size sculptures as you can see behind me, they're here — they are my life, really. They're kind of like 3-D tapestries of my existence as living as art. They contain plastic crystals mixed with diamonds, beer cans and royal silks all in one look. I like the fact that the viewer can never make the assumption about what's real and what's fake. I find it important to explore and share cultures through my works. I use clothing as a means to investigate and appreciate people from all over the world. Sometimes, people think I'm a performer or a drag queen. I'm not. Although my life appears to be a performance, it's not. It's very real. People respond to me as they would any other type of artwork. Many people are fascinated and engaged. Some people walk around me, staring, shy at first. Then they come up to me and they say they love or absolutely hate what I do. I sometimes respond, and other times I let the art talk for itself. The most annoying thing in the world is when people want to touch the artwork. But I understand. But like a lot of contemporary art, many people are dismissive. Some people are critical, others are abusive. I think it comes from the fear of the different — the unknown. There are so many reactions to what I do, and I've just learned not to take them personally. I've never lived as Daniel Lismore, the person. I've lived as Daniel Lismore, the artwork. And I've faced every obstacle as an artwork. It can be hard ... especially if your wardrobe takes up a 40-foot container, three storage units and 30 boxes from IKEA — (Laughter) and sometimes, it can be very difficult, getting into cars, and sometimes — well, this morning I didn't fit through my bathroom door, so that was a problem. (Laughter) What does it mean to be yourself? People say it all the time, but what does it truly mean, and why does it matter? How does life change when you choose to be unapologetically yourself? I've had to face struggles and triumphs whilst living my life as art. I've been put on private jets and flown around the world. My work's been displayed in prestigious museums, and I've had the opportunity — that is my grandparents, by the way, they're the people that raised me, and there I am — (Laughs) (Applause) So I've been put on private jets, flown around the world, and yet, it's not been that easy because at times, I've been homeless, I've been spat at, I've been abused, sometimes daily, bullied my entire life, rejected by countless individuals, and I've been stabbed. But what hurt the most was being put on the "Worst Dressed" list. (Laughter) It can be hard, being yourself, but I've found it's the best way. There's the "Worst Dressed." (Laughs) As the quote goes, "Everyone else is already taken." I've come to realize that confidence is a concept you can choose. I've come to realize that authenticity is necessary, and it's powerful. I've tried to spend time being like other people. It didn't work. It's a lot of hard work, not being yourself. I have a few questions for you all. Who are you? How many versions of you are there? And I have one final question: Are you using them all to your advantage? In reality, everyone is capable of creating their own masterpiece. You should try it sometime. It's quite fun. Thank you. (Applause and cheers) |
The political power of being a good neighbor | {0: 'Michael Tubbs is the youngest mayor in the history of the US to represent a city with a population of more than 100,000 residents.'} | TED2019 | So I know for sure there's at least one thing I have in common with dentists. I absolutely hate the holiday of Halloween. Now, this hatred stems not from a dislike of cavities, nor was it a lifetime in the making. Rather, this hatred stems from a particular incident that happened nine years ago. Nine years ago, I was even younger, I was 20 years old, and I was an intern in the White House. The other White House. And my job was to work with mayors and councilors nationwide. November 1, 2010 began just like any other day. I turned on the computer, went on Google and prepared to write my news clips. I was met with a call from my mother, which isn't that out the norm, my mom likes to text, call, email, Facebook, Instagram, all that. So I answered the phone expecting to hear maybe some church gossip, or maybe something from WorldStarHipHop she had discovered. But when I answered the phone, I was met with a tone that was unlike anything I had ever heard from my mother. My mother's loud. But she spoke in a hush, still, muffled tone that conveyed a sense of sadness. And as she whispered, she said, "Michael, your cousin Donnell was murdered last night, on Halloween, at a house party in Stockton." And like far too many people in this country, particularly from communities like mine, particularly that look like me, I spent the better part of the year dealing with anger, rage, nihilism, and I had a choice to make. The choice was one between action and apathy. The choice was what could I do to put purpose to this pain. I spent a year dealing with feelings of survivor's guilt. What was the point of me being at Stanford, what was the point of me being at the White House if I was powerless to help my own family? And my own family was dying, quite literally. I then began to feel a little selfish and say, what's the point of even trying to make the world a better place? Maybe that's just the way it is. Maybe I would be smart to take advantage of all the opportunities given to me and make as much money as possible, so I'm comfortable, and my immediate family is comfortable. But finally, towards the end of that year, I realized I wanted to do something. So I made the crazy decision, as a senior in college, to run for city council. That decision was unlikely for a couple of reasons, and not just my age. You see, my family is far from a political dynasty. More men in my family have been incarcerated than in college. In fact, as I speak today, my father is still incarcerated. My mother, she had me as a teenager, and government wasn't something we had warm feelings from. You see, it was the government that red-lined the neighborhoods I grew up in. Full of liquor stores and no grocery stores, there was a lack of opportunity and concentrated poverty. It was the government and the politicians that made choices, like the war on drugs and three strikes, that have incarcerated far too many people in our country. It was the government and political actors that made the decisions that created the school funding formulas, that made it so the school I went to receive less per pupil spending than schools in more affluent areas. So there was nothing about that background that made it likely for me to choose to be involved in being a government actor. And at the same time, Stockton was a very unlikely place. Stockton is my home town, a city of 320,000 people. But historically, it's been a place people run from, rather than come back to. It's a city that's incredibly diverse. Thirty-five percent Latino, 35 percent white, 20 percent Asian, 10 percent African American, the oldest Sikh temple in North America. But at the time I ran for office, we were also the largest city in the country at that time to declare bankruptcy. At the time I decided to run for office, we also had more murders per capita than Chicago. At the time I decided to run for office, we had a 23 percent poverty rate, a 17 percent college attainment rate and a host of challenges and issues beyond the scope of any 21-year-old. So after I won my election, I did what I usually do when I feel overwhelmed, I realized the problems of Stockton were far bigger than me and that I might need a little divine intervention. So as I prepared for my first council meeting, I went back to some wisdom my grandmother taught me. A parable I think we all know, that really constitutes the governing frame we're using to reinvent Stockton today. I remember in Sunday school, my grandmother told me that at one time, a guy asked Jesus, "Who was my neighbor? Who was my fellow citizen? Who am I responsible for?" And instead of a short answer, Jesus replied with a parable. He said there was a man on a journey, walking down Jericho Road. As he was walking down the road, he was beat up, left on the side of the road, stripped of all his clothes, had everything stolen from and left to die. And then a priest came by, saw the man on the side of the road, maybe said a silent prayer, hopes and prayers, prayers that he gets better. Maybe saw the man on the side of the road and surmised that it was ordained by God for this particular man, this particular group to be on the side of the road, there's nothing I can do to change it. After the priest walked by, maybe a politician walked by. A 28-year-old politician, for example. Saw the man on the side of the road and saw how beat up the man was, saw that the man was a victim of violence, or fleeing violence. And the politician decided, "You know what? Instead of welcoming this man in, let's build a wall. Maybe the politician said, "Maybe this man chose to be on the side of the road." That if he just pulled himself up by his bootstraps, despite his boots being stolen, and got himself back on the horse, he could be successful, and there's nothing I could do." And then finally, my grandmother said, a good Samaritan came by, saw the man on the side of the road and looked and saw not centuries of hatred between Jews and Samaritans, looked and saw not his fears reflected, not economic anxiety, not "what's going to happen to me because things are changing." But looked and saw a reflection of himself. He saw his neighbor, he saw his common humanity. He didn't just see it, he did something about it, my grandmother said. He got down on one knee, he made sure the man was OK, and I heard, even gave him a room at that nice Fairmont, the Pan Pacific one. (Laughter) And as I prepared to govern, I realized that given the diversity of Stockton, the first step to making change will be to again answer the same question: Who is our neighbor? And realizing that our destiny as a city was tied up in everyone. Particularly those who are left on the side of the road. But then I realized that charity isn't justice, that acts of empathy isn't justice, that being a good neighbor is necessary but not sufficient, and there was more that had to be done. So looking at the story, I realized that the road, Jericho Road, has a nickname. It's known as the Bloody Pass, the Ascent of Red, because the road is structured for violence. This Jericho Road is narrow, it's conducive for ambushing. Meaning, a man on the side of the road wasn't abnormal. Wasn't strange. And in fact, it was something that was structured to happen, it was supposed to happen. And Johan Galtung, a peace theorist, talks about structural violence in our society. He says, "Structural violence is the avoidable impairment of basic human needs." Dr. Paul Farmer talks about structural violence and talks about how it's the way our institutions, our policies, our culture creates outcomes that advantage some people and disadvantage others. And then I realized, much like the road in Jericho, in many ways, Stockton, our society, has been structured for the outcomes we complain about. That we should not be surprised when we see that kids in poverty don't do well in school, that we should not be surprised to see wealth gaps by race and ethnicity. We should not be surprised to see income pay disparities between genders, because that's what our society, historically, has been structured to do, and it's working accordingly. (Applause) So taking this wisdom, I rolled up my sleeves and began to work. And there's three quick stories I want to share, that point to not that we figured everything out, not that we have arrived, but we're trending in the right direction. The first story, about the neighbor. When I was a city council member, I was working with one of the most conservative members in our community on opening a health clinic for undocumented people in the south part of the city, and I loved it. And as we opened the clinic, we had a resolution to sign, he presented me a gift. It was an O'Reilly Factor lifetime membership pin. (Laughter) Mind you, I didn't ask what he did to get such a gift. What blood oath — I had no idea how he got it. But I looked at him and I said, "Well, how are we working together to open a health clinic, to provide free health care for undocumented people, and you're an O'Reilly Factor member?" He looked at me and said, "Councilman Tubbs, this is for my neighbors." And he's a great example of what it means to be a good neighbor, at least in that instance. The robbers. So after four years on city council, I decided to run for mayor, realizing that being a part-time councilman wasn't enough to enact the structural changes we need to see in Stockton, and I came to that conclusion by looking at the data. So my old council district, where I grew up, is 10 minutes away from a more affluent district. And 10 minutes away in the same city, the difference between zip code 95205 and 95219 in life expectancy is 10 years. Ten minutes away, 4.5 miles, 10 years life expectancy difference, and not because of the choices people are making. Because no one chose to live in an unsafe community where they can't exercise. No one chose to put more liquor stores than grocery stores in the community. No one chose these things, but that's the reality. I realized, as a councilman, to enact a structural change I wanted to see, where between the same zip codes there's a 30 percent difference in the rate of unemployment, there's a 75,000 dollars a year difference in income, that being a councilman was not going to cut it. So that's when I decided to run for mayor. And as mayor, we've been focused on the robbers and the road. So in Stockton, as I mentioned, we have historically had problems with violent crime. In fact, that's why I decided to run for office in the first place. And my first job as mayor was helping our community to see ourselves, our neighbors, not just in the people victimized by violence but also in the perpetrators. We realized that those who enact pain in our society, those who are committing homicides and contributing to gun violence, are oftentimes victims themselves. They have high rates of trauma, they have been shot at, they've known people who have been shot. That doesn't excuse their behavior, but it helps explain it, and as a community, we have to see these folks as us, too. That they too are our neighbors. So for the past three years — (Applause) So for the past three years, we've been working on two strategies: Ceasefire and Advance Peace, where we give these guys as much attention, as much love from social services, from opportunities, from tattoo removals, in some cases even cash, as a gift from law enforcement. And last year, we saw a 40 percent reduction in homicides and a 30 percent reduction in violent crime. (Applause) And now, the road. I mentioned that my community has a 23 percent poverty rate. As someone who comes from poverty, it's a personal issue for me. So I decided that we wouldn't just do a program, or we wouldn't just do something to go around the edges, but we would call into question the very structure that produces poverty in the first place. So starting in February, we launched a basic income demonstration, where for the next 18 months, as a pilot, 130 families, randomly selected, who live in zip codes at or below the median income of the city, are given 500 dollars a month. And we're doing this for a couple of reasons. We're doing it because we realize that something is structurally wrong in America, when one in two Americans can't afford one 400-dollar emergency. We're doing it because we realize that something is structurally wrong when wages have only increased six percent between 1979 and 2013. We're doing it because we realize something is structurally wrong when people working two and three jobs, doing all the jobs no one in here wants to do, can't pay for necessities, like rent, like lights, like health care, like childcare. (Applause) So I would say, Stockton again, we have real issues. I have constituent emails in my phone now, about the homelessness issue, about some of the violent crime we're still experiencing. But I would say, I think as a society, we would be wise to go back to those old Bible stories we were taught growing up, and understand that number one, we have to begin to see each other as neighbors, that when we see someone different from us, they should not reflect our fears, our anxieties, our insecurities, the prejudices we've been taught, our biases — but we should see ourselves. We should see our common humanity. Because I think once we do that, we can do the more important work of restructuring the road. Because again, I understand some listening are saying, "Well, Mayor Tubbs, you're talking about structural violence and structural this, but you're on the stage. That the structures can't be too bad if you could come up from poverty, have a father in jail, go to Stanford, work in the White House and become mayor." And I would respond by saying the term for that is exceptionalism. Meaning that we recognize it's exceptional for people to escape the structures. Meaning by our very language, we understand that the things we're seeing in our world are by design. And I think that task for us, as TEDsters, and as good people, just people, moral people, is really do the hard work necessary of not just joining hands as neighbors, but using our hands to restructure our road, a road that in this country has been rooted in things like white supremacy. A road like in this country has been rooted in things like misogyny. A road that's not working for far too many people. And I think today, tomorrow and 2020 we have a chance to change that. So as I prepare to close, I started with a story from nine years ago and I'll end with one. So after my cousin was murdered, I was lucky enough to go on the Freedom Rides with some of the original freedom riders. And they taught me a lot about restructuring the road. And one guy in particular, Bob Singleton, asked me a question I'm going to leave with us today. We were going to Anniston, Alabama, and he said, "Michael," and I said, "Yes, sir." He said, "I was arrested on August 4, 1961. Now why is that day important?" And I said, "Well, you were arrested, if you weren't arrested, we wouldn't be on this bus. if we weren't on this bus, we wouldn't have the rights we enjoy." He rolled his eyes and said, "No, son." He said, "On that day, Barack Obama was born." And then he said he had no idea that the choice he made to restructure the road would pave the way, so a child born as a second class citizen, who wouldn't be able to even get a cup of water at a counter, would have the chance, 50 years later, to be president. Then he looked at me and he said, "What are you prepared to do today so that 50 years from now a child born has a chance to be president?" And I think, TED, that's the question before us today. We know things are jacked up. I think what we've seen recently isn't abnormal but a reflection of a system that's been structured to produce such crazy outcomes. But I think it's also an opportunity. Because these structures we inherit aren't acts of God but acts of men and women, they're policy choices, they're by politicians like me, approved by voters like you. And we have the chance and the awesome opportunity to do something about it. So my question is: What are we prepared to do today, so that a child born today, 50 years from now isn't born in a society rooted in white supremacy; isn't born into a society riddled with misogyny; isn't born into a society riddled with homophobia and transphobia and anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and ableism, and all the phobias and -isms? What are we prepared to do today, so that 50 years from now we have a road in our society that's structured to reflect what we hold to be self-evident? That all men, that all women, that even all trans people are created equal and are endowed by your Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Thank you. (Applause) |
Underwater farms vs. climate change | {0: 'Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist and policy expert.'} | TED-Ed | For 3 billion people around the world, seafood provides a significant source of protein and nutrition. But recent studies show that 33% of wild fisheries are overfished, while another 60% are fished at their maximum capacity. In fact, over half the seafood we eat– from finfish and shellfish to seaweed and algae– isn’t caught in the wild. It’s grown through aquaculture, or aquatic farming. Farmed seafood is one of the fastest-growing food industries, expanding in volume by 5.8% each year. But different methods of aquaculture come with different advantages and issues– some of which echo the serious problems we’ve seen in industrial agriculture. So how can we avoid repeating the mistakes we’ve made on land, at sea? What aquaculture approaches are we currently using, and what does a sustainable way to farm the ocean really look like? One of the most common aquaculture methods involves large pens made of nets, where fish are farmed offshore in floating cages roughly 1000 square meters in size. Commonly employed off the coast of Chile and in the fjords of Norway, these fish, like many industrially farmed animals, occupy stressful, overcrowded pens. They produce massive amounts of waste, polluting the surrounding areas and potentially spreading diseases to wild species. Worse still, since the antibiotics employed to fight disease aren’t fully absorbed by the fish, they get excreted back into the environment. Net pens are also susceptible to escapes, unleashing huge numbers of fish which compete for resources and weaken the local gene pool with genes adapted for captivity. Escaped fish can even disrupt local ecosystems as invasive species. Other techniques, such as man-made coastal ponds commonly used for shrimp farming in Southeast Asia, create additional environmental problems. Just like net pens, these ponds are prone to spreading pollution and disease. Their construction also frequently destroys important ecosystems like mangroves and marshes, which protect coastal areas from storms, provide habitats, and absorb tons of greenhouse gases. One way to solve these problems is to farm fish on land in completely contained systems. Tanks and raceways can recirculate and filter water to prevent pollution. But even fully contained facilities still contend with another major hurdle: fishmeal. About 10% of the seafood caught globally is used to feed animals, including carnivorous farmed fish. Researchers are working on fish feed made of insects and plant-based proteins, but for now many inland fish farms are connected to overfishing. All these obstacles can make sustainable aquaculture feel a long way off, but innovative farmers are finding new ways to responsibly farm the seas. The most promising solution of all may be to look lower on the food chain. Instead of cramming large, carnivorous fish into pens, we can work with natural ocean systems to produce huge amounts of shellfish and seaweeds. These low-maintenance flora and fauna don’t need to be fed at all. In fact, they naturally improve water quality, filtering it as they feed off of sunlight and nutrients in the seawater. By absorbing carbon through photosynthesis, these farms help battle climate change, and reduce local ocean acidification while creating habitats for other species to thrive. Shifting to restorative ocean farming could provide good jobs for coastal communities, and support healthy plant and shellfish-based diets that have an incredibly low carbon footprint. In just 5 months, 4,000 square meters of ocean can produce 25 tons of seaweed and 250,000 of shellfish. With the right distribution network, a series of small farms, collectively the size of Washington State could feed the planet. Farms like these are already popping up around the globe, and a new generation of farmers is stepping up to pursue a more sustainable future. Done properly, regenerative ocean farming could play a vital role in helping our oceans, our climate, and ourselves. |
How ocean noise destroys marine ecosystems | {0: 'Steve Simpson is a marine biologist, fish ecologist and self-confessed ocean optimist. His main focus is on impacts of global change - including climatic warming, ocean acidification and noise - on fish, fisheries and marine ecosystems. Steve’s work on bioacoustics, including fish communication and soundscape mapping, was featured on Blue Planet II.'} | TEDxExeter | To be a marine biologist is a wonderful thing. I get to live in two universes. When I go to bed, I don't know to which world my dreams will take me. And when I'm underwater, I'm weightless, I can move in three dimensions. I can spend all day staring into the blue or marveling at the extraordinary, beautiful, mysterious, sometimes fearsome creatures that live in the sea. To be a human underwater is a completely different sensory experience. But it also strikes fear into me, not me as a human, but me as the fish that I spend my life trying to understand. Because the ocean can be a place full of danger and full of seemingly impossible challenges. Let me give you the example of the perilous life cycle of a coral reef fish. So we're all familiar with the brightly colored beautiful fish that live on coral reefs - cities of life full of color. But each year, these fish produce eggs, and the eggs hatch into tiny, almost microscopic larvae, and they spend several weeks at sea developing, only the size of a grain of rice. And after about two or three weeks, they're competent, ready to return to a coral reef where hopefully, once they found the right reef, they can gradually mature and join their adult community. Now, this seems paradoxical: you live in the perfect environment, and yet you send your offspring out to sea. Why would that be so? I've spent my life trying to understand some of the processes that make this life cycle possible. In particular, how to fish find a reef? You're out at sea, at the mercy of ocean currents. How on earth, if you're the size of a grain of rice, do you find home? How do you choose the right place to live? How do you find a hiding place? These are the challenges that I try to tackle with some of the research that I do. Now, how would you do it? If you were this tiny fish at sea, what what information would you want to try and make that life cycle possible? Well, we know that some fish are able to smell different components of their environment. Some fish are able to look at the position of the sun in the sky, even the way sunlight shines through the clouds, perhaps even use celestial nighttime visual cues. Some fish even have a magnetic sense. So is that enough information to get these fish home? Well certainly, one thing that they probably can't use is sound, right? 60 years ago, Jacques Cousteau brought into the living rooms of the world, for the first time, the wonder of our underwater world. He invented scuba, to be able to take cameras underwater and beam those images back to people around the world. It was a remarkable film in so many ways, except perhaps for the title. You see, Jacques Cousteau told us that the ocean was a silent world. But when we go into the ocean, we know that's not true. Without scuba, we hear whales singing. This is the love song of a humpback whale. And whales can communicate over tens of miles, sometimes hundreds of miles, as they interact with each other. When we look on a coral reef, we realize it's not just whales and dolphins making sound; the fish can speak too. Fish produce popping, grunting, whooping, trumpeting sounds, and they do this to warn each other of predators, to be able to call each other over when they find food, and sometimes, particularly around the breeding season, to try and really impress each other. And so they have some amazing songs within the world of fish. Here's some of the croaking sounds of sergeant majors, the whooping sound of an ambo-damselfish and the deep grunting love song, in this case of a cod. So fish use sound; it's essential to their lives. And it's not even just the fish. When we start looking at the invertebrates that live on the reef too, we realize that lobsters can play their antennae like a fiddler would play the violin, and snapping shrimp, that probably are no bigger than the size of your thumb, with a claw no bigger than the size of your thumbnail, are able to produce one of the loudest underwater explosions every time they open their claw and push a bubble forwards into the water which implodes with a flash of light and an enormous bang. And all together, that creates a crackling sound that gives coral reefs its soundscape. So 18 years ago, I asked a question which, at the time, almost everybody I was working with on the Great Barrier Reef thought was crazy: is it possible that fish could use sound as a way of finding their way home? Now, to ask that question, my first approach was to take light traps - light traps are bright boxes with clear glass windows which have slits in them, like letter boxes - and when you shine a bright light underwater on the edge of the reef, you can intercept the larval fish, the baby fish, as they come back to the reef. Many fish, like moths, are attracted to light, and we can catch them in our traps and we can count them as they return. But just to mix it up a little bit, I then hung underneath a trap a speaker. These are underwater speakers sold for synchronized-swimming teams to be able to keep beat underwater, but we use these speakers to playback recordings of coral reefs, to ask the question, "Are fish, at this tiny early stage in their life, several weeks old, attracted to coral reef sound?" And sure enough, three months later, putting these traps out night after night, we found that we caught more than twice as many fish in our noisy traps compared to the quiet ones. And then, to test whether this really was enough for a fish to choose where it wanted to make its home, we hung the speakers over small piles of dead coral rubble, artificial reefs that we built on the sand flats. And sure enough, the fish came swimming in when we were playing our sound. So sound is clearly a cue that these fish were using to hear their way home. So I've spent the last 15 years listening to the ocean, trying to interpret what these fish can hear. What is it, what information is available that gives fish this sensory experience that encourages them home? Now, as a marine biologist, one of the privileges is getting to play with some very big, very expensive toys. And I'm just going to share two of mine with you today. The first is the good ship Masifa, which we invented as a way of being able to sail a hydrophone, an underwater microphone, over the reefs so that we could start to understand the rich tapestry of sound that's made as you travel from different types of reef. And then the second one is my hydrosaur. This is a - you could see at the time that funding for marine bio acoustics was in its early stages. This is an inflatable dinosaur, but I was able to strap my microphone to this and leave it out overnight, and by doing that, we started to realize there were patterns in the soundscape. At dusk, all of the nocturnal fish, the predators, emerge from their caves, and they start calling to each other as they go looking for food. So we get a dusk chorus. And then at dawn, these fish disappear back into the reef but out come all the daytime fish, and they've got to reestablish their territories, much like birds would do in a forest, and so we get a dawn chorus too. The reef is alive with noise, and that noise has patterns. And we've explored this by combining recordings with underwater surveys. And with our underwater surveys, we realize that we can hear whether there are coral there. We can hear which species live there. We realize that the fish at sea are doing much what we would do if we were moving to a new city: we'd perhaps get on the internet and do some research into different suburbs that we might want to live in. We think fish can do the same thing by listening to their environment and choosing where they want to live. We now know that reefs all sound different; they have signature sounds. Baby fish can select the best habitat for their kind by using sound. And amazingly, it turns out so can many other animals on coral reefs: crabs, lobsters, clams, oysters, even corals themselves. Here's a few places that we've worked. This is Balicasag, which is a marine protected area in the Philippines. You can see it's full of life. It's highly protected, there's no fishing, and as a result, when we listen to it, it's a wonderful soundscape. You can hear the fish communicating, you can hear the snapping shrimp. Now sadly, if we go three bays around the corner to Bilang-Bilangan, we find a more typical Filipino reef. This is a reef that's been heavily overfished, so there are no herbivores to graze away at the algae, which now smothers the reef. You can even see craters from dynamite fishing, and when we listen to it ... you can just about hear it. So a tiny fish would have to pretty much swim into this reef before it found it. The next generation are not coming home. We are changing the soundtrack of the ocean through overfishing and poor environmental protection. Let's go somewhere better: to the Great Barrier Reef. This is, for marine biologists, the benchmark. This is where we go to see what coral reefs once were like, what coral reefs can be like with really effective management, highly protected marine reserves, long distances away from cities, from pollution, and as a result, beautiful bustling underwater cities full of life. You can hear the Great Barrier Reef; it's a wonderful thing. And we've studied this for 15 years to make reference to the reefs around the world. At least, we have until three years ago, when tragedy struck. With painful predictability, we saw the water temperature starting to rise. Oceanographic conditions meant the water was staying in one location, and for three weeks, the Great Barrier Reef cooked. We saw the reef in front of our eyes dying. And when we go back to the Great Barrier Reef now, we see in the northern part, where we do our research, 80% of it is dead. When we listen to that reef, it's 75% quieter. The snapping shrimp have gone. The complexity, the diversity of the sound is missing; it's become an acoustic desert. And so we realize, with climate change, we are changing the soundtrack of the ocean. These, in some ways, are gradual changes - overfishing, poor management, climate change - but we also realize when we take our recordings on a day-to-day basis, we change the soundtrack of the ocean by driving motor boats around. Millions of motor boats every day drive around coral reef environments, with engines that rattle, with propellers that cavitate, creating bubbles which screech in the water as they burst. And we've realized that their sound causes stress to all of the animals that experience it. And with stress comes poor decisions: the fish are no longer able to respond to predators, to be able to find food, to be able to court, to be able to successfully reproduce. This motorboat noise is a form of noise pollution that makes us realize we are changing the soundtrack of the ocean. Now, if this was the end of the talk, it would be a sorry tale, but as a scientist, I asked myself, "What is my role? Why am I trying to do the science that I'm doing? Is my duty simply to monitor, to measure, to assess how the world is changing and to report that? Or can we take that knowledge, and can we actually turn it into practical solutions?" So here's the spiny chromis, wonderful fish, lives on the Great Barrier Reef in monogamous pairs, a male and female living together. They lay their eggs in the reef, and their eggs hatch, and unusually, they bring their young through those first few weeks on the reef, they protect them, and you can see their baby fish out here, the larvae of the spiny chromis. Now, if we monitor how well they do near to boating channels, we realize that that motorboat noise means the adults don't feed as well, they don't defend the larvae against predators in the same way, and the larvae fail to develop, less larvae make it through. So, is that a real tragic story of how with noise pollution we're affecting reproduction? Or could it be that actually, if we turn it on its head, we realize our comparison is what happens if the boats aren't there: we see more reproduction, we see better behavior in the adults, more feeding, more defense against predators. Could we be talking here about a story of acoustic protection? If we go to the Great Barrier Reef and we play those sad recordings of the current state of the Great Barrier Reef, the fish no longer arrive in the numbers that we would hope for. If we play the recordings of the Great Barrier Reef as it used to be, the fish still come. So here, are we talking about a story of the loss of a sensory cue that's essential to close the loop of the life cycle? Or could this be a story about the potential value of acoustic enrichment? This is something that my group now are actively pursuing around the world, and we're hugely excited that there are tools with acoustics that we're realizing might be part of the solution. So we realize it's our gift to change the soundtrack of the ocean in this generation, but to change it for the better, not the worse. With technology, we can improve the sound outputs of boat engines - modern engines are far quieter. With environmental protection, we can keep boats away from breeding grounds, from nursery grounds. We can give quiet nights to allow the fish to come in and settle. And with acoustic enrichment, we can potentially accelerate the recovery of habitats that have been worst hit. Thank you for listening. (Applause) |
Your body vs. implants | null | TED-Ed | Insulin pumps improve the lives of many of the 415 million people with diabetes around the world by monitoring blood sugar, delivering insulin, and preventing the need for constant finger-pricking and blood testing. These small machines include a pump and a needle, which can sense glucose levels, feed back to the pump, and then calculate how much insulin to deliver through the needle. But they have a catch: they’re temporary. Within a few days, glucose sensors have to be moved and replaced. And it’s not just glucose monitors and insulin pumps that have this problem, but all bodily implants, at different time scales. Plastic prosthetic knees have to be replaced after about 20 years. Other implants, such as those used for cosmetic reasons, can meet the same fate in about 10. That isn’t just a nuisance: it can be expensive and risky. This inconvenience happens because of our bodies’ immune systems. Honed by several hundred million years of evolution, these defensive fronts have become exceptionally good at identifying foreign objects. Our immune systems boast an impressive arsenal of tools to tackle, intercept, and destroy anything they believe shouldn’t be there. But the consequence of this constant surveillance is that our bodies treat helpful implants, like insulin pumps, with the same suspicion as they would a harmful virus or bacteria. As soon as the insulin pump has been implanted in the skin, its presence triggers what’s known as a “foreign body response.” This starts with free-floating proteins that stick themselves to the surface of the implant. Those proteins include antibodies, which attempt to neutralize the new object and send out a signal that calls other immune cells to the site to strengthen the attack. Early-responding inflammatory cells, like neutrophils and macrophages, respond to the emergency call. Neutrophils release little granules filled with enzymes that try to break down the surface of the insulin pump’s needle. Macrophages secrete enzymes too, together with nitric oxide radicals, which create a chemical reaction that degrades the object over time. If the macrophages are unable to dispatch the foreign body rapidly, they fuse together, forming a mass of cells called a “giant cell.” At the same time, cells called fibroblasts travel to the site and begin to deposit layers of dense connective tissue. Those enclose the needle that the pump uses to deliver insulin and test for glucose levels. Over time this scaffolding builds up, forming a scar around the implant. The scar functions as an almost impenetrable wall that might start to block vital interactions between the body and the implant. For example, scarring around pacemakers can interrupt the electrical transmission that’s crucial for their functioning. Synthetic knee joints may give off particles as they’re worn down, causing immune cells to inflame around these fragments. Tragically, the immune system’s attack can even be life-threatening. However, researchers are finding ways to trick the immune system into accepting the new devices we introduce into our bodily tissues. We’ve discovered that coating implants with certain chemicals and drugs can dampen the immune response. Those basically make the implants invisible to the immune system. We’re also making more implants out of natural materials and in forms that directly mimic tissues, so that the body launches a weaker attack than it would if it came across a completely artificial implant. Some medical treatments involve implants designed to regenerate lost or damaged tissues. In those cases, we can design the implants to contain ingredients that will release specific signals, and carefully tailor our bodies’ immune reactions. In the future, this way of working alongside the immune system could help us develop completely artificial organs, totally integrative prostheses, and self-healing wound therapies. These treatments might one day revolutionize medicine– and transform, forever, the bodies we live in. |
5 challenges we could solve by designing new proteins | {0: 'David Baker designs new biomolecules (proteins) from first principles to address 21st-century challenges in health and technology.'} | TED2019 | I'm going to tell you about the most amazing machines in the world and what we can now do with them. Proteins, some of which you see inside a cell here, carry out essentially all the important functions in our bodies. Proteins digest your food, contract your muscles, fire your neurons and power your immune system. Everything that happens in biology — almost — happens because of proteins. Proteins are linear chains of building blocks called amino acids. Nature uses an alphabet of 20 amino acids, some of which have names you may have heard of. In this picture, for scale, each bump is an atom. Chemical forces between the amino acids cause these long stringy molecules to fold up into unique, three-dimensional structures. The folding process, while it looks random, is in fact very precise. Each protein folds to its characteristic shape each time, and the folding process takes just a fraction of a second. And it's the shapes of proteins which enable them to carry out their remarkable biological functions. For example, hemoglobin has a shape in the lungs perfectly suited for binding a molecule of oxygen. When hemoglobin moves to your muscle, the shape changes slightly and the oxygen comes out. The shapes of proteins, and hence their remarkable functions, are completely specified by the sequence of amino acids in the protein chain. In this picture, each letter on top is an amino acid. Where do these sequences come from? The genes in your genome specify the amino acid sequences of your proteins. Each gene encodes the amino acid sequence of a single protein. The translation between these amino acid sequences and the structures and functions of proteins is known as the protein folding problem. It's a very hard problem because there's so many different shapes a protein can adopt. Because of this complexity, humans have only been able to harness the power of proteins by making very small changes to the amino acid sequences of the proteins we've found in nature. This is similar to the process that our Stone Age ancestors used to make tools and other implements from the sticks and stones that we found in the world around us. But humans did not learn to fly by modifying birds. (Laughter) Instead, scientists, inspired by birds, uncovered the principles of aerodynamics. Engineers then used those principles to design custom flying machines. In a similar way, we've been working for a number of years to uncover the fundamental principles of protein folding and encoding those principles in the computer program called Rosetta. We made a breakthrough in recent years. We can now design completely new proteins from scratch on the computer. Once we've designed the new protein, we encode its amino acid sequence in a synthetic gene. We have to make a synthetic gene because since the protein is completely new, there's no gene in any organism on earth which currently exists that encodes it. Our advances in understanding protein folding and how to design proteins, coupled with the decreasing cost of gene synthesis and the Moore's law increase in computing power, now enable us to design tens of thousands of new proteins, with new shapes and new functions, on the computer, and encode each one of those in a synthetic gene. Once we have those synthetic genes, we put them into bacteria to program them to make these brand-new proteins. We then extract the proteins and determine whether they function as we designed them to and whether they're safe. It's exciting to be able to make new proteins, because despite the diversity in nature, evolution has only sampled a tiny fraction of the total number of proteins possible. I told you that nature uses an alphabet of 20 amino acids, and a typical protein is a chain of about 100 amino acids, so the total number of possibilities is 20 times 20 times 20, 100 times, which is a number on the order of 10 to the 130th power, which is enormously more than the total number of proteins which have existed since life on earth began. And it's this unimaginably large space we can now explore using computational protein design. Now the proteins that exist on earth evolved to solve the problems faced by natural evolution. For example, replicating the genome. But we face new challenges today. We live longer, so new diseases are important. We're heating up and polluting the planet, so we face a whole host of ecological challenges. If we had a million years to wait, new proteins might evolve to solve those challenges. But we don't have millions of years to wait. Instead, with computational protein design, we can design new proteins to address these challenges today. Our audacious idea is to bring biology out of the Stone Age through technological revolution in protein design. We've already shown that we can design new proteins with new shapes and functions. For example, vaccines work by stimulating your immune system to make a strong response against a pathogen. To make better vaccines, we've designed protein particles to which we can fuse proteins from pathogens, like this blue protein here, from the respiratory virus RSV. To make vaccine candidates that are literally bristling with the viral protein, we find that such vaccine candidates produce a much stronger immune response to the virus than any previous vaccines that have been tested. This is important because RSV is currently one of the leading causes of infant mortality worldwide. We've also designed new proteins to break down gluten in your stomach for celiac disease and other proteins to stimulate your immune system to fight cancer. These advances are the beginning of the protein design revolution. We've been inspired by a previous technological revolution: the digital revolution, which took place in large part due to advances in one place, Bell Laboratories. Bell Labs was a place with an open, collaborative environment, and was able to attract top talent from around the world. And this led to a remarkable string of innovations — the transistor, the laser, satellite communication and the foundations of the internet. Our goal is to build the Bell Laboratories of protein design. We are seeking to attract talented scientists from around the world to accelerate the protein design revolution, and we'll be focusing on five grand challenges. First, by taking proteins from flu strains from around the world and putting them on top of the designed protein particles I showed you earlier, we aim to make a universal flu vaccine, one shot of which gives a lifetime of protection against the flu. The ability to design — (Applause) The ability to design new vaccines on the computer is important both to protect against natural flu epidemics and, in addition, intentional acts of bioterrorism. Second, we're going far beyond nature's limited alphabet of just 20 amino acids to design new therapeutic candidates for conditions such as chronic pain, using an alphabet of thousands of amino acids. Third, we're building advanced delivery vehicles to target existing medications exactly where they need to go in the body. For example, chemotherapy to a tumor or gene therapies to the tissue where gene repair needs to take place. Fourth, we're designing smart therapeutics that can do calculations within the body and go far beyond current medicines, which are really blunt instruments. For example, to target a small subset of immune cells responsible for an autoimmune disorder, and distinguish them from the vast majority of healthy immune cells. Finally, inspired by remarkable biological materials such as silk, abalone shell, tooth and others, we're designing new protein-based materials to address challenges in energy and ecological issues. To do all this, we're growing our institute. We seek to attract energetic, talented and diverse scientists from around the world, at all career stages, to join us. You can also participate in the protein design revolution through our online folding and design game, "Foldit." And through our distributed computing project, Rosetta@home, which you can join from your laptop or your Android smartphone. Making the world a better place through protein design is my life's work. I'm so excited about what we can do together. I hope you'll join us, and thank you. (Applause and cheers) |
How synthetic biology could wipe out humanity -- and how we can stop it | {0: 'Author and entrepreneur Rob Reid writes speculative fiction for Random House.'} | TED2019 | So, there's about seven and a half billion of us. The World Health Organization tells us that 300 million of us are depressed, and about 800,000 people take their lives every year. A tiny subset of them choose a profoundly nihilistic route, which is they die in the act of killing as many people as possible. These are some famous recent examples. And here's a less famous one. It happened about nine weeks ago. If you don't remember it, it's because there's a lot of this going on. Wikipedia just last year counted 323 mass shootings in my home country, the United States. Not all of those shooters were suicidal, not all of them were maximizing their death tolls, but many, many were. An important question becomes: What limits do these people have? Take the Vegas shooter. He slaughtered 58 people. Did he stop there because he'd had enough? No, and we know this because he shot and injured another 422 people who he surely would have preferred to kill. We have no reason to think he would have stopped at 4,200. In fact, with somebody this nihilistic, he may well have gladly killed us all. We don't know. What we do know is this: when suicidal murderers really go all in, technology is the force multiplier. Here's an example. Several years back, there was a rash of 10 mass school attacks in China carried out with things like knives and hammers and cleavers, because guns are really hard to get there. By macabre coincidence, this last attack occurred just hours before the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. But that one American attack killed roughly the same number of victims as the 10 Chinese attacks combined. So we can fairly say, knife: terrible; gun: way worse. And airplane: massively worse, as pilot Andreas Lubitz showed when he forced 149 people to join him in his suicide, smashing a plane into the French Alps. And there are other examples of this. And I'm afraid there are far more deadly weapons in our near future than airplanes, ones not made of metal. So let's consider the apocalyptic dynamics that will ensue if suicidal mass murder hitches a ride on a rapidly advancing field that for the most part holds boundless promise for society. Somewhere out there in the world, there's a tiny group of people who would attempt, however ineptly, to kill us all if they could just figure out how. The Vegas shooter may or may not have been one of them, but with seven and a half billion of us, this is a nonzero population. There's plenty of suicidal nihilists out there. We've already seen that. There's people with severe mood disorders that they can't even control. There are people who have just suffered deranging traumas, etc. etc. As for the corollary group, its size was simply zero forever until the Cold War, when suddenly, the leaders of two global alliances attained the ability to blow up the world. The number of people with actual doomsday buttons has stayed fairly stable since then. But I'm afraid it's about to grow, and not just to three. This is going off the charts. I mean, it's going to look like a tech business plan. (Laughter) And the reason is, we're in the era of exponential technologies, which routinely take eternal impossibilities and make them the actual superpowers of one or two living geniuses and — this is the big part — then diffuse those powers to more or less everybody. Now, here's a benign example. If you wanted to play checkers with a computer in 1952, you literally had to be that guy, then commandeer one of the world's 19 copies of that computer, then used your Nobel-adjacent brain to teach it checkers. That was the bar. Today, you just need to know someone who knows someone who owns a telephone, because computing is an exponential technology. So is synthetic biology, which I'll now refer to as "synbio." And in 2011, a couple of researchers did something every bit as ingenious and unprecedented as the checkers trick with H5N1 flu. This is a strain that kills up to 60 percent of the people it infects, more than Ebola. But it is so uncontagious that it's killed fewer than 50 people since 2015. So these researchers edited H5N1's genome and made it every bit as deadly, but also wildly contagious. The news arm of one of the world's top two scientific journals said if this thing got out, it would likely cause a pandemic with perhaps millions of deaths. And Dr. Paul Keim said he could not think of an organism as scary as this, which is the last thing I personally want to hear from the Chairman of the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity. And by the way, Dr. Keim also said this — ["I don't think anthrax is scary at all compared to this."] And he's also one of these. [Anthrax expert] (Laughter) Now, the good news about the 2011 biohack is that the people who did it didn't mean us any harm. They're virologists. They believed they were advancing science. The bad news is that technology does not freeze in place, and over the next few decades, their feat will become trivially easy. In fact, it's already way easier, because as we learned yesterday morning, just two years after they did their work, the CRISPR system was harnessed for genome editing. This was a radical breakthrough that makes gene editing massively easier — so easy that CRISPR is now taught in high schools. And this stuff is moving quicker than computing. That slow, stodgy white line up there? That's Moore's law. That shows us how quickly computing is getting cheaper. That steep, crazy-fun green line, that shows us how quickly genetic sequencing is getting cheaper. Now, gene editing and synthesis and sequencing, they're different disciplines, but they're tightly related. And they're all moving in these headlong rates. And the keys to the kingdom are these tiny, tiny data files. That is an excerpt of H5N1's genome. The whole thing can fit on just a few pages. And yeah, don't worry, you can Google this as soon as you get home. It's all over the internet, right? And the part that made it contagious could well fit on a single Post-it note. And once a genius makes a data file, any idiot can copy it, distribute it worldwide or print it. And I don't just mean print it on this, but soon enough, on this. So let's imagine a scenario. Let's say it's 2026, to pick an arbitrary year, and a brilliant virologist, hoping to advance science and better understand pandemics, designs a new bug. It's as contagious as chicken pox, it's as deadly as Ebola, and it incubates for months and months before causing an outbreak, so the whole world can be infected before the first sign of trouble. Then, her university gets hacked. And of course, this is not science fiction. In fact, just one recent US indictment documents the hacking of over 300 universities. So that file with the bug's genome on it spreads to the internet's dark corners. And once a file is out there, it never comes back — just ask anybody who runs a movie studio or a music label. So now maybe in 2026, it would take a true genius like our virologist to make the actual living critter, but 15 years later, it may just take a DNA printer you can find at any high school. And if not? Give it a couple of decades. So, a quick aside: Remember this slide here? Turn your attention to these two words. If somebody tries this and is only 0.1 percent effective, eight million people die. That's 2,500 9/11s. Civilization would survive, but it would be permanently disfigured. So this means we need to be concerned about anybody who has the faintest shot on goal, not just geniuses. So today, there's a tiny handful of geniuses who probably could make a doomsday bug that's .1-percent effective and maybe even a little bit more. They tend to be stable and successful and so not part of this group. So I guess I'm sorta kinda barely OK-ish with that. But what about after technology improves and diffuses and thousands of life science grad students are enabled? Are every single one of them going to be perfectly stable? Or how about a few years after that, where every stress-ridden premed is fully enabled? At some point in that time frame, these circles are going to intersect, because we're now starting to talk about hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world. And they recently included that guy who dressed up like the Joker and shot 12 people to death at a Batman premiere. That was a neuroscience PhD student with an NIH grant. OK, plot twist: I think we can actually survive this one if we start focusing on it now. And I say this, having spent countless hours interviewing global leaders in synbio and also researching their work for science podcasts I create. I have come to fear their work, in case I haven't gotten that out there yet — (Laughter) but more than that, to revere its potential. This stuff will cure cancer, heal our environment and stop our cruel treatment of other creatures. So how do we get all this without, you know, annihilating ourselves? First thing: like it or not, synbio is here, so let's embrace the technology. If we do a tech ban, that would only hand the wheel to bad actors. Unlike nuclear programs, biology can be practiced invisibly. Massive Soviet cheating on bioweapons treaties made that very clear, as does every illegal drug lab in the world. Secondly, enlist the experts. Let's sign them up and make more of them. For every million and one bioengineers we have, at least a million of them are going to be on our side. I mean, Al Capone would be on our side in this one. The bar to being a good guy is just so low. And massive numerical advantages do matter, even when a single bad guy can inflict grievous harm, because among many other things, they allow us to exploit the hell out of this: we have years and hopefully decades to prepare and prevent. The first person to try something awful — and there will be somebody — may not even be born yet. Next, this needs to be an effort that spans society, and all of you need to be a part of it, because we cannot ask a tiny group of experts to be responsible for both containing and exploiting synthetic biology, because we already tried that with the financial system, and our stewards became massively corrupted as they figured out how they could cut corners, inflict massive, massive risks on the rest of us and privatize the gains, becoming repulsively wealthy while they stuck us with the $22 trillion bill. And more recently — (Applause) Are you the ones who have gotten the thank-you letters? I'm still waiting for mine. I just figured they were too busy to be grateful. And much more recently, online privacy started looming as a huge issue, and we basically outsourced it. And once again: privatized gains, socialized losses. Is anybody else sick of this pattern? (Applause) So we need a more inclusive way to safeguard our prosperity, our privacy and soon, our lives. So how do we do all of this? Well, when bodies fight pathogens, they use ingenious immune systems, which are very complex and multilayered. Why don't we build one of these for the whole damn ecosystem? There's a year of TED Talks that could be given on this first critical layer. So these are just a couple of many great ideas that are out there. Some R and D muscle could take the very primitive pathogen sensors that we currently have and put them on a very steep price performance curve that would quickly become ingenious and networked and gradually as widespread as smoke detectors and even smartphones. On a very related note: vaccines have all kinds of problems when it comes to manufacturing and distribution, and once they're made, they can't adapt to new threats or mutations. We need an agile biomanufacturing base extending into every single pharmacy and maybe even our homes. Printer technology for vaccines and medicines is within reach if we prioritize it. Next, mental health. Many people who commit suicidal mass murder suffer from crippling, treatment-resistant depression or PTSD. We need noble researchers like Rick Doblin working on this, but we also need the selfish jerks who are way more numerous to appreciate the fact that acute suffering will soon endanger all of us, not just those afflicted. Those jerks will then join us and Al Capone in fighting this condition. Third, each and every one of us can be and should be a white blood cell in this immune system. Suicidal mass murderers can be despicable, yes, but they're also terribly broken and sad people, and those of us who aren't need to do what we can to make sure nobody goes unloved. (Applause) Next, we need to make fighting these dangers core to the discipline of synthetic biology. There are companies out there that at least claim they let their engineers spend 20 percent of their time doing whatever they want. What if those who hire bioengineers and become them give 20 percent of their time to building defenses for the common good? Not a bad idea, right? (Applause) Then, finally: this won't be any fun. But we need to let our minds go to some very, very dark places, and thank you for letting me take you there this evening. We survived the Cold War because every one of us understood and respected the danger, in part, because we had spent decades telling ourselves terrifying ghost stories with names like "Dr. Strangelove" and "War Games." This is no time to remain calm. This is one of those rare times when it's incredibly productive to freak the hell out — (Laughter) to come up with some ghost stories and use our fear as fuel to fight this danger. Because, all these terrible scenarios I've painted — they are not destiny. They're optional. The danger is still kind of distant. And that means it will only befall us if we allow it to. Let's not. Thank you very much for listening. (Applause) |
How do crystals work? | null | TED-Ed | Deep beneath the geysers and hot springs of Yellowstone Caldera lies a magma chamber produced by a hot spot in the earth’s mantle. As the magma moves towards the Earth’s surface, it crystallizes to form young, hot igneous rocks. The heat from these rocks drives groundwater towards the surface. As the water cools, ions precipitate out as mineral crystals, including quartz crystals from silicon and oxygen, feldspar from potassium, aluminum, silicon, and oxygen, galena from lead and sulfur. Many of these crystals have signature shapes— take this cascade of pointed quartz, or this pile of galena cubes. But what causes them to grow into these shapes again and again? Part of the answer lies in their atoms. Every crystal’s atoms are arranged in a highly organized, repeating pattern. This pattern is the defining feature of a crystal, and isn’t restricted to minerals— sand, ice, sugar, chocolate, ceramics, metals, DNA, and even some liquids have crystalline structures. Each crystalline material’s atomic arrangement falls into one of six different families: cubic, tetragonal, orthorhombic, monoclinic, triclinic, and hexagonal. Given the appropriate conditions, crystals will grow into geometric shapes that reflect the arrangement of their atoms. Take galena, which has a cubic structure composed of lead and sulfur atoms. The relatively large lead atoms are arranged in a three-dimensional grid 90 degrees from one another, while the relatively small sulfur atoms fit neatly between them. As the crystal grows, locations like these attract sulfur atoms, while lead will tend to bond to these places. Eventually, they will complete the grid of bonded atoms. This means the 90 degree grid pattern of galena’s crystalline structure is reflected in the visible shape of the crystal. Quartz, meanwhile, has a hexagonal crystalline structure. This means that on one plane its atoms are arranged in hexagons. In three dimensions, these hexagons are composed of many interlocking pyramids made up of one silicon atom and four oxygen atoms. So the signature shape of a quartz crystal is a six-sided column with pointed tips. Depending on environmental conditions, most crystals have the potential to form multiple geometric shapes. For example, diamonds, which form deep in the Earth’s mantle, have a cubic crystalline structure and can grow into either cubes or octahedrons. Which shape a particular diamond grows into depends on the conditions where it grows, including pressure, temperature, and chemical environment. While we can’t directly observe growth conditions in the mantle, laboratory experiments have shown some evidence that diamonds tend to grow into cubes at lower temperatures and octahedrons at higher temperatures. Trace amounts of water, silicon, germanium, or magnesium might also influence a diamond’s shape. And diamonds never naturally grow into the shapes found in jewelry— those diamonds have been cut to showcase sparkle and clarity. Environmental conditions can also influence whether crystals form at all. Glass is made of melted quartz sand, but it isn’t crystalline. That’s because glass cools relatively quickly, and the atoms do not have time to arrange themselves into the ordered structure of a quartz crystal. Instead, the random arrangement of the atoms in the melted glass is locked in upon cooling. Many crystals don’t form geometric shapes because they grow in extremely close quarters with other crystals. Rocks like granite are full of crystals, but none have recognizable shapes. As magma cools and solidifies, many minerals within it crystallize at the same time and quickly run out of space. And certain crystals, like turquoise, don’t grow into any discernible geometric shape in most environmental conditions, even given adequate space. Every crystal’s atomic structure has unique properties, and while these properties may not have any bearing on human emotional needs, they do have powerful applications in materials science and medicine. |
What almost dying taught me about living | {0: "Writer Suleika Jaouad is changing the conversation about what it means to thrive in the wake of illness and life's unexpected interruptions."} | TED2019 | It was the spring of 2011, and as they like to say in commencement speeches, I was getting ready to enter the real world. I had recently graduated from college and moved to Paris to start my first job. My dream was to become a war correspondent, but the real world that I found took me into a really different kind of conflict zone. At 22 years old, I was diagnosed with leukemia. The doctors told me and my parents, point-blank, that I had about a 35 percent chance of long-term survival. I couldn't wrap my head around what that prognosis meant. But I understood that the reality and the life I'd imagined for myself had shattered. Overnight, I lost my job, my apartment, my independence, and I became patient number 5624. Over the next four years of chemo, a clinical trial and a bone marrow transplant, the hospital became my home, my bed, the place I lived 24/7. Since it was unlikely that I'd ever get better, I had to accept my new reality. And I adapted. I became fluent in medicalese, made friends with a group of other young cancer patients, built a vast collection of neon wigs and learned to use my rolling IV pole as a skateboard. I even achieved my dream of becoming a war correspondent, although not in the way I'd expected. It started with a blog, reporting from the front lines of my hospital bed, and it morphed into a column I wrote for the New York Times, called "Life, Interrupted." But — (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) But above all else, my focus was on surviving. And — spoiler alert — (Laughter) I did survive, yeah. (Applause) Thanks to an army of supportive humans, I'm not just still here, I am cured of my cancer. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) So, when you go through a traumatic experience like this, people treat you differently. They start telling you how much of an inspiration you are. They say you're a warrior. They call you a hero, someone who's lived the mythical hero's journey, who's endured impossible trials and, against the odds, lived to tell the tale, returning better and braver for what you're been through. And this definitely lines up with my experience. Cancer totally transformed my life. I left the hospital knowing exactly who I was and what I wanted to do in the world. And now, every day as the sun rises, I drink a big glass of celery juice, and I follow this up with 90 minutes of yoga. Then, I write down 50 things I'm grateful for onto a scroll of paper that I fold into an origami crane and send sailing out my window. (Laughter) Are you seriously believing any of this? (Laughter) I don't do any of these things. (Laughter) I hate yoga, and I have no idea how to fold an origami crane. The truth is that for me, the hardest part of my cancer experience began once the cancer was gone. That heroic journey of the survivor we see in movies and watch play out on Instagram — it's a myth. It isn't just untrue, it's dangerous, because it erases the very real challenges of recovery. Now, don't get me wrong — I am incredibly grateful to be alive, and I am painfully aware that this struggle is a privilege that many don't get to experience. But it's important that I tell you what this projection of heroism and expectation of constant gratitude does to people who are trying to recover. Because being cured is not where the work of healing ends. It's where it begins. I'll never forget the day I was discharged from the hospital, finally done with treatment. Those four years of chemo had taken a toll on my relationship with my longtime boyfriend, and he'd recently moved out. And when I walked into my apartment, it was quiet. Eerily so. The person I wanted to call in this moment, the person who I knew would understand everything, was my friend Melissa. She was a fellow cancer patient, but she had died three weeks earlier. As I stood there in the doorway of my apartment, I wanted to cry. But I was too tired to cry. The adrenaline was gone. I had felt as if the inner scaffolding that had held me together since my diagnosis had suddenly crumbled. I had spent the past 1,500 days working tirelessly to achieve one goal: to survive. And now that I'd done so, I realized I had absolutely no idea how to live. On paper, of course, I was better: I didn't have leukemia, my blood counts were back to normal, and the disability checks soon stopped coming. To the outside world, I clearly didn't belong in the kingdom of the sick anymore. But in reality, I never felt further from being well. All that chemo had taken a permanent physical toll on my body. I wondered, "What kind of job can I hold when I need to nap for four hours in the middle of the day? When my misfiring immune system still sends me to the ER on a regular basis?" And then there were the invisible, psychological imprints my illness had left behind: the fears of relapse, the unprocessed grief, the demons of PTSD that descended upon me for days, sometimes weeks. See, we talk about reentry in the context of war and incarceration. But we don't talk about it as much in the context of other kinds of traumatic experiences, like an illness. Because no one had warned me of the challenges of reentry, I thought something must be wrong with me. I felt ashamed, and with great guilt, I kept reminding myself of how lucky I was to be alive at all, when so many people like my friend Melissa were not. But on most days, I woke up feeling so sad and lost, I could barely breathe. Sometimes, I even fantasized about getting sick again. And let me tell you, there are so many better things to fantasize about when you're in your twenties and recently single. (Laughter) But I missed the hospital's ecosystem. Like me, everyone in there was broken. But out here, among the living, I felt like an impostor, overwhelmed and unable to function. I also missed the sense of clarity I'd felt at my sickest. Staring your mortality straight in the eye has a way of simplifying things, of rerouting your focus to what really matters. And when I was sick, I vowed that if I survived, it had to be for something. It had to be to live a good life, an adventurous life, a meaningful one. But the question, once I was cured, became: How? I was 27 years old with no job, no partner, no structure. And this time, I didn't have treatment protocols or discharge instructions to help guide my way forward. But what I did have was an in-box full of internet messages from strangers. Over the years, people from all over the world had read my column, and they'd responded with letters, comments and emails. It was a mix, as is often the case, for writers. I got a lot of unsolicited advice about how to cure my cancer with things like essential oils. I got some questions about my bra size. But mostly — (Laughter) mostly, I heard from people who, in their own different way, understood what it was that I was going through. I heard from a teenage girl in Florida who, like me, was coming out of chemo and wrote me a message composed largely of emojis. I heard from a retired art history professor in Ohio named Howard, who'd spent most of his life struggling with a mysterious, debilitating health condition that he'd had from the time he was a young man. I heard from an inmate on death row in Texas by the name of Little GQ — short for "Gangster Quinn." He'd never been sick a day in his life. He does 1,000 push-ups to start off each morning. But he related to what I described in one column as my "incanceration," and to the experience of being confined to a tiny fluorescent room. "I know that our situations are different," he wrote to me, "But the threat of death lurks in both of our shadows." In those lonely first weeks and months of my recovery, these strangers and their words became lifelines, dispatches from people of so many different backgrounds, with so many different experiences, all showing me the same thing: you can be held hostage by the worst thing that's ever happened to you and allow it to hijack your remaining days, or you can find a way forward. I knew I needed to make some kind of change. I wanted to be in motion again to figure out how to unstuck myself and to get back out into the world. And so I decided to go on a real journey — not the bullshit cancer one or the mythical hero's journey that everyone thought I should be on, but a real, pack-your-bags kind of journey. I put everything I owned into storage, rented out my apartment, borrowed a car and talked a very a dear but somewhat smelly friend into joining me. (Laughter) Together, my dog Oscar and I embarked on a 15,000-mile road trip around the United States. Along the way, we visited some of those strangers who'd written to me. I needed their advice, also to say to them, thank you. I went to Ohio and stayed with Howard, the retired professor. When you've suffered a loss or a trauma, the impulse can be to guard your heart. But Howard urged me to open myself up to uncertainty, to the possibilities of new love, new loss. Howard will never be cured of illness. And as a young man, he had no way of predicting how long he'd live. But that didn't stop him from getting married. Howard has grandkids now, and takes weekly ballroom dancing lessons with his wife. When I visited them, they’d recently celebrated their 50th anniversary. In his letter to me, he'd written, "Meaning is not found in the material realm; it's not in dinner, jazz, cocktails or conversation. Meaning is what's left when everything else is stripped away." I went to Texas, and I visited Little GQ on death row. He asked me what I did to pass all that time I'd spent in a hospital room. When I told him that I got really, really good at Scrabble, he said, "Me, too!" and explained how, even though he spends most of his days in solitary confinement, he and his neighboring prisoners make board games out of paper and call out their plays through their meal slots — a testament to the incredible tenacity of the human spirit and our ability to adapt with creativity. And my last stop was in Florida, to see that teenage girl who'd sent me all those emojis. Her name is Unique, which is perfect, because she's the most luminous, curious person I've ever met. I asked her what she wants to do next and she said, "I want to go to college and travel and eat weird foods like octopus that I've never tasted before and come visit you in New York and go camping, but I'm scared of bugs, but I still want to go camping." I was in awe of her, that she could be so optimistic and so full of plans for the future, given everything she'd been through. But as Unique showed me, it is far more radical and dangerous to have hope than to live hemmed in by fear. But the most important thing I learned on that road trip is that the divide between the sick and the well — it doesn't exist. The border is porous. As we live longer and longer, surviving illnesses and injuries that would have killed our grandparents, even our parents, the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms, spending much of our lives somewhere between the two. These are the terms of our existence. Now, I wish I could say that since coming home from my road trip, I feel fully healed. I don't. But once I stopped expecting myself to return to the person I'd been pre-diagnosis, once I learned to accept my body and its limitations, I actually did start to feel better. And in the end, I think that's the trick: to stop seeing our health as binary, between sick and healthy, well and unwell, whole and broken; to stop thinking that there's some beautiful, perfect state of wellness to strive for; and to quit living in a state of constant dissatisfaction until we reach it. Every single one of us will have our life interrupted, whether it's by the rip cord of a diagnosis or some other kind of heartbreak or trauma that brings us to the floor. We need to find ways to live in the in-between place, managing whatever body and mind we currently have. Sometimes, all it takes is the ingenuity of a handmade game of Scrabble or finding that stripped-down kind of meaning in the love of family and a night on the ballroom dance floor, or that radical, dangerous hope that I'm guessing will someday lead a teenage girl terrified of bugs to go camping. If you're able to do that, then you've taken the real hero's journey. You've achieved what it means to actually be well, which is to say: alive, in the messiest, richest, most whole sense. Thank you, that's all I've got. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) |
