Mystery: Notes from Session 8 of TED2019

To kick off day 4 of TED2019, we give you (many more) reasons to get a good night’s sleep, plunge into the massive microbiome in the Earth’s crust — and much, more more.

The event: Talks from TED2019, Session 8: Mystery, hosted by head of TED Chris Anderson and TED’s science curator David Biello

When and where: Thursday, April 16, 2019, 8:45am, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC

Speakers: Andrew Marantz, Kristie Ebi, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Edward Tenner, Matt Walker and Karen Lloyd

The talks in brief:

Andrew Marantz, journalist, author who writes about the internet

• Big idea: We have the power — and responsibility — to steer digital conversation away from noxious conspiracies and toward an open, equal world.
• How? The internet isn’t inherently toxic or wholesome — after all, it’s shaped by us, every day. Andrew Marantz would know: he’s spent three years interviewing the loudest, cruelest people igniting conversation online. He discovered that people can be radicalized to hate through social media, messaging boards and other internet rabbit holes because these tools maximize their algorithms for engagement at all costs. And what drives engagement? Intense emotion, not facts or healthy debate. Marantz calls for social media companies to change their algorithms — and, in the meantime, offers three ways we can help build a better internet: Be a smart skeptic; know that “free speech” is only the start of the conversation; and emphasize human decency over empty outrage. The internet is vast and sometimes terrible, but we can make little actions to make it a safer, healthier and more open place. So, keep sharing cute cat memes!
• Quote of the talk: “We’ve ended up in this bizarre dynamic online where some people see bigoted propaganda as being edgy, and see basic truth and human decency as pearl-clutching.”

Kristie Ebi, public health researcher, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment

• Big idea: Climate change is affecting the foods we love — and not in a good way. The time to act is now.
• How? As we continue to burn fossil fuels, the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere rises. This much we know. But Ebi’s team is discovering a new wrinkle in our changing climate: all this CO₂ is altering the nutritional quality of some key global staples, like rice, potatoes and wheat. Indeed, the very chemistry of these crops is being modified, reducing levels of protein, vitamins and nutrients — which could spell disaster for the more than two billion people who subsist on rice, for instance, as their primary food source. But we don’t have to sit by and watch this crisis unfold: Ebi calls for large-scale research projects that study the degradation of our food and put pressure on the world to quit fossil fuels.
• Quote of the talk: “It’s been said that if you think education is expensive, try ignorance. Let’s not. Let’s invest in ourselves, in our children and in our planet.”

Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, scientist and “dirt detective” studying the impact of ecological change on our soils

• Big idea: The earth’s soil is not only necessary for agriculture — it’s also an under-appreciated resource in the fight against climate change.
• How? Human beings tend to treat soil like, well, dirt: half of the world’s soil has been degraded by human activity. But soil stores carbon — 3,000 billion metric tons of it, in fact, equivalent to 315 times the amount entering our atmosphere (and contributing to climate change) every year. Picture this: there’s more twice as much carbon in soil as there is in all of the world’s vegetation — the lush tropical rainforests, giant sequoias, expansive grasslands, every kind of flora you can imagine on Earth — plus all the carbon currently up in the atmosphere, combined. If we treated soil with more respect, Berhe says, it could be a valuable tool to not only fight, but also eventually reverse, global warming.
• Quote of the talk: “Soil is just a thin veil that covers the surface of land, but it has the power to shape our planet’s destiny… [it] represents the difference between life and lifelessness in the earth’s system.”

Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Kristie Ebi and Joanne Chory in conversation with TED’s science curator David Biello

• Big idea: CO₂ is basically junk food for plants. As plants consume more and more CO₂ from the air, they’re drawing up fewer of the trace nutrients from the soil that humans need to eat. What can we do to make sure plants stay nutritious?
• How? Yes, we’re grateful to the plants that capture carbon dioxide from the air — but as Kristie Ebi notes, in the process, they’re taking up fewer nutrients from the soil that humans need. As Asmeret says: “There are 13 nutrients that plants get only from soil. They’re created from soil weathering, and that’s a very slow process.” To solve these interlocking problems — helping rebuild the soil, helping plants capture carbon, and helping us humans get our nutrients — we need all hands on deck, and many approaches to the problem. But as Joanne Chory, from the audience, reminds us, “I think we can get the plants to help us; they’ve done it before.”
• Quote of the talk: Kristie Ebi: “Plants are growing for their own benefit. They’re not growing for ours. They don’t actually care if you don’t get the nutrition you need; it’s not on their agenda.”

