The attacking infantry advances steadily, their elephants already having broken the defensive line.
The king tries to retreat, but enemy cavalry flanks him from the rear.
Escape is impossible.
But this isn’t a real war– nor is it just a game.
Over the roughly one-and-a-half millennia of its existence, chess has been known as a tool of military strategy, a metaphor for human affairs, and a benchmark of genius.
While our earliest records of chess are in the 7th century, legend tells that the game’s origins lie a century earlier.
Supposedly, when the youngest prince of the Gupta Empire was killed in battle, his brother devised a way of representing the scene to their grieving mother.
Set on the 8x8 ashtapada board used for other popular pastimes, a new game emerged with two key features: different rules for moving different types of pieces, and a single king piece whose fate determined the outcome.
The game was originally known as chaturanga– a Sanskrit word for "four divisions."
But with its spread to Sassanid Persia, it acquired its current name and terminology– "chess," derived from "shah," meaning king, and “checkmate” from "shah mat," or “the king is helpless.”
After the 7th century Islamic conquest of Persia, chess was introduced to the Arab world.
Transcending its role as a tactical simulation, it eventually became a rich source of poetic imagery.
Diplomats and courtiers used chess terms to describe political power.
Ruling caliphs became avid players themselves.
And historian al-Mas’udi considered the game a testament to human free will compared to games of chance.
Medieval trade along the Silk Road carried the game to East and Southeast Asia, where many local variants developed.
In China, chess pieces were placed at intersections of board squares rather than inside them, as in the native strategy game Go.
The reign of Mongol leader Tamerlane saw an 11x10 board with safe squares called citadels.
And in Japanese shogi, captured pieces could be used by the opposing player.
But it was in Europe that chess began to take on its modern form.
By 1000 AD, the game had become part of courtly education.
Chess was used as an allegory for different social classes performing their proper roles, and the pieces were re-interpreted in their new context.
At the same time, the Church remained suspicious of games.
Moralists cautioned against devoting too much time to them, with chess even being briefly banned in France.
Yet the game proliferated, and the 15th century saw it cohering into the form we know today.
The relatively weak piece of advisor was recast as the more powerful queen– perhaps inspired by the recent surge of strong female leaders.
This change accelerated the game’s pace, and as other rules were popularized, treatises analyzing common openings and endgames appeared.
Chess theory was born.
With the Enlightenment era, the game moved from royal courts to coffeehouses.
Chess was now seen as an expression of creativity, encouraging bold moves and dramatic plays.
This "Romantic" style reached its peak in the Immortal Game of 1851, where Adolf Anderssen managed a checkmate after sacrificing his queen and both rooks.
But the emergence of formal competitive play in the late 19th century meant that strategic calculation would eventually trump dramatic flair.
And with the rise of international competition, chess took on a new geopolitical importance.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union devoted great resources to cultivating chess talent, dominating the championships for the rest of the century.
But the player who would truly upset Russian dominance was not a citizen of another country but an IBM computer called Deep Blue.
Chess-playing computers had been developed for decades, but Deep Blue’s triumph over Garry Kasparov in 1997 was the first time a machine had defeated a sitting champion.
Today, chess software is capable of consistently defeating the best human players.
But just like the game they’ve mastered, these machines are products of human ingenuity.
And perhaps that same ingenuity will guide us out of this apparent checkmate.
Greetings audience, I'm Thea, I'm a high school student, and today we're going to talk about sex.
[It won't be too scary.]
Operating on the assumption you're human, you've certainly heard of sex.
In case you haven't, to get you up to speed, sex is the process by which many organisms ensure their continued existence.
Here's the thing though: sex is more complicated than that because - spoiler alert! - humans are complicated.
So how do we learn about sex if it's so complicated?
You might remember sex education like this: [Don't have sex; you will get PREGNANT and die.]
Urban Dictionary - your source for news and information about the 21st century zeitgeist - describes sex education as: ".. where they try to scare you out of having sex with pictures of diseased genitals..."
A more hopeful description of sex education would be something like: a lifelong process of learning about sex and sexuality, exploring values and beliefs and gaining skills to navigate relationships and manage your sexual health.
This, as far as I'm concerned, is a solid definition.
So what can we do to make sex education something that teens find actually, like, educational.
Clearly, teens need answers to their questions.
Where do people go when they have questions?
[The Internet] Listen, I love the Internet.
It's one of the greatest developments in human information exchange.
[Yes.
Thanks Internet.]
But what it says about sexual health is not accurate by any stretch of the imagination or is so laden with bias that it feels more like being pelted with judgement than actually receiving information.
Unfortunately, not every teen is willing and able to chat it up with their parents about sex.
So if not always the Internet, where can teens turn?
Enter the peer educator.
People my age do, indeed, talk to each other about sex.
So when teens are sources of accurate information, it spreads among us quickly.
As a peer educator, I belong to a program that gives me the tools to learn about everything from STIs and safe sex to contraception and consent.
Basically, I can tell you more about human sexuality than the average adult.
When teens see someone like me instead of someone older, they're quite open to the information I have to offer them.