The living tech we need to support human life on other planets | {0: 'Lynn Rothschild is passionate about the origin and evolution of life on earth or elsewhere -- while at the same time pioneering the use of synthetic biology to enable space exploration.'} | TEDxBeaconStreetSalon | For thousands of years, well, really probably millions of years, our ancestors have looked up at the sky and wondered what's up there, and they've also started to wonder, hmm, could we be alone in this planet? Now, I'm fortunate that I get to get paid to actually ask some of those questions, and sort of bad news for you, your tax dollars are paying me to try to answer some of those questions. But then, about 10 years ago, I was told, I mean asked, if I would start to look at the technology to help get us off planet, and so that's what I'm going to talk to you about today. So playing to the local crowd, this is what it looks like in your day-to-day life in Boston, but as you start to go off planet, things look very, very different. So there we are, hovering above the WGBH studios. And here's a very famous picture of the Earthrise from the Moon, and you can see the Earth starting to recede. And then what I love is this picture that was taken from the surface of Mars looking back at the Earth. Can anyone find the Earth? I'm going to help you out a little. (Laughter) Yeah. The point of showing this is that when people start to go to Mars, they're not going to be able to keep calling in and be micromanaged the way people on a space station are. They're going to have to be independent. So even though they're up there, there are going to be all sorts of things that they're going to need, just like people on Earth need things like, oh, transportation, life support, food, clothing and so on. But unlike on Earth, they are also going to need oxygen. They're going to have to deal with about a third of the gravity that we have here. They're going to have to worry about habitats, power, heat, light and radiation protection, something that we don't actually worry about nearly as much on the Earth, because we have this beautiful atmosphere and magnetosphere. The problem with that is that we also have a lot of constraints. So the biggest one for us is upmass, and the number that I've used for years is it costs about 10,000 dollars to launch a can of Coke into low Earth orbit. The problem is, there you are with 10,000 dollars later, and you're still in low Earth orbit. You're not even at the Moon or Mars or anything else. So you're going to have to try to figure out how to keep the mass as low as possible so you don't have to launch it. But on top of that cost issue with the mass, you also have problems of storage and flexibility and reliability. You can't just get there and say, "Oops, I forgot to bring," because Amazon.com just does not deliver to Mars. So you better be prepared. So what is the solution for this? And I'm going to propose to you for the rest of this talk that the solution actually is life, and when you start to look at life as a technology, you realize, ah, that's it, that's exactly what we needed. This plant here, like every person here and every one of your dogs and cats and plants and so on, all started as a single cell. So imagine, you're starting as a very low upmass object and then growing into something a good deal bigger. Now, my hero Charles Darwin, of course, reminds us that there's no such thing as a designer in biology, but what if we now have the technology to design biology, maybe even design, oh, whole new life-forms that can do things for us that we couldn't have imagined otherwise? So years ago, I was asked to start to sell this program, and while I was doing that, I was put in front of a panel at NASA, as you might sort of imagine, a bunch of people in suits and white shirts and pencil protectors, and I did this sort of crazy, wild, "This is all the next great thing," and I thought they would be blown over, and instead the chairman of the committee just looked at me straight in the eye, and said, "So what's the big idea?" So I was like, "OK, you want Star Trek? We'll do Star Trek." And so let me tell you what the big idea is. We've used organisms to make biomaterials for years. So here's a great picture taken outside of Glasgow, and you can see lots of great biomaterials there. There are trees that you could use to build houses. There are sheep where you can get your wool from. You could get leather from the sheep. Just quickly glancing around the room, I'll bet there's no one in this room that doesn't have some kind of animal or plant product on them, some kind of biomaterial. But you know what? We're not going to take sheep and trees and stuff to Mars. That's nuts, because of the upmass problem. But we are going to take things like this. This is Bacillus subtilis. Those white dots that you see are spores. This happens to be a bacterium that can form incredibly resistant spores, and when I say incredibly resistant, they've proven themselves. Bacillus subtilis spores have been flown on what was called LDEF, Long Duration Exposure Facility, for almost six years and some of them survived that in space. Unbelievable, a lot better than any of us can do. So why not just take the capabilities, like to make wood or to make wool or spider silk or whatever, and put them in Bacillus subtilis spores, and take those with you off planet? So what are you going to do when you're off planet? Here's an iconic picture of Buzz Aldrin looking back at the Eagle when he landed, oh, it was almost 50 years ago, on the surface of the Moon. Now if you're going to go to the Moon for three days and you're the first person to set foot, yeah, you can live in a tin can, but you wouldn't want to do that for, say, a year and a half. So I did actually a calculation, being in California. I looked at what the average size of a cell at Alcatraz is, and I have news for you, the volume in the Eagle there, in the Lunar Module, was about the size of a cell at Alcatraz if it were only five feet high. So incredibly cramped living quarters. You just can't ask a human to stay in there for long periods of time. So why not take these biomaterials and make something? So here's an image that a colleague of mine who is an architect, Chris Maurer, has done of what we've been proposing, and we'll get to the point of why I've been standing up here holding something that looks like a dried sandwich this whole lecture. So we've proposed that the solution to the habitat problem on Mars could just simply lie in a fungus. So I'm now probably going to turn off everyone from ever eating a mushroom again. So let's talk about fungi for a second. So you're probably familiar with this fruiting body of the fungus. That's the mushroom. But what we're interested in actually is what's beneath the surface there, the mycelium, which are these root hair-like structures that are really the main part of the mushroom. Well, it turns out you can take those — there's a micrograph I did — and you can put them in a mold and give them a little food — and it doesn't take much, you can grow these things on sawdust — so this piece here was grown on sawdust, and that mycelium then will fill that structure to make something. We've actually tried growing mycelium on Mars Simulant. So no one's actually gone to the surface of Mars, but this is a simulated surface of Mars, and you can see those hair-like mycelia out there. It's really amazing stuff. How strong can you make these things? Well, you know, I could give you numbers and tests and so on, but I think that's probably the best way to describe it. There's one of my students proving that you can do this. To do this, then, you've got to figure out how to put it in context. How's this actually going to happen? I mean, this is a great idea, Lynn, but how are you going to get from here to there? So what we're saying is you grow up the mycelium in the lab, for example and then you fill up a little structure, maybe a house-like structure that's tiny, that is maybe a double-bagged sort of plastic thing, like an inflatable — I sort of think L.L.Bean when I see this. And then you put it in a rocket ship and you send it off to Mars. Rocket lands, you release the bag and you add a little water, and voila, you've got your habitat. You know, how cool would that be? And the beauty of that is you don't have to take something prebuilt. And so our estimates are that we could save 90 percent of the mass that NASA is currently proposing by taking up a big steel structure if we actually grow it on site. So let me give you another big idea. What about digital information? What's really interesting is you have a physical link to your parents and they have a physical link to their parents, and so on, all the way back to the origin of life. You have never broken that continuum. But the fact is that we can do that today. So we have students every day in our labs — students in Boston even do this — that make up DNA sequences and they hit the "send" button and they send them to their local DNA synthesis company. Now once you break that physical link where you're sending it across town, it doesn't matter if you're sending it across the Charles River or if you're sending that information to Mars. You've broken that physical link. So then, once you're on Mars, or across the river or wherever, you can take that digital information, synthesize the physical DNA, put it maybe in another organism and voila, you've got new capabilities there. So again, you've broken that physical link. That's huge. What about chemistry? Biology does chemistry for us on Earth, and again has for literally thousands of years. I bet virtually everyone in this room has eaten something today that has been made by biology doing chemistry. Let me give you a big hint there. What about another idea? What about using DNA itself to make a wire? Because again, we're trying to miniaturize everything. DNA is really cheap. Strawberries have a gazillion amount of DNA. You know, you could take a strawberry with you, isolate the DNA, and one of my students has figured out a way to take DNA and tweak it a little bit so that you can incorporate silver atoms in very specific places, thus making an electrical wire. How cool is that? So while we're on the subject of metals, we're going to need to use metals for things like integrated circuits. Probably we're going to want it for some structures, and so on. And things like integrated circuits ultimately go bad. We could talk a lot about that, but I'm going to leave it at that, that they do go bad, and so where are you going to get those metals? Yeah, you could try to mine them with heavy equipment, but you get that upmass problem. And I always tell people, the best way to find the metals for a new cell phone is in a dead cell phone. So what if you take biology as the technology to get these metals out? And how do you do this? Well, take a look at the back of a vitamin bottle and you'll get an idea of all the sorts of metals that we actually use in our bodies. So we have a lot of proteins as well as other organisms that can actually specifically bind metals. So what if we now take those proteins and maybe attach them to this fungal mycelium and make a filter so we can start to pull those metals out in a very specific way without big mining equipment, and, even better, we've actually got a proof of concept where we've then taken those metals that we pulled out with proteins and reprinted an integrated circuit using a plasma printer. Again, how cool? Electricity: I was asked by a head of one of the NASA centers if you could ever take chemical energy and turn that into electrical energy. Well, the great news is it's not just the electric eel that does it. Everybody in this room who is still alive and functioning is doing that. Part of the food that you've eaten today has gone to operate the nerve cells in your body. But even other organisms, nonsentient ones, are creating electric energy, even bacteria. Some bacteria are very good at making little wires. So if we can harvest that ability of turning chemical energy into electrical energy, again, how cool would that be? So here are some of the big ideas we talked about. Let me try one more: life 2.0. So for example, all of the sugars in our body are right-handed. Why shouldn't we make an organism with left-handed sugars? Why not make an organism that can do things that no organism can do today? So organisms normally have evolved to live in very specific environments. So here's this lion cub literally up a tree, and I took a picture of him a bit later, and he was a lot happier when he was down on the ground. So organisms are designed for specific environments. But what if you can go back to that idea of synthetic biology and tweak 'em around? So here is one of our favorite places in Yellowstone National Park. This is Octopus Springs. If you tilt your head a little bit, it sort of looks like a body and tentacles coming out. It's above the boiling temperature of water. Those organisms that you see on the edge and the colors actually match the temperatures that are there, very, very high-temperature thermophiles. So why not take organisms that can live at extremes, whether it's high temperature or low temperature or low pH or high pH or high salt or high levels of radiation, and take some of those capabilities and put it into other organisms. And this is a project that my students have called, and I love this, the "hell cell." And so we've done that. We've taken organisms and sort of tweaked them and pushed them to the edges. And this is important for getting us off planet and also for understanding what life is like in the universe. So let me give you just a couple of final thoughts. First is this whole idea that we have all these needs for human settlement off planet that are in some ways exactly like we have on the Earth, that we need the food and we need the shelter and so on, but we have very, very different constraints of this upmass problem and the reliability and the flexibility and so on. But because we have these constraints that you don't have here, where you might have to think about the indigenous petrochemical industry, or whatever, you now have constraints that have to unleash creativity. And once you unleash this creativity because you have the new constraints, you're forcing game-changing technological advances that you wouldn't have gotten any other way. Finally, we have to think a little bit, is it a good idea to tinker around with life? Well, the sort of easy answer to that is that probably no one in the room keeps a wolf cub at home, but you might have a puppy or a dog; you probably didn't eat teosinte this summer, but you ate corn. We have been doing genetic modification with organisms for literally 10,000 or more years. This is a different approach, but to say all of a sudden humans should never touch an organism is kinda silly because we have that capability now to do things that are far more beneficial for the planet Earth and for life beyond that. And so then the question is, should we? And of course I feel that not only should we, at least for getting off Earth, but actually if we don't use synthetic biology, we will never solve this upmass problem. So once you think of life as a technology, you've got the solution. And so, with that, I'd like to finish the way I always finish, and say "ad astra," which means, "to the stars." Thank you very much, Boston. (Applause) |
There may be extraterrestrial life in our solar system | null | TED-Ed | Deep in our solar system, a new era of space exploration is unfolding. Beneath the thick ice of Europa, in the vapor plumes on Enceladus, and within the methane lakes of Titan, astrobiologists are on the hunt for extraterrestrial life. We’ve honed in on these three moons because each is an ‘ocean world,’ an environment that contains a liquid ocean– and liquid can support the formation of life. Living organisms have to be able to grow, reproduce, and feed themselves, among other things. All of those functions require the formation of complex molecules from more basic components. Liquids such as water allow chemical compounds to remain in suspension instead of sinking under the force of gravity. This enables them to interact frequently in a 3-dimensional space and, in the right conditions, go through chemical reactions that lead to the formation of living matter. That alone isn’t enough; the small but complex biomolecules that we’re familiar with are sensitive to temperature— too hot or cold, and they won’t mix. Liquid water has an additional advantage in that it’s relatively temperature-stable, meaning it can insulate molecules against large shifts in heat. On Earth, these and other conditions in aquatic environments may have supported the emergence of life billions of years ago. Tantalizingly, the same could be true in other parts of our solar system, like these three icy moons. Europa, which is a moon of Jupiter, is probably the most intriguing ocean world. Beneath a surface layer of ice thicker than Mount Everest, there exists a liquid ocean as much as 100 kilometers deep. Astrobiologists think this hidden ocean could harbor life. Thanks to the Galileo probe, we can deduce that its potential salt content is similar to that of some lakes on Earth. But most of its characteristics will be a mystery until we can explore it further. Like Jupiter, Saturn also has moons that might have the right conditions for life. For instance– Enceladus is a tiny ball of ice that’s small enough to nestle within the surface area of the Gulf of Mexico. Similarly to Europa, it likely contains an ocean deep under the ice. But Enceladus also has geysers that frequently vent water vapor and tiny ice grains into space. Astrobiologists are curious about whether these geysers are connected to the ocean below. They hope to send a probe to test whether the geysers’ plumes of vapor contain life-enabling material from that hidden sea. Although it’s the best known substance for nurturing life, water isn’t necessarily the only medium that can support living things. Take Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, which has a thick nitrogen atmosphere containing methane and many other organic molecules. Its clouds condense and rain onto Titan’s surface, sustaining lakes and seas full of liquid methane. This compound’s particular chemistry means it’s not as supportive a medium as water. But, paired with the high quantities of organic material that also rain down from the sky, these bodies of liquid methane could possibly support unfamiliar life forms. So what might indicate that life exists on these or other worlds? If it is out there, astrobiologists speculate that it would be microscopic, comparable to the bacteria we have on earth. This would make it difficult to directly observe from a great distance, so astrobiologists seek clues called biosignatures. Those may be cells, fossils, or mineral traces left behind by living things. And finding any biosignatures will be challenging for many reasons. One of the biggest concerns is to make sure we sterilize our probes extremely thoroughly. Otherwise we could accidentally contaminate ocean worlds with Earth’s own bacteria, which could destroy alien life. Titan, Enceladus, and Europa are just three of possibly many ocean worlds that we could explore. We already know of several other candidates in our solar system, including Jupiter’s moons Callisto and Ganymede, Neptune’s Triton, and even Pluto. If there’s this much potential for life to exist in our own tiny solar system, what unimagined secrets might the rest of the universe contain? |
Architectural secrets of the world's ancient wonders | {0: 'TED Fellow Brandon Clifford mines knowledge from the past to design new futures.'} | TED2019 | Do you think the things we build today will be considered wonders in the future? Think of Stonehenge, the Pyramids, Machu Picchu and Easter Island. Now, they're all pretty different from what we're doing today, with those massive stones, assembled in complex but seemingly illogical ways, and all traces of their construction erased, shrouding them in mystery. It seems like people could not have possibly built these things, because people didn't. They were carefully crafted by a primordial race of giants known as Cyclops. (Laughter) And I've been collaborating with these monsters to learn their secrets for moving those massive stones. And as it turns out, Cyclops aren't even that strong. They're just really smart about getting material to work for them. Now, the videos you see behind me of large, stone-like, wobbly creatures are the results of this collaboration. OK, so Cyclops might be a mythical creature, but those wonders are still real. People made them. But they also made the myths that surround them, and when it comes to wonders, there's this thick connective tissue between mythology and reality. Take Easter Island, for example. When the Dutch explorers first encountered the island, they asked the people of Rapa Nui how their ancestors could have possibly moved those massive statues. And the Rapa Nui said, "Our ancestors didn't move the statues, because the statues walked themselves." For centuries, this was dismissed, but actually it's true. The statues, known as moai, were transported standing, pivoting from side to side. OK? As spectacular as the moai are for visitors today, you have to imagine being there then, with colossal moai marching around the island. Because the real memorial was not the objects themselves, it was the cultural ritual of bringing a stone to life. So as an architect, I've been chasing that dream. How can we shift our idea of construction to accommodate that mythical side? So what I've been doing is challenging myself with putting on a series of performances of the ancient but pretty straightforward task of just moving and standing big heavy objects, like this 16-foot-tall megalith designed to walk across land and stand vertically; or this 4,000-pound behemoth that springs itself to life to dance onstage. And what I've found is that by thinking of architecture not as an end product but as a performance from conception to completion, we end up rediscovering some really smart ways to build things today. You know, so much of the discussion surrounding our future focuses on technology, efficiency and speed. But if I've learned anything from Cyclops, it's that wonders can be smart, spectacular and sustainable — because of their mass and their mystery. And while people still want to know how those ancient wonders were built, I've been asking Cyclops how to create the mystery that compels people to ask that very question. Because in an era where we design buildings to last 30, maybe 60 years, I would love to learn how to create something that could entertain for an eternity. Thank you. (Applause) |
"A Bird Made of Birds" | {0: 'Sarah Kay is a poet, performer, educator and the founder of Project VOICE, an organization that uses spoken word poetry to entertain, educate and empower students and teachers worldwide.'} | TED2019 | I have a friend named Kaveh Akbar, who is a fellow poet. And Kaveh found this photo online of the anatomical heart of a blue whale that scientists had hung on a hook from the ceiling, which is how they were able to observe that the heart of a blue whale is big enough that a person can stand up fully inside of it. And when Kaveh shared this photo online, he did so with the caption, "This is another reminder that the universe has already written the poem you were planning on writing." And when I first saw that, I was horrified. I was like, "Come on, man! I'm trying to invent new metaphors! I'm trying to discover beauty that hasn't been discovered yet. What do you mean, the universe is always going to get there before me?" And I know this isn't a uniquely poet problem, but on days when the world feels especially big or especially impossible or especially full of grandeur, those are the days when I feel, "What do I possibly have to contribute to all of this?" Not long ago, I saw this video that some of you may have seen. It makes the internet rounds every couple of months. There are these birds that are called starlings, and they fly in what's called a "murmuration," which is generally just a big cloud of birds. And someone happened to catch a quick video on their phone of these starlings flying. And at first, it's just an amorphous blob, and then there's a moment where the birds shift, and they form the shape of a starling in the sky! (Laughter) And as soon as I saw it, I was like, (Gasps) "The universe has already written the poem you were planning on writing!" (Laughter) Except, for the first time, it didn't fill me with despair. Instead, I thought, "OK. Maybe it's not my job to invent something new. Maybe instead it's my job to listen to what the universe is showing me and to keep myself open to what the universe offers, so that when it's my turn, I can hold something to the light, just for a moment, just for as long as I have. The universe has already written the poem that you were planning on writing. And this is why you can do nothing but point at the flock of starlings whose bodies rise and fall in inherited choreography, swarming the sky in a sweeping curtain that, for one blistering moment, forms the unmistakeable shape of a giant bird flapping against the sky. It is why your mouth forms an "o" that is not a gasp, but rather, the beginning of, "Oh. Of course." As in, of course the heart of a blue whale is as large as a house with chambers tall enough to fit a person standing. Of course a fig becomes possible when a lady wasp lays her eggs inside a flower, dies and decomposes, the fruit, evidence of her transformation. Sometimes, the poem is so bright, your silly language will not stick to it. Sometimes, the poem is so true, nobody will believe you. I am a bird made of birds. This blue heart a house you can stand up inside of. I am dying here inside this flower. It is OK. It is what I was put here to do. Take this fruit. It is what I have to offer. It may not be first, or ever best, but it is the only way to be sure that I lived at all. (Applause) |
Why kids need to learn about gender and sexuality | {0: 'Lindsay "Lindz" Amer creates LGBTQ+ and social justice media for kids and families.'} | TED Residency | Alright, let's get this kicked off. (Music) (Singing) It's OK to be gay. We are different in many ways. Doesn't matter if you're a boy, girl or somewhere in between, we all are part of one big family. Gay means "happy." Queer Kid Stuff. You are enough here at Queer Kid Stuff. (Applause) Opening a performance with lyrics like "It's OK to be gay" for a roomful of adults is one thing, but it's entirely different for a roomful of kindergartners. What you've just heard is the theme song for my web series "Queer Kid Stuff," where I make LGBTQ+ and social justice videos for all ages. And when I say all ages, I mean literal babies to your great-great-grandma. Now, I know what you're thinking: "Whoa, they're talking about gay stuff with kids." But talking to kids about gay stuff is actually crucial. The American Academy of Pediatrics has found that children have a solid understanding of their gender identity by the age of four. This is when children are developing their sense of self. They're observing the world around them, absorbing that information and internalizing it. Now, most parents want their children to become kind, empathetic, self-confident adults, and exposure to diversity is an important part of that social and emotional development. And — gender nonconforming kids and trans kids and kids with trans and nonbinary and queer parents are everywhere. In the series, my stuffed bear cohost and I talk about the LGBT community, activism, gender and pronouns, consent and body positivity. We tackle these topics through songs, not unlike the one you just heard, simple definitions and metaphors. We approach these ideas, to steal a phrase from an old professor of mine, from "under the doorknob" — getting down to toddler height and looking up at the great big world through their tiny little eyes, taking these seemingly complex ideas and simplifying them — not dumbing them down, but homing in on the core concept. Gender is about how we feel and how we express ourselves. Sexuality is about love and gender and family, not about sex. And these are all ideas children can grasp. In one of my earliest episodes about gender, I used the idea of pronouns to underscore the definition and introduce gender-neutral pronouns like "they" and "them." I encourage children to think about their own pronouns and to ask others for theirs. In later episodes, I build on this foundation and introduce big fancy words like "nonbinary" and "transgender." I get emails from viewers in their 20s who use my videos to explain nonbinary gender to their grandparents. But, I get one comment over and over again: "Let kids be kids." Well, that's a nice sentiment and all, but only if it actually includes all kids. Just a few weeks ago, a 15-year-old in Huntsville, Alabama died by suicide after being bullied for being gay. In 2018, it was a seven-year-old in Denver, Colorado. There have been and will be many more. Lesbian, gay and bisexual teens are more than three times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers, and transgender teens are almost six times more likely. According to one study, roughly one third of homeless youth identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or questioning, and about four percent of homeless youth identify as transgender, compared with one percent of the general youth population surveyed. According to the Human Rights Campaign, there have been 128 killings of trans people in 87 cities across 32 states since 2013. And those are the only the reported cases. And 80 percent of those killings were of trans women of color. The queer situation is bleak, to say the least. The YouTube comments on my videos are not much better. I'm used to the harassment. I get messages daily telling me I'm a pedophile and that I should kill myself in a number of increasingly creative ways. I once had to put the word "truck" on my block list because someone wanted me to get run over by a truck. "Shower" and "oven" are in there, too, for the less creative and more disturbing Holocaust reference. When neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, I was unsurprised to learn that the creator of a violent Reddit meme about one of my episodes was in the tiki torch crowd. This barrage of negativity is what we're up against: the crushing statistics, the violence, the mental health risks, the well-meaning but flawed response my parents gave me when I came out, that they didn't want me to have a harder life. That's what we're up against. But in the face of all that, I choose joy. I choose rainbows and unicorns and glitter, and I sing that it's OK to be gay with my childhood stuffed teddy bear. I make queer media for kids because I wish I had this when I was their age. I make it so others don't have to struggle through what I did, not understanding my identity because I didn't have any exposure to who I could be. I teach and spread this message through joy and positivity instead of framing it around the hardships of queer life. I want kids to grow up and into themselves with pride for who they are and who they can be, no matter who they love or what they wear or what pronouns they use. And I want them to love others for their differences, not in spite of them. I think fostering this pride and empathy will make the world a kinder and more equal place and combat the bigotry and hate that festers in our world. So, talk to a kid about gender. Talk to a kid about sexuality. Teach them about consent. Tell them it is OK for boys to wear dresses and for girls to speak up. Let's spread radical queer joy. Thank you. (Applause) |
How Romans flooded the Colosseum for sea battles | null | TED-Ed | The cry of the crowd. The roar of a lion. The clash of metal. Starting in 80 CE these sounds rang through the stands of the Colosseum. On hundreds of days a year, over 50,000 residents of Rome and visitors from across the Roman Empire would fill the stadiums’ four stories to see gladiators duel, animals fight, and chariots race around the arena. And for the grand finale, water poured into the arena basin, submerging the stage for the greatest spectacle of all: staged naval battles. The Romans’ epic, mock maritime encounters, called naumachiae, started during Julius Caesar’s reign in the first century BC, over a hundred years before the Colosseum was built. They were held alongside other aquatic spectacles on natural and artificial bodies of water around Rome up through Emperor Flavius Vespasian, who began building the Colosseum in 70 CE on the site of a former lake. The Colosseum was intended to be a symbol of Rome’s power in the ancient world, and what better way to display that power than a body of water that could drain and refill at the Emperor’s command? Vespasian’s son Flavius Titus fulfilled his father’s dream in 80 CE when he used war spoils to finish the Colosseum– or as it was known at the time, the Flavian Amphitheater. The grand opening was celebrated with 100 days of pageantry and gladiatorial games, setting the precedent for programming that included parades, musical performances, public executions, and of course, gladiatorial combat. Unlike the games in smaller amphitheaters funded by wealthy Romans, these lavish displays of Imperial power were financed by the Emperor. Parades of exotic animals, theatrical performances, and the awe-inspiring naumachiae were all designed to bolster faith in the god-like Emperor, who would be declared a god after his own death. It’s still a mystery how engineers flooded the arena to create this aquatic effect. Some historians believe a giant aqueduct was diverted into the arena. Others think the system of chambers and sluice gates used to drain the arena, were also used to fill it. These chambers could’ve been filled with water prior to the event and then opened to submerge the stage under more than a million gallons of water, to create a depth of five feet. But even with all that water, the Romans had to construct miniature boats with special flat bottoms that wouldn’t scrape the Colosseum floor. These boats ranged from 7 to 15 meters long, and were built to look like vessels from famous encounters. During a battle, dozens of these ships would float around the arena, crewed by gladiators dressed as the opposing sides of the recreated battle. These warriors would duel across ships; boarding them, fighting, drowning, and incapacitating their foes until only one faction was left standing. Fortunately, not every watery display told such a gruesome story. In some of these floodings, a submerged stage allowed chariot drivers to glide across the water as though they were Triton, making waves as he piloted his chariot on the sea. Animals walked on water, myths were re-enacted by condemned prisoners, and at night, nude synchronized swimmers would perform by torchlight. But the Colosseum’s aquatic age didn’t last forever. The naval battles proved so popular they were given their own nearby lake by Emperor Domitian in the early 90s CE. The larger lake proved even better for naumachiae, and the Colosseum soon gained a series of underground animal cages and trap doors that didn’t allow for further flooding. But for a brief time, the Flavian Emperors controlled the tides of war and water in a spectacular show of power. |
Why should you read "Hamlet"? | null | TED-Ed | "Who’s there?" Whispered in the dark, this question begins a tale of conspiracy, deception and moral ambiguity. And in a play where everyone has something to hide, its answer is far from simple. Written by William Shakespeare between 1599 and 1601, "Hamlet" depicts its titular character haunted by the past, but immobilized by the future. Mere months after the sudden death of his father, Hamlet returns from school a stranger to his own home, and deeply unsure of what might be lurking in the shadows. But his brooding takes a turn when he’s visited by a ghost that bears his father’s face. The phantom claims to be the victim of a “murder most foul,” and convinces Hamlet that his uncle Claudius usurped the throne and stole queen Gertrude’s heart. The prince’s mourning turns to rage, and he begins to plots his revenge on the new king and his court of conspirators. The play is an odd sort of tragedy, lacking either the abrupt brutality or all-consuming romance that characterize Shakespeare’s other work in the genre. Instead it plumbs the depths of its protagonist’s indecisiveness, and the tragic consequences thereof. The ghost’s revelation draws Hamlet into multiple dilemmas– what should he do, who can he trust, and what role might he play in the course of justice? These questions are complicated by a tangled web of characters, forcing Hamlet to negotiate friends, family, court counselors, and love interests– many of whom possess ulterior motives. The prince constantly delays and dithers over how to relate to others, and how he should carry out revenge. This can make Hamlet more than a little exasperating, but it also makes him one of the most human characters Shakespeare ever created. Rather than rushing into things, Hamlet becomes consumed with the awful machinations of thinking itself. And over the course of the play, his endless questions come to echo throughout our own racing minds. To accomplish this, Shakespeare employs his most introspective language. From the usurping king’s blazing contemplation of heaven and hell, to the prince’s own cackling meditation on mortality, Shakespeare uses melancholic monologues to breathtaking effect. This is perhaps best exemplified in Hamlet’s most famous declaration of angst: "To be or not to be—that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And, by opposing, end them." This monologue personifies Hamlet’s existential dilemma: being torn between thought and action, unable to choose between life and death. But his endless questioning raises yet another anxiety: is Hamlet’s madness part of a performance to confuse his enemies, or are we watching a character on the brink of insanity? These questions weigh heavily on Hamlet’s interactions with every character. And since he spends much of the play facing inward, he often fails to see the destruction left in his wake. He’s particularly cruel to Ophelia, his doomed love interest who is brought to madness by the prince’s erratic behavior. Her fate is one example of how tragedy could have been easily avoided, and shows the ripple effect of Hamlet’s toxic mind games. Similar warning signs of tragedy are constantly overlooked throughout the play. Sometimes, these oversights occur because of willful blindness– such as when Ophelia’s father dismisses Hamlet’s alarming actions as mere lovesickness. At other points, tragedy stems from deliberate duplicity– as when a case of mistaken identity leads to yet more bloodshed. These moments leave us with the uncomfortable knowledge that tragedy evolves from human error– even if our mistake is to leave things undecided. For all these reasons, perhaps the one thing we never doubt is Hamlet’s humanity. But we must constantly grapple with who the “real” Hamlet might be. Is he a noble son avenging his father? Or a mad prince creating courtly chaos? Should he act or observe, doubt or trust? Who is he? Why is he here? And who’s out there– waiting in the dark? |
Why we need to fight misinformation about vaccines | {0: 'Ethan Lindenberger advocates for science.'} | TEDxMidAtlantic | To start, I want to share with you guys something about my hometown of Norwalk, Ohio. Now, as this video stated, I am from Norwalk, which is an extremely small town, about 15,000 people. And really, in Norwalk, if you want to do something fun, you go to Walmart or drive half an hour to something more interesting. And for Norwalk, I've lived there for my entire life, I'm a senior at the local public high school, and you know, it's something to where I really enjoy my small town. And I'm just a normal kid, you know, I lead debate clubs, I volunteer at my church. And back in November of 2018, I made a small Reddit post asking for advice on an issue that I was encountering that I needed some clarification on. And this issue, as was stated in the introduction, was something towards vaccinations and how I was not immunized against various diseases, including polio and measles, as well as influenza, HPV, hepatitis — the standard vaccine someone my age would receive. Now, this question I asked was simple and pretty strange, because, you know, I wanted to get vaccinated. That's kind of weird, but it happened, and then this turned into a public story, because I wanted to get vaccinated. So that was kind of strange, and then it blew up more, and I was doing interviews and talking to more people, and again, I'm a normal kid, I'm not a scientist, I don't lead a non-profit, I am a pretty casual person, I'm wearing a hoodie. (Laughter) Because of this question and this story, because I wanted to get vaccinated and this interesting situation I was in, I saw that I quickly was in this public setting of an extremely important controversy and discussion taking place. Now, I saw that the stories and headlines were pretty accurate for most part, you know, "After defying anti-vax mom, Ohio teen expresses why he got vaccinated." Pretty accurate, pretty true. And, as stated, I testified in front of a Senate committee, so there, they said, "This teen who self-vaccinated just ripped his mom's anti-vaxer beliefs in front of Congress." OK, I didn't really do that, but that's fine. And certain news outlets took it a little further. "'God knows how I'm still alive': Teenager, 18, finally gets vaccinated and attacks his anti-vax parents." So I did not attack my parents, that's not accurate at all. And you know, really, my story was more about controversy. It was about how my mom was bad and I was good, and I was ripping her a new one. Not true. Not what was happening. I never was rude towards my mother, and even in public settings where I expressed how her beliefs were misinformed, I said that she was a loving mother, and that's important to understand. Because a lot of people, I think, in the scientific community that understand why vaccines are so important, can really be confused by someone who would not vaccinate. Really, we can compare it to someone not taking their child to the ER. That's a very dangerous situation to be in and it shows some lack of empathy towards your children in some regards. And really, I can understand that, I can. But my mom, she was misinformed and misled by sources that convinced her that if she was a loving parent, she wouldn't vaccinate. Now, when I encountered this and I talked to my mom, it didn't obviously go well at first, because I was wanting to do something that she thought would either cause autism or maim me for the rest of my life, and I said I wanted to do this — didn't really fly, didn't really go well. But the thing that I found interesting was that when I had started to get into this circumstance, do these interviews, there was one question I proposed. Wasn't a positive one: What in the world have I gotten myself into? That's what I asked constantly, because, again, I am not an expert, I am a normal kid, and now I'm talking to CNN and Fox News about a scientific discussion that really, should I be facilitating, should I be commenting on? And a lot of people questioned that, and for good reason. But I never claimed things I didn't understand, I talked about my personal experiences. And even at the Senate hearing, I just talked about how misinformation is dangerous. My mom got a lot of her beliefs from social media, from Facebook and from organizations that were allowing their platforms to push lies that were very dangerous. Now, I also saw that as I was doing this — and I was doing this as respectfully as I could, as accurately as I could — I was getting a lot of criticism, a lot of very angry people. When I was in DC for that testimony I gave, I was looking around the office building and three ladies got in an elevator with me and said I'm the reason their children are being maimed and murdered and I'm basically Hitler. So that was fun. (Laughter) So really, for most circumstances, for most teenagers and most people, when they get criticized, it leads to doubt. And that doubt leads to questioning, and that questioning leads to quitting. Because, when you have a topic that you're interested in, or a movement that you want to be a part of, and you're taking a stance and saying what's true, good ideas don't avoid criticism. And for especially young people, they have a hard time dealing with that, and these important discussions that need young people to take a part in, it takes a lot of commitment. I'm not saying that I'm amazing, but here's what's important: through me joining this movement and this important scientific discussion, here's what happened. Facebook changed their platform. They were going to change how they approach anti-vax content. Amazon even removed misinformed books about autism and vaccines. And recently, GoFundMe took down anti-vax campaigns. We're talking about how movements like this are causing actual change, actually impacting the way this game is played and the misinformation that's lying to people and convincing them of very dangerous ideas. Now, before I leave, because I only have a short amount of time, I want to give you one important thing to keep in mind. One important takeaway from this all. What you can do and what I did. I didn't do amazing research and studies and take information and present it to people; I didn't have deep, intellectual, scientific debates with people. All I did was share my story. And that's enough for most people: to understand the anecdotal experiences, the real people behind the data. Because data doesn't resonate with people. People resonate with people. And you have to keep that in mind, because when you are talking about a topic, and you're sharing your story, and sharing what is important, you stay authentic. Stay authentic to the data, to the information, to the importance of this topic. If I was talking to an individual and they said, "Why are vaccines important?" I would say nothing alongside any other answer, I would not in any way fathomably give them answer outside of: people are dying, and that's important. And that children are dying, and that's important. And that we're having disease outbreaks that should not be here. And I believe, as John Boyle put it, these diseases should be in history books and not in our communities. So because of that, you need to make a personal decision to stand up for truth. You need to make a personal decision for yourself to say, "This is accurate, this is what's real, and these lies are not OK." Because it started with me doing that on a personal level. I wasn't going from small town to Senate in a day. It wasn't like, I go to bed, I wake up and there's Senator Isakson, asking me questions about vaccines. It was a slow progression and it started with me saying, "This is true, my mom doesn't believe it, but that's OK." Because that doesn't change the truth, doesn't change what's accurate and what's important. And honestly, the biggest thing, this whole idea of unbreakable: remain unbroken. When you stand up for what's true and you have that criticism, and you're trying to cause a movement, don't sway. Thank you. (Applause) |
How to ask for help -- and get a "yes" | {0: 'Heidi Grant researches, writes and speaks about the science of motivation, influence and decision-making. '} | TED Salon Brightline Initiative | So, asking for help is basically the worst, right? I've actually never seen it on one of those top ten lists of things people fear, like public speaking and death, but I'm pretty sure it actually belongs there. Even though in many ways it's foolish for us to be afraid to admit we need help, whether it's from a loved one or a friend or from a coworker or even from a stranger, somehow it always feel just a little bit uncomfortable and embarrassing to actually ask for help, which is, of course, why most of us try to avoid asking for help whenever humanly possible. My father was one of those legions of fathers who, I swear, would rather drive through an alligator-infested swamp than actually ask someone for help getting back to the road. When I was a kid, we took a family vacation. We drove from our home in South Jersey to Colonial Williamsburg. And I remember we got really badly lost. My mother and I pleaded with him to please just pull over and ask someone for directions back to the highway, and he absolutely refused, and, in fact, assured us that we were not lost, he had just always wanted to know what was over here. (Laughter) So if we're going to ask for help — and we have to, we all do, practically every day — the only way we're going to even begin to get comfortable with it is to get good at it, to actually increase the chances that when you ask for help from someone, they're actually going to say yes. And not only that, but they're going to find it actually satisfying and rewarding to help you, because that way, they'll be motivated to continue to help you into the future. So research that I and some of my colleagues have done has shed a lot of light on why it is that sometimes people say yes to our requests for help and why sometimes they say no. Now let me just start by saying right now: if you need help, you are going to have to ask for it. Out loud. OK? We all, to some extent, suffer from something that psychologists call "the illusion of transparency" — basically, the mistaken belief that our thoughts and our feelings and our needs are really obvious to other people. This is not true, but we believe it. And so, we just mostly stand around waiting for someone to notice our needs and then spontaneously offer to help us with it. This is a really, really bad assumption. In fact, not only is it very difficult to tell what your needs are, but even the people close to you often struggle to understand how they can support you. My partner has actually had to adopt a habit of asking me multiple times a day, "Are you OK? Do you need anything?" because I am so, so bad at signaling when I need someone's help. Now, he is more patient than I deserve and much more proactive, much more, about helping than any of us have any right to expect other people to be. So if you need help, you're going to have to ask for it. And by the way, even when someone can tell that you need help, how do they know that you want it? Did you ever try to give unsolicited help to someone who, it turns out, did not actually want your help in the first place? They get nasty real quick, don't they? The other day — true story — my teenage daughter was getting dressed for school, and I decided to give her some unsolicited help about that. (Laughter) I happen to think she looks amazing in brighter colors. She tends to prefer sort of darker, more neutral tones. And so I said, very helpfully, that I thought maybe she could go back upstairs and try to find something a little less somber. (Laughter) So, if looks could kill, I would not be standing here right now. We really can't blame other people for not just spontaneously offering to help us when we don't actually know that that's what is wanted. In fact, actually, research shows that 90 percent of the help that coworkers give one another in the workplace is in response to explicit requests for help. So you're going to have to say the words "I need your help." Right? There's no getting around it. Now, to be good at it, to make sure that people actually do help you when you ask for it, there are a few other things that are very helpful to keep in mind. First thing: when you ask for help, be very, very specific about the help you want and why. Vague, sort of indirect requests for help actually aren't very helpful to the helper, right? We don't actually know what it is you want from us, and, just as important, we don't know whether or not we can be successful in giving you the help. Nobody wants to give bad help. Like me, you probably get some of these requests from perfectly pleasant strangers on LinkedIn who want to do things like "get together over coffee and connect" or "pick your brain." I ignore these requests literally every time. And it's not that I'm not a nice person. It's just that when I don't know what it is you want from me, like the kind of help you're hoping that can I provide, I'm not interested. Nobody is. I'd have been much more interested if they had just come out and said whatever it is was they were hoping to get from me, because I'm pretty sure they had something specific in mind. So go ahead and say, "I'm hoping to discuss opportunities to work in your company," or, "I'd like to propose a joint research project in an area I know you're interested in," or, "I'd like your advice on getting into medical school." Technically, I can't help you with that last one because I'm not that kind of doctor, but I could point you in the direction of someone who could. OK, second tip. This is really important: please avoid disclaimers, apologies and bribes. Really, really important. Do any of these sound familiar? (Clears throat) 'I'm so, so sorry that I have to ask you for this." "I really hate bothering you with this." "If I had any way of doing this without your help, I would." (Laughter) Sometimes it feels like people are so eager to prove that they're not weak and greedy when they ask your for help, they're completely missing out on how uncomfortable they're making you feel. And by the way — how am I supposed to find it satisfying to help you if you really hated having to ask me for help? And while it is perfectly, perfectly acceptable to pay strangers to do things for you, you need to be very, very careful when it comes to incentivizing your friends and coworkers. When you have a relationship with someone, helping one another is actually a natural part of that relationship. It's how we show one another that we care. If you introduce incentives or payments into that, what can happen is, it starts to feel like it isn't a relationship, it's a transaction. And that actually is experienced as distancing, which, ironically, makes people less likely to help you. So a spontaneous gift after someone gives you some help to show your appreciation and gratitude — perfectly fine. An offer to pay your best friend to help you move into your new apartment is not. OK, third rule, and I really mean this one: please do not ask for help over email or text. Really, seriously, please don't. Email and text are impersonal. I realize sometimes there's no alternative, but mostly what happens is, we like to ask for help over email and text because it feels less awkward for us to do so. You know what else feels less awkward over email and text? Telling you no. And it turns out, there's research to support this. In-person requests for help are 30 times more likely to get a yes than a request made by email. So when something is really important and you really need someone's help, make face time to make the request, or use your phone as a phone — (Laughter) to ask for the help that you need. OK. Last one, and this is actually a really, really important one and probably the one that is most overlooked when it comes to asking for help: when you ask someone for their help and they say yes, follow up with them afterward. There's a common misconception that what's rewarding about helping is the act of helping itself. This is not true. What is rewarding about helping is knowing that your help landed, that it had impact, that you were effective. If I have no idea how my help affected you, how am I supposed to feel about it? This happened; I was a university professor for many years, I wrote lots and lots of letters of recommendation for people to get jobs or to go into graduate school. And probably about 95 percent of them, I have no idea what happened. Now, how do I feel about the time and effort I took to do that, when I really have no idea if I helped you, if it actually helped you get the thing that you wanted? In fact, this idea of feeling effective is part of why certain kinds of donor appeals are so, so persuasive — because they allow you to really vividly imagine the effect that your help is going to have. Take something like DonorsChoose. You go online, you can choose the individual teacher by name whose classroom you're going to be able to help by literally buying the specific items they've requested, like microscopes or laptops or flexible seating. An appeal like that makes it so easy for me to imagine the good that my money will do, that I actually get an immediate sense of effectiveness the minute I commit to giving. But you know what else they do? They follow up. Donors actually get letters from the kids in the classroom. They get pictures. They get to know that they made a difference. And this is something we need to all be doing in our everyday lives, especially if we want people to continue to give us help over the long term. Take time to tell your colleague that the help that they gave you really helped you land that big sale, or helped you get that interview that you were really hoping to get. Take time to tell your partner that the support they gave you really made it possible for you to get through a tough time. Take time to tell your catsitter that you're super happy that for some reason, this time the cats didn't break anything while you were away, and so they must have done a really good job. The bottom line is: I know — believe me, I know — that it is not easy to ask for help. We are all a little bit afraid to do it. It makes us feel vulnerable. But the reality of modern work and modern life is that nobody does it alone. Nobody succeeds in a vacuum. More than ever, we actually do have to rely on other people, on their support and collaboration, in order to be successful. So when you need help, ask for it out loud. And when you do, do it in a way that increases your chances that you'll get a yes and makes the other person feel awesome for having helped you, because you both deserve it. Thank you. (Applause) |
What makes TB the world's most infectious killer? | null | TED-Ed | In 2008, archeologists uncovered two 9,000-year old skeletons. There’s no definitive way of knowing what killed these ancient people, but we do know their bones were infected by an all too familiar bacterium. The ancient Greeks knew its consumptive effects as phthisis; the Incans called it chaky oncay; and the English called it tuberculosis. Today, tuberculosis, or TB, is still one of the world’s biggest infectious killers, causing more deaths than malaria or even HIV and AIDS. But what exactly is this disease, and how has this pathogen persisted for so long? Typically, TB bacteria called mycobacterium tuberculosis, are airborne. They travel into our airways and infect our lungs. Here, immune cells called macrophages rush to the infection site, attempting to absorb and break down the bacterial invaders. In many cases, this response is enough to remove the bacteria. But in individuals with other medical conditions– ranging from malnutrition and HIV to diabetes and pregnancy –the immune response may not be strong enough to destroy the intruder. If so, mycobacterium tuberculosis will reproduce inside those macrophages, and form colonies in the surrounding lung tissue. As they infect more cells, the bacteria employ cell-degrading enzymes that destroy the infected tissue, triggering chest pain, and causing patients to cough up blood. The damage to the lungs leads to oxygen deprivation. This begins a flood of hormonal changes– including a decrease in appetite and iron production. From here, microbes can spread to the skeletal system, causing back pain and difficulty moving; to the kidneys and intestines, causing abdominal pain; and to the brain, causing headaches and even impaired consciousness. These symptoms produce the classic image of TB: weight loss, a hacking, bloody cough, and ashen skin. This ghostly appearance earned TB the title of the ‘White Plague’ in Victorian-era England. During this period, tuberculosis was considered a ‘romantic disease,' because it tended to affect poverty- stricken artists and poets– those with weaker immune systems. TB’s outward symptoms even helped fuel the popular myth of vampirism. In spite of– or perhaps because of these less than scientific concerns, this period also marked the first strides toward curing TB. In 1882, the German physician Robert Koch identified the disease’s bacterial origins. 13 years later, physicist Wilhelm Roentgen discovered the X-ray, enabling physicians to diagnose and track its progression through the body. These techniques allowed researchers to develop reliable and effective vaccines– first for smallpox, and again in 1921, when scientists developed the BCG vaccine to battle TB. These developments laid the groundwork for the modern field of antibiotics– currently home to our most effective TB treatments. But, antibiotics fail to address a major diagnostic complication: about 90% of people infected with TB don’t show any symptoms. In these latent infections, the TB bacterium may be dormant, only activating when someone’s immune system is too weak to mount a defense. This makes TB much harder to diagnose. And even when properly identified, traditional treatments can take up to 9 months, requiring multiple drugs and a high potential for side effects. This discourages people from finishing the full course, and partial treatment enables bacteria to develop resistance to these drugs. Today, the disease is still prevalent in 30 countries, most of which face other health crises that exacerbate TB and trigger latent cases. Worse still, accessing treatment can be difficult in many of these countries, and the stigma towards TB can discourage people from getting the help they need. Health experts agree we need to develop better diagnostics, faster acting antibiotics, and more effective vaccines. Researchers have already developed a urine test that yields results in 12 hours, as well as a new oral treatment that could cut treatment time by 75%. Hopefully, with advancements like these, we’ll finally be able to make TB exclusively a thing of the past. |
You are not alone in your loneliness | {0: 'Jonny Sun wears many hats, creating work across multiple fields and modes that speaks to the increasingly expansive society in which we live.'} | TED2019 | Hello. I'd like to introduce you to someone. This is Jomny. That's "Jonny" but spelled accidentally with an "m," in case you were wondering, because we're not all perfect. Jomny is an alien who has been sent to earth with a mission to study humans. Jomny is feeling lost and alone and far from home, and I think we've all felt this way. Or, at least I have. I wrote this story about this alien at a moment in my life when I was feeling particularly alien. I had just moved to Cambridge and started my doctoral program at MIT, and I was feeling intimidated and isolated and very much like I didn't belong. But I had a lifeline of sorts. See, I was writing jokes for years and years and sharing them on social media, and I found that I was turning to doing this more and more. Now, for many people, the internet can feel like a lonely place. It can feel like this, a big, endless, expansive void where you can constantly call out to it but no one's ever listening. But I actually found a comfort in speaking out to the void. I found, in sharing my feelings with the void, eventually the void started to speak back. And it turns out that the void isn't this endless lonely expanse at all, but instead it's full of all sorts of other people, also staring out into it and also wanting to be heard. Now, there have been many bad things that have come from social media. I'm not trying to dispute that at all. To be online at any given point is to feel so much sadness and anger and violence. It can feel like the end of the world. Yet, at the same time, I'm conflicted because I can't deny the fact that so many of my closest friends are people that I had met originally online. And I think that's partly because there's this confessional nature to social media. It can feel like you are writing in this personal, intimate diary that's completely private, yet at the same time you want everyone in the world to read it. And I think part of that, the joy of that is that we get to experience things from perspectives from people who are completely different from ourselves, and sometimes that's a nice thing. For example, when I first joined Twitter, I found that so many of the people that I was following were talking about mental health and going to therapy in ways that had none of the stigma that they often do when we talk about these issues in person. Through them, the conversation around mental health was normalized, and they helped me realize that going to therapy was something that would help me as well. Now, for many people, it sounds like a scary idea to be talking about all these topics so publicly and so openly on the internet. I feel like a lot of people think that it is a big, scary thing to be online if you're not already perfectly and fully formed. But I think the internet can be actually a great place to not know, and I think we can treat that with excitement, because to me there's something important about sharing your imperfections and your insecurities and your vulnerabilities with other people. (Laughter) Now, when someone shares that they feel sad or afraid or alone, for example, it actually makes me feel less alone, not by getting rid of any of my loneliness but by showing me that I am not alone in feeling lonely. And as a writer and as an artist, I care very much about making this comfort of being vulnerable a communal thing, something that we can share with each other. I'm excited about externalizing the internal, about taking those invisible personal feelings that I don't have words for, holding them to the light, putting words to them, and then sharing them with other people in the hopes that it might help them find words to find their feelings as well. Now, I know that sounds like a big thing, but ultimately I'm interested in putting all these things into small, approachable packages, because when we can hide them into these smaller pieces, I think they are easier to approach, I think they're more fun. I think they can more easily help us see our shared humanness. Sometimes that takes the form of a short story, sometimes that takes the form of a cute book of illustrations, for example. And sometimes that takes the form of a silly joke that I'll throw on the internet. For example, a few months ago, I posted this app idea for a dog-walking service where a dog shows up at your door and you have to get out of the house and go for a walk. (Laughter) If there are app developers in the audience, please find me after the talk. Or, I like to share every time I feel anxious about sending an email. When I sign my emails "Best," it's short for "I am trying my best," which is short for "Please don't hate me, I promise I'm trying my best!" Or my answer to the classic icebreaker, if I could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, I would. I am very lonely. (Laughter) And I find that when I post things like these online, the reaction is very similar. People come together to share a laugh, to share in that feeling, and then to disburse just as quickly. (Laughter) Yes, leaving me once again alone. But I think sometimes these little gatherings can be quite meaningful. For example, when I graduated from architecture school and I moved to Cambridge, I posted this question: "How many people in your life have you already had your last conversation with?" And I was thinking about my own friends who had moved away to different cities and different countries, even, and how hard it would be for me to keep in touch with them. But other people started replying and sharing their own experiences. Somebody talked about a family member they had a falling out with. Someone talked about a loved one who had passed away quickly and unexpectedly. Someone else talked about their friends from school who had moved away as well. But then something really nice started happening. Instead of just replying to me, people started replying to each other, and they started to talk to each other and share their own experiences and comfort each other and encourage each other to reach out to that friend that they hadn't spoken to in a while or that family member that they had a falling out with. And eventually, we got this little tiny microcommunity. It felt like this support group formed of all sorts of people coming together. And I think every time we post online, every time we do this, there's a chance that these little microcommunities can form. There's a chance that all sorts of different creatures can come together and be drawn together. And sometimes, through the muck of the internet, you get to find a kindred spirit. Sometimes that's in the reading the replies and the comments sections and finding a reply that is particularly kind or insightful or funny. Sometimes that's in going to follow someone and seeing that they already follow you back. And sometimes that's in looking at someone that you know in real life and seeing the things that you write and the things that they write and realizing that you share so many of the same interests as they do, and that brings them closer together to you. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you get to meet another alien. [when two aliebns find each other in a strange place, it feels a litle more like home] But I am worried, too, because as we all know, the internet for the most part doesn't feel like this. We all know that for the most part, the internet feels like a place where we misunderstand each other, where we come into conflict with each other, where there's all sorts of confusion and screaming and yelling and shouting, and it feels like there's too much of everything. It feels like chaos, and I don't know how to square away the bad parts with the good, because as we know and as we've seen, the bad parts can really, really hurt us. It feels to me that the platforms that we use to inhabit these online spaces have been designed either ignorantly or willfully to allow for harassment and abuse, to propagate misinformation, to enable hatred and hate speech and the violence that comes from it, and it feels like none of our current platforms are doing enough to address and to fix that. But still, and maybe probably unfortunately, I'm still drawn to these online spaces, as many others are, because sometimes it just feels like that's where all the people are. And I feel silly and stupid sometimes for valuing these small moments of human connection in times like these. But I've always operated under this idea that these little moments of humanness are not superfluous. They're not retreats from the world at all, but instead they're the reasons why we come to these spaces. They are important and vital and they affirm and they give us life. And they are these tiny, temporary sanctuaries that show us that we are not as alone as we think we are. And so yes, even though life is bad and everyone's sad and one day we're all going to die — [look. life is bad. everyones sad. We're all gona die, but i alredy bought this inflatable bouncey castle so are u gona take Ur shoes off or not] I think the inflatable metaphorical bouncy castle in this case is really our relationships and our connections to other people. And so one night, when I was feeling particularly sad and hopeless about the world, I shouted out to the void, to the lonely darkness. I said, "At this point, logging on to social media feels like holding someone's hand at the end of the world." And this time, instead of the void responding, it was people who showed up, who started replying to me and then who started talking to each other, and slowly this little tiny community formed. Everybody came together to hold hands. And in these dangerous and unsure times, in the midst of it all, I think the thing that we have to hold on to is other people. And I know that is a small thing made up of small moments, but I think it is one tiny, tiny sliver of light in all the darkness. Thank you. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) |