Edward Tenner, writer and historian

• Big idea: An obsession with efficiency can actually make us less efficient. What we need is “inspired inefficiency.”
• How? Our pursuit of more for less can cause us to get in our own way. Switching to electronic medical records made it easier to exchange information, for instance, but also left doctors filling out forms for hours — and feeling they have less time to spend with patients. Efficiency, Tenner says, is best served with a side of intuition, and a willingness to take the scenic route rather than cutting straight through to automation. Tenner’s advice: Allow for great things to happen by accident, embrace trying the hard way and seek security in diversity. “We have no way to tell who is going to be useful in the future,” he says. “We need to supplement whatever the algorithm tells us … by looking for people with various backgrounds and various outlooks.”
• Quote of the talk: “Sometimes the best way to move forward is to follow a circle.”

Matt Walker, sleep scientist

• Big idea:  If you want to live a longer and healthier life, get more sleep. And beware, the opposite holds true: the less your sleep, the shorter your life expectancy and the higher chance you have of getting a life-threatening illness.
• How? Walker has seen the results of a good night’s sleep on the brain – and the frightening results of a bad one. Consider one study: the brains of participants who slept a full night lit up with healthy learning-related activity in their hippocampi, the “informational inbox” of the brain. Those who were sleep-deprived, however, showed hippocampi that basically shut down. But why, exactly, is a good night’s sleep so good for the brain? It’s all about the deep sleep brain waves, Walker says: those tiny pulses of electrical activity that transfer memories from the brain’s short-term, vulnerable area into long-term storage. These findings have vast potential implications on aging and dementia, our education system and our immune systems. Feeling tired? Listen to your body! As Walker says: “Sleep is the Swiss Army knife of health.”
• Quotes from the talk: “Sleep, unfortunately, is not an optional lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity. It is your life support system, and it is mother nature’s best effort yet at immortality.”

Karen Lloyd, microbiologist

• Big idea: Deep in the Earth’s crust, carbon-sucking microbes have survived for hundreds of thousands of years. And we just might be able to use them to store excess CO₂ — and slow down climate change.
• How? Karen Lloyd studied microbes in hot springs and volcanoes in Costa Rica, and the results were astounding: as a side effect of its very slow survival, chemolithoautotroph — a kind of microbe that eats by turning rocks into other kinds of rocks — locks carbon deep in the Earth, turning CO₂ into carbonate mineral. And it gets better: there are more CO₂-reducing microbes laying in wait elsewhere in the Earth’s biosphere, from the Arctic to the mud in the Marianas Trench. We’re not sure how they’ll react to a rush of new carbon from the atmosphere, so we’ll need more research to illuminate possible negative (or positive!) results.
• Quote of the talk: “It may seem like life buried deep within the Earth’s crust is so far away from our daily experiences, but this weird, slow life may actually have the answers to some of the greatest mysteries to life on Earth.”

In Case You Missed It: Highlights from day 3 of TED2019

Day 3 of TED2019 featured three sessions of talks, a live podcast taping — and some world-changing ideas.

First, some news:

You could give the next best TED Talk. If you have an idea the world needs to hear, put your name forward to speak at next year’s TED conference! We’ve just opened applications in our TED2020 Idea Search, a worldwide hunt for the next great idea.

Can Twitter be saved? Jack Dorsey’s interview with TED’s Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers is live on TED.com. Hear from Jack about what worries him most about the messaging platform, which has taken a serious chunk of the blame for the divisiveness seen around the world, both online and off.

Inside the black hole image that made history. Also just published on TED.com: astrophysicist Sheperd Doeleman, head of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, speaks on the iconic, first-ever image of a black hole — and the epic, worldwide effort involved in capturing it.

Some larger themes that emerged from the day:

The spread of misinformation online is the great challenge of our time. We, the everyday users of the internet, might have to do what major tech companies and governments can’t: fight the misinformation we see every day in our feeds. Claire Wardle suggests we band together to accelerate a solution: for example, by “donating” our social data (instead of unwittingly handing it over to the tech giants), we could help researchers understand the scope of the problem. Could we build a new infrastructure for quality information, following the model of Wikipedia? In a special recording of The TED Interview, venture capitalist turned activist Roger McNamee picked up on the threat of misinformation, tracing the contours of Silicon Valley’s role in the 2016 US presidential election, Brexit and much more. After their conversation, Chris and Roger held a robust discussion with the audience, taking questions from Carole Cadwalladr, Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie and Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy, among others.