At lunch once, some friends wanted to know the difference between hormonal and copper IUDs.
So I brought this to the table.
Another day, my teacher didn't understand how emergency contraception works.
So I explained it to the class.
What does it look like when teens ask me questions about sexual health?
It goes something like this.
Venereal disease, STD, STI?
This terminology, it baffles me.
STI stands for sexually transmitted infection.
We used to say STD, which stood for sexually transmitted disease, but it was changed recently because STI is a more medically accurate term, and taking away the big scary word "disease" helps decrease stigma.
What the heck is trichomoniasis?
Well, trichomoniasis is a STI usually spread through vaginal intercourse.
It's curable with just one dose of an oral drug.
Common symptoms, regardless of a person's sex, are unusual discharge, painful urination and itching.
But it spreads really quickly because most of the time it's asymptomatic, which means people don't realize they have it.
That's why it's so important to get tested regularly.
Is it OK to be gay?
Yes, all people of all identities and backgrounds, including on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, can live healthy and productive lives.
Regardless of your beliefs, everyone has the right to explore and express their sexuality without the fear of shame or judgement.
Thanks!
So often, when my peers approach me with questions like these, seeking this or that piece of information, at least a sliver of what they're wondering is: "Am I normal?"
So let's talk about normal.
Part of the point of peer education is to give teens the opportunity to understand that there is no such thing as the elusive "normal."
Peer educators are here to say they're armed with information that empowers you to make informed decisions; you are going to be OK.
"Normal" isn't really necessary.
When you can get accurate, judgement-free information from your peers, you realize that sex-ed doesn't have to be scary.
So instead of striving to be normal, let's talk to each other.
Since peer education allows sex-ed to reach the community in ways that go far beyond pictures of diseased genitals, it turns out to be pretty brilliant.
An idea that, unlike trichomoniasis, is certainly worth spreading.
So when I decided to create an art piece in Manshiyat Naser, the neighborhood of the Cairo garbage collectors in Egypt, I never thought this project would be the most amazing human experience that I would ever live.
As an artist, I had this humanist intention of beautifying a poor and neglected neighborhood by bringing art to it and hopefully shining light on this isolated community.
The first time I heard about this Christian Coptic community was in 2009 when the Egyptian authorities under the regime of Hosni Mubarak decided to slaughter 300,000 pigs using the pretext of H1N1 virus.
Originally, they are pig breeders.
Their pigs and other animals are fed with the organic waste that they collect on a daily basis.
This event killed their livelihood.
The first time I entered Manshiyat Naser, it felt like a maze.
I was looking for the St. Simon Monastery on the top of the Muqattam Mountain.
So you go right, then straight, then right again, then left to reach all the way to the top.
But to reach there, you must dodge between the trucks overpacked with garbage and slalom between the tuk-tuks, the fastest vehicle to move around in the neighborhood.
The smell of the garbage unloaded from those trucks was intense, and the noise of the traffic was loud and overbearing.
Add to it the din created by the crushers in those warehouses along the way.
From outside it looks chaotic, but everything is perfectly organized.
The Zaraeeb, that’s how they call themselves, which means the pig breeders, have been collecting the garbage of Cairo and sorting it in their own neighborhood for decades.
They have developed one of the most efficient and highly profitable systems on a global level.
Still, the place is perceived as dirty, marginalized and segregated because of their association with the trash.
So my initial idea was to create an anamorphic piece, a piece that you can only see from one vantage point.
I wanted to challenge myself artistically by painting over several buildings and having it only fully visible from one point on the Muqattam Mountain.
The Muqattam Mountain is the pride of the community.
This is where they built the St. Simon Monastery, a 10,000-seat cave church that they carved into the mountain itself.
So, the first time I stood on top of the mountain and I looked at the neighborhood, I asked myself, how on earth will I convince all those owners to let me paint on their buildings?
And then Magd came.
Magd is a guide from the Church.
He told me the only person I needed to convince was Father Samaan, who is the leader of the community.
But to convince Father Samaan, I needed to convince Mario, who is a Polish artist who moved to Cairo 20 years ago and who created all the artwork of the Cave Church.
I am really grateful to Mario.
He was the key of the project.
He managed to get me a meeting with Father Samaan, and surprisingly, he loved the idea.
He asked me about where I painted before and how I will make it happen.
And he was mainly concerned by what I was going to write.
In every work that I create, I write messages with my style of Arabic calligraphy.
I make sure those messages are relevant to the place where I am painting but have this universal dimension, so anybody around the world can relate to it.
So for Manshiyat Naser, I decided to write in Arabic the words of St. Athanasius of Alexandria, a Coptic bishop from the third century, who said: (Arabic), which means in English, "Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eyes first."
It was really important for me that the community felt connected to the words.
And for me this quote was perfectly reflecting the spirit of the project.
So Father Samaan blessed the project, and his approval brought all the residents on board.
Hundreds of liters of paint, a dozen blue manual lifts, several trips back and forth to Cairo, a strong and solid team from France, North Africa, Middle East and the US, and after a year of planning and logistics, there we are, my team and some members from the local community creating a piece that will spread over 50 buildings, some filling up the space of the calligraphy that I trace with colors.