The next big thing is coming from the Bronx, again | {0: 'Culinary evangelist Jon Gray is the voice of Ghetto Gastro, a cooking advocacy collective that ignites conversations about race, class and inclusion via the medium of food.'} | TED2019 | My name is Jon Gray. They call me "The Dishwasher." I cofounded Ghetto Gastro, a Bronx-based collective that works at the intersection of food, design and art. We create experiences that challenge people's perceptions of the Bronx, the place that I call home. It's a funny thing. I just touched down in Vancouver from Paris a few days ago. We took over the Place Vendôme with the Bronx Brasserie. Oui oui, chérie. (Laughter) It's wild, because in Paris, they have this saying, "le Bronx," which means something is in disarray or a problem. That's the Place Vendôme. We shut it down one time. (Laughter) This lingo came into play when the Bronx was burning, and movies like "The Warriors" and "Fort Apache" still make an impression. Some may disagree, but I believe the Bronx was designed to fail. The power broker was a joker. Robert Moses, instead of parting the Red Sea, he parted the Bronx with a six-lane highway and redlined my community. My great-grandparents had a home on Featherbed Lane, and contrary to the name, they couldn't get a good night's rest due to the constant blasting and drilling that was necessary to build the cross-Bronx expressway a block away. I consider these policy decisions design crimes. (Applause) Being the resilient people that we are uptown, out of the systematic oppression hip-hop culture rose from the rubble and the ashes like a phoenix. Hip-hop is now a trillion-dollar industry, but this economic activity doesn't make it back to the Bronx or communities like it. Let's take it back to 1986. I was born in the heart of the AIDS crisis, the crack epidemic and the War on Drugs. The only thing that trickled down from Reaganomics was ghettonomics: pain, prison and poverty. I was raised by brilliant, beautiful and accomplished black women. Even so, my pops wasn't in the picture, and I couldn't resist the allure of the streets. Like Biggie said, you're either slinging crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot. Don't get it twisted, my jumper was wet. (Laughter) My shit was wet. (Applause) But when I turned 15, I started selling weed, I didn't finish high school, the New York Board of Education banned me from all of those, but I did graduate to selling cocaine when I turned 18. I did well. That was until I got jammed up, caught a case, when I was 20. I was facing 10 years. I posted bail, signed up at the Fashion Institute, I applied the skills that I learned in the streets to start my own fashion brand. My lawyer peeked my ambition, so he suggested that the judge grant me a suspended sentence. For once in my life, a suspension was a good thing. (Laughter) Over the course of two years and many court dates, my case got dismissed. Both of my brothers have done jail time, so escaping the clutches of the prison industrial system didn't seem realistic to me. Right now, one of my brothers is facing 20 years. My mother put in great effort in taking me out to eat, making sure we visited museums and traveled abroad, basically exposing me to as much culture as she could. I remembered how as a kid, I used to take over the dinner table and order food for everybody. Breaking bread has always allowed me to break the mold and connect with people. Me and my homie Les, we grew up on the same block in the Bronx, two street dudes. He happened to be a chef. We always discussed the possibility of doing something in the food game for the benefit of our neighborhood. Les had just won the food show "Chopped." Our homie Malcolm was gearing up to run a pastry kitchen at Noma, yeah, world's best Noma in Copenhagen, you know the vibes. My man P had just finished training in I-I-Italy, Milano to be exact. We decided the world needed some Bronx steasoning on it, so we mobbed up and formed Ghetto Gastro. (Applause) While I'm aware our name makes a lot of people uncomfortable, for us "ghetto" means home. Similar to the way someone in Mumbai or Nairobi might use the word "slum," it's to locate our people and to indict the systems of neglect that created these conditions. (Applause) So what is Ghetto Gastro? Ultimately, it's a movement and a philosophy. We view the work we do as gastrodiplomacy, using food and finesse to open borders and connect culture. Last year in Tokyo, we did a Caribbean patty, we do jerk wagyu beef, shio kombu. We remixed the Bronx classic with the Japanese elements. And for Kwanzaa, we had to pay homage to our Puerto Ricans, and we did a coconut charcoal cognac coquito. Dímelo! (Laughter) This here is our Black Power waffle with some gold leaf syrup. Make sure you don't slip on the drip. (Laughter) Here we got the 36 Brix plant-based velato. Strawberry fields, you know the deal. Compressed watermelon, basil seeds, a little bit of strawberries up there. Back to the Bronx Brasserie, you know we had to hit them in the head with that caviar and cornbread. (Laughter) (Applause) We also practice du-rag diplomacy. (Laughter) Because, we don't edit who we are when we do our thing. Due to our appearance, we often get mistaken for rappers or athletes. It happened here last year at TED. This dude ran down on me and asked me when I was going to perform. How about now? (Applause) So you see, we've been bringing the Bronx to the world but now we focus on bringing the world to the Bronx. We just opened our spot, an idea kitchen where we make and design products, create content — (Music) and host community events. The intention is to build financial capital and creative capital in our hood. We're also collaborating with world-renowned chef Massimo Bottura on a refettorio in the Bronx. A refettorio is a design-focused soup kitchen and community center. You see the vibes. (Applause) The recent outpouring of grief about the murder of rapper and entrepreneur Nipsey Hussle is largely due to the fact that he decided to stay and evolve in place, rather than leave his hood. After his death, some may see this decision as foolish, but I'm making that same decision every day: to live in the Bronx, to create in the Bronx, to invest in the Bronx. (Applause) At Ghetto Gastro, we don't run from the word "ghetto," and we don't run from the ghetto. Because at the end of the day, Ghetto Gastro is about showing you what we already know: the hood is good. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) |
The secret language of trees | null | TED-Ed | Most of the forest lives in the shadow of the giants that make up the highest canopy. These are the oldest trees, with hundreds of children and thousands of grandchildren. They check in with their neighbors, sharing food, supplies, and wisdom gained over their long lives. They do all this rooted in place, unable to speak, reach out, or move around. The secret to their success lies under the forest floor, where vast root systems support the towering trunks above. Partnering with these roots are symbiotic fungi called mycorrhizae. These fungi have countless branching, thread-like hyphae that together make up the mycelium. The mycelium spreads across a much larger area than the tree root system and connect the roots of different trees together. These connections form mycorrhizal networks. Through mycorrhizal networks, fungi can pass resources and signaling molecules between trees. We know the oldest trees have the largest mycorrhizal networks with the most connections to other trees, but these connections are incredibly complicated to trace. That’s because there are about a hundred species of mycorrhizal fungi– and an individual tree might be colonized by dozens of different fungal organisms, each of which connects to a unique set of other trees, which in turn each have their own unique set of fungal associations. To get a sense of how substances flow through this network, let’s zoom in on sugars, as they travel from a mature tree to a neighboring seedling. Sugar’s journey starts high above the ground, in the leaves of the tallest trees above the canopy. The leaves use the ample sunlight up there to create sugars through photosynthesis. This essential fuel then travels through the tree to the base of the trunk in the thick sap. From there, sugar flows down to the roots. Mycorrhizal fungi encounter the tips of the roots and either surround or penetrate the outer root cells, depending on the type of fungi. Fungi cannot produce sugars, though they need them for fuel just like trees do. They can, however, collect nutrients from the soil much more efficiently than tree roots— and pass these nutrients into the tree roots. In general, substances flow from where they are more abundant to where they are less abundant, or from source to sink. That means that the sugars flow from the tree roots into the fungal hyphae. Once the sugars enter the fungus, they travel along the hyphae through pores between cells or through special hollow transporter hyphae. The fungus absorbs some of the sugars, but some travels on and enters the roots of a neighboring tree, a seedling that grows in the shade and has less opportunity to photosynthesize sugars. But why does fungus transport resources from tree to tree? This is one of the mysteries of the mycorrhizal networks. It makes sense for fungus to exchange soil nutrients and sugar with a tree— both parties benefit. The fungus likely benefits in less obvious ways from being part of a network between trees, but the exact ways aren’t totally clear. Maybe the fungus benefits from having connections with as many different trees as possible, and maximizes its connections by shuttling molecules between trees. Or maybe plants reduce their contributions to fungi if the fungi don’t facilitate exchanges between trees. Whatever the reasons, these fungi pass an incredible amount of information between trees. Through the mycorrhizae, trees can tell when nutrients or signaling molecules are coming from a member of their own species or not. They can even tell when information is coming from a close relative like a sibling or parent. Trees can also share information about events like drought or insect attacks through their fungal networks, causing their neighbors to increase production of protective enzymes in anticipation of threats. The forest’s health relies on these intricate communications and exchanges. With everything so deeply interconnected, what impacts one species is bound to impact others. |
How dogs help with conservation efforts | {0: 'Dr. Megan Parker is the co-founder and director of Working Dogs for Conservation.'} | TEDxJacksonHole | Thank you. I'm here to talk about dogs, but more specifically, I'm here to talk about bad dogs, and why I love them. I'm a conservation biologist, meaning I study weird species and try to count them. And I'm also a trainer of detection dogs, and where those two worlds meet is where I live, and where I work. Most of the dogs that we get for this kind of work, we scour shelters for because these are bad dogs, and they don't make great pets. And you know these dogs. You go to your friend's barbecue, and that dog comes up, and she is so happy to see you she pees on your feet, and she drops this big, slabbery ball in your lap, and you just throw it to try to get as much distance between yourself and this dog as possible, and it comes back, and then by 950th throw you're just thinking, "Oh, just why didn't they get rid of this dog?" And often they do. They end up in shelters because they often have this overwhelming desire to bring you things. (Laughter) They think that you're really enjoying this. The dog is so happy, thinking that you're all enjoying this game because you're throwing something and it's bringing it to you. And they're telling you where this thing is, and that's what we've asked them to do over the evolution of time, our companionship with dogs, we've asked them to bring us stuff. And they do a great job. They bring us our livestock, and they bring us food and game, and this is the only species on the planet that can be bothered to bring us stuff and bothered to tell us what they know. I mean you can ask a camel or a bear, or you can ask your cat, and you get nothing. (Laughter) But dogs love telling you what they know. And the ones that really really really love this, they are over the top, they have this unbelievable energy, just unrelenting go and drive. And we categorize that often as just a reject dog. It is just too much, it's destructive, it's all of these things. But those are the characteristics I like to work with in dogs. Inability to quit: it's not even a desire, it's an inability to quit, It's what resilience is. For a dog that doesn't stop, you can train that dog to do lots of things and bring you information. I'd like to tell you a little bit about this particular dog, his name is Ruger. And he's a really bad dog. He is the first anti-poaching dog in Zambia, lives right next to a national park where animals are being poached and snared and trafficked out of the park, and even, you know, elephant ivory from the Congo Basin is moving through Tanzania and through Zambia out to ports to be shipped abroad. And this dog is trained to find ivory and rhino horn, bush meat, other wild life contraband and guns and ammunition. I trained him, and I found him to be a horrible dog. He bit and snapped at people, he was scary to approach, he was everything you fear in a dog, and it turns out he was going blind. So I take this dog to Zambia, and I pair him with these scouts who don't have any history of having pets or being with dogs except throwing rocks at village dogs. And they learned to think of this dog as a colleague. And after four months of intensive training with dogs, they started setting up roadblocks and looking for illegal contraband being trafficked in vehicles along the roads outside this park. And they checked vehicles, and by a human doing it, it can take hours, especially for a bus loaded with luggage and food, like this one up in the top corner. And Ruger just checked it in a few minutes as this is their first practice training on a roadblock. And he alerted, which means he sat, and he stared at his handler, and the handler was like, "Oh, dear!" They searched it, looked through it, and they found nothing, and so their spirits dropped. But they unloaded that minivan, and they have luggage out, and again Ruger picked a piece of luggage and he sat, and they searched through it and found nothing. And Ruger insisted, and they went back, and then Ruger hit on a tiny matchbox wrapped in a plastic bag inside clothes. And inside that matchbox was a primer cap, which is an illegal firing pin for a handmade rifle. And so everyone, all the passengers on that bus, all the scouts, they suddenly believed. They believed that Ruger knew what he was doing because he didn't quit. He has an even more interesting backstory. He came off of an Indian reservation, the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. And he was a horrible puppy, and the owner of this litter shot all of the dogs. Somehow Ruger escaped, he ended up in a shelter in Helena. Someone found him and noticed how bad he was and brought him to us to be trained as a conservation detection dog. He has made a huge difference. Because of his unrelenting energy and desire to work and love of work, he brings us amazing information. Then there is another dog I'd like you to meet. His name is Pepin, and he is with our executive, Dr. Pete Coppolillo, who is going to tell you a little bit more, and I'm going to work Pepin for you. PC: Well, Megan, Pepin get ready. I'll give you a little update on Ruger. The four months after he made his first find in the minibus, he detected and the scouts he works with confiscated 15 guns. Mostly homemade muzzleloaders, which are their gun of preference for elephant poaching. They're also used because guns are hard to come by in Africa, by sometimes seven, sometimes 10, sometimes more different poachers. So, as of now, there may be 100-150 different poachers who are out of business thanks to Ruger. (Applause) (Cheers) And for these exceptional, really high-drive dogs, you know, Ruger is really the rule rather than the exception. And I'll tell you about a couple more. This is Seamus. Seamus is trained to detect dyer’s woad, which is the weed that's in that pot there. And speaking of resilience, dyer’s woad drops between 12,000 and 15,000 seeds a year. So it's a noxious weed, and when it gets established, it's very hard to get rid of. So people were working on getting rid of it on Mount Sentinel in Missoula for about 10 years, and they weren't making any progress. So in 2011, we brought in Seamus. And Seamus is able to do something that we human searchers can't, which is find it by smell before it flowers. Seamus has knocked back dyer’s woad by over 95 percent. Thanks to him, we're going to do something that was unthinkable just a few years ago, which is eradicate a noxious weed, a bad infestation of a noxious weed. And this is Wicket. Wicket is one of the best stories. She was in a shelter in Anaconda, Montana, and when we came to get her, the director of the shelter said, "You don't want that dog. That dog is crazy." (Laughter) And now Aimee famously said, "I think she might be the right kind of crazy." Wicket is now the most accomplished conservation detection dog in the world. She's worked on three continents, she's worked in dozens of US states, and here she is searching a boat for zebra mussels which have a microscopic larval stage that we can't see. Speaking of accomplished and crazy, (Laughter) now you guys will get to watch Pepin do his thing. So Meg's put his vest on. That is his signal that it's time to work. You can see he's low-focused. (Laughter) He is ready to go. So I hid ivory. I hid some ivory in the room. Pepin is one of the ivory dogs, and I hid some ivory in the room. You, guys, just stay put. He's also not trained on narcotics, so no one has to make a run, (Laughter) for the door or anything like that, and when Meg tells him to go, he'll do his thing. So what you're going to see is you're going to see him work, and you can watch his head, he'll move his head up and down, it's a little hard indoors because there's not much air moving around in here. But he'll search, and you may see him whip around, change directions, his alert is something we call "passive alert." He sits. And the reason he does that is because we have him trained not to disturb the samples. Sometimes it's a crime scene, so they want to collect evidence. Sometimes we collect scats for DNA or things like that. Normally, he works in big open places. He is trained on grizzly bear, he is trained on wolverine, so he runs on big, high meadows and pastures, but he's also trained on containers, vehicles and buildings. And he's checking there. You see he's got scent now. There he goes. Good job, pal! That's his alert. And she has a command that is, "Show me!" And he'll show where it is. So that's a broken ivory tusk. (Applause) Well done. Thank you! (Applause) |
How augmented reality is changing activism | {0: 'Glenn Cantave is an activist, performance artist and social entrepreneur who uses immersive technology to highlight the narratives of the oppressed. '} | TED Residency | My name is Glenn, I'm 25, and I don't know my real last name. It's not uncommon in America. Most black people in this country are walking around with a slave owner's last name. Black history has been systemically erased and altered for centuries. As I give this talk, there are more than 700 Confederate monuments standing nationwide. These were erected to honor Confederate soldiers who fought to maintain slavery — mostly in the South — from the 1890s to the 1950s, when Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation were in full effect. To this day, black people are forced to confront monuments of slaveholders in our public spaces. These memorials are a physical representation of a system that is actively working to define whose lives matter and whose lives do not. If we are going to disrupt the narrative, we have to start at the origin. Genocide, slavery and patriarchy started in the Americas with Christopher Columbus. Most people in the United States know about his voyage of 1492. Fewer people know that an estimated 250,000 indigenous Arawaks were wiped out within two years of his arrival. Even fewer people know that Columbus admitted in a letter written to Doña Juana de la Torre that "nine and 10-year-old girls were in high demand, and for girls of all ages a good price must be paid." Yet New York City's Columbus Circle has had him perched 76 feet high next to Central Park since 1892. I started Movers and Shakers, a nonprofit, to get the statue removed. Movers and Shakers is a group of activists, artists, educators and engineers focused on using immersive technology to highlight the narratives of the oppressed. In our campaign to knock Columbus off his pedestal, we engaged in a visually provocative form of activism. We created an augmented reality installation on the true story of Christopher Columbus and used it to host teach-ins in Columbus Circle and Times Square. Many see the controversy around the statue as tension between the Italian-American community and the indigenous community. The reality is that most black people are here in this country as a result of the atrocities that were kicked off by Christopher Columbus. So we ended up holding a slave auction in Union Square to tie into the genesis of the transatlantic slave trade. I ran the New York City Marathon in chains to spread awareness to this issue. I was also arrested in Giants Stadium for hosting a slave reenactment at their football team's home opener. We gave it everything that we had, but in the end, New York City decided to keep the statue, and New York State unanimously voted to make it a landmark. The news was devastating, but it opened up another door. We realized that with augmented reality you don't need permission from the government to put up a monument or to make a statement. You can just do it. So New York City right now currently has more than 150 statues of men and six of women and currently acknowledges slaveholders in public spaces as well. So we decided, why not just put up a bunch of AR monuments of women and people of color throughout the city? Typically, monuments are created to commemorate the achievements of the deceased, but with augmented reality, we can reroute the rules. We started with sports. Colin Kaepernick. He was the starting quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, and he wanted to use his platform to highlight the injustice of systemic racism. So he consulted a Green Beret on the most respectful way to do this, and he decided to take a knee during the national anthem. He lost his contract with the 49ers, he was blackballed by every NFL owner, he was criticized by millions and even the president of the United States decided to insult him. It may be decades before Colin Kaepernick is adequately respected for his courage, so our team decided to do this. Now anyone that walks by Trump Tower can see Colin Kaepernick take a knee in augmented reality, and there's nothing they can do about it. (Laughter) Representation matters. Serena Williams proved to the world that a black girl from Compton can dominate a sport that's traditionally played at exclusive country clubs. Let's celebrate her now. Jackie Robinson. He broke the color barrier and empowered many black athletes to play in Major League Baseball. We're going to take this monument of him and put it in Ebbets Field so that anyone can see him swing for the fences in Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. With augmented reality, we have the power to tell stories in public spaces that need to be told. The achievements of people like Frida Kahlo, Audre Lorde, Toussaint Louverture, Madam C.J. Walker — this should be common knowledge. Our vision is a "Pokémon Go" for a contextualized history. Augmented reality can also be used as a tool to support organizations that are fighting against systemic oppression. In 2019 we will release our free smartphone app with augmented reality monuments and content. You can take your smartphone and hold it over any one-dollar bill and see a scene in augmented reality that illustrates the injustice of cash bail. You can then click on the screen and be directed to the donation page of The Bail Project, a fund that raises money for people who cannot afford bail. With augmented reality, we the people have the power to highlight the narratives of the oppressed when institutions refuse to do so. We can use this tool to highlight the systemic implications of erasing someone's history. And more concretely, we can use this technology as a way to support initiatives that are fighting against systemic racism. With AR, we have the power to reimagine a world that prioritizes justice over oppression. Thank you. (Applause and cheers) |
What emotions look like in a dog's brain | {0: 'Dr. Gregory Berns is a Distinguished Professor of Neuroeconomics at Emory University.'} | TEDxAtlanta | How many of you are dog people? A show of hands. Excellent! How about cat people? OK, you guys can go to the break early. (Laughter) So, of the dog people and the cat people who want to be dog people, (Laughter) how many of you have thought, "Wouldn't it be great to know what my dog is thinking?" I think everyone else already knows what their dog is thinking, right? I got into this project, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about how - This is basically a stupid dog trick story. It really started with this dog named Newton, who was really my favorite dog. I've had many dogs through my life, but Newton was my favorite, and he lived to be about 15 years old. After he passed away, I thought, I have these tools, this MRI machine, that I have been using for decades to study human decision making and what motivates people, why haven't we used this on other animals? Certainly, other animals have many of the same feelings and motivations that people do. But this is kind of an area of science that people don't like to talk about. So I embarked on this project about four years ago to try to figure out what dogs think, and specifically what dogs think of us. If we're talking about humans, we have kind of two ways we can think about what other people are thinking: we can either ask them, and sometimes they will tell us if they know, and they want us to know what they are thinking; or we can observe actions, we can observe behaviors, we can try to infer things about what people are thinking from their actions. With animals, and dogs, of course, we can't really ask them. We can ask them, and we may think that they tell us, but we really don't know what they're thinking. So we're kind of left with their behaviors: we can observe their actions, and we can try to infer what they are thinking. This is the foundation of behaviorism, and it's been around since Pavlov. But there are, of course, very tricky issues here, and humans being humans, we tend to anthropomorphize everything. It's kind of in this area that I became very interested in intrigued with the possibility of trying to figure out what dogs are thinking by using MRI. The technique is straightforward. It's been around for decades. The idea is: if we were studying a human, we would put a human in an MRI, have them do some type of task, and we'd measure blood flow or brain activity and then try to figure out what parts of the brain do what. Very straightforward, if you've had an MRI, it's not terribly pleasant, but people will do it. How do we do this with other animals? How do we do it with a dog? I'm going to show you what we found. Here's a short video. It's a what we call our training video, and it demonstrates how we did this. Before I start it, you're going to see two dogs in this video. The first dog, Callie, is my dog. She was actually the replacement for Newton. She was adopted here in Atlanta from the Humane Society. We loved Newton so much; we could never get another pug, so Callie is the anti-pug. The other dog is McKenzie, a border collie. We just kind of get right into it. I'll narrate as we go along. [Callie - Introduction to head coil] This's Mark Spivak. He's my partner in this endeavor, he's a dog trainer. The first thing that we had to do is figure out how do we get dogs to go into a tube, to put a head coil around their head to pick up the brain waves, and hold absolutely still. What you are seeing here, is that Callie is not a particularly obedient dog; she has no particularly special skills. But she does have one very good trait, and that is: she likes hot dogs. Mark is doing what we call clicker training. Every time she approximates what we want her to do, he clicks, and then she gets a hot dog. This's the very first time she's been introduced to the thing we call the head coil, and we didn't know at this point whether this was even going to be possible. [McKenzie - Introduction to head coil] This dog, McKenzie, a border collie, is highly trained. She's very skilled in agility, and her owner, as you'll see, gets her to sit in this coil very quickly. (Video) Dog owner: Good girl! Yes! Is she too far out now? (Video) Gregory Berns: Yeah, basically, we are looking for the brain case to be in the center, right there. That's good. (On stage) GB: If you've had an MRI, you know that you're told not to move, right? This is the big challenge of doing this. [Mckenzie - Holding without any chin rest] Up until this point, I didn't know if this was going to be possible until I saw this. This was literally after about five minutes of training. When I saw that, I knew we could do this. [Callie - Training with chin rest] What you saw McKenzie doing was close but not quite good enough. What we are going after if we're to achieve data that compares to humans - (Video) GB: You are perfect! Excellent! Perfect job! (On stage) GB: Mark told me I had to be more demonstrative than I am normally. (Laughter) (Video) GB: Perfect! Yes! (Laughter) (On stage) GB: What you notice we did was we introduced a little chin rest because we have to give the dogs a target to put their head on. McKenzie adapts this very quickly. She's actually in a simulator for an MRI that we built. She's doing quite well, but this is actually still too much movement. The really difficult part of this is the noise that the scanner makes, playing in the background. These are recordings that we made to acclimate the dogs to the training. It's very loud. This's being played at low volume just to get her used to it. But it's really about 95 decibels, and it's like jackhammer loud. (Video) GB: That's it, that what we are doing! (On stage) GB: This is after about a month or two of training. [Callie - Scammer training] We're at the real MRI now. This's probably the most expensive training session ever performed. (Laughter) We get charged about 500 dollars an hour to use the MRI. (Laughter) But we had to use the real thing at a certain point. At this point, we didn't even know how they would react to the magnetic field. The key thing I want you to notice is these dogs are doing it willingly, and they enjoy it. That is the whole point of this project. We treat these animals as family members. We don't sedate them, and we don't restrain them. [Callie - Final training] This's actually after about two months of training. We made some modifications to the chin rest, and even a shelter dog like Callie can do this. [Full chin rest, ear muffs, tube, hand signals] If you look carefully, you also notice that she's wearing ear muffs. It's very important because the scanner is so loud, and the dogs hearing is quite sensitive. [This means "hot dog"] The other thing that we did - (Laughter) This's a scientific experiment, really. (Laughter) [This means "no hot dog"] That's the training video. The "hot dog, no hot dog" hand signals, we started with this because we didn't know if this was going to work, so we decided we needed to do something really simple. This's just straight up Pavlovian conditioning where we taught the dogs two hand signals: this means "hot dog," and this means "no hot dog." If this technique works, what we should see is activity in the reward system of their brain to this hand signal but not this signal. I also put up a slide here. Once we started doing this, the word got out amongst the community here in Atlanta that we're doing this crazy dog scanning project. We're looking for volunteers, especially people who like to train dogs and have dogs that are very well behaved. That's still true. If you have a dog that can do this or you think can do this, talk to me. Because the project is still going on, and it's gotten quite large. You've seen the kind of preliminary video. This's one of my favorite photos because it's kind of captures - this is the first day we were actually doing the scanning. It captures the human confusion here. We were just standing around trying to figure out how we are going to do this. But Callie knows, she's been trained, she's been doing this for two months; so she's ready to go. The head wrap is just to keep the ear muffs in place. This is what it look likes from the other end, from the business end of the scanner. This's actually a dog named Zen. He's a yellow lab golden retriever. What we're studying initially is just the reward system response. Very simply, we got these two hand signals, and the idea is we compare the brain response to these two things. As I said, we have many dogs doing this now, it's not just shelter dogs. We have dogs from service dog organizations, we have shelter dogs - really all sorts of breeds. Before I show you some of the results, I do want to say something about brain anatomy. A dog brain - this slide is not to scale. A dog brain is probably about the size of a plum or a lemon maybe, depending on the size of the dog. It's not big, even if you have a big dog, most of the head is muscle, so just going to be aware of that. But I like putting up this slide because it shows the similarities of animal brains. You can immediately make out common structures. You can see towards the right that kind of pretty structure is the cerebellum that controls various types of motor movement, and then below that, there is the brainstem. The really the parts of the brain that are different are what we call the cortex. That's the upper part, the folded part. The big differences between dog and human have to do with the size of the cortex and how folded it is. What folding accomplishes is packing a lot more brain surface area into a specific volume. Generally speaking, the more folded a brain, the more surface area, the more brain power, if you will. There are lot of similarities, and there are some differences. What I am particularly interested in are the similarities. Because if we were to have a commonality of experience with dogs, and other animals for that matter, we have to share the same or similar brain structures. Darwin said this 150 years ago. What do the results look like? This's a very compact way of summarizing an experiment which I showed you where the dogs receive two different hand signals, and we've averaged the results over, in this case, 12 dogs, I think though, we've done this probably in over 20 dogs. The orange areas show what parts of the brain are more active to this reward signal, this hot dog signal. What I want to emphasize is the brain response is not directly to hot dogs, it's to the hand signal that means hot dogs. You may think that's not a big deal; it's still hot dogs. It's no surprise that dogs like hot dogs. But it is a big deal because we train this signal; it's a symbolic representation of a hot dog that the dog has learned and has learned to recognize this meaning. The particular parts of the brain that are being active are the reward system. There's kind of two hot spots. There's a headlight type picture. That's in an area of the brain called the cortex nucleus. It's the area of the brain that all mammals have, and it's the area that has the most dopamine receptors in the brain. It's kind of the key center that links reward and motivation with action. Normally, when that's active in a human or any other animal, it means that something important has happened, and the animal needs to do something. In this case it's quite simple because they will just eat the hot dogs. Well, so what? So we proved that dog brains like hot dogs. That was just the beginning. This started about four years ago, and we've since gone on and done many other experiments. Most of the dogs in these pictures, are still working with us in the project. We've done things looking at how their olfaction, or their sensory system for smell works, how they identify different people, and other dogs in their household by smell. One of the things that we found is that this reward system, the same part of the brain activates when the dogs smell a familiar human, even if the human is not there. It shows that dogs have representations of us of our identities that persist when we are not there. When people ask me, "Do dogs miss us when we are gone?" I have to say yes because we find evidence that they are remembering their humans, that they care about them, and that it's associated with these reward responses. Is it still just hot dogs? To answer this question, one of the other things that we did was we actually repeated the experiment I showed you, where we show the different hand signals. With one little twist: we manipulate who gives the signals. Does it matter if the dog's owner gives a signal? Or whether a stranger comes in and gives the signal? Or even whether a computer gives the signal? Because if you believe Pavlov, and all the behaviorist who followed him, it really shouldn't matter, because any signal that indicates an upcoming food treat is all the same, if animals and dogs are just kind of robots. But in fact, we did find a difference. What's very interesting about it is that not all dogs are the same. For example, my dog Callie had a much greater response in that part of the brain when a stranger gave the signals or even a computer as opposed to me! (Laughter) Other dogs in the project, some of the golden retrievers in the labs can have had the opposite pattern, where their owners had really elicited the strongest brain response. This is very interesting because what it does is it provides us with a neural biomarker of the dog's personality profile. In fact, what we've done is we've spun off a new project which we're very excited about. We've partnered with Canine Companions for Independence, which is the largest service dog training organization in the United States. If you know anything about service dogs, they're incredibly difficult to train. It's very expensive, and there's a very low success rate. Roughly about 35% of dogs that enter these programs to train to be assistance dogs will succeed; the other 2/3 end up being released and adopted to their puppy raisers. So we've partnered with CCI, and they're actually training their dogs to do the MRI procedure. What we're going to do is try to predict which of those dogs will actually be good service dogs. I really love this project because it shows that even though we started this just as my silly example of trying to understand what my dogs think, and whether they love me, it's actually gotten much bigger. Dogs are special. They're the first domesticated animals. They have been with humans since humans have been humans. When we look at their brains, it's almost like we are looking back in time, and it's giving us a picture of how the dog-human bond formed. Thank you. (Applause) |
The world's first crowdsourced space traffic monitoring system | {0: 'TED Fellow Moriba Jah studies and predicts the motion of objects in space in an effort to make space safe, secure, and sustainable.'} | TED2019 | I am an astrodynamicist — you know, like that guy Rich Purnell in the movie "The Martian." And it's my job to study and predict motion of objects in space. Currently we track about one percent of hazardous objects on orbit — hazardous to services like location, agriculture, banking, television and communications, and soon — very soon — even the internet itself. Now these services are not protected from, roughly, half a million objects the size of a speck of paint all the way to a school bus in size. A speck of paint, traveling at the right speed, impacting one of these objects, could render it absolutely useless. But we can't track things as small as a speck of paint. We can only track things as small as say, a smartphone. So of this half million objects that we should be concerned about, we can only track about 26,000 of these objects. And of these 26,000, only 2,000 actually work. Everything else is garbage. That's a lot of garbage. To make things a little bit worse, most of what we launch into orbit never comes back. We send the satellite in orbit, it stops working, it runs out of fuel, and we send something else up ... and then we send up something else ... and then something else. And every once in a while, two of these things will collide with each other or one of these things will explode, or even worse, somebody might just happen to destroy one of their satellites on orbit, and this generates many, many more pieces, most of which also never come back. Now these things are not just randomly scattered in orbit. It turns out that given the curvature of space-time, there are ideal locations where we put some of these satellites — think of these as space highways. Very much like highways on earth, these space highways can only take up a maximum capacity of traffic to sustain space-safe operations. Unlike highways on earth, there are actually no space traffic rules. None whatsoever, OK? Wow. What could possibly go wrong with that? (Laughter) Now, what would be really nice is if we had something like a space traffic map, like a Waze for space that I could look up and see what the current traffic conditions are in space, maybe even predict these. The problem with that, however, is that ask five different people, "What's going on in orbit? Where are things going?" and you're probably going to get 10 different answers. Why is that? It's because information about things on orbit is not commonly shared either. So what if we had a globally accessible, open and transparent space traffic information system that can inform the public of where everything is located to try to keep space safe and sustainable? And what if the system could be used to form evidence-based norms of behavior — these space traffic rules? So I developed ASTRIAGraph, the world's first crowdsourced, space traffic monitoring system at the University of Texas at Austin. ASTRIAGraph combines multiple sources of information from around the globe — government, industry and academia — and represents this in a common framework that anybody can access today. Here, you can see 26,000 objects orbiting the earth, multiple opinions, and it gets updated in near real time. But back to my problem of space traffic map: What if you only had information from the US government? Well, in that case, that's what your space traffic map would look like. But what do the Russians think? That looks significantly different. Who's right? Who's wrong? What should I believe? What could I trust? This is part of the issue. In the absence of this framework to monitor space-actor behavior, to monitor activity in space — where these objects are located — to reconcile these inconsistencies and make this knowledge commonplace, we actually risk losing the ability to use space for humanity's benefit. Thank you very much. (Applause and cheers) |
A vision for the future of Sierra Leone | {0: 'As President of Sierra Leone, Julius Maada Bio seeks to find ways to make progress happen -- not to dwell on the obstacles that impede it.'} | TED2019 | On Tuesday, January 16, 1996, I walked into the office of the president as head of state of the Republic of Sierra Leone. I had not been elected. Four years earlier, I was one of 30 heavily armed military officers, all in our 20s, who had driven from the war front into the capital city, Freetown. We had only one objective: to overthrow a corrupt, repressive and single-party dictatorship that had kept itself in power for over 25 years. But in the end, it wasn't a violent coup. After we fired a few shots and seized the radio station, hundreds of thousands of citizens jumped onto the streets to welcome us as liberators. If you are thinking this seems like a movie script, I'm with you. I was part of the ruling military government, and I served in several roles. Our goal was always to return the country to democratic civilian rule. But after four years, those multiparty democratic elections had still not happened. Citizens were beginning to lose faith in our promise. But you know what? I like to keep my promises. Some of my comrades and I staged another military coup, and this time, against our own head of state and commander. Again, it was a bloodless coup. That is how I became the new military head of state on January 16, 1996. I was still only 31 years old. Of course, power was sweet. I felt invulnerable. I had thousands of heavily armed men and aircraft at my command. I was heavily protected, and I lived in luxury. But my obligations to my nation were always superior. Millions of fellow citizens were either displaced or fleeing the violence and pillage of war. So I engaged in a series of diplomatic activities right across the subregion and convinced the reclusive rebel leader to initiate peace talks for the very first time. I also called a national consultative conference of civil society organizations and stakeholders to advise on the best way forward. In both cases, I shared with them what I believed in then and now: that Sierra Leone is bigger than all of us, and that Sierra Leone must be a secure, peaceful and just society where every person can thrive and contribute to national development. And so, I initiated peace talks with the rebels. I organized the first multiparty democratic elections in nearly 30 years. (Applause) I handed over power to the newly elected president, I retired from the army, and I left my country for the United States of America to study — all in three months. (Applause) In many a long walk, I wondered how we could get it right again as a nation. More than 20 years later, in April 2018, with a few more wrinkles and grey hair, I was again head of state. But guess what? This time I have been democratically elected. (Applause) At the polling stations last year, my three-year-old daughter, Amina, was in my arm. She insisted on holding on to my ballot paper with me. She was intent and focused. At that moment, with my ballot papers in both our hands, I fully understood the one priority for me if I was elected president of the Republic of Sierra Leone; that is: How could I make the lives of Amina and millions of other young girls and boys better in our country? See, I believe that leadership is about creating possibilities that everyone, especially the young people, can believe in, own, work to actualize, and which they can actively fight to protect. The pathway to power and leadership can be littered with impediments, but more often, with funny questions that may seemingly defy answers: How does one take on the unique challenges of a country like Sierra Leone? We had mined mineral resources for over a hundred years, but we still are poor. We had collected foreign aid for 58 years, but we are still poor. The secret to economic development is in nature's best resource: skilled, healthy and productive human beings. The secret to changing our country lay in enhancing and supporting the limitless potential of the next generation and challenging them to change our country. Human capital development was the key to national development in Sierra Leone. As a candidate, I met with and listened to many young men and women right across the country and in the diaspora that were feeling disconnected from political leadership and cared little about the future of our country. How could we engage them and make them believe that the answers to transforming our nation was right in their hands? Immediately after becoming president, I appointed some of Sierra Leone's brightest young people as leaders, with responsibility to realize our shared vision of transforming Sierra Leone. I am grateful many of them said yes. Let me give you a few examples. Corruption had been endemic in governance, institutions and in public life in Sierra Leone, undermining public trust and the country's international reputation. I appointed a young attorney as Commissioner for the Anti-Corruption Commission. In less than a year, he had a hundred percent conviction rate and recovered over 1.5 million dollars of stolen money. That is seed money for building the country's first-ever national medical diagnostic center in Sierra Leone. (Applause) The Millennium Challenge Corporation recently gave us a green scorecard for the Control of Corruption indicator, and multilateral development partners that had left Sierra Leone are now beginning to return. We are determined to break a culture of corruption and the culture of impunity that is associated with corruption. Before I became president, I met a skinny, dreadlocked MIT/Harvard-trained inventor in London. Over coffee, I challenged him to think and plan along with me how innovation could help to drive national development in the areas of governance, revenue mobilization, health care, education, delivering public services and supporting private sector growth. How could Sierra Leone participate in the digital economy and become an innovation hub? Guess what? He left his cozy job at IBM, and he now leads a team of young men and women within the newly established Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation in my own office. (Applause) That young man is right in here. I challenged another young Sierra Leonean woman to set up and lead the new Ministry of Planning and Economic Development. She consulted widely with Sierra Leoneans and produced, in record time, the medium-term national development plan, titled, "Education For Development." We now have our national development needs in easily understandable clusters, and we can now plan our budgets, align development partner contributions and measure our own progress. But the story of my government's flagship program is even more daring, if I can call it that. Today, three out of five adults in Sierra Leone cannot read or write. Thousands of children were not able to go to school or had dropped out of school because their parents could just not afford the $20 school fees per year. Women and girls, who constitute 51 percent of our population, were not given equal opportunity to be educated. So the obvious answer is to put in place free, quality education for every Sierra Leonean child, regardless of gender, ability or ethnicity. (Applause) Great idea you've clapped for. Right? But the only problem is we had no money to start the program. (Laughter) Absolutely nothing. Development partners wanted to see data before associating with my vision. Of course, political opponents laughed at me. But I campaigned that a nation that invests in human capital development through free, quality education, affordable and high-quality health care services and food security will accelerate its national development program. I argued that for Sierra Leone to produce a highly skilled, innovative and productive workforce fit for the 21st century global economy, we needed to invest heavily in human capital development in Sierra Leone. But we had no money, because the previous government had virtually emptied the coffers. We clamped down on corruption, closed up the loopholes for fraud and waste, and we watched the money build up. We successfully launched a free, quality education program in August last year, four years, four months later. Today, two million children are going to school. (Applause) Twenty-one percent of the national budget supports free, quality education. In close collaboration and in partnership with development partners, we have now provided teaching and learning materials, safe spaces for girls, and started implementing school feeding programs across the entire country. We have even paid backlogs of salaries for teachers. Any girl admitted to university to study science, technology, engineering, mathematics and other related disciplines receives a full scholarship in Sierra Leone today. (Applause) And here is why this matters: in a few years, we will have a healthier, better educated and highly skilled young population that will lead and drive the country's national development. They will be well-equipped to deploy science, technology and innovation. Then we'll attract investment in diversified areas of our economy, from tourism to fisheries and from renewable energy to manufacturing. That is my biggest bet. In my mind, this is what leadership is all about: a mission to listen with empathy to the craziest of ideas, the hopes and aspirations of a younger generation, who are just looking for a chance to be better and to make our country better. It is about letting them know that their dreams matter. It is about standing with them and asking, "Why not?" when they ask seemingly impossible questions. It is about exploring, making and owning a shared vision. The most audacious and nation-changing events or policies or even personal choices happen when we ask, "Why not?" then make bold choices and ensure those bold choices happen. I wake up every day believing that our country should no longer be defined by the stigma of the past. The future offers hope and opportunity for all. It matters to me that young men and women right across the country can imagine for themselves that they, too, can be and are part of the story of our nation. I want to challenge them to build a nation where three-year-olds like my daughter, Yie Amie, can grow up in good governance, quality education, health care and good infrastructure. I want our children to become young men and women who can continue nourishing the trees that will grow from the seeds that we are planting today. Now can someone tell me why we should not dare imagine that future in Sierra Leone? Thank you. (Applause) |
3 ways to measure your adaptability -- and how to improve it | {0: 'Natalie Fratto invests in underestimated startup founders and writes about how technology shapes the world around us.'} | TED Residency | I met 273 start-up founders last year. And each one was looking for money. As a tech investor, my goal was to sort through everyone that I met and make a quick determination about which ones had the potential to make something really big. But what makes a great founder? This is a question I ask myself daily. Some venture capitalists place bets based on a founder's previous background. Did they go to an Ivy League school? Have they worked at a blue-chip company? Have they built out a big vision before? Effectively, how smart is this person? Other VCs asses a founder's emotional quotient, or EQ. How well will this person build teams and build rapport across customers and clients? I have a different methodology to assess start-up founders, though, and it's not complicated. I look for signs of one specific trait. Not IQ, not EQ. It's adaptability: how well a person reacts to the inevitability of change, and lots of it. That's the single most important determinant for me. I subscribe to the belief that adaptability itself is a form of intelligence, and our adaptability quotient, or AQ, is something that can be measured, tested and improved. AQ isn't just useful for start-up founders, however. I think it's increasingly important for all of us. Because the world is speeding up. We know that the rate of technological change is accelerating, which is forcing our brains to react. Whether you're navigating changing job conditions brought on by automation, shifting geopolitics in a more globalized world, or simply changing family dynamics and personal relationships. Each of us, as individuals, groups, corporations and even governments are being forced to grapple with more change than ever before in human history. So, how do we assess our adaptability? I use three tricks when meeting with founders. Here's the first. Think back to your most recent job interview. What kind of questions were you asked? Probably some variation of, "Tell me about a time when," right? Instead, to interview for adaptability, I like to ask "what if" questions. What if your main revenue stream were to dry up overnight? What if a heat wave prevented every single customer from being able to visit your store? Asking "what if," instead of asking about the past, forces the brain to simulate. To picture multiple possible versions of the future. The strength of that vision, as well as how many distinct scenarios someone can conjure, tells me a lot. Practicing simulations is a sort of safe testing ground for improving adaptability. Instead of testing how you take in and retain information, like an IQ test might, it tests how you manipulate information, given a constraint, in order to achieve a specific goal. The second trick that I use to assess adaptability in founders is to look for signs of unlearning. Active unlearners seek to challenge what they presume to already know, and instead, override that data with new information. Kind of like a computer running a disk cleanup. Take the example of Destin Sandlin, who programed his bicycle to turn left when he steered it right and vice versa. He called this his Backwards Brain Bike, and it took him nearly eight months just to learn how to ride it kind of, sort of normally. The fact that Destin was able to unlearn his regular bike in favor of a new one, though, signals something awesome about our adaptability. It's not fixed. Instead, each of us has the capacity to improve it, through dedication and hard work. On the last page of Gandhi's autobiography, he wrote, "I must reduce myself to zero." At many points in his very full life, he was still seeking to return to a beginner's mindset, to zero. To unlearn. In this way, I think it's pretty safe to say Gandhi had a high AQ score. (Laughter) The third and final trick that I use to assess a founder's adaptability is to look for people who infuse exploration into their life and their business. There's a sort of natural tension between exploration and exploitation. And collectively, all of us tend to overvalue exploitation. Here's what I mean. In the year 2000, a man finagled his way into a meeting with John Antioco, the CEO of Blockbuster, and proposed a partnership to manage Blockbuster's fledgling online business. The CEO John laughed him out of the room, saying, "I have millions of existing customers and thousands of successful retail stores. I really need to focus on the money." The other man in the meeting, however, turned out to be Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix. In 2018, Netflix brought in 15.8 billion dollars, while Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010, directly 10 years after that meeting. The Blockbuster CEO was too focused on exploiting his already successful business model, so much so that he couldn't see around the next corner. In that way, his previous success became the enemy of his adaptability potential. For the founders that I work with, I frame exploration as a state of constant seeking. To never fall too far in love with your wins but rather continue to proactively seek out what might kill you next. When I first started exploring adaptability, the thing I found most exciting is that we can improve it. Each of us has the capacity to become more adaptable. But think of it like a muscle: it's got to be exercised. And don't get discouraged if it takes a while. Remember Destin Sandlin? It took him eight months just to learn how to ride a bike. Over time, using the tricks that I use on founders — asking "what if" questions, actively unlearning and prioritizing exploration over exploitation can put you in the driver's seat — so that the next time something big changes, you're already prepared. We're entering a future where IQ and EQ both matter way less than how fast you're able to adapt. So I hope that these tools help you to raise your own AQ. Thank you. (Applause) |
Grief and love in the animal kingdom | {0: 'As a writer on animal cognition and emotion, Barbara J. King seeks to motivate us all to be kinder to the animals we share the planet with.'} | TED2019 | I'd like to tell you today about an orca named Tahlequah. Tahlequah is also known as J35 to scientists, because she swims with the J Pod in the Salish Sea. These are the waters off of British Columbia and Washington State. Now, last year, in July 2018, she was well along in her 17-month pregnancy, and scientists were very excited because no baby had survived in this pod for three long years. Now, orcas are also known as killer whales. They're profoundly social and profoundly intelligent beings. And scientists are very interested in their behavior, because in their social networks, they share habits, information and even affection. They create true cultures of the ocean. But this pod has been in trouble. The Chinook salmon that the orcas favor has been way down in the region, and pollution has been up. But on July 24th, Tahlequah gave birth to a daughter, and scientists were so excited by this development. But unfortunately, the same day — in fact, shortly after birth — the calf died. Well, what happened next electrified animal lovers across the world, because Tahlequah refused to let her baby slip off into the water. She kept it on her body and she swam with it. If it did fall off, she would dive and rescue it, and she battled stiff currents to do this. Now, she kept this behavior up for 17 days, and during this time, she swam over 1,000 miles. At that point, she let the little baby slip off into the water. So today, Tahlequah swims on with the J Pod, but her grief still moves me. And I do believe that "grief" is the right word to use. I believe that grief is the right word to use for numerous animals who mourn the dead. They may be friends or mates or relatives. Because these visible cues, these behavioral cues, tell us something about an animal's emotional state. Now, for the last seven years, I've been working to document examples of animal grief — in birds, in mammals, in domesticated animals and in wild animals — and I believe in the reality of animal grief. Now, I say it this way because I need to acknowledge to you right up front that not all scientists agree with me. And part of the reason, I think, is because of what I call the "a-word." The a-word is anthropomorphism, and historically, it's been a big deterrent to recognizing animal emotions. So, anthropomorphism is when we project onto other animals our capacities or our emotions. And we can all probably think of examples of this. Let's say we have a friend who tells us, "My cat understands everything I say." Or, "My dog, he's so sweet. he ran right across the yard this morning towards a squirrel, and I know he just wants to play." Well, maybe. Or maybe not. I'm skeptical about claims like those. But animal grief is different, because we're not trying to read an animal's mind. We're looking at visible cues of behavior and trying to interpret them with some meaning. Now, it's true — scientists often push back at me, and they'll say, "Ah, look, the animal might be stressed, or maybe the animal's just confused because his or her routine has been disrupted." But I think that this overworry about anthropomorphism misses a fundamental point. And that is that animals can care very deeply for each other, maybe they even love each other. And when they do, a survivor's heart can be pierced by a death. Let's face it: if we deny evolutionary continuity, we are really missing out on embracing part of ourselves. So yes, I believe in the reality of animal grief, and I also think that if we recognize it, we can make the world a better place for animals, a kinder place for animals. So let me tell you a little bit more about animal grief. I'm going to start in Kenya. You see here there's an elephant named Eleanor who came one day with bruised legs, and she collapsed. You see on the left that another female named Grace came to her right away and, using her own trunk, propped her up, tried to get her up on her feet. And she did succeed, but then Eleanor collapsed again. At this point, Grace became visibly distressed, and she prodded the body, and she vocalized. Eleanor collapsed again, and unfortunately, she did die. What you see on the right is a female from another family named Maui, who came after the death, and she stayed at the body. She held a vigil there, and she even rocked in distress over the body. So the scientists watching the elephants kept close observation on Eleanor's body for seven days. And during those seven days, a parade of elephants came from five different families. Now, some were just curious, but others carried out behaviors that I really believe should be classified as grief. So what does grief look like? It can be rocking, as I said, in distress. It can also be social withdrawal, when an animal just takes himself or herself away from friends and stays by themselves, or a failure to eat or sleep properly, sometimes a depressed posture or vocalization. It can be very helpful for those of us studying this to be able to compare the behavior of a survivor before death and after death, because that increases the rigor of our interpretation. And I can explain this to you by talking about two ducks named Harper and Kohl. So we're into birds now. So Harper and Kohl were raised at a foie gras factory, and they were treated cruelly. Foie gras does involve force-feeding of birds. So this hurt their bodies, and their spirits were not in good shape, either. But thankfully, they were rescued by a farm sanctuary in upstate New York. And for four years, they stabilized, and they were fast friends. They often took themselves to a small pond on the property. Then, Kohl started to have really intractable pain in his legs, and it was clear to the sanctuary that he had to be euthanized humanely, and he was. But then the sanctuary workers did a brilliant thing, because they brought Harper to the body to see. And at first, Harper prodded the body of his friend, but then he laid himself over it, and he stayed there for over an hour with his friend. And in the weeks after, he had a hard time. He would go back to that same pond where he had been with Kohl, and he didn't want any other friends. And within two months, he died as well. Now, I'm happy to say that not all grieving animals have this sorrowful outcome. Last summer, I flew to Boston to visit my adult daughter, Sarah. I was with my husband Charlie. I really needed a break from work. But I succumbed, and I checked my work email. You know how that is. And there was a communication about a dejected donkey. Now, as an anthropologist, this wasn't what I expected, but there it was, and I'm glad I read it. Because a donkey named Lena had gone to another farm sanctuary, this one in Alberta, Canada, as the only donkey there, and had trouble making friends for that reason. But she eventually did make friends with an older horse named Jake, and for three years they were inseparable. But the reason the email came was that Jake, at age 32, the horse, had become gravely ill and had to be put down, and this is what was going on. This is Lena standing on Jake's grave. She didn't want to come in at night. She didn't want to come in for food. She didn't want to come in for water. She pawed at the grave, she brayed in distress, and there she stood. So we talked and we brainstormed. What do you do for an animal like this? And we talked about the role of time, of extra love and kindness from people and of urging her to make a new friend. And here's where her trajectory does diverge from that of Harper the duck, because she did make a new friend, and sanctuary workers wrote back and said it worked out well. Now sometimes, scientists supplement observation with hormonal analysis. There's an example of a group of scientists in Botswana, who took fecal material from baboons and compared two different groups. The first group were females who had witnessed a predator attack and lost someone in that attack, and the second group were females who had witnessed an attack but had not lost someone. And the stress hormones were way up in that first group. But here's the thing: the scientists didn't just call them "stressed baboons," they called them "bereaved baboons," and in part, that's because of the observations that they made. For example, this mother-daughter pair were very close, and then the daughter was killed by a lion. The mother removed herself from all her friends, from her grooming networks, and just stayed by herself for weeks — bereavement — and she then slowly recovered. So we have bereaved baboons. Will science tell us someday about bereaved bees? Will we hear about frogs who mourn? I don't think so, and I think the reason is because animals really need one-to-one, close relationships for that to happen. I also know that circumstance matters, and personality matters. I have documented cats and dogs who grieve, our companion animals, but I also interacted with a woman who was extremely bothered because her dog wasn't grieving. She said to me, "The first dog in the house has died. The second animal does not seem concerned, the second dog. What is wrong with him?" (Laughter) And as I listened to her, I realized that this dog was now the only animal in the household, and as far as he was concerned, that was a pretty good deal. So circumstances matter. Now, in any case, animals are not going to grieve exactly like we do. We have human creativity. We paint our grief, dance our grief, write our grief. We also can grieve for people we've never met, across space and time. I felt this strongly when I went to Berlin and I stood at the Holocaust Memorial. Animals don't grieve exactly like we do, but this doesn't mean that their grief isn't real. It is real, and it's searing, and we can see it if we choose. Now, I've lost both my parents. I lost a very dear friend at a young age from AIDS. I believe most likely most of you here have lost someone. And I have found it a genuine comfort, a solace, to know that we aren't the only beings on this earth who feel love and grief. And I think this is important. I also think we can take this a step further, and we can realize that the reality of animal grief can help us be better and do better for animals. This is already happening with Tahlequah, because the United States and Canada have renewed their talks with greater urgency for how to help the orcas, how to restore the Chinook salmon and how to help with the water pollution. We can also see that if grief is real, there's tremendous plausibility to the notion that animals feel a whole range of things. So we could look at joy, sadness, even hope. And if we do that, here's how we can start to think about the world. We can look at orcas and say, we know they grieve, we know they feel their lives, and we can refuse to confine them to small tanks in theme parks and make them perform for our entertainment. (Applause) Thank you. We can look at elephants and say, yes, they grieve, and we can renew our efforts against international trophy hunting and against poaching. (Applause) Thank you. And we can look at our closest living relatives, monkeys and apes, and know yes they grieve, they feel their lives, so they don't deserve to be confined in highly invasive biomedical experiments year after year. And, you know — (Applause) the ducks Harper and Kohl, they tell us something too. They help us connect the dots and realize that what we eat affects how animals live. And it's not just foie gras, and it's not just ducks. We can think about pigs and chickens and cows in factory farms, and we can know. I can tell you the science is real that these animals feel, too. So every single time we choose a plant-based meal, we are contributing to reducing animal suffering. (Applause) So yes, I believe in the reality of animal grief. I believe in the reality of animal love, and I think it is time for us humans to recognize that we don't own these things. And when we see that, we have an opportunity to make the world so much better for animals, a kinder world, a gentler world, and along the way, we might just save ourselves, too. Thank you so much. (Applause) Thank you. Thank you. (Applause) |
"New Colossus" | null | TED-Ed | "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” |
What is HPV and how can you protect yourself from it? | null | TED-Ed | At some point, most sexually active people will be infected with human papillomavirus, or ‘HPV.’ There are over 100 types of HPV, and most of the time the body eliminates infections without symptoms– but some strains can pose serious health risks down the line. HPV causes contact infections, which means the virus stays in the cells near the point of infection rather than spreading throughout the whole body. Since HPV is often transmitted through sexual activity, this usually means the cells of the vagina, vulva, penis, anus, mouth and throat. We can test for HPV in cells from these areas, but while testing for the virus is scientifically possible, it isn’t common. The main reason is that, while there are treatments for the adverse health effects caused by HPV, there’s no treatment for the virus itself. So testing for HPV would yield many, many positives, and although most of them won’t be cause for concern, there is still no treatment plan for clearing the body of the virus. But there are other good ways to protect yourself from HPV. We’re going to walk through how HPV can cause harm, who’s at risk, and how to minimize those risks. The body’s immune system is able to eradicate most strains of HPV before they cause any harm— and without people even knowing they’ve been infected. Certain other strains– like HPV 6 and 11– cause abnormalities in the cells of the infected tissue, which can develop into genital warts. While these are infectious and require treatment, usually with topical creams, wart-causing strains don’t create longer-term damage. But another 13 strains can cause DNA mutations that cause cells to divide at a much faster pace than normal, propelling the development of cancerous growths. The cells of the cervix are especially at risks. Two in particular– HPV 16 and 18– are responsible for the majority of cases of cervical cancer, which is now the fourth most common type of cancer in women. It can take up to 20 years for cancer symptoms to appear, but with regular screening, we can discover cellular abnormalities in the cervix before they develop into cancer. Women over 21 can undergo a regular pap smear, where a sample of tissue is gently scraped from the lining of the cervix to test for abnormal cells. A positive test doesn’t mean the person has cervical cancer, but rather that there are irregular cells in the cervix that could develop into cancer in the future. Patients are then either monitored with more frequent pap smears, or, for more severe irregularities, undergo a procedure called a colposcopy. This involves a doctor examining the cervix through a microscope, and possibly taking a small biopsy of tissue for closer examination. In some cases, the affected tissue may be removed. HPV infections of the throat may lead to head and neck cancers, but for now there’s no equivalent of the pap smear for the throat. Using condoms helps prevent the spread of HPV during sex. And there are three safe, effective vaccines that all target HPV 16 and 18. The vaccine comes in two or three doses a few months apart, and it’s only beneficial if you receive them all. Right now the vaccine is part of standard care for girls aged 11 to 18 in many countries– though it’s increasingly becoming available to boys as well. Adult women and men in countries including the United States and the United Kingdom can opt to receive the vaccine, and evidence suggests that vaccination of women and men could reduce the worldwide incidence of cervical cancer by almost 90%. Researchers are also developing an injection for people who are already infected with HPV 16 and 18, which would target the infected cells to stop them from developing into cancerous ones. So while there’s still room for improvement in screening, treatment, and access to each, condom use, vaccination, and cervical screening can each reduce the harm caused by HPV. |