But social media can also be a force for good. In a powerful personal talk, illustrator, author and screenwriter Jonny Sun shares how social media is his antidote to loneliness. By sending jokes and endearing, misspelled, illustrated observations on the human condition “out to the void” of social media, he’s found that the void is often willing to talk back — reminding us of our shared human-ness, even if only for a moment.

The new pursuit of happiness. Researcher Rick Doblin studies the use of psychedelics as medicine, including treatments that show promise against PTSD and depression. Used medically, he says, psychedelic drugs can heighten a patient’s emotional awareness and sense of unity — even create a spiritual connection. Psychologist Elizabeth Dunn studies how we can create more happiness by being more altruistic. The secret? You have to see the effects of your giving, and feel a true connection to the people you’re helping.

Exploring the unexplored. Science has a “geography problem,” says paleoanthropologist (and stand-up comedian) Ella Al-Shamahi. We’re not doing frontline scientific exploration in a massive chunk of the world, which governments have deemed too unstable — places that have played a big role in the human journey, like Africa and the Middle East. She takes us to Socotra, an island off Yemen known as the Galápagos of the Indian Ocean, where she joined the area’s first frontline exploration since 1999. Ninety percent of the reptiles and 30 percent of the plants there exist only, well, there. Al-Shamahi is hoping to return to Socotra and, with the help of local collaborators, continue to explore this alien land. A little further offshore, undersea explorer Victor Vescovo joins us fresh from an expedition to the bottom of the Indian Ocean — the fifth ocean bottom he’s seen. In conversation with TED science curator David Biello, Vescovo shares the technology powering his new submersible, designed to explore the deepest parts of the world’s oceans. He describes his project as “kind of the SpaceX of ocean exploration, but I pilot my own vehicles.”

Architecture doesn’t need to be permanent. When it comes to cities, we’re obsessed with permanence and predictability. But by studying impermanent settlements, we can learn to build cities that are more adaptable, efficient and sustainable, says architect Rahul Mehtrota. He takes us to the confluence of India’s Yamuna and Ganges rivers — where, every 12 years, a megacity springs up to house the seven million pilgrims who live there for the 55-day duration of the Kumbh Mela religious festival. The city is fully functional yet impermanent and reversible — built in ten weeks and completely disassembled after the festival. Studying the Kumbh Mela helped Mehrotra realize that our preoccupation with permanence is shortsighted. “We need to make a shift in our imagination about cities,” he says. “We need to change urban design cultures to think of the temporal, the reversible, the disassemblable.” And architect Bjarke Ingels takes us on a worldwide tour of his work — from much-needed flood-protection improvements around lower Manhattan (scheduled to break ground this year) to a toxin-free power plant in Copenhagen (with a rooftop you can ski on!) to a proposed floating ocean city (powered completely by solar energy — which could serve as a model for living on Mars.) We need to imagine vibrantly flexible habitats, he says — and, in doing so, we can forge a sustainable future for all.

How Hannah Gadsby broke comedy

“I don’t think I’m qualified to speak my own mind,” says Australian comic Hannah Gadsby. “I’m not so good at turning the thinking into the talking. And you’re wondering how someone who’s so bad at the chat could be a stand-up comedian?”

She starts off her TED Talk by promising the audience three ideas and three contradictions. Because of the length of her talk, she says, the people at TED had advised her to stick with one idea. “But I said no. What would they know?” So three ideas she will deliver, and three contradictions.

The first contradiction: “I’m bad at talking. I’m good at talking.” Gadsby was a “pathologically shy virtual mute with low self-esteem” when she first tried comedy. And “before I’d even landed my first joke, I knew I really liked stand-up, and stand-up really liked me. Why is it I can be so good at something I’m so bad at?”

One reason: Comedy has rules, like the rule of three. To demonstrate, she throws back to her opening joke, which at the time felt like a charming, disarming bit before the real talk. Here it is: “My name is Hannah, and that is a palindrome. Everyone in my family has a palindromic name, it’s a bit of a tradition. There’s Mum, Dad, Nan, Bob and my brother Kayak.” Hear it? It’s about lulling people into a pattern — and then breaking the pattern: “one, two, surprise, haha!” The rule of three is a fundamental of comedy — a contradiction of the binary, in a safe place, for laughs.