Here some blue, there some yellow, there some orange.
Some others carrying some sand bags and putting them on the top of the buildings to hold those manual lifts, and some others assembling and disassembling those same lifts and moving them around the different buildings.
At the beginning of the project, I numbered all those buildings on my sketch, and there was no real interaction with the community.
People didn’t get the point of all this.
But fast enough, those building numbers became family names.
The first building was the house of Uncle Ibrahim.
Uncle Ibrahim is such an enthusiastic person.
He was always singing and making jokes, and his daughters and sons saved me from his bull who wanted to attack me on the fourth floor.
(Laughter) Actually, the bull saw me from the window and came out on the balcony.
(Laughter) Yeah.
Uncle Ibrahim was always hanging out on the balcony and talking to me while I was painting.
I remember him saying that he didn’t go to the mountain for 10 years, and that he never takes a day off.
He said that if he stopped working, who will stop the garbage?
But surprisingly, at the end of the project, he came all the way to the mountain to look at the piece.
He was really proud to see his house painted, and he said that this project was a project of peace and -- sorry -- (Applause) Thank you.
He said that it was a project of peace and unity and that it brought people together.
So his perception towards the project changed, and my perception towards the community changed also, and towards what they do.
All the garbage that everybody is disgusted by is not theirs.
They just work out of it.
Actually, they don’t live in the garbage.
They live from the garbage.
So I started doubting myself and wondering what was the real purpose of this whole project?
It was not about beautifying a place by bringing art to it.
It was about switching perception and opening a dialogue on the connection that we have with communities that we don’t know.
So day after day, the calligraphy circle was taking shape, and we were always excited to go back on the mountain to look at the piece.
And standing exactly at this point every day made my realize the symbolism behind this anamorphic piece.
If you want to see the real image of somebody, maybe you should change your angle.
There was doubts and difficulties, like fears and stress.
It wasn't simple to work in such environments, sometimes having pigs under you while you paint or climbing a stack of garbage to reach a lift.
But we all got over the fear of the heights, the swinging lifts, the strength of the smell and also the stress of not finishing on time.
But the kindness of all those people made us forget everything.
The building number 3 was the house of Uncle Bakheet and Aunty Fareeda.
In Egyptian, they have this expression that says, "Ahsen Nas," which means "the best people."
They were the best people.
We used to take our break in front of their houses, and all the kids of the neighborhood used to join us.
I was impressed and amazed by the kids of Manshiyat Naser.
For the first few days, they were always refusing anything we were offering them, even a snack or a drink.
So I asked Aunty Fareeda, "Why is that?"
And she told me they teach their kids to refuse anything from somebody that they don't know because maybe this person needs it more than they do.
So at this exact point I realized actually the Zaraeeb community was the ideal context to raise the topic of perception.
We need to question our level of misconception and judgment we can have as a society upon communities based on their differences.
I remember how we got delayed on Uncle Ibrahim's house when his pigs that are bred on the rooftop were eating the sand bags that hold the lifts.
(Laughter) The house of Uncle Bakheet and Aunty Fareeda was this kind of meeting point.
Everybody used to gather there.
I think this is what Uncle Ibrahim meant when he said that was a project of peace and unity, because I really felt that people were coming together.
Everyone was greeting us with a smile, offering us a drink or inviting us into their own house for lunch.
Sometime, you are at the first level of a building, and somebody opens his window and offers you some tea.
And then the same thing happens on the second floor.
And you keep going all the way to the top.
(Laughter) (Applause) I think I never drink as much tea as I did in Egypt.
(Laughter) And to be honest with you, we could have finished earlier, but I think it took us three weeks because of all those tea breaks.
(Laughter) In Egypt, they have another expression, which is "Nawartouna," which means, "You brought light to us."
In Manshiyat Naser they were always telling us this.
The calligraphy, actually -- I used a white glow-in-the-dark paint for the calligraphy so at the end of the project, we rented some black light projectors and lit up the whole neighborhood, surprising everybody around.
We wanted to tell them that they are the ones who brought light to us.
(Applause) The Zaraeeb community are strong, honest, hard workers, and they know their value.
The people of Cairo call them "the Zabaleen," which means "the people of the garbage," but ironically, the people of Manshiyat Naser call the people of Cairo the Zabaleen.
They say, they are the ones who produce the garbage, not them.
(Laughter) (Applause) The goal was to leave something to this community, but I feel that they are the ones who left something in our lives.
You know, the art project was just a pretext for this amazing human experience.
The art piece at some point will disappear, vanish, and actually there is somebody who is building a second floor in front of Uncle Ibrahim's house, so it's covering part of the painting, so I might need to go back and paint over it.
(Laughter) It was about the experience, about the story, about the moment.
From the streets of the neighborhood, the painting appears in fragments, isolated from one another, standing alone.
But connected with the sign of calligraphy that today reveals the powerful message that we should all think about before we want to judge somebody.
Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eyes first.
Thank you.
(Applause)