The future of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy | {0: 'As the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, Rick Doblin crusades for the safe and legal use of psychedelics in therapy.'} | TED2019 | Preparing for this talk has been scarier for me than preparing for LSD therapy. (Laughter) "Psychedelics are to the study of the mind what the microscope is to biology and the telescope is to astronomy." Dr. Stanislav Grof spoke those words. He's one of the leading psychedelic researchers in the world, and he's also been my mentor. Today, I'd like to share with you how psychedelics, when used wisely, have the potential to help heal us, help inspire us, and perhaps even to help save us. In the 1950s and 60s, psychedelic research flourished all over the world and showed great promise for the fields of psychiatry, psychology and psychotherapy, neuroscience and the study of mystical experiences. But psychedelics leaked out of the research settings and began to be used by the counterculture, and by the anti-Vietnam War movement. And there was unwise use. And so there was a backlash. And in 1970, the US government criminalized all uses of psychedelics, and they began shutting down all psychedelic research. And this ban spread all over the world and lasted for decades. and it was tragic, since psychedelics are really just tools, and whether their outcomes are beneficial or harmful depends on how they're used. Psychedelic means "mind-manifesting," and it relates to drugs like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, iboga and other drugs. When I was 18 years old, I was a college freshman, I was experimenting with LSD and mescaline, and these experiences brought me in touch with my emotions. And they helped me have a spiritual connection that unfortunately, my bar mitzvah did not produce. (Laughter) When I wanted to tease my parents, I would tell them that they drove me to psychedelics because my bar mitzvah had failed to turn me into a man. (Laughter) But most importantly, psychedelics gave me this feeling of our shared humanity, of our unity with all life. And other people reported that same thing as well. And I felt that these experiences had the potential to help be an antidote to tribalism, to fundamentalism, to genocide and environmental destruction. And so I decided to focus my life on changing the laws and becoming a legal psychedelic psychotherapist. (Applause) Now, half a century after the ban, we're in the midst of a global renaissance of psychedelic research. Psychedelic psychotherapy is showing great promise for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, depression, social anxiety, substance abuse and alcoholism and suicide. Psychedelic psychotherapy is an attempt to go after the root causes of the problems, with just relatively few administrations, as contrasted to most of the psychiatric drugs used today that are mostly just reducing symptoms and are meant to be taken on a daily basis. Psychedelics are now also being used as tools for neuroscience to study brain function and to study the enduring mystery of human consciousness. And psychedelics and the mystical experiences they produce are being explored for their connections between meditation and mindfulness, including a paper just recently published about lifelong zen meditators taking psilocybin in the midst of a meditation retreat and showing long-term benefits and brain changes. Now, how do these drugs work? Modern neuroscience research has demonstrated that psychedelics reduce activity in what's known as the brain's default mode network. This is where we create our sense of self. It's our equivalent to the ego, and it filters all incoming information according to our personal needs and priorities. When activity is reduced in the default mode network, our ego shifts from the foreground to the background, and we see that it's just part of a larger field of awareness. It's similar to the shift that Copernicus and Galileo were able to produce in humanity using the telescope to show that the earth was no longer the center of the universe, but was actually something that revolved around the sun, something bigger than itself. For some people, this shift in awareness is the most important and among the most important experiences of their lives. They feel more connected to the world bigger than themselves. They feel more altruistic, and they lose some of their fear of death. Not all drugs work this way. MDMA, also known as Ecstasy, or Molly, works fundamentally different. And I'll be able to share with you the story of Marcela, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from a violent sexual assault. Marcela and I were introduced in 1984, when MDMA was still legal, but it was beginning also to leak out of therapeutic circles. Marcela had tried MDMA in a recreational setting, and during that, her past trauma flooded her awareness and it intensified her suicidal feelings. During our first conversation, I shared that when MDMA is taken therapeutically, it can reduce the fear of difficult emotions, and she could help move forward past her trauma. I asked her to promise not to commit suicide if we were to work together. She agreed and made that promise. During her therapeutic sessions, Marcela was able to process her trauma more fluidly, more easily. And yet, she was able to tell that the rapist had told her that if she ever shared her story, he would kill her. And she realized that that was keeping her a prisoner in her own mind. So being able to share the story and experience the feelings and the thoughts in her mind freed her, and she was able to decide that she wanted to move forward with her life. And in that moment, I realized that MDMA could be very effective for treating PTSD. Now, 35 years later, after Marcela's treatment, she's actually a therapist, training other therapists to help people overcome PTSD with MDMA. Now, how does MDMA work? How did MDMA help Marcela? People who have PTSD have brains that are different from those of us who don't have PTSD. They have a hyperactive amygdala, where we process fear. They have reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex, where we think logically. And they have reduced activity in the hippocampus, where we store memories into long-term storage. MDMA changes the brain in the opposite way. MDMA reduces activity in the amygdala, increases activity in the prefrontal cortex and increases connectivity between the amygdala and the hippocampus to remit traumatic memories to move into long-term storage. Recently, researchers at Johns Hopkins published a paper in "Nature," in which they demonstrated that MDMA releases oxytocin, the hormone of love and nurturing. The same researchers also did studies in octopuses, who are normally asocial, unless it's mating season. But lo and behold, you give them MDMA, and they become prosocial. (Laughter) Several months after Marcela and I worked together, the Drug Enforcement Administration moved to criminalize Ecstasy, having no knowledge of its therapeutic use. So I went to Washington, and I went into the headquarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and I filed a lawsuit demanding a hearing, at which psychiatrists and psychotherapists would be able to present information about therapeutic use of MDMA to try to keep it legal. And in the middle of the hearing, the DEA freaked out, declared an emergency and criminalized all uses of MDMA. And so the only way that I could see to bring it back was through science, through medicine and through the FDA drug development process. So in 1986, I started MAPS as a nonprofit psychedelic pharmaceutical company. It took us 30 years, till 2016, to develop the data that we needed to present to FDA to request permission to move into the large-scale Phase 3 studies that are required to prove safety and efficacy before you get approval for prescription use. Tony was a veteran in one of our pilot studies. According to the Veterans Administration, there's over a million veterans now disabled with PTSD. And at least 20 veterans a day are committing suicide, many of them from PTSD. The treatment that Tony was to receive was three and a half months long. But during that period of time, he would only get MDMA on three occasions, separated by 12, 90-minute non-drug psychotherapy sessions, three before the first MDMA session for preparation and three after each MDMA session for integration. We call our treatment approach "inner-directed therapy," in that we support the patient to experience whatever's emerging within their minds or their bodies. Even with MDMA, this is hard work. And a lot of our subjects have said, "I don't know why they call this Ecstasy." (Laughter) During Tony's first MDMA session, he lay on the couch, he had eyeshades on, he listened to music, and he would speak to the therapists, who were a male-female co-therapy team, whenever he felt that he needed to. After several hours, in a moment of calmness and clarity, Tony shared that he had realized his PTSD was a way of connecting him to his friends. It was a way of honoring the memory of his friends who had died. But he was able to shift and see himself through the eyes of his dead friends. And he realized that they would not want him to suffer, to squander his life. They would want him to live more fully, which they were unable to do. And so he realized that there was a new way to honor their memory, which was to live as fully as possible. He also realized that he was telling himself a story that he was taking opiates for pain. But actually, he realized, he was taking them for escape. So he decided he didn't need the opiates anymore, he didn't need the MDMA anymore, and he was dropping out of the study. That was seven years ago. Tony is still free of PTSD, has never returned to opiates and is helping others less fortunate than himself in Cambodia. (Applause) The data that we presented to FDA from 107 people in our pilot studies, including Tony, showed that 23 percent of the people that received therapy without active MDMA no longer had PTSD at the end of treatment. This is really pretty good for this patient population. However, when you add MDMA, the results more than double, to 56 percent no longer having PTSD. (Applause) But most importantly, once people learn that if they don't need to suppress their trauma, but they can process it, they keep getting better on their own. So at the 12-month follow-up one year after the last treatment session, two-thirds no longer have PTSD. And of the one-third that do, many have clinically significant reductions in symptoms. (Applause) On the basis of this data, the FDA has declared MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD a breakthrough therapy. FDA has also declared psilocybin a breakthrough therapy for treatment-resistant depression and just recently approved esketamine for depression. I'm proud to say that we have now initiated our Phase 3 studies. And if the results are as we hope, and if they're similar to the Phase 2 studies, by the end of 2021, FDA will approve MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD. If approved, the only therapists who will be able to directly administer it to patients are going to be therapists that have been through our training program, and they will only be able to administer MDMA under direct supervision in clinic settings. We anticipate that over the next several decades, there will be thousands of psychedelic clinics established, at which, therapists will be able to administer MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine and other psychedelics to potentially millions of patients. These clinics can also evolve into centers where people can come for psychedelic psychotherapy for personal growth, for couples therapy or for spiritual, mystical experiences. Humanity now is in a race between catastrophe and consciousness. The psychedelic renaissance is here to help consciousness triumph. And now, if you all just look under your seats ... Just joking! (Laughter) Thank you. (Applause) (Laughter) (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) Corey Hajim: You've got to stay up here for a minute. Thank you so much, Rick. I guess it's a supportive audience. Rick Doblin: Yes, very. Many of them have also been to Burning Man. (Laughter) CH: There's some synergy. RD: (Laughs) CH: So, in your talk, you talked about using these drugs to address some pretty serious traumas. So what about some more common mental illnesses like anxiety and depression, and is that where microdosing comes in? RD: Well, microdosing can be helpful for depression, I do know someone that has been using it. But in general, for therapeutic purposes, we prefer macro-dosing rather than microdosing, in order to really help people deal with the root causes. Microdosing is more for creativity, for artistic inspiration, for focus ... And it also does have a mood-elevation lift. But I think for serious illnesses, we'd rather not get people thinking that they need a daily drug, but do more deeper, intense work. CH: And what about outside the United States and North America, is this research being done there? RD: Oh yeah, we're globalizing. Our Phase 3 studies are actually being done in Israel, Canada and the United States. So once we get approval in FDA, it will also become approved in Israel and in Canada. We're just starting research in Europe. And we're actually going to be training some therapists from China. CH: That's great. We were going to do an audience vote to see if people felt like this was a good idea to move forward with this research or not, but I have a feeling I know the answer to that, so ... Thank you so much, Rick. RD: Thank you. Thank you all. (Applause) |
Origami robots that reshape and transform themselves | {0: 'Soft robotics expert Jamie Paik designs "robogamis" -- folding robots inspired by origami that are more adaptable than classical robots.'} | TED2019 | As a roboticist, I get asked a lot of questions. "When we will they start serving me breakfast?" So I thought the future of robotics would be looking more like us. I thought they would look like me, so I built eyes that would simulate my eyes. I built fingers that are dextrous enough to serve me ... baseballs. Classical robots like this are built and become functional based on the fixed number of joints and actuators. And this means their functionality and shape are already fixed at the moment of their conception. So even though this arm has a really nice throw — it even hit the tripod at the end— it's not meant for cooking you breakfast per se. It's not really suited for scrambled eggs. So this was when I was hit by a new vision of future robotics: the transformers. They drive, they run, they fly, all depending on the ever-changing, new environment and task at hand. To make this a reality, you really have to rethink how robots are designed. So, imagine a robotic module in a polygon shape and using that simple polygon shape to reconstruct multiple different forms to create a new form of robot for different tasks. In CG, computer graphics, it's not any news — it's been done for a while, and that's how most of the movies are made. But if you're trying to make a robot that's physically moving, it's a completely new story. It's a completely new paradigm. But you've all done this. Who hasn't made a paper airplane, paper boat, paper crane? Origami is a versatile platform for designers. From a single sheet of paper, you can make multiple shapes, and if you don't like it, you unfold and fold back again. Any 3D form can be made from 2D surfaces by folding, and this is proven mathematically. And imagine if you were to have an intelligent sheet that can self-fold into any form it wants, anytime. And that's what I've been working on. I call this robotic origami, "robogami." This is our first robogami transformation that was made by me about 10 years ago. From a flat-sheeted robot, it turns into a pyramid and back into a flat sheet and into a space shuttle. Quite cute. Ten years later, with my group of ninja origami robotic researchers — about 22 of them right now — we have a new generation of robogamis, and they're a little more effective and they do more than that. So the new generation of robogamis actually serve a purpose. For example, this one actually navigates through different terrains autonomously. So when it's a dry and flat land, it crawls. And if it meets sudden rough terrain, it starts rolling. It does this — it's the same robot — but depending on which terrain it meets, it activates a different sequence of actuators that's on board. And once it meets an obstacle, it jumps over it. It does this by storing energy in each of its legs and releasing it and catapulting like a slingshot. And it even does gymnastics. Yay. (Laughter) So I just showed you what a single robogami can do. Imagine what they can do as a group. They can join forces to tackle more complex tasks. Each module, either active or passive, we can assemble them to create different shapes. Not only that, by controlling the folding joints, we're able to create and attack different tasks. The form is making new task space. And this time, what's most important is the assembly. They need to autonomously find each other in a different space, attach and detach, depending on the environment and task. And we can do this now. So what's next? Our imagination. This is a simulation of what you can achieve with this type of module. We decided that we were going to have a four-legged crawler turn into a little dog and make small gaits. With the same module, we can actually make it do something else: a manipulator, a typical, classical robotic task. So with a manipulator, it can pick up an object. Of course, you can add more modules to make the manipulator legs longer to attack or pick up objects that are bigger or smaller, or even have a third arm. For robogamis, there's no one fixed shape nor task. They can transform into anything, anywhere, anytime. So how do you make them? The biggest technical challenge of robogami is keeping them super thin, flexible, but still remaining functional. They're composed of multiple layers of circuits, motors, microcontrollers and sensors, all in the single body, and when you control individual folding joints, you'll be able to achieve soft motions like that upon your command. Instead of being a single robot that is specifically made for a single task, robogamis are optimized to do multi-tasks. And this is quite important for the difficult and unique environments on the Earth as well as in space. Space is a perfect environment for robogamis. You cannot afford to have one robot for one task. Who knows how many tasks you will encounter in space? What you want is a single robotic platform that can transform to do multi-tasks. What we want is a deck of thin robogami modules that can transform to do multiples of performing tasks. And don't take my word for it, because the European Space Agency and Swiss Space Center are sponsoring this exact concept. So here you see a couple of images of reconfiguration of robogamis, exploring the foreign land aboveground, on the surface, as well as digging into the surface. It's not just exploration. For astronauts, they need additional help, because you cannot afford to bring interns up there, either. (Laughter) They have to do every tedious task. They may be simple, but super interactive. So you need robots to facilitate their experiments, assisting them with the communications and just docking onto surfaces to be their third arm holding different tools. But how will they be able to control robogamis, for example, outside the space station? In this case, I show a robogami that is holding space debris. You can work with your vision so that you can control them, but what would be better is having the sensation of touch directly transported onto the hands of the astronauts. And what you need is a haptic device, a haptic interface that recreates the sensation of touch. And using robogamis, we can do this. This is the world's smallest haptic interface that can recreate a sensation of touch just underneath your fingertip. We do this by moving the robogami by microscopic and macroscopic movements at the stage. And by having this, not only will you be able to feel how big the object is, the roundness and the lines, but also the stiffness and the texture. Alex has this interface just underneath his thumb, and if he were to use this with VR goggles and hand controllers, now the virtual reality is no longer virtual. It becomes a tangible reality. The blue ball, red ball and black ball that he's looking at is no longer differentiated by colors. Now it is a rubber blue ball, sponge red ball and billiard black ball. This is now possible. Let me show you. This is really the first time this is shown live in front of a public grand audience, so hopefully this works. So what you see here is an atlas of anatomy and the robogami haptic interface. So, like all the other reconfigurable robots, it multitasks. Not only is it going to serve as a mouse, but also a haptic interface. So for example, we have a white background where there is no object. That means there is nothing to feel, so we can have a very, very flexible interface. Now, I use this as a mouse to approach skin, a muscular arm, so now let's feel his biceps, or shoulders. So now you see how much stiffer it becomes. Let's explore even more. Let's approach the ribcage. And as soon as I move on top of the ribcage and between the intercostal muscles, which is softer and harder, I can feel the difference of the stiffness. Take my word for it. So now you see, it's much stiffer in terms of the force it's giving back to my fingertip. So I showed you the surfaces that aren't moving. How about if I were to approach something that moves, for example, like a beating heart? What would I feel? (Applause) This can be your beating heart. This can actually be inside your pocket while you're shopping online. Now you'll be able to feel the difference of the sweater that you're buying, how soft it is, if it's actually cashmere or not, or the bagel that you're trying to buy, how hard it is or how crispy it is. This is now possible. The robotics technology is advancing to be more personalized and adaptive, to adapt to our everyday needs. This unique specie of reconfigurable robotics is actually the platform to provide this invisible, intuitive interface to meet our exact needs. These robots will no longer look like the characters from the movies. Instead, they will be whatever you want them to be. Thank you. (Applause) |
How we're honoring people overlooked by history | {0: 'Amy Padnani shines a light on the stories of remarkable people once overlooked by history.'} | TED Salon The Macallan | My name is Amy Padnani, and I'm an editor on the obituaries desk at the "New York Times." Or, as some friends call me, the angel of death. (Laughter) In fact, people will ask me, "Isn't it depressing, working on obituaries and thinking about death all the time?" But you know what I tell them? Obits aren't about death, they're about life, they're interesting, they're relatable. Often about something you never knew. Recently, for example, we had the obit for the inventor of the sock puppet. (Laughter) Everyone knows what a sock puppet is, but have you ever thought about who created it, or what their life was like? Obits are a signature form of journalism. An art form, if you will. It's an opportunity for a writer to weave the tale of a person's life into a beautiful narrative. Since 1851, the "New York Times" has published thousands of obituaries. For heads of state, famous celebrities, even the person who came up with the name on the Slinky. There's just one problem. Only a small percentage of them chronicle the lives of women and people of color. That's the impetus behind a project I created called "Overlooked," which tells the stories of marginalized groups of people who never got an obit. It's a chance for the newspaper to revisit its 168-year existence and fill in the gaps for people who were, for whatever reason, left out. It's a chance to right the wrongs of the past, and to refocus society's lens on who is considered important. I came up with the idea when I first joined Obituaries in 2017. The Black Lives Matter movement was at a rolling boil, and the conversation on gender inequality had just started bubbling up again. And at the same time, I wondered, as a journalist and as a woman of color, what could I do to help advance this conversation. People were coming out of the shadows to tell stories of injustices that they had faced, and I could feel their pain. So I noticed we would get these emails, sometimes, from readers, saying, "Hey, why don't you have more women and people of color in your obituaries?" And I thought, "Yeah, why don't we?" Since I was new to the team, I asked my colleagues, and they said, "Well, the people who are dying today are from a generation when women and people of color weren't invited to the table to make a difference. Perhaps in a generation or two, we'll start to see more women and people of color in our obituaries." That answer just wasn't satisfying at all. (Laughter) I wanted to know: Where are all the dead women? (Laughter) So I started thinking about how we hear about people who have died, right? Number one way is through reader submissions. And so I thought, "Well, what if we were to look at international newspapers or scour social media?" It was around this time when ... Everything was swirling in my mind, and I came across a website about Mary Outerbridge. She was credited with introducing tennis to America in 1874. And I thought, wow, one of the biggest sports in America was introduced by a woman? Does anyone even know that? And did she get a New York Times obituary? Spoiler alert — she did not. (Laughter) So then I wondered who else we missed. And it sent me on this deep dive through the archives. There were some surprises. The pioneering journalist Ida B. Wells, who started the campaign against lynching. The brilliant poet Sylvia Plath. Ada Lovelace, a mathematician now recognized as the first computer programmer. So I went back to my team and I said, "What if we were to tell their stories now?" It took a while to get buy-in. There was this concern that, you know, the newspaper might look bad because it didn't get it right the first time. It was also a little weird to sort of look back at the past, rather than cover news stories of our day. But I said, "Guys, I really think this is worthwhile." And once my team saw the value in it, they were all in. And so, with the help of a dozen writers and editors, we launched on March 8, 2018, with the stories of 15 remarkable women. And while I knew that the work my team was doing was powerful, I didn't expect the response to be equally powerful. I had hundreds of emails. They were from people who said, "Thank you for finally giving these women a voice." They were from readers who said, "I cried on my way to work, reading these stories, because I felt seen for the first time." And they were from colleagues of mine, who said, "I never thought a woman of color would be allowed to achieve something like this at the 'New York Times.'" I also got about 4,000 reader submissions suggesting who else we might have overlooked. And some of those are my favorite stories in the project. My all-time favorite is Grandma Gatewood. (Laughter) She survived 30 years of domestic violence at the hands of her husband. One day, he beat her so badly, beyond recognition, he even broke a broomstick over her head, and she threw flour in his face in response. But when the police arrived, they arrested her, not him. The mayor saw her in jail and took her into his own home until she could get back on her feet. Then, one day, she read this article in "National Geographic" about how no woman had ever hiked the Appalachian Trail in its entirety alone. And she said, "You know what? I'm going to do it." Reporters caught wind of the old grandma who is hiking through the woods. And at the finish, they asked her, "How did you survive so rough a place?" But they had no idea what she had survived before that. So, "Overlooked" has become wildly successful. It's becoming a TV show now, on Netflix. (Laughter) (Applause) I cannot wait to see this thing come to life. Something like 25 different publishers have reached out to me with interest in turning "Overlooked" into a book. All of this clearly shows how timely and necessary this project is. It's also a reminder of how newspapers document what's happening in our world every single day, and we have to make sure not to leave out key people. That's why, even though it's been so meaningful to look back in the past, I'm plagued with the lingering question: "What about the future of obituaries — how do I diversify those?" That was my original problem, right? So to start answering this question, I wanted to gather some information. I went down to the sub-sub-basement level of the New York Times Building, to the archives. We call it the morgue. (Laughter) And I asked for some guidance from our archivist there. He pointed me to a book called "New York Times Obituaries Index." So we handed it to the New York Genealogical Society, and they digitized it for us. And then a programmer wrote up a program that scanned all those headlines for "Mr.," Mrs.," "Lady," "Sir," all the sort of gender-defining terms. And what we found was that from 1851 to 2017, only about 15 to 20 percent of our obits were on women. So next, I worked with a programmer to build this tool, called the diversity analysis tool. It's a very dry name, but bear with me, it's super helpful. It breaks down the percentage of our obits month to month, women to men. OK, if that doesn't sound like much to you, this is how I used to calculate it before. (Laughter) So I asked this programmer to program in a goal, and that goal was 30 percent. From the year of "Overlooked's" launch, March of 2018, to March of 2019, I was hoping we could get to 30 percent of our obits on women. It was a number we hadn't achieved in a 168 years, and I'm happy to say we did it — we got to 31 percent. (Applause) It's awesome, but it's not enough. Next we're hoping to get to 35 percent, and then 40 percent, until we achieve parity. And then I'm hoping to partner with this programmer again, to build a similar tool to measure people of color in our obits. That was something I wanted to do with "Overlooked" too, to include men of color, and I finally got to do it with a special section for Black History Month, where we told the stories of about a dozen black men and women. Again, it was a really powerful experience. Many of these people had been slaves or were a generation removed from slavery. A lot of them had to make up stories about their past just to get ahead in life. And there were these patterns of their struggles that came up again and again. Elizabeth Jennings, for instance, had to fight for her right to ride on segregated street cars in New York City — a hundred years before Rosa Parks did the exact same thing with buses. It was just a reminder of how far we've come, and how much more we still have left to do. "Overlooked" is including other marginalized people as well. Recently, we had the obit for the computer programmer Alan Turing. Believe it or not, this brilliant man never got an obituary, even though his work decoding German messages during World War II helps end the war. Instead, he died a criminal for his sexual orientation, and he was forced to endure chemical castration. Great things, like this obits project, do not come easily. There were a lot of fits and starts as I worked hard to convince people it was worth getting it off the ground. There were moments when I faced great self-doubt. I wondered if I was crazy or if I was all alone, and if I should just give up. When I've seen the reaction to this project, I know I'm not at all alone. There's so many people who feel the way I do. And so yeah, not many people think about obituaries. But when you do, you realize they're a testament to a human life. They're the last chance to talk about somebody's contribution on the world. They were also an example of who society deemed important. A hundred years from now, somebody could be looking into the past to see what our time was like. I'm lucky, as a journalist, to have been able to have used this form of storytelling to help shift a narrative. I was also able to get an established institution to question its own status quo. Little by little, I'm hoping I can keep doing this work, and continue refocusing society's lens so that nobody else gets overlooked. Thank you. (Applause) |
How film transforms the way we see the world | {0: 'TED Fellow Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy seeks to push people to have difficult conversations about inequality and injustice.'} | TED2019 | I'm a storyteller, but I'm also a troublemaker. (Laughter) And I have a habit of asking difficult questions. It started when I was 10 years old, and my mother, who was raising six children, had no time for them. At 14, fed up with my increasingly annoying questions, she recommended that I begin writing for the local English-language newspaper in Pakistan, to put my questions out to the entire country, she said. (Laughter) At 17, I was an undercover investigative journalist. I don't even think my editor knew just how young I was when I sent in a story that named and shamed some very powerful people. The men I'd written about wanted to teach me a lesson. They wanted to shame me and my family. They spray-painted my name and my family's name with unspeakable profanities across our front gate and around our neighborhood. And they felt that my father, who was a strict man of tradition, would stop me. Instead, my father stood in front of me and said, "If you speak the truth, I will stand with you, and so will the world." And then he got — (Applause) And then he got a group of people together and they whitewashed the walls. (Laughter) I've always wanted my stories to jolt people, to shake them into having difficult conversations. And I felt that I would be more effective if I did something visual. And so at 21, I became a documentary filmmaker, turning my camera onto marginalized communities on the front lines in war zones, eventually returning home to Pakistan, where I wanted to document violence against women. Pakistan is home to 200 million people. And with its low levels of literacy, film can change the way people perceive issues. An effective storyteller speaks to our emotions, elicits empathy and compassion, and forces us to look at things differently. In my country, film had the potential to go beyond cinema. It could change lives. The issues that I've always wanted to raise — I've always wanted to hold up a mirror to society — they've been driven by my barometer of anger. And my barometer of anger led me, in 2014, to honor killings. Honor killings take place in many parts of the world, where men punish women who transgress rules made by them: women who choose to marry on their own free will; or women who are looking for a divorce; or women who are suspected of having illicit relationships. In the rest of the world, honor killings would be known as murder. I always wanted to tell that story from the perspective of a survivor. But women do not live to tell their tale and instead end up in unmarked graves. So one morning when I was reading the newspaper, and I read that a young woman had miraculously survived after being shot in the face by her father and her uncle because she chose to marry a man out of her free will, I knew I had found my storyteller. Saba was determined to send her father and her uncle to jail, but in the days after leaving the hospital, pressure mounted on her to forgive. You see, there was a loophole in the law that allowed for victims to forgive perpetrators, enabling them to avoid jail time. And she was told that she would be ostracized and her family, her in-laws, they would all be shunned from the community, because many felt that her father had been well within his right, given her transgression. She fought on — for months. But on the final day in court, she gave a statement forgiving them. As filmmakers, we were devastated, because this was not the film that we had set out to make. In hindsight, had she pressed charges, fought the case and won, hers would have been an exception. When such a strong woman is silenced, what chance did other women have? And we began to think about using our film to change the way people perceived honor killings, to impact the loophole in the law. And then our film was nominated for an Academy Award, and honor killings became headline news, and the prime minister, while sending his congratulations, offered to host the first screening of the film at his office. Of course, we jumped at the chance, because no prime minister in the history of the country had ever done so. And at the screening, which was carried live on national television, he said something that reverberated throughout the country: "There is no honor in honor killings," he said. (Applause) At the Academy Awards in LA, many of the pundits had written us off, but we felt that in order for the legislative push to continue, we needed that win. And then, my name was announced, and I bounded up the steps in flip-flops, because I didn't expect to be onstage. (Laughter) And I accepted the statue, telling a billion people watching that the prime minister of Pakistan had pledged to change the law, because, of course, that's one way of holding the prime minister accountable. (Laughter) And — (Applause) Back home, the Oscar win dominated headline news, and more people joined the fray, asking for the loophole in the law to be closed. And then in October 2016, after months of campaigning, the loophole was indeed closed. (Applause) And now men who kill women in the name of honor receive life imprisonment. (Applause) Yet, the very next day, a woman was killed in the name of honor, and then another and another. We had impacted legislation, but that wasn't enough. We needed to take the film and its message to the heartland, to small towns and villages across the country. You see, for me, cinema can play a very positive role in changing and molding society in a positive direction. But how would we get to these places? How would we get to these small towns and villages? We built a mobile cinema, a truck that would roll through the length and breadth of the country, that would stop in small towns and villages. We outfitted it with a large screen that would light up the night sky, and we called it "Look But With Love." It would give the community an opportunity to come together and watch films in the evening. We knew we could attract men and children in the mobile cinema. They would come out and watch. But what about women? In these small, rural communities that are segregated, how would we get women to come out? We had to work with prevailing cultural norms in order to do so, and so we built a cinema inside the cinema, outfitting it with seats and a screen where women could go inside and watch without fearing or being embarrassed or harassment. We began to introduce everyone to films that opened up their minds to competing worldviews, encouraging children to build critical thinking so that they could ask questions. And we expanded our scope beyond honor killings, talking about income inequality, the environment, talking about ethnic relations, religious tolerance and compassion. And inside, for women, we showed them films in which they were heroes, not victims, and we told them how they could navigate the court system, the police system, educating them about their rights, telling them where they could seek refuge if they were victims of domestic violence, where they could go and get help. We were surprised that we were welcomed in so many of the places that we went to. Many of the towns had never seen television or social media, and they were eager for their children to learn. But there was also pushback and blowback with the ideas that we were bringing with us. Two members of our mobile cinema team resigned because of threats from villages. And in one of the villages that we were screening in, they shut it down and said they didn't want the women to know about their rights. But on the flip side, in another village when a screening was shut down, a plainclothes policeman got up and ordered it back on, and stood by, protecting our team, telling everyone that it was his duty to expose the young minds to an alternative worldview and to this content. He was an ordinary hero. But we've come across so many of these heroes on our journey. In another town, where the men said that only they could watch and the women had to stay home, a community elder got up, got a group of people together, had a discussion, and then both men and women sat down to watch together. We are documenting what we are doing. We talk to people. We adapt. We change the lineup of films. When we show men films that show perpetrators of violence behind bars, we want to hit home the fact that if men are violent, there will be repercussions. But we also show films where men are seen as championing women, because we want to encourage them to take on those roles. For women, when we show them films in which they are heads of state or where they are lawyers and doctors and in leadership positions, we talk to them and encourage them to step into those roles. We are changing the way people in these villages interact, and we're taking our learnings into other places. Recently, a group contacted us and wants to take our mobile cinema to Bangladesh and Syria, and we're sharing our learnings with them. We feel it's really important to take what we are doing and spread it across the world. In small towns and villages across Pakistan, men are changing the way they interact with women, children are changing the way they see the world, one village at a time, through cinema. Thank you. (Applause) |
The fascinating (and dangerous) places scientists aren't exploring | {0: "Ella Al-Shamahi is a palaeoanthropologist specializing in fossil hunting in caves in unstable, hostile and disputed territories. In her spare time, she's a stand-up comic."} | TED2019 | So I've got something that I'm slightly embarrassed to admit to. At the age of 17, as a creationist, I decided to go to university to study evolution so that I could destroy it. (Laughter) I failed. I failed so spectacularly that I'm now an evolutionary biologist. (Applause) So I'm a paleoanthropologist, I'm a National Geographic Explorer specializing in fossil hunting in caves in unstable, hostile and disputed territories. And we all know that if I was a guy and not a girl, that wouldn't be a job description, that would be a pick-up line. (Laughter) Now, here's the thing. I do not have a death wish. I'm not an adrenaline junkie. I just looked at a map. See, frontline exploratory science does not happen as much in politically unstable territories. This is a map of all the places which the British Foreign Office have declared contain red zones, orange zones or have raised some kind of a threat warning about. Now I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it is a tragedy if we're not doing frontline exploratory science in a huge portion of the planet. And so science has a geography problem. Also, as a paleoanthropologist, guys, this is basically a map of some of the most important places in the human journey. There are almost definitely fascinating fossils to be found here. But are we looking for them? And so as an undergraduate, I was repeatedly told that humans, be they ourselves, homo sapiens, or earlier species, that we left Africa via the Sinai of Egypt. I'm English, as you can probably tell from my accent, but I am actually of Arab heritage, and I always say that I'm very, very Arab on the outside. You know, I can really be passionate. Like, "You're amazing! I love you!" But on the inside, I'm really English, so everybody irritates me. (Laughter) It's true. And the thing is, my family are Arab from Yemen, and I knew that that channel, Bab-el-Mandeb, is not that much of a feat to cross. And I kept asking myself this really simple question: if the ancestors to New World monkeys could somehow cross the Atlantic Ocean, why couldn't humans cross that tiny stretch of water? But the thing is, Yemen, compared to, let's say, Europe, was so understudied that it was something akin to near virgin territory. But that, along with its location, made the sheer potential for discovery so exciting, and I had so many questions. When did we first start using Bab-el-Mandeb? But also, which species of human besides ourselves made it to Yemen? Might we find a species as yet unknown to science? And it turned out, I wasn't the only one who had noticed Yemen's potential. There was actually a few other academics out there. But sadly, due to political instability, they moved out, and so I moved in. And I was looking for caves: caves because caves are the original prime real estate. But also because if you're looking for fossils in that kind of heat, your best bet for fossil preservation is always going to be caves. But then, Yemen took a really sad turn for the worse, and just a few days before I was due to fly out to Yemen, the civil war escalated into a regional conflict, the capital's airport was bombed and Yemen became a no-fly zone. Now, my parents made this decision before I was born: that I would be born British. I had nothing to do with the best decision of my life. And now ... Now the lucky ones in my family have escaped, and the others, the others are being been bombed and send you WhatsApp messages that make you detest your very existence. This war's been going on for four years. It's been going on for over four years, and it has led to a humanitarian crisis. There is a famine there, a man-made famine. That's a man-made famine, so not a natural famine, an entirely man-made famine that the UN has warned could be the worst famine the world has seen in a hundred years. This war has made it clear to me more than ever that no place, no people deserve to get left behind. And so I was joining these other teams, and I was forming new collaborations in other unstable places. But I was desperate to get back into Yemen, because for me, Yemen's really personal. And so I kept trying to think of a project I could do in Yemen that would help highlight what was going on there. And every idea I had just kept failing, or it was just too high-risk, because let's be honest, most of Yemen is just too dangerous for a Western team. But then I was told that Socotra, a Yemeni island, was safe once you got there. In fact, it turned out there was a few local and international academics that were still working there. And that got me really excited, because look at Socotra's proximity to Africa. And yet we have no idea when humans arrived on that island. But Socotra, for those of you who know it, well, let's just say you probably know it for a completely different reason. You probably know it as the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean, because it is one of the most biodiverse places on this earth. But we were also getting information that this incredibly delicate environment and its people were under threat because they were at the frontline of both Middle Eastern politics and climate change. And it slowly dawned on me that Socotra was my Yemen project. And so I wanted to put together a huge multidisciplinary team. We wanted to cross the archipelago on foot, camel and dhow boat to conduct a health check of this place. This has only been attempted once before, and it was in 1999. But the thing is, that is not an easy thing to pull off. And so we desperately needed a recce, and for those of you who aren't familiar with British English, a recce is like a scouting expedition. It's like a reconnaissance. And I often say that a really big expedition without a recce is a bit like a first date without a Facebook stalk. (Laughter) Like, it's doable, but is it wise? (Laughter) There's a few too many knowing laughs in this room. Anyway, so then our recce team thankfully were no strangers to unstable places, which, let's be honest, is kind of important because we were trying to get to a place between Yemen and Somalia, And after calling in what felt like a million favors, including to the deputy governor, we finally found ourselves on the move, albeit on a wooden cement cargo ship sailing through pirate waters in the Indian Ocean with this as a toilet. (Laughter) Can you guys see this? You know how everybody has their worst toilet story? Well, I've never swam with dolphins before. I just went straight to pooping on them. (Laughter) And also, I genuinely discovered that I am genuinely less stressed by pirate waters than I am with a cockroach infestation that was so intense that at one point I went belowdeck, and the floor was black and it was moving. (Audience moans) Yeah, and at night there was three raised platforms to sleep on, but there was only — let's say there was four team members, and the thing is, if you got a raised platform to sleep on, you only had to contend with a few cockroaches during the night, whereas if you got the floor, good luck to you. And so I was the only girl in the team and the whole ship, so I got away without sleeping on the floor. And then, on, like, the fourth or fifth night, Martin Edström looks at me and goes, "Ella, Ella I really believe in equality." (Laughter) So we were sailing on that cement cargo ship for three days, and then we slowly started seeing land. And after three years of failing, I was finally seeing Yemen. And there is no feeling on earth like that start of an expedition. It's this moment where you jump out of a jeep or you look up from a boat and you know that there's this possibility, it's small but it's still there, that you're about to find something that could add to or change our knowledge of who we are and where we come from. There is no feeling like it on earth, and it's a feeling that so many scientists have but rarely in politically unstable places. Because Western scientists are discouraged or all-out barred from working in unstable places. But here's the thing: scientists specialize in the jungle. Scientists work in deep cave systems. Scientists attach themselves to rockets and blow themselves into outer space. But apparently, working in an unstable place is deemed too high-risk. It is completely arbitrary. Who here in this room wasn't brought up on adventure stories? And most of our heroes were actually scientists and academics. Science was about going out into the unknown. It was about truly global exploration, even if there were risks. And so when did it become acceptable to make it difficult for science to happen in unstable places? And look, I'm not saying that all scientists should go off and start working in unstable places. This isn't some gung-ho call. But here's the thing: for those who have done the research, understand security protocol and are trained, stop stopping those who want to. Plus, just because one part of a country is an active war zone doesn't mean the whole country is. I'm not saying we should go into active war zones. But Iraqi Kurdistan looks very different from Fallujah. And actually, a few months after I couldn't get into Yemen, another team adopted me. So Professor Graeme Barker's team were actually working in Iraqi Kurdistan, and they were digging up Shanidar Cave. Now, Shanidar Cave a few decades earlier had unveiled a Neanderthal known as Shanidar 1. Now, for a BBC/PBS TV series we actually brought Shanidar 1 to life, and I want you guys to meet Ned, Ned the Neanderthal. Now here's the coolest thing about Ned. Ned, this guy, you're meeting him before his injuries. See, it turned out that Ned was severely disabled. He was in fact so disabled that there is no way he could have survived without the help of other Neanderthals. And so this was proof that, at least for this population of Neanderthals at this time, Neanderthals were like us, and they sometimes looked after those who couldn't look after themselves. Ned's an Iraqi Neanderthal. So what else are we missing? What incredible scientific discoveries are we not making because we're not looking? And by the way, these places, they deserve narratives of hope, and science and exploration can be a part of that. In fact, I would argue that it can tangibly aid development, and these discoveries become a huge source of local pride. And that brings me to the second reason why science has a geography problem. See, we don't empower local academics, do we? Like, it's not lost on me that in my particular field of paleoanthropology we study human origins, but we have so few diverse scientists. And the thing is, these places are full of students and academics who are desperate to collaborate, and the truth is that for them, they have fewer security issues than us. I think we constantly forget that for them it's not a hostile environment; for them it's home. I'm telling you, research done in unstable places with local collaborators can lead to incredible discoveries, and that is what we are hoping upon hope to do in Socotra. They call Socotra the most alien-looking place on earth, and myself, Leon McCarron, Martin Edström and Rhys Thwaites-Jones could see why. I mean, look at this place. These places, they're not hellholes, they're not write-offs, they're the future frontline of science and exploration. 90 percent of the reptiles on this island, 37 percent of the plant species exist here and nowhere else on earth, and that includes this species of dragon's blood tree, which actually bleeds this red resin. And there's something else. People on Socotra, some of them still live in caves, and that is really exciting, because it means if a cave is prime real estate this century, maybe it was a few thousand years ago. But we need the data to prove it, the fossils, the stone tools, and so our scouting team have teamed up with other scientists, anthropologists and storytellers, international as well as local, like Ahmed Alarqbi, and we are desperate to shed a light on this place before it's too late. And now, now we just somehow need to get back for that really big expedition, because science, science has a geography problem. You guys have been a really lovely audience. Thank you. (Applause) |
The fundamental right to seek asylum | {0: 'Melanie Nezer is a national leader in efforts to inform and educate individuals, institutions, elected officials and communities about refugees and asylum seekers.'} | TEDxMidAtlantic | Last summer, I got a call from a woman named Ellie. And she had heard about the family separations at the southern border and wanted to know what she could do to help. She told me the story of her grandfather and his father. When they were kids in Poland, their father, fearing for his son's safety, gave them a little bit of money and told them to walk west, to just keep walking west across Europe. And they did. They walked all the way west across Europe, and they got on a boat and they got to America. Ellie said that when she heard the stories of the teens walking up across Mexico, all she could think about was her grandfather and his brother. She said that for her, the stories were exactly the same. Those brothers were the Hassenfeld Brothers — the "Has" "bros" — the Hasbro toy company, which, of course, brought us Mr. Potato Head. But that is not actually why I'm telling you this story. I'm telling you this story because it made me think about whether I would have the faith, the courage, to send my teens — and I have three of them — on a journey like that. Knowing that they wouldn't be safe where we were, would I be able to watch them go? I started my career decades ago at the southern US border, working with Central American asylum seekers. And in the last 16 years, I've been at HIAS, the Jewish organization that fights for refugee rights around the world, as a lawyer and an advocate. And one thing I've learned is that, sometimes, the things that we're told make us safer and stronger actually don't. And, in fact, some of these policies have the opposite of the intended results and in the meantime, cause tremendous and unnecessary suffering. So why are people showing up at our southern border? Most of the immigrants and refugees that are coming to our southern border are fleeing three countries: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. These countries are consistently ranked among the most violent countries in the world. It's very difficult to be safe in these countries, let alone build a future for yourself and your family. And violence against women and girls is pervasive. People have been fleeing Central America for generations. Generations of refugees have been coming to our shores, fleeing the civil wars of the 1980s, in which the United States was deeply involved. This is nothing new. What's new is that recently, there's been a spike in families, children and families, showing up at checkpoints and presenting themselves to seek asylum. Now, this has been in the news lately, so I want you to remember a few things as you see those images. One, this is not a historically high level of interceptions at the southern border, and, in fact, people are presenting themselves at checkpoints. Two, people are showing up with the clothes on their backs; some of them are literally in flip-flops. And three, we're the most powerful country in the world. It's not a time to panic. It's easy from the safety of the destination country to think in terms of absolutes: Is it legal, or is it illegal? But the people who are wrestling with these questions and making these decisions about their families are thinking about very different questions: How do I keep my daughter safe? How do I protect my son? And if you want absolutes, it's absolutely legal to seek asylum. It is a fundamental right in our own laws and in international law. And, in fact — (Applause) it stems from the 1951 Refugee Convention, which was the world's response to the Holocaust and a way for countries to say never again would we return people to countries where they would harmed or killed. There are several ways refugees come to this country. One is through the US Refugee Admissions Program. Through that program, the US identifies and selects refugees abroad and brings them to the United States. Last year, the US resettled fewer refugees than at any time since the program began in 1980. And this year, it'll probably be less. And this is at a time when we have more refugees in the world than at any other time in recorded history, even since World War II. Another way that refugees come to this country is by seeking asylum. Asylum seekers are people who present themselves at a border and say that they'll be persecuted if they're sent back home. An asylum seeker is simply somebody who's going through the process in the United States to prove that they meet the refugee definition. And it's never been more difficult to seek asylum. Border guards are telling people when they show up at our borders that our country's full, that they simply can't apply. This is unprecedented and illegal. Under a new program, with the kind of Orwellian title "Migrant Protection Protocols," refugees are told they have to wait in Mexico while their cases make their way through the courts in the United States, and this can take months or years. Meanwhile, they're not safe, and they have no access to lawyers. Our country, our government, has detained over 3,000 children, separating them from their parents' arms, as a deterrent from seeking asylum. Many were toddlers, and at least one was a six-year-old blind girl. And this is still going on. We spend billions to detain people in what are virtually prisons who have committed no crime. And family separation has become the hallmark of our immigration system. That's a far cry from a shining city on a hill or a beacon of hope or all of the other ways we like to talk about ourselves and our values. Migration has always been with us, and it always will be. The reasons why people flee — persecution, war, violence, climate change and the ability now to see on your phone what life is like in other places — those pressures are only growing. But there are ways that we can have policies that reflect our values and actually make sense, given the reality in the world. The first thing we need to do is dial back the toxic rhetoric that has been the basis of our national debate on this issue for too long. (Applause) I am not an immigrant or a refugee myself, but I take these attacks personally, because my grandparents were. My great-grandmother Rose didn't see her kids for seven years, as she tried to bring them from Poland to New York. She left my grandfather when he was seven and didn't see him again until he was 14. On the other side of my family, my grandmother Aliza left Poland in the 1930s and left for what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, and she never saw her family and friends again. Global cooperation as a response to global migration and displacement would go a long way towards making migration something that isn't a crisis but something that just is, and that we deal with as a global community. Humanitarian aid is also critical. The amount of support we provide to countries in Central America that are sending refugees and migrants is a tiny fraction of the amount we spend on enforcement and detention. And we can absolutely have an asylum system that works. For a tiny fraction of the cost of a wall, we could hire more judges, make sure asylum seekers have lawyers and commit to a humane asylum system. (Applause) And we could resettle more refugees. To give you a sense of the decline in the refugee program: three years ago, the US resettled 15,000 Syrian refugees in response to the largest refugee crisis on earth. A year later, that number was 3,000. And last year, that number was 62 people. 62 people. Despite the harsh rhetoric and efforts to block immigration, keep refugees out of the country, support for refugees and immigrants in this country, according to polls, has never been higher. Organizations like HIAS, where I work, and other humanitarian and faith-based organizations, make it easy for you to take a stand when there's a law that's worth opposing or a law that's worth supporting or a policy that needs oversight. If you have a phone, you can do something, and if you want to do more, you can. I will tell you that if you see one of these detention centers along the border with children in them — they're jails — you will never be the same. What I loved so much about my call with Ellie was that she knew in her core that the stories of her grandparents were no different than today's stories, and she wanted to do something about it. If I leave you with one thing, beyond the backstory for Mr. Potato Head, which is, of course, a good story to leave with, it's that a country shows strength through compassion and pragmatism, not through force and through fear. (Applause) These stories of the Hassenfelds and my relatives and your relatives are still happening today; they're all the same. A country is strong when it says to the refugee, not, "Go away," but, "It's OK, we've got you, you're safe." Thank you. (Applause) Thanks. (Applause) |
Can you solve the dark matter fuel riddle? | null | TED-Ed | It’s an incredible discovery: an ancient, abandoned alien space station filled with precursor technology. But now, every species in the galaxy is in a mad dash to get there first and claim it for themselves. And right away, you’ve got a problem. Your ship’s faster-than-light jump drive consumes 1 unit of fuel for every parsec of distance it takes you, and your ship holds only 15 units of fuel. But the space station is 23 parsecs away, and there’s only empty space between there and here. There’s one thing that can help you, though: dark matter fuel is stable in deep space. That means you can vent a cache of it from your fuel chamber, and then come back to pick it up again later. Even though your ship holds only 15 units of fuel, you’ve been granted use of all 45 units in your current location. With some strategic fuel caching along the way, you might be able to make it all 23 parsecs. So how can you reach the alien space station? Answer in 3, 2, 1. It’s possible to solve this riddle using as few as two cache points, and there are also valid solutions that use more. No matter how you go about it though, the key is determining exactly where to cache fuel along your route. Let’s work backwards from the alien space station. To reach 23 parsecs, you’ll have to leave the 8-parsec mark with a full tank of fuel. The 8-parsec point is too far from the start to use as a cache right away; you could jump there, but wouldn’t have enough fuel to return to the start, let alone store any for later. So that means you’ll need to find a cache somewhere between the start and 8. But where? There’s an interesting pattern that can help. At the start you have exactly 3 tanks’ worth of fuel. At 8 parsecs you need exactly 1. Is there a point, which we can call point X, where you could have exactly 2? That would be useful, because then you could refuel there exactly twice, making full use of your storage capacity without any waste. Wherever point X is, you’ll jump forward from it twice: once to deposit some fuel at the 8-parsec cache point, and a second time for good. So you’ll jump the distance between X and 8-parsecs 3 times in all. You’d have 2 tanks of fuel at point X, and need 1 left at the 8 parsec cache point, so you can spend one tank— or 15 units— going back and forth. Since 15 units divided by 3 trips is 5, we can place these two cache points 5 parsecs apart. Any farther, and you wouldn’t have enough fuel to reach the alien space station. So it looks like the earliest we can place point X is at the 3-parsec mark. Is it possible to transport 30 units of fuel there? Let’s try. You set out with a full tank of 15 units. You jump 3 parsecs, drop 9 units off at the cache point, and then jump the 3 units home, arriving with an empty tank. Repeating this process gets you 18 units of fuel at the cache point, and one more jump puts you at the 3-parsec cache with 30 total units of fuel. So far so good! Next, you jump to the 8-parsec mark, drop off 5 units of fuel, and jump back to the 3-parsec mark. You fill up your tank and jump forward again, arriving with 10 units of fuel in your tank. And now the end is in sight. You beam the 5 units of fuel in from deep space to fill your tank to capacity, and type in the coordinates of your final destination. A 15-parsec jump leaves you running on fumes, but ready to dock with the precursor space station. Time to put this alien tech to work and make life better for everyone in the galaxy. |
Mentalism, mind reading and the art of getting inside your head | {0: 'With beguiling feats of mind reading and suggestion, Derren Brown explores psychological manipulation and its implications for the human experience.'} | TED2019 | We are all trapped inside our own heads, and our beliefs and our understandings about the world are limited by that perspective, which means we tell ourselves stories. Right? So here we are in this infinite data source. There's an infinite number of things that we could think about, but we edit and delete. We choose what to think about, what to pay attention to. We make up a story ... to make sense of what's going on, and we all get it wrong. Because we're all trying to navigate with our own skewed compasses, and we all have our own baggage, but the stories themselves are utterly convincing. And we all do this, and a lot of the stories that we live by aren't even our own. The first ones we inherit at a young age from our parents, who of course have their own skewed beliefs, their own frustrations, their own unlived lives. And for better or worse, we take all that onboard, and then we go out into the world thinking maybe we have to be successful to be loved; or that we always have to put other people's needs first; or that we have some big terrible secret we couldn't possible tell people. And it's just fiction, it's just stories, and we'd worry a lot less about what other people think of us if we realized how seldom they do. (Laughter) So I feel that magic is a great analogy for how we edit reality and form a story and then mistake that story for the truth, and I've had a 20-year career in the UK staging big psychological experiments on TV, and now that's on Netflix. I also have a stage show. I've got my first Broadway show actually coming up, called "Secret." Just throwing that out there. No pressure. (Laughter) That should be this year. And I try to do something new with mentalism, mentalism, which is the dubious art of getting inside your head. So there was a heyday for this kind of stage mind-reading, which was the 1930s. That's why I'm dressed like this, in my most un-TED-like garb. And there was an act, an act known as the Oracle Act. And in the Oracle Act, members of the audience, as I know you have done, would write down secret questions, the sort of questions you might ask a psychic, seal that question into an envelope, and on the outside of the envelope they would write their initials and then roughly where they sat in the audience. And then the Oracle, the mind reader, would take an envelope one at a time, he wouldn't open it, but he would attempt to divine what question was sealed inside. And if he got that right, he would try and answer the question for the person too. And the act spread like wildfire. It's a testament, I think, to the seductive appeal of some powerful figure offering you easy, simple answers to life's complex and subtle questions and anxieties. So thank you all of you that wrote questions. I haven't seen these. I know somebody's guarding them. Thank you so much. I will take those now. Thank you all of you that did this. I should say, probably, a couple of things before I start. In absolute honesty, first of all I can't see through these envelopes. They are sealed. They are thick black envelopes. You'll know if you wrote one. I can't see through them. Secondly, importantly, I don't know any of you and nobody is playing along. That's not what this is. Thirdly ... I don't believe for a second that I have any special psychological gifts, let alone any psychic ones. So let's begin. Nope. (Laughter) OK, this — Oh, nice. OK, this one's interesting. There's a couple here. I will start with maybe this one. This one's interesting, because the writing undulates. There's a sort of an up and down thing, which normally — not always — normally means that the person doesn't know the answer to the question themselves, so it's normally a question about the future, right? That sort of suggests uncertainty. So I would say it's a lady, age-wise it's a little difficult to tell from this minimal handwriting, but I would expect maybe 30s, maybe 40s, but let's find out. It says — and a question about the future — it says, "JN, center." So it's going to be somebody in this big central section here. If you think this is you, if you wrote one, could you make a fuss? It's a bit difficult for me to see in the center. Hi, give us a wave. So J ... Jane? Jessica? Jessica: Yes. Derren Brown: Which one? Jessica: Jessica. DB: Thank you. Just a guess. Little murmur of approval, thank you? (Laughter) I'll take it. Alright, so Jessica, I won't ask your age, but is it a question essentially about the future? Jessica: Mhm? DB: Yes? Jessica: Yes. DB: Yes. OK. Alright. So what did we ask? What did Jessica ask about the future? So am I OK with late-30s, early-40s? Jessica: I'll take it. I'm taking it. (Laughter) DB: OK, so it's important, because we ask different questions depending how old we are. Just say, "I'll take it" again. Jessica: I'll take it. DB: Virginia? You're from Virginia? Jessica: Yes, I am. DB: Yeah. So — (Laughter) I think this is a lady, I think this is a lady who wants to leave Virginia. I think you're looking at plans, it's whether or not things are going to come together to get out. Just show me your hands. Other sides so I can see fingernails? OK, I think you have a farm and it's whether or not you're going to sell your farm and get out of Virginia? Is this right? Jessica: Absolutely, that's the question. DB: Alright. Great. Thank you. It's a great question! What was the actual question? What did you put? Jessica: "Will I sell the farm in Virginia?" DB: Will you sell the farm? Alright, so look, it's a great question if you are pretending to be psychic, because it's about the future, which means I can give you a yes or no on this. It means nothing. You have no way of verifying it. And a dangerous thing to do — and if I say yes or no, it'll just stick in the back of your mind, and it can't not start to affect decisions you make. So a dangerous thing to do. However — (Laughter) Yes, I think you will sell the farm, because I think you're the sort of person that in the nicest way will get what you want. I think when there are things you want, you tend to focus on them at the expense of other things that you know you probably should be focusing on more, would you agree? Educated, you spent a few years in — Say yes again, the word "yes" quickly? Jessica: Yes. DB: No? Jessica: No. DB: California? Berkeley? A bit of a guess, but ... Jessica: I went to Berkeley, yes. Stop doing this! DB: So it's a yes. Oh, and you've been to India recently as well. There's just a tiny, tiny little thing going on there. Yes? No? Jessica: Yes, I just got back from India. DB: It's a yes from me, I just don't want to say it like it's written in the stars because it isn't, and you need to take responsibility for it. DB: Have a seat. Thank you. Let's do another one. (Applause) AH, also in the center? AH. This will be a man, a little older, maybe late 40s, I would say from this. AH, center, stand up for me if you think this is you. AH. Hi, let's get a microphone to this guy. Quick as we can, on camera would be amazing. Oh, look at that! Freeze. Don't move. Don't move. Keep absolutely still. Are you standing? Where are you? Man: I am standing. I'm not that short. DB: OK. Alright, now you changed that. There was just something you did as you got up. Yes or no, have you put something on here — you're not doing it now, but you did it as you stood up — to do with your left or your left leg or your left foot, yes or no? Man: Yes. DB: Alright. He was giving us a nice clear signal as he stood up. Put your weight on your left-hand side and say "yes." Man: Yes. DB: Take your hand out of that pocket, put your weight on the other side, change hands with the mic and say "yes" again. Man: Yes. DB: You have a dislocation in the big toe on your left-hand side? Man: Yes. DB: Thank you so much. Great. Good one! Take a seat. Take a seat. Can I get the microphone? I'm going to change microphone for this. Can I grab a mic up? Thank you. Thank you so much. That would be great there. I'm going to change mic because, hopefully you can now still hear me? So I'm going to blindfold myself. And I'm doing this now so I don't have the clues as you stand up. I can't see where you put your hands. I can't see how you respond to what I'm saying. I can't see what the people next to you are doing either. If they know the answers to the question, that's always very helpful. I won't have those advantages, but strangely, this frees me up, and I want this to free you up as well, so if you didn't write a question but you wish that you had done, you can still take part. The point of writing the question is only that it just kind of gets a nice, clear, succinct wording in your head. So if you can just find a question in your head, make it clear and succinct, just send it to me, and I'll try and do this now without anything written down. So just start to form questions but send me your name as well. "My name is," whatever that last guy was, and "what's strange about my feet," or whatever the question was. So name and question. There is somebody already, I'm guessing you're quite near the front, because your name is quite clear. Feels like you're in the center at the front. OK, let me just ... Allan? Feels like there's an Allan. And you're going to be quite near the front, vaguely central, I think. Feels like it's coming from right there. There's like a man, maybe early 60s, something like that. Allan: Yes. DB: You've got a mic? Great, thank you. Allan, just say "stop" when I get to you so that I know where you are, where to face. Allan: Stop. DB: You a Capricorn? Allan: Yes. DB: So Allan has something in his head. Now, did you hear it, hear the reserve in his voice? It's going to be something really tricky. I think with you ... Just say "yes" again for me? Allan: Yes. DB: It's going to be either — no it's not. It's access, it's a password or access to something. Have you got something, just yes or no, with a password in your head? Allan: Yes. DB: A computer password, that sort of thing? Allan: Yes. DB: Excellent! (Laughter) In that case, I'm going to finish on this one. Let me —- If I get this right, they're all going to know what it is, and millions of people potentially. You will change it, won't you? Allan: Of course. (Laughter) DB: Just say "of course" again? Allan: Of course. DB: Alright. If it's a word — I imagine it's a word, right — just see the password written in front of you, big clear block capital letters, and as you look at it, think for me of a letter somewhere in the middle, don't say it out loud, just get a letter in your head that's in the middle. Have you got one? Allan: Yeah. DB: OK, stick with that for me. Ah, you changed it, OK. You changed your mind there. I think you settled on a — I think that's a "B", yes? Allan: No. I didn't. DB: Then it's an "I"? Allan: Correct. DB: But you had a B. Allan: Yes. DB: Yeah, he changed his mind. He changed his mind. (Laughter) So see it written there. Just keep saying it to yourself in your head. Oh, you play drums, don't you. Allan: I do. DB: Just get that out of your head, get that out of your head, just focus on this one thing for me. (Laughter) My job is to sell you a story, right? I try and do this to all of you, to get you to pay attention to one thing that I want you to find important, ignore other things that I want you to ignore, and then join up those narrative dots to tell yourself a certain story about what I'm doing, and this only works because we are story-forming creatures, which means we do this every day. We go out into this complex and subtle world full of a complex and subtle people like you and me, Allan, and we reduce them to these neat characters that fit whatever story we're telling ourselves, and we say, "She's insecure," "He's arrogant," "They can't be trusted." And these are just stories like the story that I can somehow read your mind. You're thinking of selling your company as well, aren't you, at the moment. Allan: Correct. DB: Which is something to do with skin? Allan: Yes. DB: Skin care or something like this. Allan: Uh, yes. DB: And I think the reason why I love doing this is that it reminds me at least to try and be more alive and alert to the complexity and the subtlety of what's real, that there's always other stuff going on that we don't know about, and it means we can get less stuck, we can be kinder to people because we can recognize there's always fear behind their stress, so we don't need to meet it as defensively, and we can start to see the stories for what they are and recognize that life isn't all about us. Oh! Your password, where are you? Where are you? Where is he? Allan: Right here. DB: Stand up for me. Your password is "ariboy." A-r-i-b-o-y? Is that right? Allan: That's correct. DB: Then thank you so much. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. (Applause) |
Infinity according to Jorge Luis Borges | null | TED-Ed | When Ireneo Funes looked at a glass of wine on a table, he saw “all the shoots, clusters, and grapes of the vine. He remembered the shapes of the clouds in the south at the dawn of the 30th of April of 1882, and he could compare them in his recollection with the marbled grain in the design of a leather-bound book which he had seen only once, and with the lines in the spray which an oar raised in the Rio Negro on the eve of the battle of the Quebrancho.” In the short story “Funes, the Memorious,” Jorge Luis Borges explores what it would be like to have a perfect memory. His character not only remembers everything he has ever seen, but every time he has seen it in perfect detail. These details are so overwhelming Funes has to spend his days in a dark room, and can only sleep by imagining a part of town he has never visited. According to Borges, Funes’s memories even rendered him incapable of real thought, because “To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes there were nothing but details.” Funes’ limitless memory was just one of Borges’s many explorations of infinity. Born in Argentina in 1899, he admired the revolutionaries of his mother’s family but took after his father’s bookish clan. His body of essays, poems, and stories, or, as he called them, ficciones pioneered the literary style of “lo real maravilloso,” known in English as Magical Realism— and each was just a few pages long. Though Borges was not interested in writing long books, he was an avid reader, recruiting friends to read to him after he went blind in middle age. He said his image of paradise was an infinite library, an idea he brought to life in “The library of Babel.” Built out of countless identical rooms, each containing the same number of books of the same length, the library of babel is its own universe. It contains every possible variation of text, so there are some profound books, but also countless tomes of complete gibberish. The narrator has spent his entire life wandering this vast labyrinth of information in a possibly futile search for meaning. Labyrinths appeared over and over in Borges’ work. In “The Garden of Forking Paths,” as Yu Tsun winds his way through country roads, he remembers a lost labyrinth built by one of his ancestors. Over the course of the story, he finds out the labyrinth is not a physical maze but a novel. And this novel reveals that the real Garden of Forking Paths is time: in every instant, there are infinite possible courses of action. And as one moment follows another, each possibility begets another set of divergent futures. Borges laid out infinite expanses of time in his labyrinths, but he also explored the idea of condensing all of time into a single moment. In “The God’s Script,” at the very beginning of the world the god writes exactly one message into the spots of the jaguars, who then “love and reproduce without end, in caverns, in cane fields, on islands, in order that the last men might receive it.” The last man turns out to be a tenacious old priest who spends years memorizing and deciphering the jaguar’s spots, culminating in an epiphany where he finally understands the god’s message. Imprisoned deep underground, he has no one to share this meaning with, and it changes nothing about his circumstances, but he doesn’t mind: in that one moment, he has experienced all the experience of everyone who has ever existed. Reading Borges, you might catch a glimpse of infinity too. |
What does it mean to be a refugee? | {0: 'Benedetta Berti studies how conflicts impact civilians.'} | TED-Ed | Around the globe, there are approximately 60 million people who have been forced to leave their homes to escape war, violence, and persecution. The majority of them have become internally displaced persons, which means they have fled their homes but are still within their own countries. Others have crossed a border and sought shelter outside of their own countries. They are commonly referred to as refugees. But what exactly does that term mean? The world has known refugees for millennia, but the modern definition was drafted in the UN's 1951 Convention relating to the status of refugees in response to mass persecutions and displacements of the Second World War. It defines a refugee as someone who is outside their country of nationality, and is unable to return to their home country because of well-founded fears of being persecuted. That persecution may be due to their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, and is often related to war and violence. Today, roughly half the world's refugees are children, some of them unaccompanied by an adult, a situation that makes them especially vulnerable to child labor or sexual exploitation. Each refugee's story is different, and many must undergo dangerous journeys with uncertain outcomes. But before we get to what their journeys involve, let's clear one thing up. There's a lot of confusion regarding the difference between the terms "migrant" and "refugee." "Migrants" usually refers to people who leave their country for reasons not related to persecution, such as searching for better economic opportunities or leaving drought-stricken areas in search of better circumstances. There are many people around the world who have been displaced because of natural disasters, food insecurities, and other hardships, but international law, rightly or wrongly, only recognizes those fleeing conflict and violence as refugees. So what happens when someone flees their country? Most refugee journeys are long and perilous with limited access to shelter, water, or food. Since the departure can be sudden and unexpected, belongings might be left behind, and people who are evading conflict often do not have the required documents, like visas, to board airplanes and legally enter other countries. Financial and political factors can also prevent them from traveling by standard routes. This means they can usually only travel by land or sea, and may need to entrust their lives to smugglers to help them cross borders. Whereas some people seek safety with their families, others attempt passage alone and leave their loved ones behind with the hopes of being reunited later. This separation can be traumatic and unbearably long. While more than half the world's refugees are in cities, sometimes the first stop for a person fleeing conflict is a refugee camp, usually run by the United Nations Refugee Agency or local governments. Refugee camps are intended to be temporary structures, offering short-term shelter until inhabitants can safely return home, be integrated to the host country, or resettle in another country. But resettlement and long-term integration options are often limited. So many refugees are left with no choice but to remain in camps for years and sometimes even decades. Once in a new country, the first legal step for a displaced person is to apply for asylum. At this point, they are an asylum seeker and not officially recognized as a refugee until the application has been accepted. While countries by and large agree on one definition of refugee, every host country is responsible for examining all requests for asylum and deciding whether applicants can be granted the status of refugee. Different countries guidelines can vary substantially. Host countries have several duties towards people they have recognized as refugees, like the guarantee of a minimum standard of treatment and non-discrimination. The most basic obligation towards refugees is non-refoulement, a principle preventing a nation from sending an individual to a country where their life and freedom are threatened. In reality, however, refugees are frequently the victims of inconsistent and discriminatory treatment. They're increasingly obliged to rebuild their lives in the face of xenophobia and racism. And all too often, they aren't permitted to enter the work force and are fully dependent on humanitarian aid. In addition, far too many refugee children are out of school due to lack of funding for education programs. If you go back in your own family history, chances are you will discover that at a certain point, your ancestors were forced from their homes, either escaping a war or fleeing discrimination and persecution. It would be good of us to remember their stories when we hear of refugees currently displaced, searching for a new home. |
A new way to get every child ready for kindergarten | {0: 'As the cofounder and executive director of Waterford UPSTART, Claudia Miner has one goal: to help families overcome barriers and prepare their children for lifelong learning.'} | TED2019 | I'm an historian. And what I love about being an historian is it gives you perspective. Today, I'd like to bring that perspective to education in the United States. About the only thing people can agree on is that the most strategic time for a child to start learning is early. Over 50 years ago, there was a watershed moment in early education in the US called "Head Start." Now, historians love watersheds because it makes it so easy to talk about what came before and what's happened since. Before Head Start, basically nothing. With Head Start, we began to get our nation's most at-risk children ready for school. Since Head Start, we've made strides, but there are still 2.2 million children in the US without access to early learning, or more than half of the four-year-olds in the country. That's a problem. But the bigger problem is what we know happens to those children. At-risk children who reach school without basic skills are 25 percent more likely to drop out, 40 percent more likely to become teen parents and 60 percent less likely to go to college. So if we know how important early education is, why aren't all children getting it? There are barriers that the solutions we've come up with to date simply can't overcome. Geography: think rural and remote. Transportation: think working parents everywhere. Parent choice: no state requires a four-year-old to go to school. And cost: the average cost for a state to educate a preschooler is five thousand dollars a year. So am I just going to keep talking about problems? No. Today, I want to tell you about a cost-effective, technology-delivered, kindergarten-readiness program that can be done in the home. It's called UPSTART, and more than 60,000 preschoolers in the US have already used it. Now, I know what you might be thinking: here's another person throwing tech at a national problem. And you'd be partially right. We develop early learning software designed to individualize instruction, so children can learn at their own pace. To do that, we rely on experts from fields ranging from reading to sociology to brain science development to all aspects of early learning, to tell us what the software should do and look like. Here's an example. (Video) Zero (sings to the tune of "Day-O"): Zero! Zero! Zero is the number that's different from the others. Seagulls: Zero is a big, round "O." Zero: It's not like one, I'm sure you'll discover. Seagulls: Zero is a big, round "O." (Laughter) Claudia Miner: That is "The Zero Song." (Laughter) And here are Odd Todd and Even Steven to teach you some things about numbers. And here are the Word Birds, and they're going to show you when you blend letter sounds together, you can form words. You can see that instruction is short, colorful and catchy, designed to capture a child's attention. But there's another piece to UPSTART that makes it different and more effective. UPSTART puts parents in charge of their children's education. We believe, with the right support, all parents can get their children ready for school. Here's how it works. This is the kindergarten readiness checklist from a state. And almost every state has one. We go to parents wherever they are, and we conduct a key in-person group training. And we tell them the software can check every reading, math and science box, but they're going to be responsible for motor skills and self-help skills, and together, we're going to work on social emotional learning. Now, we know this is working because we have a 90-percent completion rate for the program. Last year, that translated into 13,500 children "graduating," with diplomas, from UPSTART. And the results have been amazing. We have an external evaluation that shows our children have two to three times the learning gains as children who don't participate in the program. We have a random control trial that shows strong evidence of effectiveness, and we even have a longitudinal study that shows our children's gains last into third and fourth grade, the highest grades the children had achieved at the time. Those are academic gains. But another study has shown that our children's social emotional gains are equal to those of children attending public and private preschool. The majority of the 60,000 children who have participated in UPSTART to date have been from Utah. But we have replicated our results with African-American children in Mississippi — this is Kingston and his mother; with English language learners in Arizona — this is Daisy and her family; with refugee children in Philadelphia — this is my favorite graduation photo; and with Native American children from some of the most remote parts of the United States. This is Cherise, and this is where she lives in Monument Valley. Now, there are skeptics about UPSTART. Some people don't believe young children should have screen time. To them, we say: UPSTART's usage requirement of 15 minutes a day, five days a week, is well within the hour-a-day recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics for four-year-olds. Some people believe only site-based preschool can work, and to them, we say: site-based preschool is great, but if you can't get a child there or if a parent won't send a child there, isn't a technology-delivered, results-based option a great alternative? And we love working with site-based preschools. Right now, there are 800 children in Mississippi going to Head Start during the day and doing UPSTART at night with their families. Our audacious idea is to take UPSTART across the country — not to replace anything; we want to serve children who otherwise would not have access to early education. We have the guts to take on the skeptics, we have the energy to do the work, and we have a plan. It is the role of the states to educate their children. So first we will use philanthropy dollars to go into a state to pilot the program and get data. Every state believes it's unique and wants to know that the program will work with its children before investing. Then we identify key leaders in the state to help us champion UPSTART as an option for unserved children. And together, we go to state legislatures to transition UPSTART from philanthropy to sustainable and scalable state funding. That plan has worked — (Applause) Thanks. Thank you. That plan has worked in three states to date: Utah, Indiana and South Carolina. We've also piloted the program in a number of states and identified champions. Next, we're moving to states with the greatest geographic barriers to work the plan, and then on to states that already have early education but may not be getting great academic results or great parent buy-in to participate. From there, we go to the states that are going to require the most data and work to convince, and we'll hope our momentum helps turn the tide there. We will serve a quarter of a million children in five years, and we will ensure that states continue to offer UPSTART to their children. Here's how you can help: for two thousand dollars, we can provide a child with UPSTART, a computer and internet, and that child will be part of the pilot that makes certain other children get UPSTART in the future. We also need engaged citizens to go to their government and say just how easy it can be to get children ready for school. You wouldn't be here if you weren't an engaged citizen, so we're asking for your help. Now, will all of us this make UPSTART a watershed moment in early education? I believe together we can make it one. But I can tell you without a doubt that UPSTART is a watershed moment in the life of a child who otherwise would not be ready for school. Thank you. (Applause) |
Ancient Rome's most notorious doctor | null | TED-Ed | In the middle of the 16th century, a talented young anatomist named Andreas Vesalius made a shocking discovery: the most famous human anatomy texts in the world were wrong. They not only failed to account for many details of the human body, they also described the organs of apes and other mammals. While Vesalius knew he was right, announcing these errors would mean challenging Galen of Pergamon– the most renowned physician in medical history. But who was this towering figure? And why did doctors working more than 1,300 years later so revere and fear him? Born in 129 CE, Galen left home as a teen to scour the Mediterranean for medical wisdom. He returned home a gifted surgeon with a passion for anatomy and a penchant for showmanship. He gleefully entered public anatomy contests, eager to show up his fellow physicians. In one demonstration, he caused a pig to lose its voice by tying off one of its nerves. In another, he disemboweled a monkey and challenged his colleagues to repair it. When they couldn’t, he did. These grizzly feats won him a position as surgeon to the city’s gladiators. Eventually, he would leave the arena to become the personal physician to four Roman Emperors. While his peers debated symptoms and their origins, Galen obsessively studied anatomy. He was convinced that each organ had a specific function. Since the Roman government largely prohibited working with human cadavers, Galen conducted countless dissections of animals instead. Even with this constraint, his exhaustive investigations yielded some remarkably accurate conclusions. One of Galen’s most important contributions was the insight that the brain, not the heart, controlled the body. He confirmed this theory by opening the cranium of a living cow. By applying pressure to different parts of the brain, he could link various regions to specific functions. Other experiments allowed him to distinguish sensory from motor nerves, establish that urine was made in the kidneys, and deduce that respiration was controlled by muscles and nerves. But these wild experiments also produced extraordinary misconceptions. Galen never realized that blood cycles continuously throughout the body. Instead, he believed the liver constantly produces an endless supply of blood, which gets entirely depleted on its one-way trip to the organs. Galen is also credited with solidifying the popular theory of the Four Humours. Introduced by Hippocrates centuries earlier, this misguided hypothesis attributed most medical problems to an imbalance in four bodily fluids called humours. To correct the balance of these fluids, doctors employed dangerous treatments like bloodletting and purging. Informed by his poor understanding of the circulatory system, Galen was a strong proponent of these treatments, despite their sometimes lethal consequences. Unfortunately, Galen’s ego drove him to believe that all his discoveries were of the utmost importance. He penned treatises on everything from anatomy to nutrition to bedside manner, meticulously cataloguing his writings to ensure their preservation. Over the next 13 centuries, Galen’s prolific collection dominated all other schools of medical thought. His texts became the standard works taught to new generations of doctors, who in turn, wrote new essays extolling Galen’s ideas. Even doctors who actually dissected human cadavers would bafflingly repeat Galen’s mistakes, despite seeing clear evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, the few practitioners bold enough to offer conflicting opinions were either ignored or ridiculed. For 1,300 years, Galen’s legacy remained untouchable– until renaissance anatomist Vesalius spoke out against him. As a prominent scientist and lecturer, his authority influenced many young doctors of his time. But even then, it took another hundred years for an accurate description of blood flow to emerge, and two hundred more for the theory of the Four Humours to fade. Hopefully, today we can reap the benefits of Galen’s experiments without attributing equal credence to his less accurate ideas. But perhaps just as valuable is the reminder that science is an ever-evolving process, which should always place evidence above ego. |
How we can improve maternal healthcare -- before, during and after pregnancy | {0: 'Elizabeth Howell is working to address maternal mortality in the United States.'} | TEDMED 2018 | It was chaos as I got off the elevator. I was coming back on duty as a resident physician to cover the labor and delivery unit. And all I could see was a swarm of doctors and nurses hovering over a patient in the labor room. They were all desperately trying to save a woman's life. The patient was in shock. She had delivered a healthy baby boy a few hours before I arrived. Suddenly, she collapsed, became unresponsive, and had profuse uterine bleeding. By the time I got to the room, there were multiple doctors and nurses, and the patient was lifeless. The resuscitation team tried to bring her back to life, but despite everyone's best efforts, she died. What I remember most about that day was the father's piercing cry. It went through my heart and the heart of everyone on that floor. This was supposed to be the happiest day of his life, but instead it turned out to be the worst day. I wish I could say this tragedy was an isolated incident, but sadly, that's not the case. Every year in the United States, somewhere between 700 and 900 women die from a pregnancy-related cause. The shocking part of this story is that our maternal mortality rate is actually higher than all other high-income countries, and our rates are far worse for women of color. Our rate of maternal mortality actually increased over the last decade, while other countries reduced their rates. And the biggest paradox of all? We spend more on health care than any other country in the world. Well, around the same time in residency that this new mother lost her life, I became a mother myself. And even with all of my background and training in the field, I was taken aback by how little attention was paid to delivering high-quality maternal health care. And I thought about what that meant, not just for myself but for so many other women. Maybe it's because my dad was a civil rights attorney and my parents were socially conscious and demanded that we stand up for what we believe in. Or the fact that my parents were born in Jamaica, came to the United States and were able to realize the American Dream. Or maybe it was my residency training, where I saw firsthand how poorly so many low-income women of color were treated by our healthcare system. For whatever the reason, I felt a responsibility to stand up, not just for myself, but for all women, and especially those marginalized by our healthcare system. And I decided to focus my career on improving maternal health care. So what's killing mothers? Cardiovascular disease, hemorrhage, high blood pressure causing seizures and strokes, blood clots and infection are some of the major causes of maternal mortality in this country. But a maternal death is only the tip of the iceberg. For every death, over a hundred women suffer a severe complication related to pregnancy and childbirth, resulting in over 60,000 women every year having one of these events. These complications, called severe maternal morbidity, are on the rise in the United States, and they're life-altering. It's estimated that somewhere between 1.5 and two percent of the four million deliveries that occur every year in this country are associated with one of these events. That is five or six women every hour having a blood clot, a seizure, a stroke, receiving a blood transfusion, having end-organ damage such as kidney failure, or some other tragic event. Now, the part of this story that's frankly unforgivable is the fact that 60 percent of these deaths and severe complications are thought to be preventable. When I say 60 percent are preventable, I mean there are concrete steps and standard procedures that we could implement that could prevent these bad outcomes from occurring and save women's lives. And it doesn't require fancy new technology. We just have to apply what we know and ensure equal standards between hospitals. For example, if a pregnant woman in labor has really high blood pressure and we treat her with the right antihypertensive medication in a timely fashion, we can prevent stroke. If we accurately track blood loss during delivery, we can detect a hemorrhage sooner and save a woman's life. We could actually lower the rates of these catastrophic events tomorrow, but it requires that we value the quality of care we deliver to pregnant women before, during and after pregnancy. If we raise quality of care universally to what is supposed to be the standard, we could bring the rates of these deaths and severe complications way down. Well, there is some good news. There are some success stories. There are some places that have actually adopted these standards, and it's really making a difference. A few years ago, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists joined forces with other healthcare organizations, researchers like myself and community organizations. They wanted to implement standard care practices in hospitals and health systems throughout the country. And the vehicle they're using is a program called the Alliance for Innovation in Maternal Health, the AIM program. Their goal is to lower maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity rates through quality and safety initiatives across the country. The group has developed a number of safety bundles that target some of the most preventable causes of a maternal death. The AIM program currently has the potential to reach over 50 percent of US births. So what's in a safety bundle? Evidence-based practices, protocols, procedures, medications, equipment and other items targeting these conditions. Let's take the example of a hemorrhage bundle. For a hemorrhage, you need a cart that has everything a doctor or nurse might need in an emergency: an IV line, an oxygen mask, medications, checklists, other equipment. Then you need something to measure blood loss: sponges and pads. And instead of just eyeballing it, the doctors and nurses collect these sponges and pads and either weigh them or use newer technology to accurately assess how much blood has been lost. The hemorrhage bundle also includes crises protocols for massive transfusions and regular trainings and drills. Now, California has been a leader in the use of these types of bundles, and that's why California saw a 21 percent reduction in near death from hemorrhage among hospitals that implemented this bundle in the first year. Yet the use of these bundles across the country is spotty or missing. Just like the fact that the use of evidence-based practices and the emphasis on safety differs from one hospital to the next, quality of care differs. And quality of care differs greatly for women of color in the United States. Black women who deliver in this country are three to four times more likely to suffer a pregnancy-related death than are white women. This statistic is true for all black women who deliver in this country, whether they were born in the United States or born in another country. Many want to think that income differences drive these disparities, but it goes beyond class. A black woman with a college education is nearly twice as likely to die as compared to a white woman with less than a high school education. And she is two to three times more likely to suffer a severe pregnancy complication with her delivery. Now, I was always taught to think that education was our salvation, but in this case, it's simply not true. This black-white disparity is the largest disparity among all population perinatal health measures, according to the CDC. And these disparities are even more pronounced in some of our cities. For example, in New York City, a black woman is eight to 12 times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than is a white woman. Now, I think many of you are probably familiar with the heart-wrenching story of Dr. Shalon Irving, a CDC epidemiologist who died following childbirth. Her story was reported in ProPublica and NPR a little less than a year ago. Recently, I was at a conference and I had the privilege of hearing her mother speak. She brought the entire audience to tears. Shalon was a brilliant epidemiologist, committed to studying racial and ethnic disparities in health. She was 36 years old, this was her first baby, and she was African-American. Now, Shalon did have a complicated pregnancy, but she delivered a healthy baby girl and was discharged from the hospital. Three weeks later, she died from complications of high blood pressure. Shalon was seen four or five times by healthcare professionals in those three weeks. She was not listened to, and the severity of her condition was not recognized. Now, Shalon's story is just one of many stories about racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care in the United States, and there's a growing recognition that the social determinants of health, such as racism, poverty, education, segregated housing, contribute to these disparities. But Shalon's story highlights an additional underlying cause: quality of care. Lack of standards in postpartum care. Shalon was seen multiple times by clinicians in those three weeks, and she still died. Quality of care in the setting of childbirth is an underlying cause of racial and ethnic disparities in maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity in the United States, and it's something we can address now. Research by our team and others has documented that, for a variety of reasons, black women tend to deliver in a specific set of hospitals, and those hospitals often have worse outcomes for both black and white women, regardless of patient risk factors. This is true overall in the United States, where about three quarters of all black women deliver in a specific set of hospitals, while less than one-fifth of white women deliver in those same hospitals. In New York City, a woman's risk of having a life-threatening complication during delivery can be six times higher in one hospital than another. Not surprisingly, black women are more likely to deliver in hospitals with worse outcomes. In fact, differences in delivery hospital explain nearly one-half of the black-white disparity. While we must address social determinants of health if we're ever going to truly have equitable health care in this country, many of these are deep-seated and they will take some time to resolve. In the meantime, we can tackle quality of care. Providing high-quality care across the care continuum means providing access to safe and reliable contraception throughout women's reproductive lives. Before pregnancy, it means providing preconception care, so we can manage chronic illness and optimize health. During pregnancy, it includes high-quality prenatal and delivery care so we can produce healthy moms and babies. And finally, after pregnancy, it includes postpartum and inter-pregnancy care so we can set moms up to have a healthy next baby and a healthy life. And it can literally spell the difference between life and death, as it did in the case of Maria, who checked into the hospital after having an elevated blood pressure during a prenatal visit. Maria was 40, and this was her second pregnancy. During Maria's first pregnancy that had happened two years earlier, she also didn't feel so well in the last few weeks of her pregnancy, and she had a few elevated blood pressures, but nobody seemed to pay attention. They just said, "Maria, don't worry, you'll be fine. This is your first pregnancy. You're a little nervous." But it did not end well for Maria last time. She seized during labor. Well, this time her team really listened. They asked smart and probing questions. Her doctor counseled her about the signs and symptoms of preeclampsia and explained that if she was not feeling well, she needed to come in and be seen. And this time Maria came in, and her doctor immediately sent her to the hospital. At the hospital, her doctor ordered urgent lab tests. They hooked her up to multiple different monitors and paid special attention to her blood pressure, the fetal heart rate tracing and gave her IV medication to prevent a seizure. And when Maria's blood pressure got so high it put her at risk for a stroke, her doctors and nurses jumped into action. They repeated her blood pressure in 15 minutes and declared a hypertensive emergency. They gave her the right IV medication according to the latest correct protocol. They worked smoothly together as a coordinated team and successfully lowered her blood pressure. As a result, what could have been a tragedy became a success story. Maria's dangerous symptoms were controlled, and she delivered a healthy baby girl. And before Maria was discharged from the hospital, her doctor counseled her again about the signs and symptoms of preeclampsia, the importance of having her blood pressure checked, especially in this first week postpartum and gave her education about postpartum health and what to expect. And in the weeks and months that followed, naturally, Maria had follow-up visits with her pediatrician to check in on her baby's health. But just as important, she had follow-up visits with her ob-gyn to check in on her health, her blood pressure, and her cares and concerns as a new mother. This is what high-quality care across the care continuum looks like, and this is how it can look. If every pregnant woman in every community received this kind of high-quality care and delivered at facilities that utilized standard care practices, our maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity rates would plummet. Our international ranking would no longer be an embarrassment. But the truth is, we've had decades of unacceptably high rates of maternal death and life-threatening complications during delivery and decades of devastating consequences for moms, babies and families, and we have not been moved to action. The recent media attention on our poor performance on maternal mortality has helped the public to understand: high-quality maternal health care is within reach. The question is: Are we as a society ready to value pregnant women from every community? For my part, I'm doing everything I can to ensure that when we do, we have the tools and evidence base ready to move forward. Thank you. (Applause) |
A (not so) scientific experiment on laughter | {0: 'Anthony McCarten is an award winning filmmaker, television writer, novelist, and playwright.'} | TEDxMünchen | Hello. It is said that you're asked to come and give a TEDx talk twice in your career: once on the way up, and once on the way down. (Laughter) And may I say, "It's great to be back." (Laughter) Laughter - that is our theme today. Laughter - I may not be able to produce much of it, but will try to shine some light on it, and ask the question: what is it, and what is its role in our lives and in our society? I want to tell you four jokes today. That's pretty much it. I'm going to tell you four jokes, and we will derive whatever lessons we may from these four jokes. Before I tell you the first joke, as we are in Munich, I'd like to conduct a little experiment. Some terrible things are said about the German sense of humor specifically that you don't have one. (Laughter) And I'd like to put this horrible assumption to the test and do an experiment. So when I tell this first joke, I would ask that only the German people here respond. (Laughter) To either laugh or not laugh, as you see fit. But please, don't force yourself to laugh to skew the results. (Laughter) This is a scientific experiment, it's terribly serious. So here is the first joke. There is a man, he is dying in his bed in his home (Laughter) and he smells, coming from the kitchen, the most sublime smell. It's the smell of his favorite chocolate chip cookies. And with his last strength, he gets out of bed, and he goes to the kitchen, where his wife of 50 years, is cooking these beautiful chocolate chip cookies. And they are on a plate of four of them, just out of the oven. And with his last human strength, he reaches over to take one of the biscuits, and his wife sees him, she rushes over, she slaps his hand, and she says, "No, they are for the funeral." (Laughter) Newsflash, "TEDx talks reveals finally that the Germans have a sense of humor. (Laughter) So, now a statement, here is a statement for you: those who lose the power to laugh, lose the power to think. If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think. If I can put that another way, the smartest people I know in the world are the funniest. The smarter they are, the funnier. And why should that be? For me, the answer is that seriousness is not the correct response to the absurdity of life. The human comedy that would create beings, such as we, who are sophisticated enough to ask the huge questions, "Why are we here?", "Who are we?", but be really forever denied an answer and left in a state of existential tension which we seek to relieve in various ways, and one of these, the most effective for me is laughter. Two old couples are walking down the street. Two women are walking in front of the two men, and one of the men says to the other, "What did you do last night?" And the second man says, "Oh, I went to this restaurant. It was amazing. The food was fantastic, and the prices were great. Absolutely super." And the first one says, "Wow, sounds great. What was the name of the restaurant?" And the second man says, "Oh! What's the name of that flower that smells great? It's red, and on the stems, there are little thorns." And the first men says, "Well, that would be the rose." And the second man says, "Of course." "Rose, what was the name of that restaurant we went to last night?" (Laughter) (Applause) For me, that joke is as priceless as a painting by Monet or a sonnet by Shakespeare. For me, laughter has always been extremely important. Seriousness - I hope you will agree with this statement - seriousness is dangerous. Seriousness is dangerous, not just for ourselves but also in society. And why should that be? I think, it's partly that seriousness, the forces of seriousness, of humorlessness, would limit us to narrow thinking, rigid ideology, cruelty, and a tunnel vision whereas humor obliges us to have an open mind. It obliges empathy and forgiveness. Humor always forgives. The relationship between humor and seriousness has long been understood. Winston Churchill, a famous wit, once said, "You cannot hope to understand the most serious things in life, unless you understand the most humorous." The American Civil Rights activist Clarence Darrow wrote, "If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think." If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think. These two men were dealing with politics at a very, very high level, and they knew very well that sometimes only humor can break down entrenched positions and rigid ideology. There was a flight, a Lufthansa flight from Munich to New York. The flight was going very well. It was almost in New York, and then there was a tremendous explosion from the right wing of the aircraft, and the captain's voice came over the speaker, and he said, (with German accent) "Ladies and gentlemen, please, we have a problem with the number three engine on the right wing of the aircraft. Please do not panic, we have four engines on this aircraft. We have... (explosion sound) We also now have a problem with the number one engine, but we have two very good... (explosion sound) We have one engine, but I assure you the pilot is most capable of flying the aircraft with only... (explosion sound) Ladies and gentlemen, we're about to make a landing on the water. (Laughter) I will speak to you from the water. Please do not panic." The Lufthansa pilot, of course, makes a spectacular landing on the water. And then, the captain's voice comes over the speaker again, and he says, "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for following my instructions. Now, please listen very, very carefully to what I am about to say. All those of you who can swim, please line up on the right wing of the aircraft. All those of you who cannot swim, line up on the left wing of the aircraft, and I will speak to you from the water." So they do everything he says, and they see finally a little captain in a rubber boat rowing to the front of the aircraft, and he has a loudspeaker, and he says, "Ladies and gentlemen, again, I congratulate you for following my instructions. Now please listen carefully to what I am about to say. First, those of you on the right wing of the aircraft, New York is this way. (Laughter) It is only three nautical miles, the water is warm, and the current is with you. Good luck. Those of you on the left wing of the aircraft, 'Thank you for flying Lufthansa.'" (Laughter) (Applause) Why do we laugh? Why did you just laugh? Why do any of us laugh? Well, this question has perplexed philosophers for thousands of years. And the best of them: Plato, Freud, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche. Here is what they came up with. They said that the reason we laugh is our ancient response to the passing of animal danger. That's the best they could come up with, that we laugh because it's our ancient response to the passing of animal danger, from which I think, people, we could conclude that asking a philosopher to define comedy is like asking Stevie Wonder to help you find your car keys. (Laughter) Just as you cannot have a mathematical proof that isn't built from pure mathematics, you cannot have a theory of laughter that isn't funny. So let's try again. Let's try here today to define comedy, better than Plato, and Nietzsche, and Freud. I've looked around for the oldest joke I could find, and I found one. It's 1,000 years old. At the end of the first millennium, this was knocking them dead (Laughter) and it goes like this. There was a funeral in a church. You have to imagine a medieval church, and everyone is weeping in great tears, except one man. And the priest notices that one man isn't crying, and at the end of the service, the priest goes up to the one man, and he says, "Did you know the dead man?" The men says, "Yes, I did." And he said, "Well, why aren't you crying?" And he said, "Well, I would have, but I don't belong to this parish." You'll have to accept that 1,000 years ago that was a killer. (Laughter) But it does teach us something interesting about comedy: that to understand a joke, you have to belong to the parish. Let me tell you what I mean. To understand a joke, you have to belong to the parish, that community of understanding, and if you feel you belong to that community of understanding, of getting the joke, then you will laugh at almost anything that reinforces your sense of belonging to that group. Jokes connect us, they embrace us. And in sheer gratitude for that embrace, our mouths open, our chests fill with air, and our bodies do something utterly extraordinary: they make a noise that no other creature has, or will ever make in the entire history of the universe — laughter. And what a privilege it is to be able to make someone else laugh. So when you make someone else laugh, you're not just being funny. It's not a trivial thing. You are inducers of hope, embracers of strangers, eradicators of hopelessness, you are physicians, and peacemakers. I'd like to read you a little statement. It's a quote, and I wrote it down. It goes like this, "Comedy is the clash of one point of view colliding with another, one sensibility with another, high with low, East with West, light with dark, old with the young; a collision of two worldviews of two civilizations; and like two pieces of flint being struck together, a life-saving spark is given off and with this spark, you can light a fire." I thought that was a wonderful quote. I wrote it this morning. (Laughter) I'd like to give you an example of how humor can be used to break down rigid thinking and entrenched positions. In 1995, during the Second Intifada, Palestinian Intifada, I was in London, and I went to see the great Jewish comedian Jackie Mason. Terrific, very controversial in some of his comments. He was doing his normal show, very funny, and then at one point he said, he wanted to become very serious, and of course, if you know Jackie Mason, the audience became very anxious that Jackie would say one of his very controversial things, and, in fact, he did. He said, "I want to speak about the Palestinian question," and you could feel the tension in the audience rose tremendously. And he said - this is what he said. He said, "I believe that Benjamin Netanyahu wants peace. I believe this. In fact, I think he would give back the West Bank to the Palestinian people this very day, this very day; but he can't, because it's already in his wife's name." (Laughter) And the laughter in this primarily Jewish audience was so pronounced, it went on for five minutes. It was hysterical. And in that five minutes, you couldn't help but feel that the possibility of peace had been advanced in some way, that somehow, compromise was just a little closer at hand, and that's what laughter can do. If we can laugh together, we can live together. You know what I think the secret of life is? Some people would say, it's knowledge, but for me we don't seem to learn very much in our human evolution. History is a wonderful teacher, but we seem to be very poor students. For me, I think, it's laughter. Laughter, the husband of truth, the arch enemy of dogma, transmuting the dross of existence into gold. Someone asked me recently, "How do you want to die? Do you have any ideas?" And I thought for a moment, and I said, "I think I want to die like my father did, quietly, in his sleep, not screaming like his passengers." (Laughter) The final line of any joke is called the punchline in English, and in German, in "Deutsch" I believe, it's "die Poente." It's the line where the miracle happens; the line where we're surprised by something that is revealed, and from that surprise is released joy. And my parting wish for you all here today is that your own life be a joke. (Laughter) Yes, I want all your lives to be a joke, and that they have punchlines; that they have (German) "die Poente," as good as "No, they are for the funeral," "It's already in his wife's name," "Not screaming like his passengers," and "Thank you for flying Lufthansa." Stay funny. Keep laughing. Peace. (Applause) |
How a typeface helped launch Apollo | {0: "Douglas Thomas's research explores the power of fonts at the intersection of design and culture."} | TEDxSanFrancisco | In 1969 in July, three Americans launched into space. Now, they went to the surface of the moon, they famously made the great leap for mankind. Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, they walked on the surface, they planted this flag. It's rightly celebrated as a moment that in America we say is a triumph. We think it was this amazing accomplishment. They didn't just leave behind this flag, though. They also left behind a plaque. This plaque is a beautiful object, and one that I want to talk to you a little bit about. First, you might notice that there's two globes, representing all of earth. And then there's this beautiful statement: "We came in peace for all mankind." Now, at first, this is just nice poetic language, but it's also set in a typeface that's perfect for this moment. It seems industrial, it seems engineered. It also is the best possible name you could come up with for something on the moon: Futura. Now, I want to talk to you about fonts, and why this typeface is perfect for this moment. But it's actually more than just ceremonial. Now, when all of you arrived here today, you actually had to think about fonts. You might not realize it, but you're all unconscious experts on typography. Typography is the study of how fonts inhabit our world, they're the visual language of the words we use. Here's the thing that's funny about this, though. I know you're probably not like me, you're not a font nerd, maybe some of you are, but if you're not, that's alright, because I might spend hours every day trying to pick the perfect typeface for the perfect project, or I might spend thousands of dollars every year, trying to get ones with the right features. But all of you actually spend hours every day, evaluating fonts. If you don't believe me, think about how you got here. Each of you had to judge by the signs and maybe even on your phone, which signals to trust and which to ignore. You were evaluating fonts. Or maybe when you're just buying a new product, you have to think about whether something is expensive or cheap or hard to get or easy to find. And the funny thing about it is, this may not seem extraordinary to you, but the moment you see something out of place, you recognize it right away. (Laughter) The thing I love about typography, and why I love fonts and why I love Futura, is that, for me, what I study is everywhere. Every street that I walk down, every book that I pick up, every thing that I read is filled with the thing I love. Now, once you understand the history and what happens with typography, you actually have a history of everything before you. And this is the typeface Futura. As previously we've discussed, this is modernism in miniature. This is a way in which modernism infiltrated this country and became perhaps the most popular, or promiscuous typeface, of the twentieth century. "Less is more," right, these are the aphorisms of modernism. And in the visual arts, the same thing happened. Let's focus on the essentials, focus on the basic shapes, focus on geometry. So Futura actually holds this to its core. You might notice that the shapes inherent in Futura have circles, squares, triangles. Some of the shapes are all based on circles, like the O, D and C, or others have this pointed apex of the triangle. Others just look like they might have been made with a ruler or a compass. They feel geometric, they feel mathematic, precise. In fact, this whole system carries through with the way that the typeface was designed. To not look like it was made like other typefaces, to be something new. Here it is in the lightweight, the medium weight and the bold weight. The whole family has different things to commend to it. This was a conscious break from the past, something that looked like it was made by a machine, and not by hand. When I say not made by hand, this is what I mean. This is what we think about maybe, when you might create something with a calligraphic brush or a pen. That there's thicks and thins. And even more traditional typefaces, say like a Garamond, holds vestiges of this old system in which you can see the A where it get little bit thinner at the top and thicker down below, because it's trying to look like someone had made it by hand. But Futura, in contrast, is designed to look like no one had touched it at all, that this was made by a machine, for a machine age, for an industrial age. There's actually a sleight of hand here that Paul Renner, the designer who made this in 1927, employed. If you look at the way in which the circular shape joins with the vertical shaft, you'll notice that it tapers just every so slightly. And this is one of hundreds of ways in which this typeface was designed to look geometrically perfect, even though it's mathematically not. And this is what typeface designers do all the time to make typefaces work, every day. Now, there were other designers doing this at the same time in Europe and America. These are a few other excellent examples from Europe, trying to create something new for the new age, a new moment in time. These are some other ones in Germany that in some ways look very similar to Futura, maybe with higher waist or lower waist or different proportions. Then why did Futura take over the world? In this case, if you can read the titles there, some of these names don't quite roll off the tongue: Erbar, Kabel Light, Berthold-Grotesk, Elegant-Grotesk. These aren't exactly household names, are they? And so when you compare that to Futura, you realize that this was a really good choice by the marketing team. What's amazing about this name — you know, what's in this name is that this is a name that actually invokes hope and an idea about the future. And this isn't actually the word for future in German, it wasn't a German name, they actually picked something that would speak to a wider, larger audience, a universal audience. And when you compare it to what was being done in America — these are the typefaces from the same period in the United States in the 1920s, bold, brash, braggadocios. You almost think of this as exactly like what the stock market looked like when they were all going nuts in the 1920s. And you realize that Futura is doing something revolutionary. I want to step back and talk about an example of the typeface in use. So this is a magazine that we all probably know today, "Vanity Fair." This is what it looked like in 1929, in the summer. And in many ways, there's nothing wrong with this design. This is absolutely typical of the 1920s. There's a photograph of an important person, in this case Franklin Roosevelt, then-governor of New York. Everything seems centered, everything seems symmetrical. There's still a little bit of ornamentation, so this is still maybe having some vestiges of the painted lady and not fully modernistic. But everything seems kid of solid. There's even drop caps to help you get into the text. But this all changed very quickly and in October of 1929, a Berlin-based designer came and redesigned "Vanity Fair." And this is what it looks like with Futura. Instead of the governor now we have a photograph of an abstract, beautiful setting, in this case, the ocean. Instead of drop caps, there's nothing at all. And replaced with a centered layout is now asymmetry. And it gets even more radical the further you enter the magazine. In this case, even more dramatic asymmetry. In this case, illustrations by Pablo Picasso, moving across the page and breaking the gutter of the two pages. And there's something even more radical. If you look closely at the Futura, you might notice something. You might not pick it up at first, but there are no capital letters in the title or the captions on this page. You might not think that's very radical, but pick up any magazine, any book or go to any website, and I guarantee, you are not going to find it very easily. This is still a radical idea. And why is that radical? When we think about what capital letters denote, they denote something important, whether it's our names, or our titles. Or maybe even just the name of our corporations, or maybe our trademarks. Actually, in some ways, America's the home of capitalization. We love putting capitals in everything. (Laughter) But think about how radical this would be to introduce a magazine where you're taking away all the capital letters. This has maybe had the same political force that we now argue over things like pronouns in our society today. In the 1920s, this is just shortly after Soviet Russia had a communist revolution. And for them, this actually represented a socialist infiltration into America. All lowercase letters meant that this was an egalitarian, complete lowering of everything into one equal playing field. Now this is still kind of a radical idea. Think about how often you do capitalize something to have more power or prestige to it. So for them to do this was a way in which Futura was using this idea. Now, other designers were doing other things with Futura. Others brought other ideas of modernism with it, whether it was interesting new illustration styles, or interesting new collage types of illustration. Or even just new book covers, whether they were from Europe. But here's the funny thing. In the 1920s, if you wanted to use a new typeface, you couldn't just go download it onto your computer. You actually had to have pieces of lead. So for Americans who wanted to adopt this and make it part of their own system, something they could use in everyday typography, whether in ads or anything else, they actually had to have metal type. So being good American capitalists, what did we do? We made all sorts of copies. Ones that had nothing to do with the name Futura, but looked identical to it, whether it was Spartan or Tempo. And in fact, by the time that World War II started, American corporations were actually trying to boycott Nazi goods. But they said, "Go ahead and use our copies. Use 20th Century, use Spartan, use Vogue, use Tempo. These are identical to Futura." And in fact, for most people, they didn't even learn the new names, they just still called it all Futura. So America took this typeface in, conquered it and made it its own. So by the time World War II finishes, Americans are using this on everything, whether it be catalogs, or atlases, or encyclopedias or charts and graphs, or calendars, or even political material. And even the logo for a new expansion football team. And in fact, it was used even on some of the most important advertising of the 20th century. So it's in this context that when the US government was picking a typeface to use after World War II for new maps and new projects, they picked Futura. It wasn't an astounding choice, it wasn't a radical choice, it didn't have anything to do with communism. But in this case, it was used on some of the most important maps, so this one, an air force map in 1962, or used for the maps in Vietnam in '66. And so it wasn't a surprise that when astronauts first started the Mercury program, such as John Glenn orbiting the earth, that charts and maps that he was using were in Futura. And in fact, by the time Mercury morphed into Apollo, it started getting used more and more for more things. So in this case for a safety plan, or even starting to get used on instrument panels, or navigational aids. Or even on diagrams to show how the whole system worked. But here's the amazing thing, it didn't just get used for papers that they handed out to people. It started to get used for an interface, for an entire system that helped the astronauts know how to use the machine. NASA wasn't just one big corporation making everything. There was hundreds of contractors — Boeing, IBM, McDonnell Douglas — all making different machines. Now imagine if astronauts had to use different typefaces and different systems for each component they had in the space shuttles. This would have been impossible to navigate and there would have been a cognitive overload every time they had to open up a new system. So in this case, Futura being used on the interface helped them navigate complexity and make it more clear. And it wasn't just used on buttons, it was used on labels, and it was used on their food rations, and it was used on their tool kits. It was used on knobs and levers to tell them what to do. In fact, maybe even some of the places where they needed to have things that were complex be more simple to them, instructions were printed entirely in Futura, so that they could know what to do with that one moment. They didn't have to remember everything in their head, they could have it out there in the world to see and refer to. In this case, Futura helped make that system, which was already a very difficult and complex system, a little less complex. In fact, the very first or last thing an astronaut might have seen when they were entering or exiting the spacecraft would have been in Futura. One of my favorite examples of how Futura worked in this way is actually this camera. This is a Hasselblad that was made by the Swedish company. It's a perfectly good camera, some of you might have used one, it's prized by photographers as a really great camera. And you might notice, if you know anything about cameras, that there's some modifications made to it. In this case, there are stickers placed all over the film canisters, or other parts of the camera here. What this enabled NASA to do, was make something really great out of the astronauts. They're not photographers, they're not experts in art. But they could ensure that they would know how to use this camera because of the labels placed there in Futura. So in this case, Futura acquired and made sure that they had legitimacy with the things they were using. In this case to not take off the film before it would expose. Which, in this case, we would have never had some of the amazing photos we had without this label. When we see something as decorative as this, a ceremonial patch, or something like this plaque on the moon, we realize that Futura was more than just something ceremonial, something more than something that had just been picked for its design. In fact, Futura had authority, had legitimacy and had power because of this choice. There's one other thing I want to talk about in closing. And that is that Futura tells a story. And this is what I love about typefaces, is that all of them tell stories. And in this case, this typeface tells a very powerful story about assimilation, about something being taken into America and being made part of its culture. And that's one of the best and worst things America does, is we take things into our culture and we spit them out back again and claim them our own. And in this case, Futura mirrors exactly what happened with the technology undergirding the whole system. Futura was a German typeface, taken in, made into an American commodity. And so were the technologies: the rockets, the scientists all came from Germany as well. So in some ways, this German typeface on an American plaque perfectly mirrors what happened with the technology. And in this case, when you think about this story, you realize that typography on the moon represents legitimacy, represents authority, and this gave them, the astronauts, the power to get to the moon. Thank you. (Applause) |
The architectural wonder of impermanent cities | {0: 'Rahul Mehrotra is an architect working in India who focuses on institutional buildings and conservation of historic places. He is also a professor at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.\r\n'} | TED2019 | On this planet today, there are about 50 cities that are larger than five million people. I'm going to share with you the story of one such city, a city of seven million people, but a city that's a temporary megacity, an ephemeral megacity. This is a city that is built for a Hindu religious festival called Kumbh Mela, which occurs every 12 years, in smaller editions every four years, and takes place at the confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers in India. And for this festival, about 100 million people congregate. The reason so many people congregate here, is the Hindus believe that during the festival, the cycle every 12 years, if you bathe at the confluence of these two great rivers you are freed from rebirth. It's a really compelling idea, you are liberated from life as we know it. And this is what attracts these millions. And an entire megacity is built to house them. Seven million people live there for the 55 days, and the other 100 million visit. These are images from the same spot that we took over the 10 weeks that it takes for the city to emerge. After the monsoon, as the waters of these rivers begin to recede and the sand banks expose themselves, it becomes the terrain for the city. And by the 15th of January, starting 15th of October to 15th of January, in these weeks an entire city emerges. A city that houses seven million people. What is fascinating is this city actually has all the characteristics of a real megacity: a grid is employed to lay the city out. The urban system is a grid and every street on this city goes across the river on a pontoon bridge. Incredibly resilient, because if there's an unseasonal downpour or if the river changes course, the urban system stays intact, the city adjusts itself to this terrain which can be volatile. It also replicates all forms of physical, as well as social, infrastructure. Water supply, sewage, electricity, there are 1,400 CCTV cameras that are used for security by an entire station that is set up. But also social infrastructure, like clinics, hospitals, all sorts of community services, that make this function like any real megacity would do. 10,500 sweepers are employed by the city. It has a governance system, a Mela Adhikari, or the commissioner of the festival, that ensures that land is allocated, there are systems for all of this, that the system of the city, the mobility, all works efficiently. You know, it was the cleanest and the most efficient Indian city I've lived in. (Laughter) And that's what it looks like in comparison to Manhattan, 30 square kilometers, that's the scale of the city. And this is not an informal city or a pop-up city. This is a formal city, this is a state enterprise, the government sets this up. In today's world of neoliberalism and capitalism, where the state has devolved itself complete responsibility from making and designing cities, this is an incredible case. It's a deliberate, intentional city, a formal city. And it's a city that sits on the ground very lightly. It sits on the banks of these rivers. And it leaves very little mark. There are no foundations; fabric is used to build this entire city. What's also quite incredible is that there are five materials that are used to build this settlement for seven million people: eight-foot tall bamboo, string or rope, nails or screw and a skinning material. Could be corrugated metal, a fabric or plastic. And these materials come together and aggregate. It's like a kit of parts. And it's used all the way from a small tent, which might house five or six people, or a family, to temples that can house 500, sometimes 1,000 people. And this kit of parts, and this imagination of the city, allows it to be disassembled. And so at the end of the festival, within a week, the entire city is disassembled. These are again images from the same spot. And the terrain is offered back to the river, as with the monsoon the water swells again. And it's this sort of imagination as a kit of parts that allows this disassembly and the reabsorption of all this material. So the electricity poles go to little villages in the hinterland, the pontoon bridges are used in small towns, the material is all reabsorbed. Fascinating, it's amazing. Now, you may embrace these Hindu beliefs or not. But you know, this is a stunning example, and it's worthy of reflection. Here, human beings spend an enormous amount of energy and imagination knowing that the city is going to reverse, it's going to be disassembled, it's going to disappear, it's the ephemeral megacity. And it has profound lessons to teach us. Lessons about how to touch the ground lightly, about reversibility, about disassembly. Rather amazing. And you know, we are, as humans, obsessed with permanence. We resist change. It's an impulse that we all have. And we resist change in spite of the fact that change is perhaps the only constant in our lives. Everything has an expiry date, including Spaceship Earth, our planet. So what can we learn from these sorts of settlements? Burning Man, of course much smaller, but reversible. Or the thousands of markets for transaction, that appear around the globe in Asia, Latin America, Africa, this one in Mexico, where the parking lots are animated on the weekends, about 50,000 vendors, but on a temporal cycle. The farmer's market in the Americas: it's an amazing phenomenon, creates new chemistries, extends the margin of space that is unused or not used optimally, like parking lots, for example. In my own city of Mumbai, where I practice as an architect and a planner, I see this in the everyday landscape. I call this the Kinetic City. It twitches like a live organism; it's not static. It changes every day, on sometimes predictable cycles. About six million people live in these kinds of temporary settlements. Like — unfortunately, like refugee camps, the slums of Mumbai, the favelas of Latin America. Here, the temporary is becoming the new permanent. Here, urbanism is not about grand vision, it's about grand adjustment. On the street in Mumbai, during the Ganesh festival, a transformation. A community hall is created for 10 days. Bollywood films are shown, thousands congregate for dinners and celebration. It's made out of paper-mache and plaster of Paris. Designed to be disassembled, and in 10 days, overnight, it disappears, and the street goes back to anonymity. Or our wonderful open spaces, we call them maidans. And it's used for this incredibly nuanced and complicated, fascinating Indian game, called cricket, which, I believe, the British invented. (Laughter) And in the evenings, a wedding wraps around the cricket pitch — Notice, the cricket pitch is not touched, it's sacred ground. (Laughter) But here, the club members and the wedding party partake in tea through a common kitchen. And at midnight, it's disassembled, and the space offered back to the city. Here, urbanism is an elastic condition. And so, if we reflect about these questions, I mean, I think many come to mind. But an important one is, are we really, in our cities, in our imagination about urbanism, making permanent solutions for temporary problems? Are we locking resources into paradigms that we don't even know will be relevant in a decade? This becomes, I think, an interesting question that arises from this research. I mean, look at the abandoned shopping malls in North America, suburban North America. Retail experts have predicted that in the next decade, of the 2,000 malls that exist today, 50 percent will be abandoned. Massive amount of material, capturing resources, that will not be relevant soon. Or the Olympic stadiums. Around the globe, cities build these under great contestation with massive resources, but after the games go, they can't often get absorbed into the city. Couldn't these be nomadic structures, deflatable, we have the technology for that, that get gifted to smaller towns around the world or in those countries, or are stored and moved for the next Olympics? A massive, inefficient use of resources. Like the circus. I mean, we could imagine it like the circus, this wonderful institution that used to camp in cities, set up this lovely kind of visual dialogue with the static city. And within it, the amazement. Children of different ethnic groups become suddenly aware of each other, people of color become aware of others, income groups and cultures and ethnicities all come together around the amazement of the ring with animals and performers. New chemistries are created, people become aware of things, and this moves on to the next town. Or nature, the fluxes of nature, climate change, how do we deal with this, can we be more accommodating? Can we create softer urban systems? Or are we going to challenge nature continuously with heavy infrastructure, which we are already doing, unsuccessfully? Now, I'm not arguing that we've got to make our cities like a circus, I'm not arguing that cities must be completely temporary. I'm only making a plea that we need to make a shift in our imagination about cities, where we need to reserve more space for uses on a temporal scale. Where we need to use our resources efficiently, to extend the expiry date of our planet. We need to change planning urban design cultures, to think of the temporal, the reversible, the disassembleable. And that can be tremendous in terms of the effect it might have on our lives. I often think back to the Kumbh Mela that I visited with my students and I studied, and this was a moment where the city had been disassembled. A week after the festival was over. There was no mark. The terrain was waiting to be covered over by the water, to be consumed. And I went to thank a high priestess who had helped us and my students through our research and facilitated us through this process. And I went to her with great enthusiasm, and I told her about how much we had learned about infrastructure, the city, the efficiency of the city, the architecture, the five materials that made the city. She looked really amused, she was smiling. In any case, she leaned forward and put her hand on my head to bless me. And she whispered in my ear, she said, "Feel blessed that the Mother Ganges allowed you all to sit in her lap for a few days." I've often thought about this, and of course, I understood what she said. She said, cities, people, architecture will come and go, but the planet is here to stay. Touch it lightly, leave a minimal mark. And I think that's an important lesson for us as citizens and architects. And I think it was this experience that made me believe that impermanence is bigger than permanence and bigger than us all. Thank you for listening. (Applause) |
Romance and revolution: the poetry of Pablo Neruda | null | TED-Ed | Pablo Neruda published his first collection of poems at age 19. He went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature— and also rescue 2,000 refugees, spend three years in political exile, and run for president of Chile. A romantic and a revolutionary, Neruda was one of the most celebrated poets of the 20th century, but also one of the most accessible and controversial. Originally written in Spanish, his poems often use straightforward language and everyday experience to create lasting impact. Neruda was born Ricardo Eliezer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in a small Chilean town in 1904. His father didn’t want him to be a poet, so at sixteen he began to write under the pen name “Pablo Neruda.” The poems in his early collection "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" were tender and perceptive, illuminating the subtleties of love and enchantment. In "Poem VI," for example, he writes: “Tu recuerdo es de luz, de humo, de estanque en calma!/ Más allá de tus ojos ardían los crepúsculos.” Later, he poured this attention to detail into poems of appreciation for everyday objects. Many of the 225 short poems in his collection "All the Odes" are dedicated to the assortment of small, apparently insignificant items that surround us, from a pair of shoelaces to a watermelon. An onion is más hermosa que un ave/ de plumas cegadoras, while a tuna in the market is a bala del profundo/ océano, proyectil natatorio, te vi, muerto. Despite this early literary success, Neruda struggled financially, and took a series of diplomatic jobs in places such as Burma, Indonesia, Singapore and Spain. In 1936, while Neruda was working at the consulate in Madrid, civil war broke out and the government was overthrown by a fascist military dictatorship. Neruda organized an evacuation of refugees from Spain to Chile, saving 2,000 lives. Over a period of twenty years, Neruda captured his experiences abroad in a three volume poetry collection titled "Residence on Earth." Many of these poems were experimental and surreal, merging epic landscapes, supernatural themes, and feelings of longing with discussion of political strife and a poet’s responsibility to speak out against injustice. In “I Explain a Few Things” he lingers on haunting details of the destruction of the Spanish Civil War. For the rest of his life, Neruda remained committed to revolutionary ideals. His politics led to several years of exile before he was able to return to Chile in 1952. While in exile, he published his influential "Canto General." The book attempts to retell the entire history of Latin America through poetry, touching on everything from its flora and fauna to its politics and wars, but above all paying homage to the common people behind its civilizations’ achievements. Although he continued to travel, after returning from exile Neruda lived in Chile for the rest of his life. In 1970, at age 66, Neruda ran for president of Chile before yielding to Salvador Allende and becoming his close advisor. But in 1973, Allende was overthrown in a military coup by General Augusto Pinochet. Neruda died in the hospital a couple of weeks later. Because of the timing of his death so soon after the coup, rumors swirled that he had died of sadness or even been assassinated, but the hospital recorded his cause of death as cancer. Today, Neruda’s lines are recited at protests and marches worldwide. Much like his life, Neruda’s poems bridged romance and revolution by emphasizing the everyday moments worth fighting for. |
How to use family dinner to teach politics | {0: "As an activist promoting human rights in Libya and beyond, Hajer Sharief works against society's flow -- and across generations -- to find solutions."} | TEDSummit 2019 | Twenty years ago, my family introduced a system called "Friday Democracy Meetings." Every Friday at 7pm, my family came together for an official meeting to discuss the current family affairs. These meetings were facilitated by one of my parents, and we even had a notetaker. These meetings had two rules. First, you are allowed to speak open and freely. Us kids were allowed to criticize our parents without that being considered disrespectful or rude. Second rule was the Chatham House rule, meaning whatever is said in the meeting stays in the meeting. (Laughter) The topics which were discussed in these meetings varied from one week to another. One week, we'd talk about what food we wanted to eat, what time us kids should go to bed and how to improve things as a family, while another meeting discussed pretty much events that happened at school and how to solve disputes between siblings, by which I mean real fights. At the end of each meeting, we'd reach decisions and agreements that would last at least until the next meeting. So you could say I was raised as a politician. By the age of six or seven, I mastered politics. I was negotiating, compromising, building alliances with other political actors. (Laughter) And I even once tried to jeopardize the political process. (Laughter) These meetings sound very peaceful, civil and democratic, right? But that was not always the case. Because of this open, free space to talk, discuss and criticize, things sometimes got really heated. One meeting went really bad for me. I was about 10 years old at that time, and I'd done something really horrible at school, which I'm not going to share today — (Laughter) but my brother decided to bring it up in the meeting. I could not defend myself, so I decided to withdraw from the meeting and boycott the whole system. I literally wrote an official letter and handed it to my dad, announcing that I am boycotting. (Laughter) I thought that if I stopped attending these meetings anymore, the system would collapse, (Laughter) but my family continued with the meetings, and they often made decisions that I disliked. But I could not challenge these decisions, because I was not attending the meetings, and thus had no right to go against it. Ironically, when I turned about 13 years old, I ended up attending one of these meetings again, after I boycotted them for a long time. Because there was an issue that was affecting me only, and no other family member was bringing it up. The problem was that after each dinner, I was always the only one who was asked to wash the dishes, while my brothers didn't have to do anything about it. I felt this was unjust, unfair and discriminatory, so I wanted to discuss it in the meeting. As you know, the idea that it's a woman or a girl's role to do household work is a rule that has been carried out by many societies for so long, so in order for a 13-year-old me to challenge it, I needed a platform. In the meeting, my brothers argued that none of the other boys we knew were washing the dishes, so why should our family be any different? But my parents agreed with me and decided that my brothers should assist me. However, they could not force them, so the problem continued. Seeing no solution to my problem, I decided to attend another meeting and propose a new system that would be fair to everyone. So I suggested instead of one person washing all the dishes used by all the family members, each family member should wash their own dishes. And as a gesture of good faith, I said I'd wash the pots as well. This way, my brothers could no longer argue that it wasn't within their responsibility as boys or men to wash the dishes and clean after the family, because the system I proposed was about every member of the family cleaning after themselves and taking care of themselves. Everyone agreed to my proposal, and for years, that was our washing-the-dishes system. What I just shared with you is a family story, but it's pure politics. Every part of politics includes decision-making, and ideally, the process of decision-making should include people from different backgrounds, interests, opinions, gender, beliefs, race, ethnicity, age, and so on. And they should all have an equal opportunity to contribute to the decision-making process and influence the decisions that will affect their lives directly or indirectly. As such, I find it difficult to understand when I hear young people saying, "I'm too young to engage in politics or to even hold a political opinion." Similarly, when I hear some women saying, "Politics is a dirty world I don't want to engage with," I'm worried that the idea of politics and political engagement has become so polarized in many parts of the world that ordinary people feel, in order for them to participate in politics, they need to be outspoken activists, and that is not true. I want to ask these young people, women and ordinary people in general: Can you really afford not to be interested or not to participate in politics? Politics is not only activism. It's awareness, it's keeping ourselves informed, it's caring for the facts. When it's possible, it's casting a vote. Politics is the tool through which we structure ourselves as groups and societies. Politics governs every aspect of life, and by not participating in it, you're literally allowing other people to decide on what you can eat, wear, if you can have access to health care, free education, how much tax you pay, when you can retire, what is your pension. Other people are also deciding on whether your race and ethnicity is enough to consider you a criminal, or if your religion and nationality is enough to put you on a terrorist list. And if you still think you are a strong, independent human being unaffected by politics, then think twice. I am speaking to you as a young woman from Libya, a country that is in the middle of a civil war. After more than 40 years of authoritarian rule, it's not a place where political engagement by women and young people is possible, nor encouraged. Almost all political dialogues that took place in the past few years, even those gathered by foreign powers, has been with only middle-aged men in the room. But in places with a broken political system like Libya, or in seemingly functioning places, including international organizations, the systems we have nowadays for political decision-making are not from the people for the people, but they have been established by the few for the few. And these few have been historically almost exclusively men, and they've produced laws, policies, mechanisms for political participation that are based on the opinions, beliefs, worldviews, dreams, aspirations of this one group of people, while everyone else was kept out. After all, we've all heard some version of this sentence: "What does a woman, let alone a young person, who is brown, understand about politics?" When you're young — and in many parts of the world, a woman — you often hear experienced politicians say, "But you lack political experience." And when I hear that, I wonder what sort of experience are they referring to? The experience of corrupted political systems? Or of waging wars? Or are they referring to the experience of putting the interests of economic profits before those of the environment? Because if this is political experience, then yes — (Applause) we, as women and young people, have no political experience at all. Now, politicians might not be the only ones to blame, because ordinary people, and many young people as well, don't care about politics. And even those who care don't know how to participate. This must change, and here is my proposal. We need to teach people at an early age about decision-making and how to be part of it. Every family is its own mini political system that is usually not democratic, because parents make decisions that affect all members of the family, while the kids have very little to say. Similarly, politicians make decisions that affect the whole nation, while the people have very little say in them. We need to change this, and in order to achieve this change systematically, we need to teach people that political, national and global affairs are as relevant to them as personal and family affairs. So if we want to achieve this, my proposal and advice is, try out the Family Democracy Meeting system. Because that will enable your kids to exercise their agency and decision-making from a very early age. Politics is about having conversations, including difficult conversations, that lead to decisions. And in order to have a conversation, you need to participate, not sign off like I did when I was a kid and then learn the lesson the hard way and have to go back again. If you include your kids in family conversations, they will grow up and know how to participate in political conversations. And most importantly, most importantly, they will help others engage. Thank you. (Applause) |
The real relationship between your age and your chance of success | {0: 'A pioneer in network science, Albert-László Barabási uncovers the hidden order behind complex systems.'} | TEDxMidAtlantic | Today, actually, is a very special day for me, because it is my birthday. (Applause) And so, thanks to all of you for joining the party. (Laughter) But every time you throw a party, there's someone there to spoil it. Right? (Laughter) And I'm a physicist, and this time I brought another physicist along to do so. His name is Albert Einstein — also Albert — and he's the one who said that the person who has not made his great contributions to science by the age of 30 will never do so. (Laughter) Now, you don't need to check Wikipedia that I'm beyond 30. (Laughter) So, effectively, what he is telling me, and us, is that when it comes to my science, I'm deadwood. Well, luckily, I had my share of luck within my career. Around age 28, I became very interested in networks, and a few years later, we managed to publish a few key papers that reported the discovery of scale-free networks and really gave birth to a new discipline that we call network science today. And if you really care about it, you can get a PhD now in network science in Budapest, in Boston, and you can study it all over the world. A few years later, when I moved to Harvard first as a sabbatical, I became interested in another type of network: that time, the networks within ourselves, how the genes and the proteins and the metabolites link to each other and how they connect to disease. And that interest led to a major explosion within medicine, including the Network Medicine Division at Harvard, that has more than 300 researchers who are using this perspective to treat patients and develop new cures. And a few years ago, I thought that I would take this idea of networks and the expertise we had in networks in a different area, that is, to understand success. And why did we do that? Well, we thought that, to some degree, our success is determined by the networks we're part of — that our networks can push us forward, they can pull us back. And I was curious if we could use the knowledge and big data and expertise where we develop the networks to really quantify how these things happen. This is a result from that. What you see here is a network of galleries in museums that connect to each other. And through this map that we mapped out last year, we are able to predict very accurately the success of an artist if you give me the first five exhibits that he or she had in their career. Well, as we thought about success, we realized that success is not only about networks; there are so many other dimensions to that. And one of the things we need for success, obviously, is performance. So let's define what's the difference between performance and success. Well, performance is what you do: how fast you run, what kind of paintings you paint, what kind of papers you publish. However, in our working definition, success is about what the community notices from what you did, from your performance: How does it acknowledge it, and how does it reward you for it? In other terms, your performance is about you, but your success is about all of us. And this was a very important shift for us, because the moment we defined success as being a collective measure that the community provides to us, it became measurable, because if it's in the community, there are multiple data points about that. So we go to school, we exercise, we practice, because we believe that performance leads to success. But the way we actually started to explore, we realized that performance and success are very, very different animals when it comes to the mathematics of the problem. And let me illustrate that. So what you see here is the fastest man on earth, Usain Bolt. And of course, he wins most of the competitions that he enters. And we know he's the fastest on earth because we have a chronometer to measure his speed. Well, what is interesting about him is that when he wins, he doesn't do so by really significantly outrunning his competition. He's running at most a percent faster than the one who loses the race. And not only does he run only one percent faster than the second one, but he doesn't run 10 times faster than I do — and I'm not a good runner, trust me on that. (Laughter) And every time we are able to measure performance, we notice something very interesting; that is, performance is bounded. What it means is that there are no huge variations in human performance. It varies only in a narrow range, and we do need the chronometer to measure the differences. This is not to say that we cannot see the good from the best ones, but the best ones are very hard to distinguish. And the problem with that is that most of us work in areas where we do not have a chronometer to gauge our performance. Alright, performance is bounded, there are no huge differences between us when it comes to our performance. How about success? Well, let's switch to a different topic, like books. One measure of success for writers is how many people read your work. And so when my previous book came out in 2009, I was in Europe talking with my editor, and I was interested: Who is the competition? And I had some fabulous ones. That week — (Laughter) Dan Brown came out with "The Lost Symbol," and "The Last Song" also came out, Nicholas Sparks. And when you just look at the list, you realize, you know, performance-wise, there's hardly any difference between these books or mine. Right? So maybe if Nicholas Sparks's team works a little harder, he could easily be number one, because it's almost by accident who ended up at the top. So I said, let's look at the numbers — I'm a data person, right? So let's see what were the sales for Nicholas Sparks. And it turns out that that opening weekend, Nicholas Sparks sold more than a hundred thousand copies, which is an amazing number. You can actually get to the top of the "New York Times" best-seller list by selling 10,000 copies a week, so he tenfold overcame what he needed to be number one. Yet he wasn't number one. Why? Because there was Dan Brown, who sold 1.2 million copies that weekend. (Laughter) And the reason I like this number is because it shows that, really, when it comes to success, it's unbounded, that the best doesn't only get slightly more than the second best but gets orders of magnitude more, because success is a collective measure. We give it to them, rather than we earn it through our performance. So one of things we realized is that performance, what we do, is bounded, but success, which is collective, is unbounded, which makes you wonder: How do you get these huge differences in success when you have such tiny differences in performance? And recently, I published a book that I devoted to that very question. And they didn't give me enough time to go over all of that, so I'm going to go back to the question of, alright, you have success; when should that appear? So let's go back to the party spoiler and ask ourselves: Why did Einstein make this ridiculous statement, that only before 30 you could actually be creative? Well, because he looked around himself and he saw all these fabulous physicists that created quantum mechanics and modern physics, and they were all in their 20s and early 30s when they did so. And it's not only him. It's not only observational bias, because there's actually a whole field of genius research that has documented the fact that, if we look at the people we admire from the past and then look at what age they made their biggest contribution, whether that's music, whether that's science, whether that's engineering, most of them tend to do so in their 20s, 30s, early 40s at most. But there's a problem with this genius research. Well, first of all, it created the impression to us that creativity equals youth, which is painful, right? (Laughter) And it also has an observational bias, because it only looks at geniuses and doesn't look at ordinary scientists and doesn't look at all of us and ask, is it really true that creativity vanishes as we age? So that's exactly what we tried to do, and this is important for that to actually have references. So let's look at an ordinary scientist like myself, and let's look at my career. So what you see here is all the papers that I've published from my very first paper, in 1989; I was still in Romania when I did so, till kind of this year. And vertically, you see the impact of the paper, that is, how many citations, how many other papers have been written that cited that work. And when you look at that, you see that my career has roughly three different stages. I had the first 10 years where I had to work a lot and I don't achieve much. No one seems to care about what I do, right? There's hardly any impact. (Laughter) That time, I was doing material science, and then I kind of discovered for myself networks and then started publishing in networks. And that led from one high-impact paper to the other one. And it really felt good. That was that stage of my career. (Laughter) So the question is, what happens right now? And we don't know, because there hasn't been enough time passed yet to actually figure out how much impact those papers will get; it takes time to acquire. Well, when you look at the data, it seems to be that Einstein, the genius research, is right, and I'm at that stage of my career. (Laughter) So we said, OK, let's figure out how does this really happen, first in science. And in order not to have the selection bias, to look only at geniuses, we ended up reconstructing the career of every single scientist from 1900 till today and finding for all scientists what was their personal best, whether they got the Nobel Prize or they never did, or no one knows what they did, even their personal best. And that's what you see in this slide. Each line is a career, and when you have a light blue dot on the top of that career, it says that was their personal best. And the question is, when did they actually make their biggest discovery? To quantify that, we look at what's the probability that you make your biggest discovery, let's say, one, two, three or 10 years into your career? We're not looking at real age. We're looking at what we call "academic age." Your academic age starts when you publish your first papers. I know some of you are still babies. (Laughter) So let's look at the probability that you publish your highest-impact paper. And what you see is, indeed, the genius research is right. Most scientists tend to publish their highest-impact paper in the first 10, 15 years in their career, and it tanks after that. It tanks so fast that I'm about — I'm exactly 30 years into my career, and the chance that I will publish a paper that would have a higher impact than anything that I did before is less than one percent. I am in that stage of my career, according to this data. But there's a problem with that. We're not doing controls properly. So the control would be, what would a scientist look like who makes random contribution to science? Or what is the productivity of the scientist? When do they write papers? So we measured the productivity, and amazingly, the productivity, your likelihood of writing a paper in year one, 10 or 20 in your career, is indistinguishable from the likelihood of having the impact in that part of your career. And to make a long story short, after lots of statistical tests, there's only one explanation for that, that really, the way we scientists work is that every single paper we write, every project we do, has exactly the same chance of being our personal best. That is, discovery is like a lottery ticket. And the more lottery tickets we buy, the higher our chances. And it happens to be so that most scientists buy most of their lottery tickets in the first 10, 15 years of their career, and after that, their productivity decreases. They're not buying any more lottery tickets. So it looks as if they would not be creative. In reality, they stopped trying. So when we actually put the data together, the conclusion is very simple: success can come at any time. It could be your very first or very last paper of your career. It's totally random in the space of the projects. It is the productivity that changes. Let me illustrate that. Here is Frank Wilczek, who got the Nobel Prize in Physics for the very first paper he ever wrote in his career as a graduate student. (Laughter) More interesting is John Fenn, who, at age 70, was forcefully retired by Yale University. They shut his lab down, and at that moment, he moved to Virginia Commonwealth University, opened another lab, and it is there, at age 72, that he published a paper for which, 15 years later, he got the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. And you think, OK, well, science is special, but what about other areas where we need to be creative? So let me take another typical example: entrepreneurship. Silicon Valley, the land of the youth, right? And indeed, when you look at it, you realize that the biggest awards, the TechCrunch Awards and other awards, are all going to people whose average age is late 20s, very early 30s. You look at who the VCs give the money to, some of the biggest VC firms — all people in their early 30s. Which, of course, we know; there is this ethos in Silicon Valley that youth equals success. Not when you look at the data, because it's not only about forming a company — forming a company is like productivity, trying, trying, trying — when you look at which of these individuals actually put out a successful company, a successful exit. And recently, some of our colleagues looked at exactly that question. And it turns out that yes, those in the 20s and 30s put out a huge number of companies, form lots of companies, but most of them go bust. And when you look at the successful exits, what you see in this particular plot, the older you are, the more likely that you will actually hit the stock market or the sell the company successfully. This is so strong, actually, that if you are in the 50s, you are twice as likely to actually have a successful exit than if you are in your 30s. (Applause) So in the end, what is it that we see, actually? What we see is that creativity has no age. Productivity does, right? Which is telling me that at the end of the day, if you keep trying — (Laughter) you could still succeed and succeed over and over. So my conclusion is very simple: I am off the stage, back in my lab. Thank you. (Applause) |
An urgent call to protect the world's "Third Pole" | {0: "Tshering Tobgay is the president of the People's Democratic Party in Bhutan."} | TEDSummit 2019 | On the 17th of October, 2009, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives did something unusual. He held his cabinet meeting underwater. He literally took his ministers scuba diving, as it were, to warn the world that his country could drown unless we control global warming. Now I don't know whether he got his message across to the world or not, but he certainly caught mine. I saw a political stunt. You see, I'm a politician, and I notice these things. And let's be honest, the Maldives are distant from where I come from — my country is Bhutan — so I didn't lose any sleep over their impending fate. Barely two months later, I saw another political stunt. This time, the prime minister of Nepal, he held his cabinet meeting on Mount Everest. He took all his ministers all the way up to the base camp of Everest to warn the world that the Himalayan glaciers were melting. Now did that worry me? You bet it did. I live in the Himalayas. But did I lose any sleep over his message? No. I wasn't ready to let a political stunt interfere with my beauty sleep. (Laughter) Now fast-forward 10 years. In February this year, I saw this report. This here report basically concludes that one-third of the ice on the Hindu Kush Himalaya mountains could melt by the end of the century. But that's only if, if we are able to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade over preindustrial levels. Otherwise, if we can't, the glaciers would melt much faster. 1.5 degrees Celsius. "No way," I thought. Even the Paris Agreement's ambitious targets aimed to limit global warming to two degrees centigrade. 1.5 degrees centigrade is what they call the best-case scenario. "Now this can't be true," I thought. The Hindu Kush Himalaya region is the world's third-largest repository of ice, after the North and South Poles. That's why we are also called the "Third Pole." There's a lot of ice in the region. And yes, the glaciers, they are melting. We know that. I have been to those in my country. I've seen them, and yes, they are melting. They are vulnerable. "But they can't be that vulnerable," I remember thinking. But what if they are? What if our glaciers melt much more quickly than I anticipate? What if our glaciers are much more vulnerable than previously thought? And what if, as a result, the glacial lakes — now these are lakes that form when glaciers melt — what if those lakes burst under the weight of additional water? And what if those floods cascade into other glacial lakes, creating even bigger outbursts? That would create unprecedented flash floods in my country. That would wreck my country. That would wreak havoc in my country. That would have the potential to literally destroy our land, our livelihood, our way of life. So that report caught my attention in ways that political stunts couldn't. It was put together by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, or ICIMOD, which is based in Nepal. Scientists and experts have studied our glaciers for decades, and their report kept me awake at night, agonizing about the bad news and what it meant for my country and my people. So after several sleepless nights, I went to Nepal to visit ICIMOD. I found a team of highly competent and dedicated scientists there, and here's what they told me. Number one: the Hindu Kush Himalaya glaciers have been melting for some time now. Take that glacier, for instance. It's on Mount Everest. As you can see, this once massive glacier has already lost much of its ice. Number two: the glaciers are now melting much more quickly — so quickly, in fact, that at just 1.5 degrees centigrade of global warming, one-third of the glaciers would melt. At two degrees centigrade of global warming, half the glaciers would disappear. And if current trends were to continue, a full two-thirds of our glaciers would vanish. Number three: global warming means that our mountains receive more rain and less snow ... and, unlike snowfall, rain melts ice, which just hurts the health of our glaciers. Number four: pollution in the region has increased the amount of black carbon that's deposited on our glaciers. Black carbon is like soot. Black carbon absorbs heat and just accelerates the melting of glaciers. To summarize, our glaciers are melting rapidly, and global warming is making them melt much more quickly. But what does this mean? It means that the 240 million people who live in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region — in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and my own beloved country, Bhutan — these people will be directly affected. When glaciers melt, when there's more rain and less snow, there will be huge changes in the way water behaves. There will be more extremes: more intense rain, more flash floods, more landslides, more glacial lake outburst floods. All this will cause unimaginable destruction in a region that already has some of the poorest people on earth. But it's not just the people in the immediate region who'll be affected. People living downstream will also be hit hard. That's because 10 of their major rivers originate in the Hindu Kush Himalaya mountains. These rivers provide critical water for agriculture and drinking water to more than 1.6 billion people living downstream. That's one in five humans. That's why the Hindu Kush Himalaya mountains are also called the "water towers of Asia." But when glaciers melt, when monsoons turn severe, those rivers will obviously flood, so there will be deluges when water is not required and droughts will be very common, when water is desperately required. In short, Asia's water tower will be broken, and that will be disastrous for one-fifth of humanity. Should the rest of the world care? Should you, for instance, care? Remember, I didn't care when I heard that the Maldives could disappear underwater. And that is the crux of the problem, isn't it? We don't care. We don't care until we are personally affected. I mean, we know. We know climate change is real. We know that we face drastic and dramatic change. We know that it is coming fast. Yet most of us act as if everything were normal. So we must care, all of us, and if you can't care for those who are affected by the melting of glaciers, you should at least care for yourself. That's because the Hindu Kush Himalaya mountains — the entire region is like the pulse of the planet. If the region falls sick, the entire planet will eventually suffer. And right now, with our glaciers melting rapidly, the region is not just sick — it is crying out for help. And how will it affect the rest of the world? One obvious scenario is the potential destabilization caused by tens of millions of climate refugees, who'll be forced to move because they have no or little water, or because their livelihoods have been destroyed by the melting of glaciers. Another scenario we can't take lightly is the potential of conflict over water and the political destabilization in a region that has three nuclear powers: China, India, Pakistan. I believe that the situation in our region is grave enough to warrant the creation of a new intergovernmental agency. So as a native from that part of the world, I want to propose here, today, the establishment of the Third Pole Council, a high-level, intergovernmental organization tasked with the singular responsibility of protecting the world's third-largest repository of ice. A Third Pole Council would consist of all eight countries located in the region as member countries, as equal member countries, and could also include representative organizations and other countries who have vested interests in the region as non-voting members. But the big idea is to get all stakeholders together to work together. To work together to monitor the health of the glaciers; to work together to shape and implement policies to protect our glaciers, and, by extension, to protect the billions of people who depend on our glaciers. We have to work together, because thinking globally, acting locally ... does not work. We've tried that in Bhutan. We've made immense sacrifices to act locally ... and while individual localized efforts will continue to be important, they cannot stand up to the onslaught of climate change. To stand up to climate change, we must work together. We must think globally and act regionally. Our entire region must come together, to work together, to fight climate change together, to make our voices heard together. And that includes India and China. They must step up their game. They must take the ownership of the fight to protect our glaciers. And for that, these two countries, these two powerful giants, must reduce their own greenhouse gases, control their pollution, and lead the fight. Lead the global fight against climate change. And all that with a renewed sense of urgency. Only then — and that, too, only maybe — will our region and other regions that depend on our glaciers have any chance to avoid major catastrophes. Time is running out. We must act together, now. Otherwise, the next time Nepal's cabinet meets on Mount Everest, that spectacular backdrop ... may look quite different. And if that happens, if our glaciers melt, rising sea levels could well drown the Maldives. And while they can hold their cabinet meetings underwater to send an SOS to the world, their country can keep existing only if their islands keep existing. The Maldives are still distant, away. Their islands are distant from where I live. But now, I pay close attention to what happens out there. Thank you very much. (Applause) |
A brief history of cannibalism | null | TED-Ed | 15th century Europeans believed they had hit upon a miracle cure: a remedy for epilepsy, hemorrhage, bruising, nausea, and virtually any other medical ailment. This brown powder could be mixed into drinks, made into salves or eaten straight up. It was known as mumia and made by grinding up mummified human flesh. The word "cannibal" dates from the time of Christopher Columbus; in fact, Columbus may even have coined it himself. After coming ashore on the island of Guadaloupe, Columbus' initial reports back to the Queen of Spain described the indigenous people as friendly and peaceful— though he did mention rumors of a group called the Caribs, who made violent raids and then cooked and ate their prisoners. In response, Queen Isabella granted permission to capture and enslave anyone who ate human flesh. When the island failed to produce the gold Columbus was looking for, he began to label anyone who resisted his plundering and kidnapping as a Caribe. Somewhere along the way, the word "Carib" became "Canibe" and then "Cannibal." First used by colonizers to dehumanize indigenous people, it has since been applied to anyone who eats human flesh. So the term comes from an account that wasn't based on hard evidence, but cannibalism does have a real and much more complex history. It has taken diverse forms— sometimes, as with mumia, it doesn't involved recognizable parts of the human body. The reasons for cannibalistic practices have varied, too. Across cultures and time periods, there's evidence of survival cannibalism, when people living through a famine, siege or ill-fated expedition had to either eat the bodies of the dead or starve to death themselves. But it's also been quite common for cultures to normalize some form of eating human flesh under ordinary circumstances. Because of false accounts like Columbus's, it's difficult to say exactly how common cultural cannibalism has been— but there are still some examples of accepted cannibalistic practices from within the cultures practicing them. Take the medicinal cannibalism in Europe during Columbus's time. Starting in the 15th century, the demand for mumia increased. At first, stolen mummies from Egypt supplied the mumia craze, but soon the demand was too great to be sustained on Egyptian mummies alone, and opportunists stole bodies from European cemeteries to turn into mumia. Use of mumia continued for hundreds of years. It was listed in the Merck index, a popular medical encyclopedia, into the 20th century. And ground up mummies were far from the only remedy made from human flesh that was common throughout Europe. Blood, in either liquid or powdered form, was used to treat epilepsy, while human liver, gall stones, oil distilled from human brains, and pulverized hearts were popular medical concoctions. In China, the written record of socially accepted cannibalism goes back almost 2,000 years. One particularly common form of cannibalism appears to have been filial cannibalism, where adult sons and daughters would offer a piece of their own flesh to their parents. This was typically offered as a last-ditch attempt to cure a sick parent, and wasn't fatal to their offspring— it usually involved flesh from the thigh or, less often, a finger. Cannibalistic funerary rites are another form of culturally sanctioned cannibalism. Perhaps the best-known example came from the Fore people of New Guinea. Through the mid-20th century, members of the community would, if possible, make their funerary preferences known in advance, sometimes requesting that family members gather to consume the body after death. Tragically, though these rituals honored the deceased, they also spread a deadly disease known as kuru through the community. Between the fictionalized stories, verifiable practices, and big gaps that still exist in our knowledge, there's no one history of cannibalism. But we do know that people have been eating each other, volunteering themselves to be eaten, and accusing others of eating people for millennia. |
The new political story that could change everything | {0: 'As an investigative journalist and self-described "professional troublemaker," George Monbiot uncovers the complicated truths behind the world\'s most persistent problems.'} | TEDSummit 2019 | Do you feel trapped in a broken economic model? A model that's trashing the living world and threatens the lives of our descendants? A model that excludes billions of people while making a handful unimaginably rich? That sorts us into winners and losers, and then blames the losers for their misfortune? Welcome to neoliberalism, the zombie doctrine that never seems to die, however comprehensively it is discredited. Now you might have imagined that the financial crisis of 2008 would have led to the collapse of neoliberalism. After all, it exposed its central features, which were deregulating business and finance, tearing down public protections, throwing us into extreme competition with each other, as, well, just a little bit flawed. And intellectually, it did collapse. But still, it dominates our lives. Why? Well, I believe the answer is that we have not yet produced a new story with which to replace it. Stories are the means by which we navigate the world. They allow us to interpret its complex and contradictory signals. When we want to make sense of something, the sense we seek is not scientific sense but narrative fidelity. Does what we are hearing reflect the way that we expect humans and the world to behave? Does it hang together? Does it progress as a story should progress? Now, we are creatures of narrative, and a string of facts and figures, however important facts and figures are — and, you know, I'm an empiricist, I believe in facts and figures — but those facts and figures have no power to displace a persuasive story. The only thing that can replace a story is a story. You cannot take away someone's story without giving them a new one. And it's not just stories in general that we are attuned to, but particular narrative structures. There are a number of basic plots that we use again and again, and in politics there is one basic plot which turns out to be tremendously powerful, and I call this "the restoration story." It goes as follows. Disorder afflicts the land, caused by powerful and nefarious forces working against the interests of humanity. But the hero will revolt against this disorder, fight those powerful forces, against the odds overthrow them and restore harmony to the land. You've heard this story before. It's the Bible story. It's the "Harry Potter" story. It's the "Lord of the Rings" story. It's the "Narnia" story. But it's also the story that has accompanied almost every political and religious transformation going back millennia. In fact, we could go as far as to say that without a powerful new restoration story, a political and religious transformation might not be able to happen. It's that important. After laissez-faire economics triggered the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes sat down to write a new economics, and what he did was to tell a restoration story, and it went something like this. Disorder afflicts the land! (Laughter) Caused by the powerful and nefarious forces of the economic elite, which have captured the world's wealth. But the hero of the story, the enabling state, supported by working class and middle class people, will contest that disorder, will fight those powerful forces by redistributing wealth, and through spending public money on public goods will generate income and jobs, restoring harmony to the land. Now like all good restoration stories, this one resonated across the political spectrum. Democrats and Republicans, labor and conservatives, left and right all became, broadly, Keynesian. Then, when Keynesianism ran into trouble in the 1970s, the neoliberals, people like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, came forward with their new restoration story, and it went something like this. You'll never guess what's coming. (Laughter) Disorder afflicts the land! Caused by the powerful and nefarious forces of the overmighty state, whose collectivizing tendencies crush freedom and individualism and opportunity. But the hero of the story, the entrepreneur, will fight those powerful forces, roll back the state, and through creating wealth and opportunity, restore harmony to the land. And that story also resonated across the political spectrum. Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and labor, they all became, broadly, neoliberal. Opposite stories with an identical narrative structure. Then, in 2008, the neoliberal story fell apart, and its opponents came forward with ... nothing. No new restoration story! The best they had to offer was a watered-down neoliberalism or a microwaved Keynesianism. And that is why we're stuck. Without that new story, we are stuck with the old failed story that keeps on failing. Despair is the state we fall into when our imagination fails. When we have no story that explains the present and describes the future, hope evaporates. Political failure is at heart a failure of imagination. Without a restoration story that can tell us where we need to go, nothing is going to change, but with such a restoration story, almost everything can change. The story we need to tell is a story which will appeal to as wide a range of people as possible, crossing political fault lines. It should resonate with deep needs and desires. It should be simple and intelligible, and it should be grounded in reality. Now, I admit that all of this sounds like a bit of a tall order. But I believe that in Western nations, there is actually a story like this waiting to be told. Over the past few years, there's been a fascinating convergence of findings in several different sciences, in psychology and anthropology and neuroscience and evolutionary biology, and they all tell us something pretty amazing: that human beings have got this massive capacity for altruism. Sure, we all have a bit of selfishness and greed inside us, but in most people, those are not our dominant values. And we also turn out to be the supreme cooperators. We survived the African savannas, despite being weaker and slower than our predators and most of our prey, by an amazing ability to engage in mutual aid, and that urge to cooperate has been hardwired into our minds through natural selection. These are the central, crucial facts about humankind: our amazing altruism and cooperation. But something has gone horribly wrong. Disorder afflicts the land. (Laughter) Our good nature has been thwarted by several forces, but I think the most powerful of them is the dominant political narrative of our times, which tells us that we should live in extreme individualism and competition with each other. It pushes us to fight each other, to fear and mistrust each other. It atomizes society. It weakens the social bonds that make our lives worth living. And into that vacuum grow these violent, intolerant forces. We are a society of altruists, but we are governed by psychopaths. (Applause) But it doesn't have to be like this. It really doesn't, because we have this incredible capacity for togetherness and belonging, and by invoking that capacity, we can recover those amazing components of our humanity: our altruism and cooperation. Where there is atomization, we can build a thriving civic life with a rich participatory culture. Where we find ourselves crushed between market and state, we can build an economics that respects both people and planet. And we can create this economics around that great neglected sphere, the commons. The commons is neither market nor state, capitalism nor communism, but it consists of three main elements: a particular resource; a particular community that manages that resource; and the rules and negotiations the community develops to manage it. Think of community broadband or community energy cooperatives or the shared land for growing fruit and vegetables that in Britain we call allotments. A common can't be sold, it can't be given away, and its benefits are shared equally among the members of the community. Where we have been ignored and exploited, we can revive our politics. We can recover democracy from the people who have captured it. We can use new rules and methods of elections to ensure that financial power never trumps democratic power again. (Applause) Representative democracy should be tempered by participatory democracy so that we can refine our political choices, and that choice should be exercised as much as possible at the local level. If something can be decided locally, it shouldn't be determined nationally. And I call all this the politics of belonging. Now, I think this has got the potential to appeal across quite a wide range of people, and the reason for this is that among the very few values that both left and right share are belonging and community. And we might mean slightly different things by them, but at least we start with some language in common. In fact, you can see a lot of politics as being a search for belonging. Even fascists seek community, albeit a frighteningly homogenous community where everyone looks the same and wears the same uniform and chants the same slogans. What we need to create is a community based on bridging networks, not bonding networks. Now a bonding network brings together people from a homogenous group, whereas a bridging network brings together people from different groups. And my belief is that if we create sufficiently rich and vibrant bridging communities, we can thwart the urge for people to burrow into the security of a homogenous bonding community defending themselves against the other. So in summary, our new story could go something like this. Disorder afflicts the land! (Laughter) Caused by the powerful and nefarious forces of people who say there's no such thing as society, who tell us that our highest purpose in life is to fight like stray dogs over a dustbin. But the heroes of the story, us, we'll revolt against this disorder. We will fight those nefarious forces by building rich, engaging, inclusive and generous communities, and, in doing so, we will restore harmony to the land. (Applause) Now whether or not you feel this is the right story, I hope you'll agree that we need one. We need a new restoration story, which is going to guide us out of the mess we're in, which tells us why we're in the mess and tells us how to get out of that mess. And that story, if we tell it right, will infect the minds of people across the political spectrum. Our task is to tell the story that lights the path to a better world. Thank you. (Applause) |
Why governments should prioritize well-being | {0: 'As the first woman to hold the office of First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon is an important progressive and feminist voice in the governance of the United Kingdom.'} | TEDSummit 2019 | Just over a mile away from here, in Edinburgh's Old Town, is Panmure House. Panmure House was the home of the world-renowned Scottish economist Adam Smith. In his important work "The Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith argued, amongst many other things, that the measurement of a country's wealth was not just its gold and silver reserves. It was the totality of the country's production and commerce. I guess it was one of the earliest descriptions of what we now know today as gross domestic product, GDP. Now, in the years since, of course, that measurement of production and commerce, GDP, has become ever more important, to the point that today — and I don't believe this is what Adam Smith would have intended — that it is often seen as the most important measurement of a country's overall success. And my argument today is that it is time for that to change. You know, what we choose to measure as a country matters. It really matters, because it drives political focus, it drives public activity. And against that context, I think the limitations of GDP as a measurement of a country's success are all too obvious. You know, GDP measures the output of all of our work, but it says nothing about the nature of that work, about whether that work is worthwhile or fulfilling. It puts a value, for example, on illegal drug consumption, but not on unpaid care. It values activity in the short term that boosts the economy, even if that activity is hugely damaging to the sustainability of our planet in the longer term. And we reflect on the past decade of political and economic upheaval, of growing inequalities, and when we look ahead to the challenges of the climate emergency, increasing automation, an aging population, then I think the argument for the case for a much broader definition of what it means to be successful as a country, as a society, is compelling, and increasingly so. And that is why Scotland, in 2018, took the lead, took the initiative in establishing a new network called the Wellbeing Economy Governments group, bringing together as founding members the countries of Scotland, Iceland and New Zealand, for obvious reasons. We're sometimes called the SIN countries, although our focus is very much on the common good. And the purpose of this group is to challenge that focus on the narrow measurement of GDP. To say that, yes, economic growth matters — it is important — but it is not all that is important. And growth in GDP should not be pursued at any or all cost. In fact, the argument of that group is that the goal, the objective of economic policy should be collective well-being: how happy and healthy a population is, not just how wealthy a population is. And I'll touch on the policy implications of that in a moment. But I think, particularly in the world we live in today, it has a deeper resonance. You know, when we focus on well-being, we start a conversation that provokes profound and fundamental questions. What really matters to us in our lives? What do we value in the communities we live in? What kind of country, what kind of society, do we really want to be? And when we engage people in those questions, in finding the answers to those questions, then I believe that we have a much better chance of addressing the alienation and disaffection from politics that is so prevalent in so many countries across the developed world today. In policy terms, this journey for Scotland started back in 2007, when we published what we call our National Performance Framework, looking at the range of indicators that we measure ourselves against. And those indicators are as varied as income inequality, the happiness of children, access to green spaces, access to housing. None of these are captured in GDP statistics, but they are all fundamental to a healthy and a happy society. (Applause) And that broader approach is at the heart of our economic strategy, where we give equal importance to tackling inequality as we do to economic competitiveness. It drives our commitment to fair work, making sure that work is fulfilling and well-paid. It's behind our decision to establish a Just Transition Commission to guide our path to a carbon zero economy. We know from economic transformations of the past that if we're not careful, there are more losers than winners. And as we face up to the challenges of climate change and automation, we must not make those mistakes again. The work we're doing here in Scotland is, I think, significant, but we have much, much to learn from other countries. I mentioned, a moment ago, our partner nations in the Wellbeing network: Iceland and New Zealand. It's worth noting, and I'll leave it to you to decide whether this is relevant or not, that all three of these countries are currently led by women. (Applause) They, too, are doing great work. New Zealand, in 2019, publishing its first Wellbeing Budget, with mental health at its heart; Iceland leading the way on equal pay, childcare and paternity rights — not policies that we immediately think of when we talk about creating a wealthy economy, but policies that are fundamental to a healthy economy and a happy society. I started with Adam Smith and "The Wealth of Nations." In Adam Smith's earlier work, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," which I think is just as important, he made the observation that the value of any government is judged in proportion to the extent that it makes its people happy. I think that is a good founding principle for any group of countries focused on promoting well-being. None of us have all of the answers, not even Scotland, the birthplace of Adam Smith. But in the world we live in today, with growing divides and inequalities, with disaffection and alienation, it is more important than ever that we ask and find the answers to those questions and promote a vision of society that has well-being, not just wealth, at its very heart. (Applause) You are right now in the beautiful, sunny capital city ... (Laughter) of the country that led the world in the Enlightenment, the country that helped lead the world into the industrial age, the country that right now is helping to lead the world into the low carbon age. I want, and I'm determined, that Scotland will also be the country that helps change the focus of countries and governments across the world to put well-being at the heart of everything that we do. I think we owe that to this generation. I certainly believe we owe that to the next generation and all those that come after us. And if we do that, led here from the country of the Enlightenment, then I think we create a better, healthier, fairer and happier society here at home. And we play our part in Scotland in building a fairer, happier world as well. Thank you very much. (Applause) |
How policewomen make communities safer | {0: "Ivonne Roman cofounded the Women's Leadership Academy to increase the retention of women in policing. "} | TED2019 | I've been a police officer in an urban city for nearly 25 years. That's crazy, right? And in that time, I've served in every rank, from police officer to police chief. A few years ago, I noticed something alarming. Starting in 2014, I started monitoring recruits as they cycled through police academies in the state of New Jersey, and I found that women were failing at rates between 65 and 80 percent, due to varying aspects of the physical fitness test. I learned that a change in policy now required recruits to pass the fitness exam within 10 short workout sessions. This had the greatest impact on women. The change meant that recruits had about three weeks out of a five-month-long academy to pass the fitness exam. This just didn't make sense, though. Police agencies and police recruits had made huge investments to get those recruits into the academy. Police recruits had passed lengthy background checks, they had passed medical and psychological exams, they had quit their jobs. And many had spent more than 2,000 dollars in fees and equipment just to get kicked out within the first three weeks? The dire situation in New Jersey led me to examine the status of women in policing across the United States. I found that women make up less than 13 percent of police officers. A number that hasn't changed much in the past 20 years. And they make up just three percent of police chiefs as of 2013, the last time the data was collected. We know that we can improve those rates. Other countries like Canada, Australia and the UK have nearly twice the amount of policewomen. And New Zealand is steadily marching towards their goal of recruit gender parity by 2021. Other countries are actively working to increase the number of women in policing, because they know of a vast body of research evidence, spanning more than 50 years, detailing the advantages to women in policing. From that research, we know that policewomen are less likely to use force or to be accused of excessive force. We know that policewomen are less likely to be named in a lawsuit or a citizen complaint. We know that the mere presence of a policewoman reduces the use of force among other officers. And we know that policewomen are met with the same rates of force as their male counterparts, and sometimes more, and yet they're more successful in defusing violent or aggressive behavior overall. So there are vast advantages to women in policing, and we're losing them to arbitrary fitness standards. The problem is, the United States has nearly 18,000 police agencies — 18,000 agencies with wildly varying fitness standards. We know that a majority of academies rely on a masculine ideal of policing that works to decrease the number of women in policing. These types of academies overemphasize physical strength, with much less attention spent to subjects like community policing, problem-solving and interpersonal communication skills. This results in training that does not mirror the realities of policing. Physical agility is but a small component of police work. Much of an officer's day is spent mediating interpersonal conflicts. That's the reality of policing. These are my babies. And we can reduce the disparity in policing by changing exams that produce disparate outcomes. The federal courts have stated that men and women simply are not physiologically the same for the purposes of physical fitness programs. And that's based on science. Respected institutions that law enforcement deeply respects, like the FBI, the US Marshals Service, the DEA and even the US military — they rigorously test fitness programs to ensure they measure fitness without gender-disparate outcomes. Why is that? Because recruiting is expensive. They want to recruit and retain qualified candidates. You know what else the research finds? Well-trained women are as capable as their male counterparts in overall fitness, but more importantly, in how they police. The law-enforcement community is admittedly experiencing a recruitment crisis. Yet, if they truly want to increase the number of applicants, they can. We can easily recruit more women and reap all those research benefits by training well-qualified candidates to pass validated, work-related, physiologically-based fitness exams, as required by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. We can increase the number of women, we can reduce that gender disparity, by simply changing exams that produce disparate outcomes. We have the tools. We have the research, we have the science, we have the law. This, my friends, should be a very easy fix. Thank you. (Applause) |
How sharks could inspire a new generation of medical devices | {0: 'Dr. Ethan Mann is the Vice President of Sharklet Technologies, Inc., an innovative surface technology company based in Aurora, Colorado. Ethan has a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska. He trained as a post-doctoral fellow in infectious disease at the Ohio State University. He serves on NIH review panels to evaluate small business innovation research grants. Ethan played Division II College Football at Chadron State College, runs marathons, and is more athletic than he looks! He has four children with his beautiful wife of 14 years, Tracy.'} | TEDxMileHigh | The US Navy has always had this frustrating problem with their fleet. It's something called "fouling." Now, for all you non-seafaring folk, fouling is when things like algae and barnacles and other marine materials get stuck to the sides of ships and submarines. Used to be able to prevent this fouling by coating ships and submarines with toxic agents, like heavy metals, but these heavy metals aren't as effective at keeping ships clean as they used to be. And we want clean ships because fouling on these vessels actually makes them less efficient in the water and can be easier for enemies to detect. This is not good. So several years ago, the US Office of Naval Research called on one of my colleagues, engineer scientist Dr. Anthony Brennan, to devise a solution to prevent fouling without the use of these heavy metals. See, Dr. Brennan was already investigating how things like surface roughness can prevent the attachment of organisms like algae. But Dr. Brennan was struggling. All of the engineered surfaces he came up with algae eventually overcame. And then Brennan found himself at a conference in Hawaii, of all places, and noticed something rather intriguing. Take a look at these three animals: a manatee, a whale and a shark. What do you notice? Well, right. So the whale and the manatee are filthy, but the shark is squeaky clean. This is a property unique to all sharks. The next time you watch Shark Week, you'll notice each and every shark you see is pristine. (Laughter) Why? Brennan wanted to find out. So with the help of some brave graduate students, they set out to find a shark. (Laughter) They found one in the shallow water and carefully took a mold of its skin using a dental impression material. Don't worry. The shark wasn't harmed in the process, although I'm sure he didn't appreciate it. (Laughter) So the students took the mold back to the lab and put it under a microscope, and this is what it looks like. The sharkskin is comprised of little denticles, and they overlap to create a diamond-shape repeating pattern on the sharkskin. Upon further investigation, Brennan and his team noticed that the texture on these denticles is actually what's responsible for keeping sharks clean. I'm a microbiologist and infectious disease expert, and I find this fascinating. I've spent my career trying to keep surfaces clean, especially the surfaces of medical devices. In hospitals this is a massive problem. See, what happens is bacteria who are really normally good find themselves in places they shouldn't be as a result of some medical procedure. Sometime during or after surgery, bacteria latch onto the surface of a medical device, stay there, and cause a serious infection; and this makes it impossible for the body to heal. Take a look at these surgical wires used to close a patient's sternum following open-heart surgery. Notice the tiny clusters of bacteria on the surface? This patient didn't heal for months until the wires were removed, and replaced with clean ones. You know, it used to be we just used antibiotics to treat these types of infections. Antibiotics were an amazing drug, for a while. But eventually, bacteria were exposed to antibiotics so frequently they were forced to adapt. And survival is the key driver of evolution, and that's what we're talking about here: bacterial evolution. Perhaps you've heard about this in the news. It's referred to as "Antimicrobial Resistance." The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call antimicrobial resistance one of the greatest public health challenges of our time. Illnesses that were once easily treatable are now untreatable. In the US alone every year, more than two million people will get an antibiotic resistant infection, and over 23,000 people will die as a result of that infection. The pharmaceutical industry is rushing to develop more and more and more antimicrobials, desperately trying to outpace antimicrobial resistance. But bacteria and germs, they evolve so much more quickly than we could innovate ways to kill them. It's clear the antimicrobial era is coming to an end, so we have to think about this in a whole new way. What if instead of trying to kill bacteria after they cause infections, we simply make it harder for bacteria to stick to the surfaces of medical devices in the first place? In other words, we prevent these infections from occurring altogether. That's what brings me back to what we've learned from sharks. It's the texture of sharkskin that makes them resistant to fouling. So what if we change the texture of medical devices to make them resistant to bacteria causing so many problems? Dr. Brennan knew he had a major medical breakthrough on his hands. He called up some trusted friends right here in Denver Colorado, and they started a company, and they called it Sharklet Technologies. In 2013, I joined the team, and together we used engineered surfaces mimicking the skin of sharks to prevent bacteria and other medical complications. Our first commercial device is a urological catheter, which doctors began using for patients just last year. (Applause) Take a look at these example images. The surface on the left is a smooth surface, and the one on the right is a sharkskin-like texture. Notice how much bacteria's on the smooth surface compared to the sharkskin-like surface? This is because the sharkskin-like texture creates an inhospitable surface for bacterial attachment and growth. It works on sharks, and it works here too because the texture takes advantage of principles of surface energy. Now, surface energy is really a description of a detailed property of a surface. It can include things like water interaction or material stiffness. The roughened sharkskin-like texture creates a surface with greater surface energy. You know, we interact with surface energy changes all the time. We often just don't notice it. For example, we like when rain beads up and runs off our car, right? Well, this happens best with a nice coat of wax. Wax is a material with greater surface energy characteristics. Now, we can't coat medical devices in wax, but we can change their surface texture. And this approach works on all types of medical devices, from catheters to pacemakers, and it's effective against all types of bacteria and germs. As it turns out, we can actually do more than just bacteria-proof medical devices. We can prevent other medical complications through understanding the power of surface energy, things like frequent clogging, excessive blood clotting or poor healing interactions. The next generation of medical device surfaces inspired by the skin of sharks will actually expand how medical devices are made. Really the core issue is that we create all types of sophisticated medical devices, things to pump fluid into our blood, keep our heart beating on pace, or even stimulate brain activity. But bad things happen when these devices don't interact well with our bodies' natural mechanisms. We've actually discovered that we can improve how medical devices are tolerated through subtly tuning the surface energy characteristics, like for example, we can prevent a lot of the excessive clotting that's occurring here on the smooth surface, compared to the sharkskin-like texture. This means that we can actually match the required surface energy with the medical use to prevent complications, all with the power of sharks. Ultimately, as we continue to engineer smart surfaces, we'll require fewer antimicrobials, fewer chemicals and fewer harsh additives, and this will make life-saving medical technology safer for all of us to use. This is innovation in its purest form, to be sure. But it's also a good reminder of just how important it is to observe the subtle cues in the raw mystery of the world around us. Thank you. (Applause) |
Why the world needs sharks | {0: 'Ocean Ramsey´s passion sounds rather scary to many of us. She dives with white sharks and is passionate about showing the beauty of them. White sharks are nowaday close to extinction, as they are misunderstood beings suffering under their wrong interpretated nature. Even though sharks are very intelligent and highly helpful in keeping the oceans in a healthy balance by eating ill organisms, they are seen as a danger. It is her goal to generate a better understanding between humans and sharks in order to save them.'} | TEDxKlagenfurt | What if we were to redefine the relationship we have with sharks, to one based on scientific fact, reality, and logic, rather than the current one, based off of limited and biased information? I want to talk about how changing the way we perceive sharks and interact with them could change our environment, economies, and lives for the better. But first, I want to introduce you to someone who has positively influenced and inspired my life's work, passion, and focus. She's intelligent, she's graceful, beautiful, efficient, but what I admire her most for is her very important work and role. What most people don't know is that without her work and influence, none of our lives would be the same. And I wanted to describe her to you first, before I showed you her photo, because I've come to find that, oftentimes, we make snap judgments, prejudice, based off of very little factual information. I've personally found this because oftentimes I'm judged solely off of my appearance or work as a professional model, rather than my primary work in science, conservation, and business. So, please keep in mind the truth that often there's more than meets the eye, and when you take time to get to know someone and better understand them, maybe you can better value them. And sometimes it's a little more interesting than you think too. So, without further ado, my beautiful role model, Bella, which means beautiful, and yes, she's a great white shark, or more accurately termed, a white shark, Carcharodon carcharias. Now, I know you might just be noticing her nice teeth and thinking something along the lines of "monster," but tonight, put your prior beliefs about sharks on hold, while I explain why Bella is an ideal role model, why we should seriously take action to redefine the relationship we have with these animals, to one based on scientific fact, to that or reality, rather than appearances, snap judgments, and fictitious Hollywood movies. Bella and her kind are extremely intelligent. I've observed her, and her kind, outsmarting even humans within a matter of moments by adapting her behavior even in novel situations. This ability to quickly adapt has likely led to sharks' resilience over time. They evolved before dinosaurs, before trees. They evolved two more known sensory systems than we even have to aid them a high level of efficiency in their very important role in the ecosystems, shaping, influencing them, and making them stronger, and better. Now, even though they are highly cognitive, cautious, and take in multiple factors before they take action, it is true that on rare, rare, rare, much more rare, occasions than we make mistakes, sharks do make mistakes, and, unfortunately, someone does get bit. Still, considering the millions of people that enter the water, the oceans, every single day, and the average number of fatalities is five to seven ... Now, I feel extremely lucky. I get to spend almost every single day diving with sharks, over 30 different species around the world on a diversity of research programs and conservation campaigns. My work in marine biology focuses on ethology, which is animal behavior and psychology, and cognitive ecology, where I study the way the animals interact with one another and their environment. I've come to observe and learn some of the most fascinating things I wish I had more time to share with you tonight. But in my limited time with you, what I've come to appreciate, what I feel is most important and urgent, and if I could speak up for sharks, what I'd want to share with you, is their very important role and work, and how it affects all of our lives. Essentially, imagine sharks as the ocean's immune system, the white blood cells. They pick up the dead, dying, weak, sick, injured animals, leaving only the healthiest to reproduce, keeping lower trophic levels and populations in balance. We all rely on our immune systems, and the scientific evidence for the importance of sharks is mounting. There are so many studies that show one after the other that the removal of sharks has environmental and economic negative impacts - Ransom A Myers, Bascompete - effects all the way down to coral reef systems. The removal of sharks has been attributed with starvation. Throughout the respected scientific community, there's no denying the importance of sharks, their effects on our environments, our economies, even the air that we breathe. 70-80% of the air we rely on to continue living comes from our oceans. Either directly or indirectly, we all rely on the oceans. Billions rely on it for seafood, over 200 million rely on it for direct employments. Our lives, our futures, are interconnected. In the words of one of my human role models, the wonderful Dr Sylvia Earle, "With every drop of water that you drink, every breath that you take, you're connected to the sea. No matter where on the planet you live." But sharks are still scary, right? So that's kind of the problem. Most peoples don't know many factual things about sharks, except they have teeth, and many more people don't know that sharks are actually being decimated, globally, at a rate of over 11,000 every single hour. That's more than three sharks every single second. That translates to 70-100 million sharks killed every year. That's like killing everyone in Spain, Austria and France every single year. Now, according to fishing records, over 90% of sharks have been depleted. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, over a third of all large sharks have been wiped out, or are facing extinction, or are vulnerable to extinction. So, why such a mass slaughter of such an important and keystone species? Well, some of it is due to silly things like souvenirs and pharmaceuticals. Some of it is due to men and their inferiority complexes ... I'm guessing. (Laughter) (Applause) 80% of long-lining is bycatch, and most of it is sharks. Culling, which is probably this least intelligent reaction a country can have to an adverse shark-human interaction; basically, like shooting yourself in the foot, from a behavioral standpoint, also a waste and indiscriminate killer. But the number one killer of sharks, globally: a bowl of soup. Yes, we are trading the health and productivity of our oceans-reliant environment and economies for a bowl of soup. What's worse, it's not even nutritious; it's actually toxic. It's merely for the Chinese culture belief that when they serve that soup, it means that they're prestigious or important. But what is classy about catching a shark, hacking off its fins, oftentimes while it's still alive, wasting 95% of the animal just to make yourself feel better about your social status. Consider: sharks have been evolving for over 400 million years; humans, 200,000, and their culturals, far less. We can live without culture, but not without our oceans, and our oceans cannot live without their immune systems. Like rhinos killed just for their horns, and elephants killed just for their tusks, sharks are being killed, slaughtered, globally, just for their fins. Now, I love traveling the world and experiencing the diversity of cultures, but there has to be a point when we re-evaluate the relationship that we have with sharks and animals, and look at how our cultures can adapt and evolve honorably. An ancient Chinese proverb says when you do not change your direction, you may end up where you are heading. So what if we were to adopt this idea and change the way we interact with sharks? What would that look like? Well, the great news is we already have concrete examples, places like Palau, Bahamas, areas like Cabo Pulmo, and Palmyra. In those areas, reef and fish stocks are thriving. Ecotourism is bringing in over US $314 million to local economies, directly employing over 10,000 jobs. This study by Dr Michele Barnes and the University of British Columbia is actually showing that that number will increase, more than double, in less than 20 years. So $780 million, far outweighing the global fin trade. So put at the most basic terms, even on just the monetary level, which is usually what politicians care about, a live shark is worth more than a dead shark. And what's great is, these shark ecotourism programs, they can support research. I was working out with Dr Mauricio Hoyos, we were tagging, taking biopsies, and I was wondering: Is any of this conservation-based research going to make a difference before these guys are just wiped out off the planet? Then one day, 20 meters underwater, doing a population count surrounded by these beautiful sharks, I was realizing by the time I gather, process and publish my studies, another 3-6 million sharks will be killed. So why study something that's being eradicated the rate the sharks are and not do anything about it. So I opened my research to the public. I developed a program, where people could come to learn about sharks from a scientific perspective. I collaborated with @juansharks, who is a well-known shark and marine photographer and shark specialist. We developed this program that's research- and conservation-based, and opened it to the public so they could learn about their biology, physiology, behavior, how to interact with them safely, answers all those questions people don't know about sharks. The cool thing is people actually get to get in the water with us and see for themselves, eye to eye, what sharks are really like. It's such a successful program as people can speak up for sharks from a first-hand perspective and also influence their networks, and change people's minds. We are also able to fund educational outreach through this, reef and beach cleanups, local conservation campaigns, and international conservation campaigns, like stopping the cull in Western Australia, a story for another time I'm honestly rather glad I don't have time to share tonight as I'd end up crying. But we were able to save one of the juvenile sharks. She was under three meters, and she would have just died, even though she was cattle tagged improperly, and, you know, for 90 minutes, I swam with her, looking her in the eye, and trying to tell her it was going to be okay as blood was spilling out of her head, and kind of trying to tell myself it was going to be okay. After 90 minutes, she swam off: and it was that effort. This is another conservation campaign, a little better known. It reached over 2 million people in 2 days and featured none other than the lovely role model, Bella, who is so great for her species, a great representative. At the time when we released it, it was because there was a study put out showing there were less than 350 great whites, in the area from California to Alaska to Hawaii to Mexico, an area where juansharks and I grew up diving with sharks, with white sharks specifically. We knew many of them, had spent much time with them, studying behavior, working with them. So what do you do when you hear someone you love, care about, understand, is being eradicated? Something. So, we thought, with Water Inspired we'd try and use inspiring photography and videography to inspire people to care. We needed people to give white sharks a second look, a second chance. They don't make the news very often. When they do, I'm sure you guys all know, it's not usually good press. So we were successful. We wanted to show the natural beauty of sharks. But most often, when people see a beautiful image like this, they just think it's just on its way to eat the next person, right? So, we want to do the anti-Jaws. The little blond girl, she gets eaten in the fictitious movie, right? So what's it like in reality? Well, I've been working with them for a long time, right? We dive to get receivers and other things like that, so I wanted to show a connection, I wanted people to be able to connect, see another side of these animals, realize that we can coexist. But in order to coexist, they have to exist, and there's so much more to these animals than meets the eye. When you take the time to get to know somebody, you know, you can understand that maybe there's more to them. And so I wanted to share that with the world. And I have to give the disclaimer - I mean, there's just so many things that I would love to share with you guys — but I do have to give the disclaimer that they deserve a lot of respect ... not fear, but they are apex predators, they do have a role ... and we need them for that role, it's very important. I mean, I could cite study after study after study, showing the importance of that. You know, if I wanted to go out into the African savanna and pat a lion, you know what I would do? I would call up the lion whisperer, and I'd go hang out with him, and I'd learn, and I'd study from him, out of respect for the animal because of its reputation. So, while I understand that, especially the way that they are portrayed in the media, that people are afraid of them, you shouldn't be afraid of them; you should just respect them. they are beautiful animals, there's so much more to them. So if there's one thing that Bella has taught me, it's that, like Bella, we can all positively change and influence our environments for the better. All we need to do is take action. In the words of Jane Goodall: Every day we make an impact. It's up to us what kind of an impact we want that to be. Now, this was just one successful collaborative program that we collaborated with GoPro on. They were very true to the message and released a beautiful piece, but there are so many other things, other media pieces we could do, even just writing to a restaurant, asking them not to serve shark fin soup. New campaigns, political policies, the ideas are endless. What it comes down to is: Yeah, knowledge is powerful, but it's nothing without action. I love Nike. I get up every morning and go running. It's like, just do it. You may not feel like it, but any effort is better than no effort. [We may feel like what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less without that drop.] So I want to ask you guys tonight, (Laughter) to take action for your future. Sharks and the oceans affect us all. I'd like to see a raise of hands for all those that are willing to take a small, small action for a better future. Raise your hands if you are willing to take that action. Oh, I so see all those hands. Okay, I'm going to call you out on it. I want you guys to use that hand and grab your phones. I'll do it with you. Grab your phones. I know it's usually rude to grab your phones during a talk, but you'll be helping me. This is really good. This is good. This is your call to action. Let's do it! (Laughter) So I want you guys to grab your phone, and we're going to spread great ideas globally. I want you guys to Tweet, Facebook, Instagram, something. Spread an idea, share a fact about a shark. I'm going to do it with you because it's actually really fun. Even though you guys are kind of dark - Okay, ready? Smile! Okay. So don't get distracted with the missed call or text. This'll only take a minute, and I'm off the stage, so ... All right, let's do this together. We're going to make a difference, a measurable impact for sharks. So I'm going to Instagram. This is how the world is now, right? We all just walk around on our phones. I think I saw that on a talk earlier. This is all good. Okay next. So I'm going to use a hashtag. #HelpSaveSharks. Okay. #HelpSaveBella. Here with the amazing group at TEDx conference in Europe, helping spread great ideas and ways we can help save sharks and our future. Sharks are important. Redefining the relationships we have with sharks. #SharkConservation, #HelpSaveSharks, #NoSharkFinSoup, #TEDSavesSharks, #TEDTalksonSharks. Okay. And I will share that. Awesome! And this is the best part. I get to thank you all for being a part of the force that redefines the relationship we have with sharks for a better future. Thank you, guys. (Applause) |
What it was like to grow up under China's one-child policy | {0: 'Nanfu Wang uncovers untold stories about human rights in China.'} | TED2019 | My name is Nanfu. In Chinese, "nan" means "man." And "fu" means "pillar." My family had hoped for a boy, who would grow up to be the pillar of the family. And when I turned out to be a girl, they named me Nanfu anyway. (Laughter) I was born in 1985, six years before China announced its one-child policy. Right after I was born, the local officials came and ordered my mom to be sterilized. My grandpa stood up to the officials, because he wanted a grandson to carry on the family name. Eventually, my parents were allowed to have a second child, but they had to wait for five years and pay a substantial fine. Growing up, my brother and I were surrounded by children from one-child families. I remember feeling a sense of shame because I had a younger brother. I felt like our family did something wrong for having two children. At the time, I didn't question where this sense of shame and guilt came from. A year and a half ago, I had my own first child. It was the best thing that ever happened in my life. Becoming a mother gave me a totally new perspective on my own childhood, and it brought back my memories of early life in China. For the past three decades, everyone in my family had to apply for a permission from the government to have a child. And I wondered what it was like for people who lived under the one-child policy. So I decided to make a documentary about it. One of the people I interviewed was the midwife who delivered all of the babies born in my village, including myself. She was 84 years old when I interviewed her. I asked her, "Do you remember how many babies you delivered throughout your career?" She didn't have a number for deliveries. She said she had performed 60,000 forced abortions and sterilizations. Sometimes, she said, a late-term fetus would survive an abortion, and she would kill the baby after delivering it. She remembered how her hands would tremble as she did the work. Her story shocked me. When I set out to make the film, I expected it would be a simple story of perpetrators and victims. People who carried out the policy and people who are living with the consequences. But that wasn't what I saw. As I was finishing my interview with the midwife, I noticed an area in her house that was decorated with elaborate homemade flags. And each flag has a picture of a baby on it. These were flags that were sent by families whom she helped treat their infertility problems. She explained that she had had enough of performing abortions and sterilizations — that the only work she did now was to help families have babies. She said she was full of guilt for carrying out the one-child policy, and she hoped that by helping families have babies, she could counteract what she did in the past. It became clear to me she, too, was a victim of the policy. Every voice was telling her that what she did was right and necessary for China's survival. And she did what she thought was right for her country. I know how strong that message was. It was everywhere around myself when I grew up. It was printed on matches, playing cards, textbooks, posters. The propaganda praising the one-child policy was everywhere around us. [Anyone who refuses to sterilize will be arrested.] And so were the threats against disobeying it. The message seeped into our minds so much so that I grew up feeling embarrassed for having a younger brother. With each person I filmed, I saw how their minds and hearts can be influenced by the propaganda, and how their willingness to make sacrifices for the greater good can be twisted into something very dark and tragic. China is not the only place where this happens. There is no country on earth where propaganda isn't present. And in societies that are supposed to be more open and free than China, it can be even harder to recognize what propaganda looks like. It hides in plain sight as news reports, TV commercials, political campaigning and in our social media feeds. It works to change our minds without our knowledge. Every society is vulnerable to accepting propaganda as truth, and no society where propaganda replaces the truth can be truly free. Thank you. (Applause) |
The human skills we need in an unpredictable world | {0: 'The former CEO of five businesses, Margaret Heffernan explores the all-too-human thought patterns that lead organizations and managers astray.'} | TEDSummit 2019 | Recently, the leadership team of an American supermarket chain decided that their business needed to get a lot more efficient. So they embraced their digital transformation with zeal. Out went the teams supervising meat, veg, bakery, and in came an algorithmic task allocator. Now, instead of people working together, each employee went, clocked in, got assigned a task, did it, came back for more. This was scientific management on steroids, standardizing and allocating work. It was super efficient. Well, not quite, because the task allocator didn't know when a customer was going to drop a box of eggs, couldn't predict when some crazy kid was going to knock over a display, or when the local high school decided that everybody needed to bring in coconuts the next day. (Laughter) Efficiency works really well when you can predict exactly what you're going to need. But when the anomalous or unexpected comes along — kids, customers, coconuts — well, then efficiency is no longer your friend. This has become a really crucial issue, this ability to deal with the unexpected, because the unexpected is becoming the norm. It's why experts and forecasters are reluctant to predict anything more than 400 days out. Why? Because over the last 20 or 30 years, much of the world has gone from being complicated to being complex — which means that yes, there are patterns, but they don't repeat themselves regularly. It means that very small changes can make a disproportionate impact. And it means that expertise won't always suffice, because the system just keeps changing too fast. So what that means is that there's a huge amount in the world that kind of defies forecasting now. It's why the Bank of England will say yes, there will be another crash, but we don't know why or when. We know that climate change is real, but we can't predict where forest fires will break out, and we don't know which factories are going to flood. It's why companies are blindsided when plastic straws and bags and bottled water go from staples to rejects overnight, and baffled when a change in social mores turns stars into pariahs and colleagues into outcasts: ineradicable uncertainty. In an environment that defies so much forecasting, efficiency won't just not help us, it specifically undermines and erodes our capacity to adapt and respond. So if efficiency is no longer our guiding principle, how should we address the future? What kind of thinking is really going to help us? What sort of talents must we be sure to defend? I think that, where in the past we used to think a lot about just in time management, now we have to start thinking about just in case, preparing for events that are generally certain but specifically remain ambiguous. One example of this is the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness, CEPI. We know there will be more epidemics in future, but we don't know where or when or what. So we can't plan. But we can prepare. So CEPI's developing multiple vaccines for multiple diseases, knowing that they can't predict which vaccines are going to work or which diseases will break out. So some of those vaccines will never be used. That's inefficient. But it's robust, because it provides more options, and it means that we don't depend on a single technological solution. Epidemic responsiveness also depends hugely on people who know and trust each other. But those relationships take time to develop, time that is always in short supply when an epidemic breaks out. So CEPI is developing relationships, friendships, alliances now knowing that some of those may never be used. That's inefficient, a waste of time, perhaps, but it's robust. You can see robust thinking in financial services, too. In the past, banks used to hold much less capital than they're required to today, because holding so little capital, being too efficient with it, is what made the banks so fragile in the first place. Now, holding more capital looks and is inefficient. But it's robust, because it protects the financial system against surprises. Countries that are really serious about climate change know that they have to adopt multiple solutions, multiple forms of renewable energy, not just one. The countries that are most advanced have been working for years now, changing their water and food supply and healthcare systems, because they recognize that by the time they have certain prediction, that information may very well come too late. You can take the same approach to trade wars, and many countries do. Instead of depending on a single huge trading partner, they try to be everybody's friends, because they know they can't predict which markets might suddenly become unstable. It's time-consuming and expensive, negotiating all these deals, but it's robust because it makes their whole economy better defended against shocks. It's particularly a strategy adopted by small countries that know they'll never have the market muscle to call the shots, so it's just better to have too many friends. But if you're stuck in one of these organizations that's still kind of captured by the efficiency myth, how do you start to change it? Try some experiments. In the Netherlands, home care nursing used to be run pretty much like the supermarket: standardized and prescribed work to the minute: nine minutes on Monday, seven minutes on Wednesday, eight minutes on Friday. The nurses hated it. So one of them, Jos de Blok, proposed an experiment. Since every patient is different, and we don't quite know exactly what they'll need, why don't we just leave it to the nurses to decide? Sound reckless? (Laughter) (Applause) In his experiment, Jos found the patients got better in half the time, and costs fell by 30 percent. When I asked Jos what had surprised him about his experiment, he just kind of laughed and he said, "Well, I had no idea it could be so easy to find such a huge improvement, because this isn't the kind of thing you can know or predict sitting at a desk or staring at a computer screen." So now this form of nursing has proliferated across the Netherlands and around the world. But in every new country it still starts with experiments, because each place is slightly and unpredictably different. Of course, not all experiments work. Jos tried a similar approach to the fire service and found it didn't work because the service is just too centralized. Failed experiments look inefficient, but they're often the only way you can figure out how the real world works. So now he's trying teachers. Experiments like that require creativity and not a little bravery. In England — I was about to say in the UK, but in England — (Laughter) (Applause) In England, the leading rugby team, or one of the leading rugby teams, is Saracens. The manager and the coach there realized that all the physical training they do and the data-driven conditioning that they do has become generic; really, all the teams do exactly the same thing. So they risked an experiment. They took the whole team away, even in match season, on ski trips and to look at social projects in Chicago. This was expensive, it was time-consuming, and it could be a little risky putting a whole bunch of rugby players on a ski slope, right? (Laughter) But what they found was that the players came back with renewed bonds of loyalty and solidarity. And now when they're on the pitch under incredible pressure, they manifest what the manager calls "poise" — an unflinching, unwavering dedication to each other. Their opponents are in awe of this, but still too in thrall to efficiency to try it. At a London tech company, Verve, the CEO measures just about everything that moves, but she couldn't find anything that made any difference to the company's productivity. So she devised an experiment that she calls "Love Week": a whole week where each employee has to look for really clever, helpful, imaginative things that a counterpart does, call it out and celebrate it. It takes a huge amount of time and effort; lots of people would call it distracting. But it really energizes the business and makes the whole company more productive. Preparedness, coalition-building, imagination, experiments, bravery — in an unpredictable age, these are tremendous sources of resilience and strength. They aren't efficient, but they give us limitless capacity for adaptation, variation and invention. And the less we know about the future, the more we're going to need these tremendous sources of human, messy, unpredictable skills. But in our growing dependence on technology, we're asset-stripping those skills. Every time we use technology to nudge us through a decision or a choice or to interpret how somebody's feeling or to guide us through a conversation, we outsource to a machine what we could, can do ourselves, and it's an expensive trade-off. The more we let machines think for us, the less we can think for ourselves. The more — (Applause) The more time doctors spend staring at digital medical records, the less time they spend looking at their patients. The more we use parenting apps, the less we know our kids. The more time we spend with people that we're predicted and programmed to like, the less we can connect with people who are different from ourselves. And the less compassion we need, the less compassion we have. What all of these technologies attempt to do is to force-fit a standardized model of a predictable reality onto a world that is infinitely surprising. What gets left out? Anything that can't be measured — which is just about everything that counts. (Applause) Our growing dependence on technology risks us becoming less skilled, more vulnerable to the deep and growing complexity of the real world. Now, as I was thinking about the extremes of stress and turbulence that we know we will have to confront, I went and I talked to a number of chief executives whose own businesses had gone through existential crises, when they teetered on the brink of collapse. These were frank, gut-wrenching conversations. Many men wept just remembering. So I asked them: "What kept you going through this?" And they all had exactly the same answer. "It wasn't data or technology," they said. "It was my friends and my colleagues who kept me going." One added, "It was pretty much the opposite of the gig economy." But then I went and I talked to a group of young, rising executives, and I asked them, "Who are your friends at work?" And they just looked blank. "There's no time." "They're too busy." "It's not efficient." Who, I wondered, is going to give them imagination and stamina and bravery when the storms come? Anyone who tries to tell you that they know the future is just trying to own it, a spurious kind of manifest destiny. The harder, deeper truth is that the future is uncharted, that we can't map it till we get there. But that's OK, because we have so much imagination — if we use it. We have deep talents of inventiveness and exploration — if we apply them. We are brave enough to invent things we've never seen before. Lose those skills, and we are adrift. But hone and develop them, we can make any future we choose. Thank you. (Applause) |
"You Have the Rite" | {0: 'Marc Bamuthi Joseph investigates cultural erasure through performances that range from opera to dance theater.'} | TED2019 | Me and the boy wear the same shoe size. He wants a pair of Air Jordan 4s for Christmas. I buy them, and then I steal them from his closet, like a twisted Grinch-themed episode of "Black-ish." (Laughter) The kicks are totems to my youth. I wear them like mercury on my Black man feet. I can't get those young freedom days back fast enough. Last time I was really fast I was 16, outrunning a doorman on the Upper East Side. He caught me vandalizing his building, not even on some artsy stuff, just ... stupid. Of all the genders, boys are the stupidest. (Laughter) Sixteen was a series of barely getting away and never telling my parents. I assume that my son is stewarding this tradition well. Sixteen was "The Low End Theory" and Marvin Gaye on repeat. Sixteen is younger than Trayvon and older than Emmett Till. At the DMV, my boy's in line to officially enter his prime suspect years: young, brown and behind the wheel, a moving semaphore, signaling the threat of communities from below. On top of the food chain, humans have no natural predator, but America plays out something genetically embedded and instinctual in its appetite for the Black body. America guns down Black bodies and then walks around them, bored, like laconic lions next to half-eaten gazelles, bloody lips ... "America and the Black Body" on some Nat Geo shit. Well, he passes his road test at the DMV. He does this strut C-Walk broken "Fortnite" thing on the way in to finish his paperwork, true joy and calibrated cool under the eye of my filming iPhone, the victory dance of someone who has just salvaged a draw. He's earned this win, but he's so 16 he can't quite let his body be fully free. When he's three, I'm in handcuffs in downtown Oakland. Five minutes ago, I was illegally parked. Now I'm in the back of a squad car, considering the odds that I'm going to die here, 15 minutes away from my son who expects that in 18 minutes, daddy's gonna pick him up from preschool. There are no pocket-size cameras to capture this moment, so. I learned a lot of big words when I was 16 getting ready for the SAT, but none of them come to me now. In the police car, the only thing that really speaks is my skin. I know this: I was parked on a bus zone on 12th and Broadway, running to the ATM on the corner. I pull the cash out just as a police car pulls up behind me, give him the "Aw shucks, my bad," that earnest Black man face. He waits till I'm back in the car and then hits the siren, takes my license with his hand on the gun, comes back two minutes later, gun drawn, another patrol car now, four cops now, my face on the curb, hands behind my back, shackled. I'm angry and humiliated, only until I'm scared and then sad. I smell like the last gasp before my own death. I think how long the boy will wait before he realizes that daddy is not on his way. I think his last barely formed memory of me will be the story of how I never came for him. I try to telepathically say goodbye. The silence brings me no peace. The quiet makes it hard to rest. In the void there is anger mushrooming in the moss at the base of my thoughts, a fungus growing on the spine of my freedom attempts. I'm free from all except contempt, the spirit of an unarmed civilian in the time of civil unrest, no peace, just Marvin Gaye falsettos arching like a broken-winged sparrow, competing against the empty sirens, singing the police. Apparently some cat from Richmond had a warrant out on him, and when the cop says my name to dispatch, dude doesn't hear "Marc Joseph," he hears "Mike Johnson." I count seven cars and 18 cops on the corner now, a pride around a pound of flesh. By the grace of God, I'm not fed to the beast today. Magnanimously, the first cop makes sure to give me a ticket for parking in a bus zone, before he sets me free. The boy is 16. He has a license to drive in the hollow city, enough body to fill my shoes. I have grey in my beard, and it tells the truth. He can navigate traffic in the age of autonomous vehicles. You know, people say "the talk," like the thing happens just once, like my memory's been erased and my internet is broken, like I can't read today's martyred name, like today's the day that I don't love my son enough to tell him, "Bro, I really don't care about your rights, yo. Your mission is to get home to me. Live to tell me the story, boy. Get home to me." Today's talk is mostly happening in my head as he pulls onto the freeway and Marvin Gaye comes on the radio. I'm wearing the boy's shoes, and the tune in my head is the goodbye that I almost never said, a goodbye the length of a requiem, a kiss, a whiff of his neck, the length of a revelation and a request flying high in the friendly sky without ever leaving the ground. My pain is a walking bass line, a refrain, placated stress against the fading baseline. Listen, this is not to be romantic, but to assert a plausible scenario for the existential moment. Driving while Black is its own genre of experience. Ask Marvin. It may not be the reason why you sing like an angel, but it surely has something to do with why heaven bends to your voice. The boy driving, the cop in the rearview mirror is a ticket to ride or die. When you give a Black boy "the talk," you pray he is of the faction of the fraction that survives. You pitch him the frequency of your telepathic goodbye, channel the love sustained in Marvin's upper register under his skullcap. Black music at its best is an exploded black hole responding to the call of America at its worst. Strike us down, the music lives, dark, like tar or tobacco or cotton in muddy water. Get home to me, son. Like a love supreme, a god as love, a love overrules, feathers for the angelic lift of the restless dead, like a theme for trouble man, or a 16-year-old boy, free to make mistakes and live through them, grow from them, holy, holy, mercy, mercy me, mercy, mercy. Thank you. (Applause) |
What's at the bottom of the ocean -- and how we're getting there | {0: "In 2019, Victor Vescovo could become the first person to have climbed to the highest point of all the world's continents as well as descended to the deepest reaches of all its oceans, including the Challenger Deep.", 1: 'David Biello is TED\'s science curator and the author of "The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth\'s Newest Age."'} | TED2019 | David Biello: So Victor, what have you been up to? Victor Vescovo: That's the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, and I guess I read too much Jules Verne as a young boy, and so for the last four years I've led a team to design and build what is now the most advanced and deepest diving submersible on the planet, and I have the ability to personally pilot it too. So this was us in December of last year, for the first time — the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. DB: And nobody's seen that before right? That's just you. VV: No. Well, now everybody else. DB: Who does that? Like — VV: Well, I think everyone has seen the developments in the last 10, 15 years. You have a bunch of people that have the means to explore outer space, like SpaceX or Blue Origin — those guys — and we're going the other direction. So it's a wonderful era of private individuals spending their resources to develop technologies that can take us to places that have never been explored before, and the oceans of the world is — it's almost a cliché to say it's 70 percent of our entire planet, and of that, 95 percent is unexplored. So what we're trying to do with our expedition is to build and prove out a submersible that can go to any point on the bottom of the planet to explore the 60 percent of this planet that is still unexplored. DB: You need a pretty cool tool to do that, right? VV: Right. Now the tool is the submarine, the Limiting Factor. It's a state-of-the-art vessel supported by the support ship, the Pressure Drop. It has a two-person titanium sphere, 90 millimeters-thick, that keeps it at one atmosphere, and it has the ability to dive repeatedly down to the very deepest point of the ocean. DB: So like the SpaceX of ocean exploration? VV: Yeah, it's kind of the SpaceX of ocean exploration, but I pilot my own vehicles. (Laughter) DB: Are you going to take Elon or...? VV: Yeah, I could take someone down there. So, Elon, if you're listening, I'll give you a ride in mine if you give me a ride in yours. (Laughter) DB: So tell us what it's like down there. I mean, we're talking about a place where the pressure is so intense that it's like putting an Eiffel Tower on your toe. VV: It's more than that. It's about 16,000 psi. So the issue is that we have this titanium sphere that allows us to go down to these extreme depths and come up repeatedly. That's never been done before. The Challenger Deep has been dived twice, once in 1960 and once in 2012 by James Cameron, and they went down and came back up and those were experimental craft. This is the first commercially certified submersible that can go up and down thousands of times with two people, including a scientist. We're very proud that we took down the deepest-diving British citizen in history just three weeks ago, Dr. Alan Jamieson of Newcastle University who was down with us on the Java Trench. DB: So, not too much freaks you out, is what I'm guessing. VV: Well, it's a lot different to go diving. If you're claustrophobic, you do not want to be in the submarine. We go down quite a distance and the missions typically last eight to nine hours in a confined space. It's very different from the career I had previously which was mountain climbing where you're in open spaces, the wind is whipping, it's very cold. This is the opposite. It's much more technical. It's much more about precision in using the instruments and troubleshooting anything that can go wrong. But if something really goes wrong in the submersible, you're not going to know it. (Laughter) DB: So you're afraid of leaks is what you're saying. VV: Leaks are not good, but if it's a leak that's happening, it's not that bad because if it was really bad you wouldn't know it, again, but — you know, fire in the capsule, that wouldn't be good either, but it's actually a very safe submersible. I like to say I don't trust a lot of things in life, but I do trust titanium, I trust math and I trust finite element analysis, which is how you figure out whether or not things like this can survive these extraordinary pressures and conditions. DB: And that sphere is so perfectly machined, right? This is a truly unique craft. VV: That was the real trick — is actually building a titanium sphere that was accurate to within .1 percent of machine. Titanium is a hard metal to work and a lot of people haven't figured it out, but we were very fortunate. Our extraordinary team was able to make an almost perfect sphere, which when you're subjecting something to pressure, that's the strongest geometry you can have. When I'm in the submersible and that hatch closes, I'm confident that I'm going to go down and come back up. DB: And that's the thing you double-check — that the hatch is closed? VV: There are only two rules in diving a submarine. Number one is close the hatch securely. Number two is go back to rule number one. DB: Alright so, Atlantic Ocean: check. Southern Ocean: check. VV: No one has ever dived the Southern Ocean before. I know why. It's really, really hostile. The weather is awful. The word collision comes to mind. But we did that one, yes. Glad that's over — DB: Yeah — VV: Thank you. (Applause) DB: It's like you're racing through it. And now the Indian Ocean, as Kelly mentioned. VV: Yeah, that was three weeks ago. We were fortunate enough to actually solve the mystery. If someone had asked me three weeks ago, "What is the deepest point in the Indian Ocean?" — no one really knew. There were two candidates, one off of Western Australia and one in the Java Trench. We have this wonderful ship with a brilliant sonar. We mapped both of them. We sent landers down to the bottom and verified. It's actually in the center portion of the Java Trench, which is where no one thought it was. In fact, every time we've completed one of our major dives, we have to run off to Wikipedia and change it because it's completely wrong. (Laughter) DB: So it probably takes longer to get down there than the time you're able to spend down there? VV: No, we actually spend quite a bit of time. I have four days of oxygen supply in the vessel. If I'm down there for four days, something's gone so wrong I'm probably not going to use it, but it's about three hours down to the deepest part of the ocean and then we can spend usually three or four hours and then another three hours up. So you don't want to stay in there for more than 10 or 11 hours. It can get a little tight. DB: Alright, so the bottom of the Indian Ocean. And this is something that no one besides you has ever seen before — VV: This is actually imagery from one of our robotic landers. On the bottom right you can actually see a robust assfish — that's what it's actually called. (Laughter) But you can see from the left a creature that's never been seen before. It's actually a bottom-dwelling jellyfish called a stalked ascidian, and none of them have ever looked like this before. It actually has a small child at the bottom of its stalk, and it just drifted across beautifully. So every single dive we have gone on, even though we're only down there for a couple of hours, we have found three or four new species because these are places that have been isolated for billions of years and no human being has ever been down there to film them or take samples. And so this is extraordinary for us — (Applause) So what we are hoping — the main objective of our mission is to build this tool. This tool is a door, because with this tool, we'll be able to make more of them potentially and take scientists down to do thousands of dives, to open that door to exploration and find things that we had no idea even existed. DB: And so more people have been to space than the bottom of the ocean. You're one of three. You're going to up that number, you're going to give it away. VV: Yeah, three people have dived to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The USS Trieste in 1960 with two individuals. James Cameron in 2012 with his Deep Sea Challenger — thank you, Jim, great sub. This is a third-generation technology. We're not only going to try and go down, actually in two weeks, but we're going to try and do it multiple times, which has never been done before. If we can do that, we'll have proven the technology and that door will not just go open, it will stay open. (Applause) DB: Fantastic. Good luck. VV: Thank you very much. DB: Thank you. VV: Thank you all. (Applause) |
The murder of ancient Alexandria's greatest scholar | null | TED-Ed | In the city of Alexandria in 415 CE, the bishop and the governor were in a fight. It started with a disagreement over the behavior of a militia of monks, and ended with an accusation of witchcraft leveled against one of the most powerful figures in the city. Hypatia of Alexandria was a prominent mathematician, philosopher, and advisor to the city’s leaders. In the centuries since she lived, the details of her life have been the subject of much dispute and have taken on an almost mythical status. But while none of Hypatia’s own writings survive, her contemporaries’ and students’ accounts of her work and life paint a picture of the qualities that made her renowned as a scholar, beloved as a teacher, and ultimately led to her downfall. Hypatia was born around 355 in Alexandria, then part of the Egyptian province of the Eastern Roman Empire, and an intellectual center. Her father Theon was an accomplished Greek mathematician and astronomer; her mother is unknown. Hypatia was likely an only child, and Theon educated her himself. By adulthood, she had surpassed her father in both mathematics and philosophy, becoming the city’s foremost scholar and taking over his position at the head of the Platonic school, similar to a modern university. She refined scientific instruments, wrote math textbooks, and developed a more efficient method of long division. But perhaps her most significant contributions to intellectual life in Alexandria came through her teaching. The philosophy Hypatia taught drew from the legacy of Plato and Aristotle, as well as the mystical philosopher Plotinus and the mathematician Pythagoras. The convergence of these influences merged to form a school called Neoplatonism. For the Neoplatonists, mathematics had a spiritual aspect, divided among the four branches of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. These subjects were not studied merely for the sake of curiosity or practical utility, but because they authenticated the belief that numbers were the sacred language of the universe. In the repeated patterns of algebraic formulas and geometric shapes, the orbits of the planets, and the harmonious intervals of musical tones, the Neoplatonists saw a rational cosmic force at work. Students delved into this ordered mathematical world to achieve higher unity with this force, known as “the One.” While Hypatia was considered pagan— a term for traditional Roman belief before Christianity— she worshipped no particular deity or deities, and her ideas could be applied alongside multiple religious viewpoints. Jewish and Christian as well as pagan students travelled from the farthest reaches of the empire to study with her. The nonpartisan environment Hypatia fostered, where all students could feel comfortable, was especially remarkable given the religious and political turmoil that was fracturing the city of Alexandria at the time. Christianity had recently become the Empire’s state religion. The local archbishop Cyril had steadily gained political power, commanding zealous militias of Christian monks to destroy pagan temples and harass the Jewish population. In doing so, he encroached on the secular authority of the Roman governor Orestes, himself a moderate Christian, leading to a bitter public feud between the two men. Because she was seen as a wise and impartial figure, governor Orestes consulted Hypatia, who advised him to act with fairness and restraint. But when a group of Cyril’s monks incited a riot, badly injuring Orestes in the process, he had their leader tortured to death. Cyril and his followers blamed Hypatia, accusing her of witchcraft to turn Orestes against Christianity. In March 415, as Hypatia was traveling through the city, the bishop’s militia of monks dragged her from her carriage and brutally murdered and dismembered her. Hypatia’s death was a turning point in the politics of Alexandria. In the wake of her murder, other philosophers in the Greek and Roman tradition fled, and the city’s role as a center of learning declined. In a very real way, the spirit of inquisition, openness, and fairness she fostered died with her. |
How turtle shells evolved... twice | null | TED-Ed | Meet Odontochelys semitestacea. This little creature spends its days splashing in Late Triassic swamps with a host of other reptiles. Under the surface lies its best defense against attack: a hard shell on its belly. Odontochelys is an early ancestor of the turtle. Its half-shelled body illustrates an important point about the modern turtle: it actually has two shells that develop totally separately while the turtle is still an embryo. Both are extensions of the animal’s skeleton, and together they are made of almost 60 bones. Like other embryos, turtle embryos are made of undifferentiated cells that become specific cell types, and then organs and tissues, through gene activity and communication between cells. At first, turtle embryos look very similar to those of other reptiles, birds, and mammals, except for a bulge of cells called the carapacial ridge. The ridge expands around the body between the neck and lower back, creating a disc shape. It guides the formation of the upper part of the turtle’s shell, called the carapace, likely by attracting the cells that will become ribs. Instead of curving downwards to make a regular rib cage, the ribs move outwards towards the carapacial ridge. They then secrete a signaling protein that converts surrounding cells into bone-forming cells. These fifty bones grow until they meet and connect with sutures. A ring of bone solidifies the carapace’s edges. The outer layer of skin cells produces the scales, known as scutes, that cover the carapace. The development of the bottom half of the shell, the plastron, is driven by neural crest cells, which can produce a variety of different cell types including neurons, cartilage and bone. A thick shield of these cells spreads across the belly, coming together in regions that produce nine plate-like bones. Eventually, these connect to the carapace by sutures. A turtle’s shell has obvious advantages for guarding against predators, but the rigid casing also presents some challenges. As the turtle grows, the sutures between the bones of the carapace and plastron spread. Most mammals and reptiles rely on a flexible rib cage that expands to allow them to breathe, but turtles use abdominal muscles attached to the shell instead: one to breathe in, and one to breathe out. So how did the shell evolve? Though there are still gaps in the fossil record, the first step seems to have been a thickening of the ribs. The oldest known turtle ancestor, a creature called Eunotosaurus africanus, lived 260 million years ago and looked almost nothing like a modern turtle, but it had a set of broad, flat ribs that anchored the muscles of its powerful forearms. Eunotosaurus was likely a burrowing creature, digging homes for itself in what’s now southern Africa. Odontochelys semitestacea illustrates another, later step in turtle evolution, with thick ribs like Eunotosaurus plus a belly plate for protection. Our first fossil evidence of the full shell characteristic of modern turtles is about 210 million years old, and belongs to a species called Proganochelys quenstedti, whose ribs had fused. Proganochelys could move between water and land. Unlike modern turtles, it couldn’t retract its head into its shell, but had defensive spines on its neck. Modern turtle shells are almost as diverse as the turtles themselves. Sea turtles have flatter, lighter shells for streamlined gliding through the water. Land-dwelling tortoises, meanwhile, have domed shells that can slip free of predators’ jaws and help them turn right-side up if they fall on their backs. Leatherback and softshell turtles have shells without the ring of bone around the edge of the carapace or the tough scutes covering it, making it easier for them to squeeze into tight spaces. |
From pacifist to spy: WWII's surprising secret agent | null | TED-Ed | Noor Inayat Khan was in the midst of a desperate escape. She had been imprisoned for her activities as an Allied spy, but with the help of a screwdriver and two other prisoners, she was back under the Parisian stars. As she began to run, her thoughts leapt to the whirlwind of events that had brought her here… Born in Moscow in 1914 to an Indian Muslim father and an American mother, Noor was raised in a profoundly peaceful home. Her parents were Sufi pacifists, who put their faith in the power of music and compassion. They moved to Paris, where Noor studied child psychology and published children’s books. But all this changed with the advent of the Second World War. In May 1940, with the German army ready to occupy Paris, Noor and her brother were faced with a difficult choice. As pacifists, they believed that all disputes should be settled non-violently. But witnessing the devastation across Europe, they decided that standing on the sidelines was not an option. Traveling to England, Noor volunteered for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and trained as a radio operator. She immersed herself in wireless operations and Morse code– unaware that she was being monitored by a secret organization. The British Special Operations Executive was established to sabotage the Germans in Nazi-occupied countries. As a trained radio operator who knew Paris well and spoke fluent French, Noor was an attractive recruit. In her interview, she was warned that wireless operation was some of the most dangerous work in the intelligence field. Operators had to lug a conspicuous transmitter through enemy territory, and the clandestine agency couldn’t protect her if she was caught. Noor accepted her assignment immediately. While she was determined to take her pacifist principles as far as possible, Noor had to learn the art of espionage. She learned how to contact intelligence networks, pick a lock, resist interrogation and fire a gun. In June 1943 she landed in Angers, south of Paris, and made her way to the city armed with a false passport, a pistol and a few French francs. But her network was compromised. Within a week of her deployment, all her fellow agents were arrested, and Noor was called home. She convinced her supervisors to let her stay– which meant doing the work of six radio operators singlehandedly. Over the following months, she tracked and transported supplies to the French resistance, sent reports of Nazi activity back to London and arranged safe passage for allied soldiers. This work was essential to building the French resistance and Allied intelligence networks– and, ultimately, ending the war. Protected only by her quick thinking and charisma, she frequently talked her way out of questioning. When the Gestapo searched her on the train, she gave them a casual tour of her “film projector.” When an officer spotted her hanging her aerial, she chatted about her passion for listening to music on the radio– and charmed him into helping her set up the cable. In her entire four month tenure, her sharp wits and stealth never failed her. But her charm had inspired lethal jealousy. In October 1943, the sister of a colleague, in love with an agent that loved Noor, sold her address to the Gestapo. Noor refused to give away any information, focusing instead on her escape. Secreting a screwdriver away from the guards, they were able to loosen a skylight and slip out into the night. But just as the prisoners began to run for their lives, an air raid siren alerted her captors. Noor was caught once again and sent to a German prison. Then, on to Dachau concentration camp. Despite being tortured, deprived and isolated, Noor gave nothing away. In the moments before her execution she is thought to have shouted “Liberté!” Since her heroic sacrifice, Noor has been honoured as a hero who waged secret battles behind enemy lines– paving the way for freedom without ever taking a life. |
How do viruses jump from animals to humans? | null | TED-Ed | At a Maryland country fair in 2017, the prize pigs were not looking their best. Farmers reported feverish hogs with inflamed eyes and running snouts. But while fair officials worried about the pigs, the Maryland department of health was concerned about a group of sick fairgoers. Some had pet the pigs, while others had merely been near their barns; but soon, 40 of these attendees would be diagnosed with swine flu. More often than not, sick animals don’t infect humans. But when they do, these cross-species infections, or viral host jumps, have the potential to produce deadly epidemics. So how can pathogens from one species infect another, and what makes host jumps so dangerous? Viruses are a type of organic parasite infecting nearly all forms of life. To survive and reproduce, they must move through three stages: contact with a susceptible host, infection and replication, and transmission to other individuals. As an example, let’s look at human influenza. First, the flu virus encounters a new host and makes its way into their respiratory tract. This isn’t so difficult, but to survive in this new body, the virus must mount a successful infection before it’s caught and broken down by an immune response. To accomplish this task, viruses have evolved specific interactions with their host species. Human flu viruses are covered in proteins adapted to bind with matching receptors on human respiratory cells. Once inside a cell, the virus employs additional adaptations to hijack the host cell’s reproductive machinery and replicate its own genetic material. Now the virus only needs to suppress or evade the host’s immune system long enough to replicate to sufficient levels and infect more cells. At this point, the flu can be passed on to its next victim via any transmission of infected bodily fluid. However, this simple sneeze also brings the virus in contact with pets, plants, or even your lunch. Viruses are constantly encountering new species and attempting to infect them. More often than not, this ends in failure. In most cases, the genetic dissimilarity between the two hosts is too great. For a virus adapted to infect humans, a lettuce cell would be a foreign and inhospitable landscape. But there are a staggering number of viruses circulating in the environment, all with the potential to encounter new hosts. And because viruses rapidly reproduce by the millions, they can quickly develop random mutations. Most mutations will have no effect, or even prove detrimental; but a small proportion may enable the pathogen to better infect a new species. The odds of winning this destructive genetic lottery increase over time, or if the new species is closely related to the virus’ usual host. For a virus adapted to another mammal, infecting a human might just take a few lucky mutations. And a virus adapted to chimpanzees, one of our closest genetic relatives, might barely require any changes at all. It takes more than time and genetic similarity for a host jump to be successful. Some viruses come equipped to easily infect a new host’s cells, but are then unable to evade an immune response. Others might have a difficult time transmitting to new hosts. For example, they might make the host’s blood contagious, but not their saliva. However, once a host jump reaches the transmission stage, the virus becomes much more dangerous. Now gestating within two hosts, the pathogen has twice the odds of mutating into a more successful virus. And each new host increases the potential for a full-blown epidemic. Virologists are constantly looking for mutations that might make viruses such as influenza more likely to jump. However, predicting the next potential epidemic is a major challenge. There’s a huge diversity of viruses that we’re only just beginning to uncover. Researchers are tirelessly studying the biology of these pathogens. And by monitoring populations to quickly identify new outbreaks, they can develop vaccines and containment protocols to stop these deadly diseases. |
The high-stakes race to make quantum computers work | null | TED-Ed | The contents of this metal cylinder could either revolutionize technology or be completely useless— it all depends on whether we can harness the strange physics of matter at very, very small scales. To have even a chance of doing so, we have to control the environment precisely: the thick tabletop and legs guard against vibrations from footsteps, nearby elevators, and opening or closing doors. The cylinder is a vacuum chamber, devoid of all the gases in air. Inside the vacuum chamber is a smaller, extremely cold compartment, reachable by tiny laser beams. Inside are ultra-sensitive particles that make up a quantum computer. So what makes these particles worth the effort? In theory, quantum computers could outstrip the computational limits of classical computers. Classical computers process data in the form of bits. Each bit can switch between two states labeled zero and one. A quantum computer uses something called a qubit, which can switch between zero, one, and what’s called a superposition. While the qubit is in its superposition, it has a lot more information than one or zero. You can think of these positions as points on a sphere: the north and south poles of the sphere represent one and zero. A bit can only switch between these two poles, but when a qubit is in its superposition, it can be at any point on the sphere. We can’t locate it exactly— the moment we read it, the qubit resolves into a zero or a one. But even though we can’t observe the qubit in its superposition, we can manipulate it to perform particular operations while in this state. So as a problem grows more complicated, a classical computer needs correspondingly more bits to solve it, while a quantum computer will theoretically be able to handle more and more complicated problems without requiring as many more qubits as a classical computer would need bits. The unique properties of quantum computers result from the behavior of atomic and subatomic particles. These particles have quantum states, which correspond to the state of the qubit. Quantum states are incredibly fragile, easily destroyed by temperature and pressure fluctuations, stray electromagnetic fields, and collisions with nearby particles. That’s why quantum computers need such an elaborate set up. It’s also why, for now, the power of quantum computers remains largely theoretical. So far, we can only control a few qubits in the same place at the same time. There are two key components involved in managing these fickle quantum states effectively: the types of particles a quantum computer uses, and how it manipulates those particles. For now, there are two leading approaches: trapped ions and superconducting qubits. A trapped ion quantum computer uses ions as its particles and manipulates them with lasers. The ions are housed in a trap made of electrical fields. Inputs from the lasers tell the ions what operation to make by causing the qubit state to rotate on the sphere. To use a simplified example, the lasers could input the question: what are the prime factors of 15? In response, the ions may release photons— the state of the qubit determines whether the ion emits photons and how many photons it emits. An imaging system collects these photons and processes them to reveal the answer: 3 and 5. Superconducting qubit quantum computers do the same thing in a different way: using a chip with electrical circuits instead of an ion trap. The states of each electrical circuit translate to the state of the qubit. They can be manipulated with electrical inputs in the form of microwaves. So: the qubits come from either ions or electrical circuits, acted on by either lasers or microwaves. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages. Ions can be manipulated very precisely, and they last a long time, but as more ions are added to a trap, it becomes increasingly difficult to control each with precision. We can’t currently contain enough ions in a trap to make advanced computations, but one possible solution might be to connect many smaller traps that communicate with each other via photons rather than trying to create one big trap. Superconducting circuits, meanwhile, make operations much faster than trapped ions, and it’s easier to scale up the number of circuits in a computer than the number of ions. But the circuits are also more fragile, and have a shorter overall lifespan. And as quantum computers advance, they will still be subject to the environmental constraints needed to preserve quantum states. But in spite of all these obstacles, we’ve already succeeded at making computations in a realm we can’t enter or even observe. |
Can you solve the multiverse rescue mission riddle? | null | TED-Ed | It was a normal Tuesday at the superconductor, until a bug in the system created a small situation. Now your team is trapped in eleven separate pocket dimensions. Luckily for you, there’s a half-finished experimental teleportation robot that may be able to get you all home, if you can figure out how to work through the quirks of its design. Over interdimensional radio, your engineers explain that the robot can teleport into the alternate universes you’re trapped in, but it’ll do so completely at random. The robot has two levers and one big button. When it appears, you just switch the position of one of the levers from A to B or vice versa, and then the robot will note your dimensional position and teleport to another of the eleven dimensions at random. If it shows up again, you’ll have to pull a lever before it’ll teleport away. When anyone presses the button, the robot will bring everyone who pulled a lever back home. Anyone who didn’t will be lost in the multi-verse forever. The challenge is to make sure everyone has pulled a lever before anyone hits the button. While you can talk to each other now over the interdimensional radio and agree on a plan, the robot’s teleportation technology will interfere with all attempts at communication once it arrives. You won’t be able to attach messages to the robot or scratch notes into its superstrong alloy body. Your only way to communicate information is to change the position of exactly one lever or hit the button. What plan will make sure everyone gets home? Pause the video now if you want to figure it out for yourself. Answer in 3 Answer in 2 Answer in 1 It would be nice if you could set different combinations of the levers to indicate who’s already been visited by the robot. But it has only two levers. That gives four combinations— far too few to communicate about 11 people, especially when you’re forced to flip one to send the robot onward. There must be another way. The critical insight is that not everyone has to know when every pocket dimension has been visited. If one person accepts responsibility ahead of time for hitting the button, then only they need to know who the robot has visited. In fact, they don’t even need to know exactly who’s been visited… just how many people have been. You volunteer to be the person in charge of pressing the button when the moment is right, and give the following directions to everyone else. Your plan is simple: you’ll use the left lever to count visits, and the right lever will have no meaning, so there’s no harm in moving it up or down. Each of the others will pull the left lever from position A to position B exactly once. If the robot appears with the left lever already pulled down, or if an individual has previously pulled the left lever down at any point in the past, then they should move the right lever. You, meanwhile, will be the only one who ever resets the left lever from position B to position A. This gives you a way to count how many people have been visited by the robot. Everyone needs to pull the left lever down exactly once, and you’re the only one to pull it back up. So you know that the tenth time the robot visits you with its left lever in the down position, it must have visited all ten of the others. And that means you’re safe to press the button and teleport everyone home. It may take a while– most likely the robot will need to teleport around 355 times; but better that than leave anyone behind. Your teammates phase back into your home dimension one at a time. The mission proves a great success. Well...mostly. |
How music makes me a better neuroscientist | {0: 'Combining a passion for music with scientific curiosity, Dr. Indre Viskontas is affectionately known as Dr. Dre by her students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she is pioneering the application of neuroscience to musical training, and at the University of San Francisco, where she is an Adjunct Professor of Psychology. She received a BSc in psychology and French literature from the University of Toronto, an MM degree in vocal performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at UCLA.\n\u200b\nIndre is a sought-after science communicator across all mediums. She co-hosted the 6-episode docuseries Miracle Detectives on the Oprah Winfrey Network and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, major radio stations across the US, including several appearances on the NPR program City Arts & Lectures and The Sunday Edition on the CBC in Canada. She is the co-creator and host of the popular science podcast Inquiring Minds, which boasts more than '} | TEDxSanFrancisco | Music isn't music until your brain makes it so. Sounds can be noise in one context and music in another. We can all tell when someone is speaking vs. when they're singing, but as Diana Deutsch discovered if you take a spoken sentence, pull out a phrase, repeat that phrase over and over and over again, it will begin to sound musical. Then, if you listen to the entire sentence again, it will sound as if the person bursts into song when he or she gets to the repeated part. But the sounds reaching your ear are the same in all of those cases; what's changed is your brain. How the brain turns sound into music remains one of the greatest mysteries of neuroscience. The vast majority of us love some kind of music; If you don't, you are very rare and scientists will want to study you. We call you a person with "amusia" - a cool new name. We don't all love the same music. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of smooth jazz, and you might not like opera. This characteristic of music, the fact that it's universally loved, but highly subjective, has ensured that it continues to baffle us. We all need certain things to survive and reproduce: food, water, sex. Our minds have evolved in such a way that when we don't have those things, we seek them out. They become enjoyable; we call them "biological reinforcers." But music is just a bunch of sounds strung together, it doesn't provide us with the essential nutrients; it doesn't bind to our neurons the way drugs do; it doesn't ensure that our genes live on although that might be debatable. Why do we love music? It's a question I've struggled to answer, and I can't promise you a full, complete solution today, but I like to share with you some of the scientific insights that had made me a better musician, and some of the artistic insights I hope will help neuroscientists solve this mystery. I come from a family of physicians: two anesthesiologists, a gastroenterologist, a generalist, an orthopedic surgeon, an ophthalmic surgeon, and an ER doctor. Thanksgiving dinner at our house is the safest place to be outside of the hospital. (Laughter) so I can't guarantee it's the most fun. Then there is my mother; she is a conductor, much to my two-year old son's dismay, not of the locomotive kind but very much of the music kind. Growing up, I saw how difficult it is to make a living as a musician in a society where music is universally loved but hopelessly undervalued. She works long hours, she still sacrifices every holiday, and there is a part of her that never stops wondering what people thought of her last performance. If you count up all the awards, the recognitions, and distinctions, she's by far, the most successful member of our family, but she certainly wouldn't think so. Not that being a doctor isn't stressful - it is - but at the end of the day, you've spent your time trying to extend or enhance a person's life, and who can argue the value of that? So when it was my turn to decide what to do with my professional life, the choice seemed pretty straight forward: go to medical school, and in your free time, continue up your musical training. But then I watched my brother trained to become an orthopedic surgeon, and I realized there is no such thing as free time in med school and especially in the years that follow. I didn't want to give up the most important years of my vocal training. I also couldn't see how I could support myself and pay for those expensive singing lessons if I didn't have some other way to make money. So I turned to neuroscience. To me, it was the a perfect blend of science and poetry. Like pretty much every other neuroscientist of my generation, I devoured the writings of Oliver Sacks; I studied topics like autobiographical memory, analogical reasoning, creativity. So you'd think then I'd turn to science to help me become a better musician. After all, if I was using science to understand something as elusive as insight, wouldn't it make sense to turn there to learn the things that I loved? But the truth is the more I looked at anatomical drawings of the larynx, the tongue, and the diaphragm, the less I felt I understood about my instrument; I couldn't see how knowing what parts of the brain were active or even enhanced in musicians would make me sing better. For a while, I even tried very hard to give up singing, because, after all, there are so many great singers in the world. We all need to get one-on-one care from a physician, but many hundreds of thousands of us can be moved by the same musician. So wouldn't I, and maybe the world, be better off if I stuck to medical research? The problem was that the more time I let elapse between singing engagements, the more I felt there was something really important missing from my life. The more I felt that I couldn't be the person I needed to be, I became moody, irritable, a little irrational, often mean; and I found too often I would cap off a difficult day in the lab with a martini or two and an hour of self-loathing. So when I finished my neuroscience PhD, I decided to dedicate myself full time to music; I enrolled in a Master's of Music program. Classical musical training follows the apprenticeship model where you study with one or two teachers for many years until you can produce the sounds that you hear in your imagination on your instrument. But the one thing that kept gnawing at me over and over again was how little neuroscience had trickled down into this model. After all, most of the techniques are built upon performing the same exercises over and over and over again, often, in the same way, everyday; until you build those skills. To demonstrate this, I want to introduce to you one of my favorite collaborators, Keisuke Nakagoshi. (Applause) Keisuke is going to give us an example of what a typical piano training exercise sounds like. (Piano music starts) (Piano music ends) Over and over and over again! But the truth is if you want to take what you're learning, what you're developing in that skill, and apply it to any piece of music, research in motor learning suggests that you should in fact interleave and space out your trials introducing some randomness - what we call "desirable difficulties." There is even a study of pianists demonstrating this effect, but so many teachers have never heard of such a thing. So then I began to wonder, "What would happen if I actually try it on myself?" as most scientists use themselves as guinea pigs, and I found that I started to improve much more rapidly. So I developed a course called Training the Musical Brain; how to use neuroscience to develop more effective practice strategies which I now teach at the Conservatory of Music here in San Francisco. I started to wonder, "Are there other ways that science can make me a better musician that I couldn't see ten years ago?" When I was a child, I remember one of my evaluations at the Royal Conservatory of Music; it'll always stick with me. I was a kid, I sang all my pieces well, I didn't make any mistakes, the judges said my tone was very good, I had good technique, but my performance was deemed "unmusical." I was devastated. How could these judges gauge my musicality? Couldn't they see that I feel and understand this music deeply? But the truth is feeling the music and producing music other people feel are two different skills. In the rehearsal room, I can cry as much as I need to when my character is dying, but when I get on stage, it's your time to cry not mine. So what could science tell me about that? That's when my two worlds collided; because after all, art and science are after the same thing: the goal is to understand the human experience. Science does it by extracting general principles about the world, and art uses individual experience to highlight what's universal. So here is what I learned in a nutshell: your brain is primed to search for meaning, for patterns, in a random, chaotic world. We look for these things everywhere, and we've evolved in such a way that it's enjoyable when we make a new connection, when we learn something new, when we understand something meaningful. We find pleasure in it. We see things that are meaningful to us even when they are not there. We see faces everywhere; they are important to us. We anthropomorphize or attribute human-like traits to our pets, or cars, or digital devices. When we hear repeated sounds, and we know what they mean, we call it music. Speech becomes song just by repetition. In fact, repetition is the one quality of music that seems to be common across all cultures and genres, even in the one genre in which it's explicitly avoided - we call this classical contemporary music composition." Elizabeth Margulis found if you artificially insert repetition into these pieces, people find them more enjoyable, more interesting, more likely to be rated as having been composed by a human being rather than a computer. Why? Because repetition signals intention, it frames the pattern, it shows you that there is something meaningful here to listen to. But that's not enough to explain a human obsession. After all, music can cause riots, topple governments, raise the hairs on the back of your neck. What can science tell us about that? It turns out that when your brain is enjoying a piece of music that might even give you the chills, it's awash with a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Dopamine, despite its widespread fame, has actually been undersold in many ways; people think of it as the "pleasure chemical," but that's not all it does. A better term for it is the "salience chemical," because it's awash in some parts of your brain when you're trying to hold important things in mind, when you're nauseated, when you want something, when there is a meaning to be found. The way that dopamine's awash in the brain while you're getting the chills from music is very specific to when and where it happens. There's a paper from Robert Zatorre's lab at McGill with Valorie Salimpoor, the first author that documents these changes and showed me, finally, what it means to be musical. Even as a master's student, I self-doubted my ability to sing musically; it was a bit like being cool: everyone seemed to know what it was and how to do it, but if you even asked the question, it showed that you weren't cool. I guess the fact I turned to science for help puts the nail in the coffin of my coolness. (Laughter) Even though in the practice room, I'd spend almost all my time perfecting my high notes, after all, that's what gets you hired. They come at the climax of the piece; they get the biggest reaction from the audience; and if you screw them up, they are the most memorable. But my singing teacher would say to me, "It's all the notes that are leading up to the high note that are more important than the high note, and that's what you should practice." I understood that from a technical perspective but not from a musical one until I read the Salimpoor paper. In the Salimpoor paper, they show that there are two regions of the brain that mediate getting the chills from music and they tracked dopamine in these regions. They are the caudate and the nucleus accumbens. You can think of the caudate as your parent: it tells you that your behavior has consequences, it tracks how the things that you see, hear, observe, and do have outcomes; it sets up the expectation of a reward of pleasure and ensures, in the future, you will behave in such a way that you will seek reward and avoid the things that led to punishment. The caudate is awash with dopamine when you are leading up to the special moment that will give you the chills. But when you get to the moment that give you the chills, there is a dopamine spike in your nucleus accumbens. Your nucleus accumbens is your BFF, it's your best friend for life, because more dopamine in the nucleus accumbens correlates with a bigger high. In the 1950s, Olds and Milner stuck electrodes into the nucleus accumbens of a bunch of rats. Then, they taught those rats to press the lever; and every time they pressed the lever, they'd get a little electric current that stimulates their nucleus accumbens. Those rats wanted nothing more than to press that lever. One rat pressed it 7,500 times in 12 hours, suggesting that it would starve rather than stop pressing. The nucleus accumbens likes, but the caudate wants. The intensity of the chills that you feel from music depends on how much dopamine there is in your nucleus accumbens, but the number of times you get the chills or, if you get them at all, depends on the amount of dopamine in your caudate. That's what I learned, that's what it means to be musical. You need to set up the musical intention for your audience so that they will pay attention, so that the caudate will know that there is a reward to be had, and we better pay attention. Then, as a musician, you use all kinds of tools, once you've set up the tension, to delay it, to delay the release. There's all kinds of music tools you can use to increase the desire, the expectation, the motivation for the reward, because, after all, pleasure is the death of desire. But the more desire there is, the better the pleasure. That's what I learned. So let me demonstrate to you this little theory in practice. One of my favorite opera is "La Traviata" by Verdi. It tells the story of a Parisian courtesan, a high class prostitute, who is dying of tuberculosis, as lots of sopranos do. (Laughter) She is entertaining a lavish party because she's giving everybody pleasure. That's what she does for a living, she gives pleasure, and she gets exhausted by the party; but at the party, she meets this young man who has been sitting outside her window while she was ill, unable to give pleasure when all her friends had abandoned her, and he was waiting for her because he really loved her. And now, alone in her room, she wonders, "What would it be like to feel true love?" "What is this mysterious thing, this pulse of the universe?" She realizes that it's a double-edged sword, that love is both torture and delight, (Italian) "croce e delizia." That's the intention I want to communicate to you, musically, because, of course, the idea is much more complicated than we can say. In order to do that, I'll first sing a repeat of what the tenor's saying earlier in the act. Clever Verdi! We like things better the second time around; repetition. Then I will set up the expectation, I'll tell you straight off, there will be a high note - Setting that up? - but I will delay that high note as long as possible to increase your motivation to get dopamine into your caudates, so that by the time we relax that tension, there is a dopamine spike in your nucleus accumbens. (Laughter) (Piano music starts) (Singing) (Singing and piano music end) (Applause) |
When do kids start to care about other people's opinions? | {0: 'Sara Valencia Botto investigates when and how humans develop a concern for reputation.'} | TEDxAtlanta | I'd like you to take a moment and consider what you are wearing right now. I have a deep, philosophical question for you. Why are we not all wearing comfortable pajamas right now? (Laughter) Well, I'm a psychologist and not a mind reader, although many people think that's the same thing. I can bet you that your response is somewhere along the lines of, "I'm expected to not wear pj's in public" or "I don't want people to think I am a slob." Either way, the fact that we all chose to wear business casual clothing, as opposed to our favorite pair of sweatpants, is not a silly coincidence. Instead, it reveals two defining human characteristics. The first is that we are cognizant of what other people value, like what they will approve or disapprove of, such as not wearing pj's to these sorts of settings. And two, we've readily used this information to guide our behavior. Unlike many other species, humans are prone to tailor their behavior in the presence of others to garner approval. We spend valuable time putting on make up, choosing the right picture and Instagram filter, and composing ideas that will undoubtedly change the world in 140 characters or less. Clearly, our concern with how other people will evaluate us is a big part of being human. Despite this being a big human trait, however, we know relatively little about when and how we come to care about the opinion of others. Now, this is a big question that requires many studies. But the first step to uncovering this question is to investigate when in development we become sensitive to others' evaluations. I have spent the past four years at Emory University investigating how an infant, who has no problem walking around the grocery store in her onesie, develops into an adult that fears public speaking for fear of being negatively judged. (Laughter) Now, this is usually a point when people ask me, "How do you investigate this question, exactly? Infants can't talk, right?" Well, if my husband were up here right now, he would tell you that I interview babies, because he would rather not say that his wife experiments on children. (Laughter) In reality, I design experiments for children, usually in the form of games. Developmental psychologist Dr. Philippe Rochat and I designed a "game" called "The Robot Task" to explore when children would begin to be sensitive to the evaluation of others. Specifically, the robot task captures when children, like adults, strategically modify their behavior when others are watching. To do this, we showed 14 to 24-month-old infants how to activate a toy robot, and importantly, we either assigned a positive value, saying "Wow, isn't that great!" or a negative value, saying, "Oh, oh. Oops, oh no," after pressing the remote. Following this toy demonstration, we invited the infants to play with the remote, and then either watched them or turned around and pretended to read a magazine. The idea was that if by 24 months, children are indeed sensitive to the evaluation of others, then their button-pressing behavior should be influenced not only by whether or not they're being watched but also by the values that the experimenter expressed towards pressing the remote. So for example, we would expect children to play with the positive remote significantly more if they were being observed but then choose to explore the negative remote once no one was watching. To really capture this phenomenon, we did three variations of the study. Study one explored how infants would engage with a novel toy if there were no values or instructions provided. So we simply showed infants how to activate the toy robot, but didn't assign any values, and we also didn't tell them that they could play with the remote, providing them with a really ambiguous situation. In study two, we incorporated the two values, a positive and a negative. And in the last study, we had two experimenters and one remote. One experimenter expressed a negative value towards pressing the remote, saying, "Yuck, the toy moved," while the other experimenter expressed a positive value, saying, "Yay, the toy moved." And this is how the children reacted to these three different scenarios. So in study one, the ambiguous situation, I'm currently watching the child. She doesn't seem to be too interested in pressing the remote. Once I turned around — now she's ready to play. (Laughter) Currently, I'm not watching the child. She's really focused. I turn around. (Laughter) She wasn't doing anything, right? In study two, it's the two remotes, one with the positive and one with the negative value. I'm currently observing the child. And the orange remote is a negative remote. She's just looking around, looking at me, hanging out. Then I turn around ... (Laughter) That's what she's going for. I'm not watching the child. He wants the mom to play with it, right? Take a safer route. I turn around ... (Laughter) He wasn't doing anything, either. Yeah, he feels awkward. (Laughter) Everyone knows that side-eyed glance, right? Study three, the two experimenters, one remote. The experimenter that reacted negatively towards pressing the remote is watching the child right now. She feels a little awkward, doesn't know what to do, relying on Mom. And then, she's going to turn around so that the experimenter that expressed a positive response is watching. Coast is clear — now she's ready to play. (Laughter) So, as the data suggests, we found that children's button-pressing behavior was indeed influenced by the values and the instructions of the experimenter. Because in study one, children did not know what would be positively or negatively evaluated, they tended to take the safest route and wait until I turned my back to press the remote. Children in study two chose to press the positive remote significantly more when I was watching, but then once I turned my back, they immediately took the negative remote and started playing with it. Importantly, in a control study, where we removed the different values of the remotes — so we simply said, "Oh, wow" after pressing either of the remotes — children's button-pressing behavior no longer differed across conditions, suggesting that it was really the values that we gave the two remotes that drove the behavior in the previous study. Last but not least, children in study three chose to press a remote significantly more when the experimenter that expressed a positive value was watching, as opposed to the experimenter that had expressed a negative value. Not coincidentally, it is also around this age that children begin to show embarrassment in situations that might elicit a negative evaluation, such as looking at themselves in the mirror and noticing a mark on their nose. The equivalent of finding spinach in your teeth, for adults. (Laughter) So what can we say, based on these findings? Besides the fact that babies are actually really, really sneaky. (Laughter) From very early on, children, like adults, are sensitive to the values that we place on objects and behaviors. And importantly, they use these values to guide their behavior. Whether we're aware of it or not, we're constantly communicating values to those around us. Now, I don't mean values like "be kind" or "don't steal," although those are certainly values. I mean that we are constantly showing others, specifically our children, what is likeable, valuable and praiseworthy, and what is not. And a lot of the times, we actually do this without even noticing it. Psychologists study behavior to explore the contents of the mind, because our behavior often reflects our beliefs, our values and our desires. Here in Atlanta, we all believe the same thing. That Coke is better than Pepsi. (Applause) Now, this might have to do with the fact that Coke was invented in Atlanta. But regardless, this belief is expressed in the fact that most people will chose to drink Coke. In the same way, we are communicating a value when we mostly complement girls for their pretty hair or their pretty dress, but boys, for their intelligence. Or when we chose to offer candy, as opposed to nutritious food, as a reward for good behavior. Adults and children are incredibly effective at picking up values from these subtle behaviors. And in turn, this ends up shaping their own behavior. The research I have shared with you today suggests that this ability emerges very early in development, before we can even utter a complete sentence or are even potty-trained. And it becomes an integral part of who we grow up to be. So before I go, I'd like to invite you to contemplate on the values that we broadcast in day-to-day interactions, and how these values might be shaping the behavior of those around you. For example, what value is being broadcasted when we spend more time smiling at our phone than smiling with other people? Likewise, consider how your own behavior has been shaped by those around you, in ways you might not have considered before. To go back to our simple illustration, do you really prefer Coke over Pepsi? Or was this preference simply driven by what others around you valued? Parents and teachers certainly have the privilege to shape children's behavior. But it is important to remember that through the values we convey in simple day-to-day interactions, we all have the power to shape the behavior of those around us. Thank you. (Applause) |
La música de las ideas | {0: "Dr. Sergio Feferovich holds a PhD in Music from John Hopkins University and a Master’s degree in Orchestral Conducting from the university's Peabody Institute. He has conducted numerous choirs and orchestras in his home country of Argentina and beyond."} | TEDxRiodelaPlata | Ideas worth spreading. When is an idea worth spreading? Is an idea good by itself? Can inappropriate context ruin an idea? Can a simple idea work within a very motivating context? Here I have a piano. And within music there are ideas. For example, if I play this, (Music) I can see ladies in the audience sighing because it is a wonderful idea. Who doesn't know Beethoven's 'Fur Elise'? Now, this idea needs a context. On the piano, the context is played by the left hand. The left hand plays this. (Music) Perfect. I have an idea and a context. Then, I just have to put them together, So it sounds like this. (Music) Something is wrong. You may notice that this (Music) can't be Beethoven. It is wrong because the melody, the idea, (Music) is in one tone but the context is in another. (Music) This happens often in real life too. You feel like you have an idea but the context is in a different tone. If I take the context and do this. (Music) I change it (Music) and I put it in the same frequency and tone as the idea. (Music) Then, everything starts to work. But this example is easy, if the idea is as wonderful as Beethoven's idea. But imagine that a boy says to me "Hi Fefe" — they call me Fefe, I don't know why. "Hi Fefe. I want to be a composer and I have composed my first piece, this is the idea I have. (Music) And I say, "Yes, yes, very nice." It reminds me of the story of the father that makes his son study violin and takes him to a friend and says: "Look, Juan, listen how my son plays the violin." The son plays the violin... very badly. (Laughter) And he says: "what do you think about the execution?" "Well, executing him is excessive, a couple of slaps would be enough." (Laughter) But, that wasn't the case. (Applause) Without going that far it occurred to me to say "If this is your idea... (Music) you'd better do something else, son". But, if that child was Frédéric Chopin, a Polish composer of the nineteenth century, he could have written (Music) And with this very simple idea, which could deserve a slap, he composed a prelude, "Prelude in E Minor" a wonderful piece that is played in piano recitals everywhere. So we had these two examples. But, what happens if I say I have an idea, I'm going to be a composer, and this is my idea. (Note) Ha! (Laughter) What do you think? I hear laughs. But be careful, because laughter can be disrespectful because this note, (Note) this idea, can be repeated. (Two notes) Ha! It starts to sound different. I can even change the rhythm — rhythm is the duration of a note. I can do this. (Notes) If I am Tom Jobim, for example, a Brazilian composer, I can do this. (Music) This is "One-note Samba." you may have noticed why it's called that. (Laughter) Now, this one-note samba makes the most of the idea of one idea - the redundancy is intended - reduced to the expression of a single note. But, speaking of reducing ideas, there is one example which is pretty average. The most interesting example of synthesizing an idea was invented by John Cage, who composed a piece for piano called "4 Minutes 33 Seconds." And in this case, to be faithful to the piece, I'm going to use a score if you don't mind. And I'm going to play just a fragment, because, you know, time is... (Laughter) We could keep going, but I think you get the picture. (Applause) There must be, perhaps, a more intense version somewhere, but it's less interesting for an orchestra. You can listen to it if you want. (Laughter) And, speaking of ideas in music, I'm thinking, to what extent is an idea our own? Really our own. And when does an idea begin to be shared? There is an aria by Mozart from the Don Giovanni opera —Don Juan— it's the story of a man who is a womanizer and even though he seduces one woman after another, he is never satisfied. This aria is "Là ci darem la mano" where Don Giovanni sings to one of his lovers "come I'll give you my hand, we will go far away, you will accept this, etc." It sounds like this. (Music) Là ci darem la mano, Là mi dirai di sì: Vedi, non è lontano... 'El Reino del Reves' (Spanish nursery rhyme) (Laughter) It's very similar to that nursery rhyme! (Applause) Now, this example is less clear because we can think has this idea been done before? Is it new? A composer, we could say, found things before they were lost. This is a euphemism for stealing. This composer, (Laughter) let's say he is a popular composer, ran out of inspiration. He didn't show inspiration in other work either, but in this case he wanted inspiration, so he searched his old jukebox and his old vinyl discs. To the youngest among you, back then, we didn't have pendrives or CDs. We had vinyl discs, you know. And he played this vinyl disc in search for inspiration; it was a tango. (Music) It was broken. It didn't work. So he threw it away and looked for another and he read on the cover "Muzio Clementi", "Sonatina en sol mayor". Who knows Muzio Clementi? Well, Muzio Clementi was a great composer. He was much less famous than his genius deserved. He was Beethoven's teacher, among others. And in the third movement of that sonata - the one that the composer was using for inspiration - he wrote this. (Music) But the composer thought: "I don't like this. Something is wrong." "And, what is this button for?" There was a button, metronome, that had three numbers: 33, 45 and 78. (Laughter) It was set in 78. So he thought: "This is wrong. Let me put it in 45." (Music) "No. I don't like this either." "Let's see what happens in 33." (Music) I have a hit! (Music) And who, who's going to complain? (Applause) Muzio Clementi died more than 300 years ago. Who is going to remember? Who knows? Only the idiots who go and listen to TED talks and investigate those things. (Laughter) Now, in an unprecedented effort because the sonatina doesn't end there. (Music) It goes on... (Music) This is the next hit. It says: "When I'm feeling happy, when I'm feeling honey. All I have to do is steal another tune". (Laughter) Done! Now I just have to publish it. And we all get rich. Now, I once heard — whilst we're on the topic of ideas — I heard Alejandro Dolina say that the genius was not the guy who invented the first phone. The genius was the one who invented the second phone. Because one phone alone is not worth it. (Laughter) In the case of ideas it's the same. Some composers have great ideas. But the really brilliant composers are those who find the second phone for each idea. And that is why one of my favorite and most popular composers is undoubtedly Mozart. We were listening to him before - I mean, I quoted him before - in "Là ci darem la mano." He composed a Sonata in C Major a piano sonata that could be used to tell a story. And the idea sounds like this: it begins when we are born (Music) and then we go to kindergarten. (Music) We play with other children with our friends. Then we grow older, we finish school - elementary school - and then, all of a sudden there she is. Ahh! When I first met my wife, I asked her - I just met her and, playing the piano, I asked - "Do you like music?" She said: "Yes, but never mind, keep playing." (Laughter) She appears... (Music) All is well. "Would you like to go out?" "Yes!" "To have a cup of coffee... have a great time together." There we are, very happy. And this is the time when you have to ask: "Do you like me being a musician?" "Yes!" "Do you like me being a bohemian, not interested in things?" "Love it" "Sign it!" (Laughter) Because I want to have that on the record, because that... (Music) is about to end. "How nice. How about living together? How about getting married?" "OK!" "Let's fix a date." (Music) And then the marriage begins... Oh! (Laughter) This is Mozart, eh? It's Mozart. (Applause) This is Mozart. (Music) The kids. Work. The house. (Music) And then... Is this the life I want? (Music) All you want is to go back to the beginning when you were a child (Music) Ah! There we are — This is like the beginning. But the beginning was like this. (Music) And now it's like this. (Music) It's not the same... it's alike but it's not the same. Now we have gained a few kilos, lost some hair... The other day I was sitting and my son said to me: "Dad, you are getting bald." (Laughter) And I said: "It's true." because now we're going through the same thing. (Music) But we still enjoy it, right? And you are looking forward - the kids are grown up - to meeting that person that you once knew... (Music) and you feel that you have found her. Ah! But, how was she before? (Music) And now she is... (Music) That's okay, it's close enough. (Laughter) What can you do? I've gained some weight too... (Laughter) "Will we play? Will we go out? "No, let's stay here." (Laughter) "Dr. House isn't that bad" (Laughter) "And Utilísima is so useful, it has recipes and everything! (Laughter) "I like that roast beef with potatoes." And I will end there. (Applause) And now that we're talking about ideas in music that go together, and since we all trust each other and won't tell anyone else I propose that together, we write a hit. Let's write a song that could sell and then we'll distribute the profits. Nobody will know. But, to make a hit we need an idea. An idea could have three notes. There are 7 musical notes, right? C, D, E, F, G, A, B. There are some alterations: flat, sharp... But that doesn't matter. Together, let's create an idea with three notes. Now, over here, give me a note. C, D, E, F, G, A, B? A note? F. F, perfect, F. F. F, what a good idea! People will say, F! Come on! F! F. And you over there? Give me a note. OK. OK. Let's say B. Flat? Sharp? Just B? Flat. B flat. It's getting there, eh? Getting there. Let's see over there, another note? D. Flat? Sharp? D flat. Now. We already have the idea! And in order to make it a hit, - because that's all we want - to be able to sell it very well, and make a lot of money, we have to make something popular. A "bolero" for example, what do you think? (Music) Ah! But - sorry, I have to make the cameramen move a bit - You know what? If this is a bolero, we need lyrics. Boleros have words. This idea needs words. What word can we use? Let's see. You know what? I'm going to tell you something that I learned after many years of studying. If the idea has three notes the text needs three syllables. If you tell me "TEDxRíodelaPlata" there is no way I could do it. Let's see, Max? Could you give me a word? What? Give me a word for a bolero? We are creating a hit here. "So you were..." I was playing the piano Give me something to make a hit. Three notes, one word. This is a bolero. "Ambition" That's it: Ambition! Ambition to love you, to have you ambition for whatever you want! So, let's do something. You remember the idea, right? (Music) Let's see if we can sing this. Please sing "Ambition" in these three notes. (Singing) Ambition. (Laughter) We have a problem here. Let's see. Breathe properly, let's do it again. (Singing) Ambition. Again. (Singing) Ambition. Great! I'm going to fill in the gaps but when the theme comes back we'll sing it loudly. Ready? Let's go. We begin with Ambition (Singing) Ambition. Stop, stop, stop. Now go! Right now. (Singing) Ambition. Louder, louder. (Singing) Ambition. And... (Singing) Ambition. And to make it a real hit, it needs to end with an ovation because, people will think... We're recording this live, right now, so you can buy it at the exit, you can digitalize it. So, over here. Let's do a rehearsal of the ovation like this. (Applause) Everyone over there. (Applause) More, more, right at the back! Great! Very good! You'll do that. And you begin to sing, as the applause grows you stop singing and start clapping. And that's how we finish this TEDxRíodelaPlata. Let's see how it goes, eh? Everybody sing, okay? When I give the signal, we give an ovation. We are recording this, so, be serious. And... three... (Singing) Ambition. (Singing) Ambition. (Singing) Ambition. (Applause) (Singing) Ambition. (Applause) (Music) (Ovation) |
The benefits of music education | {0: 'Dr. Anita Collins is an educator, researcher and writer in the field of brain development and music learning.'} | TEDxCanberra | What if, what if a large number of scientific studies had found that there was one activity that could improve our cognitive function, help our memory systems to work, help us to learn language, help us to moderate our emotional states, help us to solve complex problems and help our brains to be healthier into later life? What if that activity, while beneficial if undertaken at any time during our lives, was actually found by the scientists to be most beneficial if it was undertaken before the age of seven? What if that activity, unlike the momentary pain of a vaccination needle, is actually enjoyable for everyone involved? Now, you might be expecting me to reveal a new superfood we could eat some more of, maybe a pill we could take every day or an exercise regimen we could start, But actually, this activity is as old as our cultures and societies itself. And that activity is music education. Now, I may well be biased. I am a music educator, and I understand the world through the twin lenses of being a musician and being a teacher. But even before I became a teacher, I used to look around at all the people I was doing musical activities with and I used to wonder why they seemed to be good at everything, why they seem to do well at all of their studies, why they fit more into a day. And while many of them, most of them, never went on to be musicians in their professional lives, the careers they did choose were incredibly diverse and they were so successful in them. and they continue to be so. What, if anything, did music education have to do with that? So when it came time for me to choose a topic for my PhD study, it became pretty clear pretty quickly, I wanted to know if music education benefited brain development. What I found was a huge amount of research, now two decades worth, conducted by neuroscientists. And the neuroscientists had stumbled on something kind of by accident. They were looking at the brain functions and structures of musicians, and, literally, their brains looked different and they function differently and in many cases, far more effectively. So the neuroscientists started to do experiments that compared groups of musicians with groups of non-musicians doing all manner of tasks. Now, it's important at this point to share the definition of musician that the neuroscientists use. They believe it was someone who learnt a musical instrument and had learnt it formally, meaning they'd had lessons from an expert every week. They'd learnt how to read music, most of them had been involved in ensemble music-making experiences, and they'd done it for a reasonably long period of time, two years at the very least. Now, to help me explain some of this research, I'm going to use, I hope - There we go! Thank you. I'm going to use some animation from a TED Education film that I wrote and I helped to create earlier this year. Now, the technology that helped the neuroscientists allow them to see our brains working in real time. And what they did is they used fMRI machines and PET scanners to watch what was happening. They would get the participants to do all sorts of tasks - reading, maths problems - and they would see certain areas of the brain light up. But when they asked the participants to listen to music, they saw fireworks. They had never seen so many areas of the brain light up at the same time. So why did music education have this impact on the brain? Well, what they found is that music education works three areas of the brain at once: the motor, visual and auditory cortices. If we think about it, it's like a full-brain workout; it's like our legs,our arms and our torso doing an exercise at the same time. Music education is exercise for the brain. And among many, many other things, they also found that musicians had a larger bridge, a larger corpus callosum, across the two hemispheres of the brain, which allowed the messages to travel far more quickly and in very, very creative pathways. So what did this brain exercise mean for how musicians' brains actually functioned? Again, among many, many other things they found, they found that musicians were able to solve puzzles and problems far more effectively and creatively. They found that musicians had higher levels of executive function. Now, executive function is a complex group of activities in our brain that solve those really complex problems that have logical, strategic, conceptual, emotional elements to them. They also found that musicians had very highly developed memory systems in their brain. And that they thought this might have happened because when a musician makes a memory, they actually put tags against it - an emotional tag, a visual tag, a conceptual tag, a contextual tag. And overall, so far with these two decades of research that we now have, they have found that music education raises the general cognitive capacity of anyone who undertakes it. And even further to that, they've found that music education helps us be comfortable with discomfort. Now, learning is uncomfortable: we're asking our brains and our bodies to do things we've never done before. So music education actually helps us be comfortable in that state. It helps us to feel comfortable with learning. Now, I'd like to share with you two studies which, to me, highlight some of the many applications and impacts that music education could have. First one involves babies. I've seen very trusting mothers allow their beautiful babies to be put into fMRI machines so the neuroscientists could monitor their brain functions as the mothers spoke to them, along with many other tasks. Now, I say "trusting mothers" because these babies were between one and three days old. What the neuroscientists saw is that the babies were using their music-processing networks to understand their mother's voices. Literally, they were hearing music in their mother's voices. And this confirms something that the neuroscientists had been thinking for a while, that music and language processing are very closely connected in the brain, that, indeed, at birth we need our music processing to understand our language: at birth, we are musical. The second study involves IQ points. And I know we could have a whole other TED Talk about IQ points, but they are a well-used measure of intellectual capacity. And in this study comparing musicians with non-musicians, they found that those that had undertaken music education before the age of seven had around about 7.5 IQ points higher than those that had not. Now, 7.5 IQ points doesn't sound like much, but if we put it in context, an IQ of 100 is said to be average or normal, an IQ of 130 is said to be genius or entry into Mensa. So 7.5 points is huge. It's over 20%. And even further to that, another study looked at the economic capacity vs. IQ point, how much more we would earn per year, on average, per one IQ point that we had higher. What they found in today's dollars is that for every IQ point higher we have is equal to about $700 per year. Let's take our 7.5 IQ points for music education. That's about $5000 per year. Now think of that across 10 years, and suddenly we start to see that music education could have an enormous impact on every part of our society. Now, in every area of scientific study, it is incredibly important to ask big questions and to look at the myths that exist in that area. And there are two big ones in this area, and they are that to play music we need to be smart and to play music we need to be talented. Neuroscientists have now done a large number of randomized studies that have showed that music education impacts everybody who undertakes it. You don't need to be smart to start with. And if we think back to that study about babies, we're all born musical. We have to be to understand language. It is the experiences and the opportunities that we have in life that realizes that talent. And this gets me thinking even more about the fact that music education could be the glue that could bring together so many things that we are dealing with in our educational systems and our societies today. Let me give you some examples. Learning disorders. At the moment, many of them understood to be a miscommunication between the left and the right hemispheres of the brain. And as we saw earlier, music education actually makes those two sides of the brain work together really well. ADHD, again, at the moment understood to be a mistiming between the motor, visual and auditory cortices. And again, we saw before, music education actually makes the three areas of the brain work together incredibly well. If we take it another step further, music education has been found to help us acquire and understand language and to solve complex problems, many of which involve numbers. How might universal music education change literacy and numeracy in this country and in many countries around the world where it's a very hot topic? Now, I think about all of these issues in light of my own daughter, who's just turned four. And I think about her and her generation. I wonder what could universal music education do for an entire generation? I think of in 10 years' time, when she's 14, what might learning be like in her classroom if the general cognitive capacity has been raised of an entire generation. If literacy and numeracy levels have been raised, if many of the learning and behavioural disorders that we deal with today in classrooms have had the benefit of music education, how might our schools change? I jump again to 30 years' time, when she's 34. She could be doing absolutely anything with her life. But again, if we raise the cognitive capacity of an entire generation, how might that change our social, cultural, economic, political landscape? Dare I say it, how might the focus and quality about political debate in this country change if that's the generation of voters that they're trying to impress upon? I jump again to 70 years' time, when she's 74. I wonder about the quality of her physical and mental health if we'd invested before the age of seven in her brain health into later life. How might that impact our health budget? How might we be spending our money differently if we've made an investment back here in her generation that will impact in 70 years' time? And this gets me thinking about a much larger issue with education. Too often, we play the short game with education. It is a political football that gets hit back and forth with every change in government. What if we played the long game? What if we invested now in my daughter's generation before the age of seven in ways that now the science has showed us we can absolutely predict to the benefits, and in so many ways, we absolutely cannot predict the benefits. Now, music education is not the only answer, it's not the silver bullet that we've heard of earlier. There is no single answer. But I know it was the answer for me. When I was seven or eight years old, I was struggling to read. I could not untangle words and letters. And it wasn't through a lack of trying. My mother was a specialist reading teacher. And at the age of nine, someone handed me a clarinet by mistake - I was meant to get a flute. There was none left, so they said, "Here you go. Have a clarinet." And I learnt how to play, and I learnt how to read music. Within about six months, I'd untangled those words and those letters. I have no proof that those two are interconnected, but from all the research that I have read and from the works I continue to see the neuroscientists undertake, I'm sure they are connected. So now, with all of this research and all of this knowledge, what can we do? I think the first thing we can do is think differently. Music is a beautiful and wonderful art form that almost every human being on the planet enjoys in so many different ways every single day. But maybe we are missing an opportunity with music education that could change our world in ways we have no idea of. I think we could listen differently. When we hear that scratchy, out-of-tune sound of a beginner violinist, don't think about how it offends our ears. Think about the fireworks that are going off for that young child as they try so desperately to get the right note. Think of the learning that is going on for them. I think we could act differently. Instead of just going along to our child or grandchild's end-of-year concert, ask the music teacher if you can go to the rehearsal beforehand. See the learning happening. See the learning to be comfortable with discomfort going on. See the fireworks. And if you have a child or a grandchild who's been playing trombone for about six months and doesn't feel that they're really getting anywhere and they ask you if they can give up, don't let them. Make a choice for them that they will thank you for in the decades to come. Music education should be essential for every child. And if you look at our national curriculum and many national curriculums around the world, it is a core part of it. And yet in a research a study recently, relates to here in Australia, 1.4 million children today do not have access to a music teacher in their school. Music education is not for the talented. It is not a luxury, it's not an add-on, it's not a bonus, it's not a nice thing if we had some extra money. It is essential. We take deliberate steps to teach our children how to care for this planet so that they may enjoy it in the future. We take deliberate steps to teach our children how to eat well, exercise and look after themselves and make good choices so that they may live a full life. Why can't we take deliberate steps to raise the cognitive capacity through music education of the next generation so that they can build a better world for themselves? Thank you. (Applause) |
Why should you read "Kafka on the Shore"? | null | TED-Ed | “Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away… This storm is you. Something inside of you.” This quote, from the first chapter of Haruki Murakami’s "Kafka on the Shore," captures the teenage protagonist's turmoil. Desperate to escape his tyrannical father and the family curse he feels doomed to repeat, he renames himself Kafka after his favorite author and runs away from home. But memories of a missing mother, along with dreams that haunt his waking life, prove more difficult to outrun. Published in Japanese in 2002 and translated into English three years later, "Kafka on the Shore" is an epic literary puzzle filled with time travel, hidden histories, and magical underworlds. Readers delight in discovering how the mind-bending imagery, whimsical characters and eerie coincidences fit together. Kafka narrates every second chapter, with the rest centering on an old man named Satoru Nakata. After awakening from a coma he went into during the Second World War, Nakata loses the ability to read and write– but gains a mysterious knack for talking to cats. When he’s asked to tail a missing pet, he’s thrown onto a dangerous path that runs parallel to Kafka’s. Soon prophecies come true, portals to different dimensions open up– and fish and leeches begin raining from the sky. But what ties these two characters together– and is it a force either one of them can control? The collision of different worlds is a common thread in Haruki Murakami’s work. His novels and short stories often forge fantastic connections between personal experience, supernatural possibilities, and Japanese history. Born in Kyoto in 1949, Murakami grew up during the post-World War II American occupation of Japan. The shadow of war hung over his life as it does his fiction; "Kafka on the Shore" features biological attacks, military ghosts and shady conspiracies. Murakami’s work blurs historical periods and draws from multiple cultural traditions. References to Western society and Japanese customs tumble over each other, from literature and fashion to food and ghost stories. He has a penchant for musical references, too, especially in "Kafka on the Shore." As the runaway Kafka wanders the streets of a strange city, Led Zeppelin and Prince keep him company. Soon, he takes refuge in an exquisite private library. While he spends his days poring over old books and contemplating a strange painting and the library’s mysterious owner, he also befriends the librarian– who introduces him to classical music like Schubert. This musical sensibility makes Murakami’s work all the more hypnotic. He frequently bends the line between reality and a world of dreams, and is considered a master of magic lurking in the mundane. This is a key feature of magical realism. In contrast to fantasy, magic in this sort of writing rarely offers a way out of a problem. Instead, it becomes just one more thing that complicates life. In "Kafka on the Shore," characters are faced with endless otherworldly distractions, from a love sick ghost to a flute made from cat souls. These challenges offer no easy answers. Instead, they leave us marveling at the resourcefulness of the human spirit to deal with the unexpected. While Kafka often seems suspended in strangeness, there’s a tenderness and integrity at the heart of his mission that keeps him moving forward. Gradually he comes to accept his inner confusion. In the end, his experience echoes the reader’s: the deeper you go, the more you find. |
How craving attention makes you less creative | {0: 'As an actor, filmmaker and founder of the online community HITRECORD, Joseph Gordon-Levitt seeks to inspire creativity through collaboration.'} | TED2019 | First of all, thank you for your attention. There's nothing quite like being in a room full of people like this, where all of you are giving your attention to me. It's a powerful feeling, to get attention. I'm an actor, so I'm a bit of an expert on, well, nothing, really. (Laughter) But I do know what it feels like to get attention — I've been lucky in my life to get a lot more than my fair share of attention. And I'm grateful for that, because like I said, it's a powerful feeling. But there's another powerful feeling that I've also been lucky to experience a lot as an actor. And it's funny, it's sort of the opposite feeling, because it doesn't come from getting attention. It comes from paying attention. When I'm acting, I get so focused that I'm only paying attention to one thing. Like when I'm on set and we're about to shoot and the first AD calls out "Rolling!" And then I hear "speed," "marker," "set," and then the director calls "Action!" I've heard that sequence so many times, like, it's become this Pavlovian magic spell for me. "Rolling," "speed," "marker," "set" and "action." Something happens to me, I can't even help it. My attention ... narrows. And everything else in the world, anything else that might be bothering me or might grab my attention, it all goes away, and I'm just ... there. And that feeling, that is what I love, that, to me, is creativity. And that's the biggest reason I'm so grateful that I get to be an actor. So, there's these two powerful feelings. There's getting attention and paying attention. Of course, in the last decade or so, new technology has allowed more and more people to have this powerful feeling of getting attention. For any kind of creative expression, not just acting. It could be writing or photography or drawing, music — everything. The channels of distribution have been democratized, and that's a good thing. But I do think there's an unintended consequence for anybody on the planet with an urge to be creative — myself included, because I'm not immune to this. I think that our creativity is becoming more and more of a means to an end — and that end is to get attention. And so I feel compelled to speak up because in my experience, the more I go after that powerful feeling of paying attention, the happier I am. But the more I go after the powerful feeling of getting attention, the unhappier I am. (One person claps) And — thanks. (Laughter) (Applause) So this is something that goes way back for me. I think the first time I can remember using my acting to get attention, I was eight years old at summer camp. And I'd been going on auditions for about a year by then, and I'd been lucky to get some small parts in TV shows and commercials, and I bragged about it a lot, that summer at camp. And at first, it worked. The other kids gave me a bunch of extra attention, because I had been on "Family Ties." That's a picture of me on "Family Ties." (Laughter) Then, the tide turned — I think I took it too far with the bragging. And then, the other kids started to make fun of me. I remember there was this one girl I had a crush on, Rocky. Her name was Rachel, she went by Rocky. And she was beautiful, and she could sing, and I was smitten with her, and I was standing there, bragging. And she turned to me and she called me a show-off. Which I 100 percent deserved. But you know, it still really hurt. And ever since that summer, I've had a certain hesitance to seek attention for my acting. Sometimes, people would ask me, "Wait a minute, if you don't like the attention, then why are you an actor?" And I'd be like, "Because that's not what acting's about, man, it's about the art." And they'd be like, "OK, OK, dude." (Laughter) And then Twitter came out. And I got totally hooked on it, just like everybody else, which made me into a complete hypocrite. Because at that point, I was absolutely using my acting to get attention. I mean, what, did I think I was just getting all these followers because of my brilliant tweets? I actually did think that — I was like — (Laughter) "They don't just like me because they saw me in 'Batman,' they like what I have to say, I've got a way with words." (Laughter) And then in no time at all, it started having an impact on my dearly beloved creative process. It still does. I try not to let it. But you know, I'd be sitting there, like, reading a script. And instead of thinking, "How can I personally identify with this character?" Or "How is the audience going to relate to this story?" I'm like, "What are people going to say about this movie on Twitter?" And "What will I say back that will be good and snarky enough to get a lot of retweets, but not too harsh, because people love to get offended, and I don't want to get canceled?" These are the thoughts that enter my mind when I'm supposed to be reading a script, trying to be an artist. And I'm not here to tell you that technology is the enemy of creativity. I don't think that. I think tech is just a tool. It has the potential to foster unprecedented human creativity. Like, I even started an online community called HITRECORD, where people all over the world collaborate on all kinds of creative projects, so I don't think that social media or smartphones or any technology is problematic in and of itself. But ... if we're going to talk about the perils of creativity becoming a means to get attention, then we have to talk about the attention-driven business model of today's big social media companies, right? (Applause) This will be familiar territory for some of you, but it's a really relevant question here: How does a social media platform like, for example, Instagram, make money? It's not selling a photo-sharing service — that part's free. So what is it selling? It's selling attention. It's selling the attention of its users to advertisers. And there's a lot of discussion right now about how much attention we're all giving to things like Instagram, but my question is: How is Instagram getting so much attention? We get it for them. Anytime somebody posts on Instagram, they get a certain amount of attention from their followers, whether they have a few followers or a few million followers. And the more attention you're able to get, the more attention Instagram is able to sell. So it's in Instagram's interest for you to get as much attention as possible. And so it trains you to want that attention, to crave it, to feel stressed out when you're not getting enough of it. Instagram gets its users addicted to the powerful feeling of getting attention. And I know we all joke, like, "Oh my God, I'm so addicted to my phone," but this is a real addiction. There's a whole science to it. If you're curious, I recommend the work of Jaron Lanier, Tristan Harris, Nir Eyal. But here's what I can tell you. Being addicted to getting attention is just like being addicted to anything else. It's never enough. You start out and you're thinking, "If only I had 1,000 followers, that would feel amazing." But then you're like, "Well, once I get to 10,000 followers," and, "Once I get to 100 — Once I get to a million followers, then I'll feel amazing." So I have 4.2 million followers on Twitter — it's never made me feel amazing. I'm not going to tell you how many I have on Instagram, because I feel genuine shame about how low the number is, because I joined Instagram after "Batman" came out. (Laughter) And I search other actors, and I see that their number is higher than mine, and it makes me feel terrible about myself. Because the follower count makes everybody feel terrible about themselves. That feeling of inadequacy is what drives you to post, so you can get more attention, and then that attention that you get is what these companies sell, that's how they make their money. So there is no amount of attention you can get where you feel like you've arrived, and you're like, "Ah, I'm good now." And of course, there are a lot of actors who are more famous than I am, have more followers than I do, but I bet you they would tell you the same thing. If your creativity is driven by a desire to get attention, you're never going to be creatively fulfilled. But I do have some good news. There is this other powerful feeling. Something else you can do with your attention besides letting a giant tech company control it and sell it. This is that feeling I was talking about, why I love acting so much — it's being able to pay attention to just one thing. Turns out there's actually some science behind this too. Psychologists and neuroscientists — they study a phenomenon they call flow, which is this thing that happens in the human brain when someone pays attention to just one thing, like something creative, and manages not to get distracted by anything else. And some say the more regularly you do this, the happier you'll be. Now I'm not a psychologist or a neuroscientist. But I can tell you, for me, that is very true. It's not always easy, it's hard. To really pay attention like this takes practice, everybody does it their own way. But if there's one thing I can share that I think helps me focus and really pay attention, it's this: I try not to see other creative people as my competitors. I try to find collaborators. Like, if I'm acting in a scene, if I start seeing the other actors as my competitors, and I'm like, "God, they're going to get more attention than I am, people are going to be talking about their performance more than mine" — I've lost my focus. And I'm probably going to suck in that scene. But when I see the other actors as collaborators, then it becomes almost easy to focus, because I'm just paying attention to them. And I don't have to think about what I'm doing — I react to what they're doing, they react to what I'm doing, and we can kind of keep each other in it together. But I don't want you to think it's only actors on a set that can collaborate in this way. I could be in whatever kind of creative situation. It could be professional, could be just for fun. I could be collaborating with people I'm not even in the same room with. In fact, some of my favorite things I've ever made, I made with people that I never physically met. And by the way, this, to me, is the beauty of the internet. If we could just stop competing for attention, then the internet becomes a great place to find collaborators. And once I'm collaborating with other people, whether they're on set, or online, wherever, that makes it so much easier for me to find that flow, because we're all just paying attention to the one thing that we're making together. And I fell like I'm part of something larger than myself, and we all sort of shield each other from anything else that might otherwise grab our attention, and we can all just be there. At least that's what works for me. Sometimes. Sometimes — it doesn't always work. Sometimes, I still totally get wrapped up in that addictive cycle of wanting to get attention. I mean, like, even right now, can I honestly say there's not some part of me here who's like, "Hey, everybody, look at me, I'm giving a TED Talk!" (Laughter) There is — there's, you know, some part. But I can also honestly say that this whole creative process of writing and giving this talk, it's been a huge opportunity for me to focus and really pay attention to something I care a lot about. So regardless of how much attention I do or don't get as a result, I'm happy I did it. And I'm grateful to all of you for letting me. So thank you, that's it, you can give your attention to someone else now. Thanks again. (Applause) |
A Holocaust survivor's blueprint for happiness | {0: 'Eddie Jaku OAM, born Abraham Jakubowicz in Germany in 1920.\n\nHis family considered themselves German, first, Jewish second. On 9 November 1938, the night immortalised as Kristallnacht, Eddie returned home from boarding school to an empty house. At dawn Nazi soldiers burst in, Eddie was beaten and taken to Buchenwald.\n\nEddie was released and with his father escaped to Belgium and then France, but was again captured and sent to a camp, and thereafter to Auschwitz. On route, Eddie managed to escape back to Belgium where he lived in hiding with his parents and sister.\n\nIn October 1943, Eddie’s family were arrested and again sent to Auschwitz where his parents were both murdered. In 1945, Eddie was sent on a ‘death march’ but once again escaped and hid in a forest eating slugs and snails until June 1945 he was finally rescued by.\n\nEddie has volunteered at the Sydney Jewish Museum since it’s inception in 1992. Self-proclaimed as ‘the happiest man on earth’, he saw death every day throughout WWII, and because he managed to survive, made a vow to himself to smile every day.\n\nEdie has been married to Flore for 73 years, they have two sons, grandchildren and great grandchildren.'} | TEDxSydney | My dear new friends ... (Laughter) My name is Eddie Jaku, and I'm standing in front of you today, a survivor of the Holocaust and a witness of the most tragic times in the history of mankind. I was a proud young German. I thought this was the best civilization that could be given to a young man like me. How wrong I was. On the 9th of November, 1938, I returned from boarding school where I had lived under a false name for five years because I was a Jew. I lived away from my family, like an orphan, getting an education and under enormous pressure and fear that somebody could find out that I was not Walter Shleiss who I pretended to be. I was in great danger. On that fateful night, I had arrived home, but my family had gone in hiding, and I was alone. I went to bed with my dog close by. At 5 a.m., on the 10th of November, 1938, ten Nazis broke down the door of our house. What they did to me, I am ashamed to tell you. It was so bad that I believed, "Eddie, you're going to die today." After, they made me witness the demolition of our 200-year-old house and murdering my beloved dog, Lulu, who had tried to protect me, in front of my eyes. I lost my dignity, my freedom, and my faith in humanity. I lost everything I lived for. I was reduced from a man to being nothing. What happened to my country where I was born in, the country of my ancestors, the country which produced [Schiller], Goethe, Beethoven, and Mozart? What had happened to my German friends who became murderers? At the time, none of us understood that "Kristallnacht" - the "Night of Broken Glass" where the fronts of Jewish-owned shops were smashed, and the shops looted, and homes and synagogues were set on fire - was only the beginning of the nightmare of much, much worse to come. That day, I was transported to my first concentration camp, Buchenwald, where I was kept with another 11,000 Jewish men for about five months. On the 2nd of May, 1939, I was released. My father picked me up and brought me to Aachen. After 10 hours driving, we made an arrangement with a smuggler to take us into Belgium. I spent two weeks there with my dad in an apartment until I was arrested by Belgium police as a German, not a Jew. and interned in a camp with 4,000 other Germans. On the 10th of May, 1940, the camp was liquidated. We split up in Dunkirk, and I continued on to Lyon. There, I was arrested by French police and sent to Gurs, a terrible camp with 6,000 Germans. After my internments at camps, I was finally transported to what became my hell on earth: Auschwitz. My parents and sister were also transported to Auschwitz, and I was never to see my parents again. I did not have a chance to say goodbye to my beloved mother, and I have missed her every day of my life. If you have the opportunity today, please go home and make sure you tell your mom how much you love her. Please do this for your new friend, Eddie. I was lucky enough, managed to escape what became known as the death march. and I hid in a forest, alone, for many months, before I was found by the American army. But I'm standing here today a happy man, who enjoys life with a wonderful wife and a beautiful family. I do not hate anyone. Hate is a disease which may destroy your enemy, but will also destroy you in the process. (Applause) I'm doing everything I can to make this world a better place for everyone, and I implore you all to do your best too. Let us ensure that this terrible tragedy, the worst in the history, may never happen again and also will never, ever be forgotten. After many years of hardship and hiding, on the 7th September, 1945, after a long journey by train, I entered back into Belgium without any papers. Very shortly after that, I met and married my wife, Flore, to whom I have been married for 73 years. (Cheers) (Applause) Thank you. At that time, I was not a happy man. (Laughter) (Chuckles) I did not enjoy being amongst people. That was until our first son, Michael, was born. At that time, my heart was healed and my happiness returned in abundance. I made the promise that from that day until the end of my life, I promised to be happy, smile, be polite, helpful, and kind. I also promised to never put my foot on German soil again. Today, I stand in front of you, a man who has kept all those promises. My greatest happiness comes from my family, my wife, two sons - Michael and Andre - my many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who all bring so much joy. Today, I teach and share happiness with everyone I meet. Happiness does not fall from the sky; it's in your hands. If you're healthy and happy, you're a millionaire. (Chuckles) Happiness also brings good health to the body and mind, and I attribute my 99 years of health mostly to the positive and happy attitude. (Applause) One flower is my garden; one good friend is my world. Young people today forget to stop. They're constantly running and don't know where they're running to. (Laughter) You should take time to be happy and enjoy life. There's a time to laugh and there's a time to cry. I see good things in life. Invite a friend or family member for a meal. Go for a walk. Tomorrow will come, but first enjoy today! (Applause) I wonder how people exist without friendship, without people to share their secrets, hopes, and dreams, to share good fortune or sad losses. In the sweetness of friendship, let there be laughter and sharing of pleasure, good times made better and bad times forgotten - due to the magic of friendship. For me, when I wake up, I'm happy because it is another day to enjoy. When I remember that I should have died a miserable death, but instead I'm alive, so I aim to help people who are down. I was at the bottom of the pit. So If I can make one miserable person smile, I'm happy. (Applause) Remember these words: Please do not walk in front of me - I may not be able to follow. Please do not walk behind me - I may not be able to lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend. (Applause) I will end my talk with a wish from my heart to all your hearts. May you always have lots of love to share, lots of good health to spare, and lots of good friends that care. Thank you for giving me the privilege of speaking to you today. Thank you. (Applause) (Cheers) |
Family, hope and resilience on the migrant trail | {0: 'TED Fellow Jon Lowenstein is a documentary photographer, filmmaker and visual artist whose work reveals what the powers that be are trying to hide.'} | TEDSummit 2019 | [This talk contains graphic images] So I'm sitting across from Pedro, the coyote, the human smuggler, in his cement block apartment, in a dusty Reynosa neighborhood somewhere on the US-Mexico border. It's 3am. The day before, he had asked me to come back to his apartment. We would talk man to man. He wanted me to be there at night and alone. I didn't know if he was setting me up, but I knew I wanted to tell his story. He asked me, "What will you do if one of these pollitos, or migrants, slips into the water and can't swim? Will you simply take your pictures and watch him drown? Or will you jump in and help me?" At that moment, Pedro wasn't a cartoonish TV version of a human smuggler. He was just a young man, about my age, asking me some really tough questions. This was life and death. The next night, I photographed Pedro as he swam the Rio Grande, crossing with a group of young migrants into the United States. Real lives hung in the balance every time he crossed people. For the last 20 years, I've documented one of the largest transnational migrations in world history, which has resulted in millions of undocumented people living in the United States. The vast majority of these people leave Central America and Mexico to escape grinding poverty and extreme levels of social violence. I photograph intimate moments of everyday people's lives, of people living in the shadows. Time and again, I've witnessed resilient individuals in extremely challenging situations constructing practical ways to improve their lives. With these photographs, I place you squarely in the middle of these moments and ask you to think about them as if you knew them. This body of work is a historical document, a time capsule that can teach us not only about migration, but about society and ourselves. I started the project in the year 2000. The migrant trail has taught me how we treat our most vulnerable residents in the United States. It has taught me about violence and pain and hope and resilience and struggle and sacrifice. It has taught me firsthand that rhetoric and political policy directly impact real people. And most of all, the migrant trail has taught me that everyone who embarks on it is changed forever. I began this project in the year 2000 by documenting a group of day laborers on Chicago’s Northwest side. Each day, the men would wake up at 5am, go to a McDonald's, where they would stand outside and wait to jump into strangers' work vans, in the hopes of finding a job for the day. They earned five dollars an hour, had no job security, no health insurance and were almost all undocumented. The men were all pretty tough. They had to be. The police constantly harassed them for loitering, as they made their way each day. Slowly, they welcomed me into their community. And this was one of the first times that I consciously used my camera as a weapon. One day, as the men were organizing to make a day-labor worker center, a young man named Tomás came up to me and asked me will I stay afterwards and photograph him. So I agreed. As he walked into the middle of the empty dirt lot, a light summer rain started to fall. Much to my surprise, he started to take off his clothes. (Laughs) I didn't exactly know what to do. He pointed to the sky and said, "Our bodies are all we have." He was proud, defiant and vulnerable, all at once. And this remains one of my favorite photographs of the past 20 years. His words have stuck with me ever since. I met Lupe Guzmán around the same time, while she was organizing and fighting the day-labor agencies which were exploiting her and her coworkers. She organized small-scale protests, sit-ins and much more. She paid a high price for her activism, because the day-labor agencies like Ron's blackballed her and refused to give her work. So in order to survive, she started selling elotes, or corn on the cob, on the street, as a street vendor. And today, you can still find her selling all types of corn and different candies and stuff. Lupe brought me into the inner world of her family and showed me the true impact of migration. She introduced me to everyone in her extended family, Gabi, Juan, Conchi, Chava, everyone. Her sister Remedios had married Anselmo, whose eight of nine siblings had migrated from Mexico to Chicago in the nineties. So many people in her family opened their world to me and shared their stories. Families are the heart and lifeblood of the migrant trail. When these families migrate, they change and transform societies. It's rare to be able to access so intimately the intimate and day-to-day lives of people who, by necessity, are closed to outsiders. At the time, Lupe's family lived in the insular world of the Back of the Yards, a tight-knit Chicago neighborhood, which for more than 100 years had been a portal of entry for recent immigrants — first, from Europe, like my family, and more recently, from Latin America. Their world was largely hidden from view. And they call the larger, white world outside the neighborhood "Gringolandia." You know, like lots of generations moving to the Back of the Yards, the family did the thankless hidden jobs that most people didn't want to do: cleaning office buildings, preparing airline meals in cold factories, meat packing, demolitions. It was hard manual labor for low exploitation wages. But on weekends, they celebrated together, with backyard barbecues and birthday celebrations, like most working families the world over. I became an honorary family member. My nickname was "Johnny Canales," after the Tejano TV star. I had access to the dominant culture, so I was part family photographer, part social worker and part strange outsider payaso clown, who was there to amuse them. One of the most memorable moments of this time was photographing the birth of Lupe's granddaughter, Elizabeth. Her two older siblings had crossed across the Sonoran Desert, being carried and pushed in strollers into the United States. So at that time, her family allowed me to photograph her birth. And it was one of the really coolest things as the nurses placed baby Elizabeth on Gabi's chest. She was the family's first American citizen. That girl is 17 today. And I still remain in close contact with Lupe and much of her family. My work is firmly rooted in my own family's history of exile and subsequent rebirth in the United States. My father was born in Nazi Germany in 1934. Like most assimilated German Jews, my grandparents simply hoped that the troubles of the Third Reich would blow over. But in spring of 1939, a small but important event happened to my family. My dad needed an appendectomy. And because he was Jewish, not one hospital would operate on him. The operation was carried out on his kitchen table, on the family's kitchen table. Only after understanding the discrimination they faced did my grandparents make the gut-wrenching decision to send their two children on the Kindertransport bound for England. My family's survival has informed my deep commitment to telling this migration story in a deep and nuanced way. The past and the present are always interconnected. The long-standing legacy of the US government's involvement in Latin America is controversial and well-documented. The 1954 CIA-backed coup of Árbenz in Guatemala, the Iran-Contra scandal, the School of the Americas, the murder of Archbishop Romero on the steps of a San Salvador church are all examples of this complex history, a history which has led to instability and impunity in Central America. Luckily, the history is not unremittingly dark. The United States and Mexico took in thousands and millions, actually, of refugees escaping the civil wars of the 70s and 80s. But by the time I was documenting the migrant trail in Guatemala in the late 2000s, most Americans had no connection to the increasing levels of violence, impunity and migration in Central America. To most US citizens, it might as well have been the Moon. Over the years, I slowly pieced together the complicated puzzle that stretched from Central America through Mexico to my backyard in Chicago. I hit almost all the border towns — Brownsville, Reynosa, McAllen, Yuma, Calexico — recording the increasing militarization of the border. Each time I returned, there was more infrastructure, more sensors, more fences, more Border Patrol agents and more high-tech facilities with which to incarcerate the men, women and children who our government detained. Post-9/11, it became a huge industry. I photographed the massive and historic immigration marches in Chicago, children at detention facilities and the slow percolating rise of anti-immigrant hate groups, including sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona. I documented the children in detention facilities, deportation flights and a lot of different things. I witnessed the rise of the Mexican drug war and the deepening levels of social violence in Central America. I came to understand how interconnected all these disparate elements were and how interconnected we all are. As photographers, we never really know which particular moment will stay with us or which particular person will be with us. The people we photograph become a part of our collective history. Jerica Estrada was a young eight-year-old girl whose memory has stayed with me. Her father had gone to LA in order to work to support his family. And like any dutiful father, he returned home to Guatemala, bearing gifts. That weekend, he had presented his eldest son with a motorcycle — a true luxury. As the son was driving the father back home from a family party, a gang member rode up and shot the dad through the back. It was a case of mistaken identity, an all too common occurrence in this country. But the damage was done. The bullet passed through the father and into the son. This was not a random act of violence, but one instance of social violence in a region of the world where this has become the norm. Impunity thrives when all the state and governmental institutions fail to protect the individual. Too often, the result forces people to leave their homes and flee and take great risks in search of safety. Jerica's father died en route to the hospital. His body had saved his son's life. As we arrived to the public hospital, to the gates of the public hospital, I noticed a young girl in a pink striped shirt, screaming. Nobody comforted the little girl as she clasped her tiny hands. She was the man's youngest daughter, her name was Jerica Estrada. She cried and raged, and nobody could do anything, for her father was gone. These days, when people ask me why young mothers with four-month-old babies will travel thousands of miles, knowing they will likely be imprisoned in the United States, I remember Jerica, and I think of her and of her pain and of her father who saved his son's life with his own body, and I understand the truly human need to migrate in search of a better life. Thank you. (Applause) |
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