From this more traditionally joke-y bit, Gadsby shifts into another gear. She starts to tell the story of her family, and of her grandma, surrounded by her large family in the last days of her life. It’s not where you expect a comedy routine to go, and the rhythm is not that of comedy. But it’s intensely interesting, personal and raw. She’s building to an emotional point when —

— her headset mic goes out.

Hannah walks to the side of the stage, and someone hands her the handheld mic we keep there for just such an occasion, while our video editors frantically start to work out in their heads how they can possibly fix the continuity. Then Hannah is beckoned back to the side of the stage, and returns followed by our sound guy, who changes the batteries in her belt pack and takes away the handheld, leaving her alone on the stage again.

This shaky moment within the tightly choreographed whirl of TED should have let the air out of her talk. But everyone is drawn in by Hannah’s story now, we know there’s something coming, and we desperately need to know the other two ideas and the contradictions we were promised.

“Where was I?” she asks the crowd. She gets some useless answers, scrubs back and forth mentally to where she was interrupted, and she’s back.

The story she tells from these broken pieces takes us from the chatty letters she wrote her grandma from college, forward to the present day, to who she is now. She talks about the success of Nanette, her groundbreaking comedy-not-comedy-but-comedy. She makes a joke simply to make two specific people laugh (our video editors; I checked with them just now: they died, they love you, we all do). She tells us what she’s feeling, while admitting that she’s up there feeling almost nothing. It’s an astonishing performance, a brave and moving story wrapped in a comedy routine wrapped in a TED Talk wrapped in a contradiction, or two, or three.

Possibility: Notes from Session 7 of TED2019

To close out day 3 of TED2019, we imagine different versions of the future — from the magical possibilities of deep-sea exploration to the dark future of humanity if something goes horribly wrong. Gulp.

The event: Talks and performances from TED2019, Session 7: Possibility, hosted by TED’s Helen Walters and Kelly Stoetzel

When and where: Wednesday, April 17, 2019, 5pm, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC

Speakers: Judith Jamison, Rob Reid, Nick Bostrom, Ella Al-Shamahi, Victor Vescovo and Hannah Gadsby

Opening: Members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform “Wade in the Water” (from choreographer Alvin Ailey’s iconic 1960 work Revelations) and “Cry,” the solo piece Ailey created for his mother in 1971.

The talks in brief:

Judith Jamison, artistic director emerita of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

• Big idea: Dance elevates our human experience, communicating struggles, thrills and universal emotions that go beyond words.
• How? Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was founded in 1958 by the legendary dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey. In the middle of the civil rights movement, the dance company put on bold works that presented the African-American experience in its fullness — and as an essential part of American culture. Just over 60 years later, Judith Jamison, the Theater’s artistic director emerita, reflects on Ailey’s visionary legacy and the enduring power of dance to turn history into art that thrills and excites global audiences — and, not infrequently, brings tears to their eyes.
• Quote of the talk: “When you’re sitting in the dark, in the theater, having a personal experience, you don’t feel blocked or misunderstood. You feel open, alive … inspired.”

Rob Reid, entrepreneur and cyberthriller author

• Big idea: We must act fast to build a global immune system that could fight off a massive biotech attack.
• How? Rob Reid raises the unthinkable specter of suicidal mass murder on a global scale, using tools of synthetic biology to create weaponized biotech. What can we do to protect ourselves? It’s (probably) years away from being a possibility, but now’s the time to start thinking about it. A couple ideas: enlisting the experts and creating more experts (for every million-and-one bioengineers, Reid notes, at least a million of them are going to be on our side) and finding a way to safeguard our prosperity and privacy that doesn’t rely on government and industry.
• Quote of the talk: “I have come to fear [synthetic biology] … 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 annihilating ourselves?”

Nick Bostrom, philosopher, technologist, author, researcher of existential risk

• Big idea: The more technological power we invent, the more likely we are to create a “black ball” — the one breakthrough that could destroy us all.
• How? It’s an uncomfortable dilemma: as tech accelerates, so too does the potential for a bad actor to use those very advancements to wipe out civilization. Consider synthetic biology: at the current rate of progress, in the not-too-distant future someone could theoretically cook up a city-destroying organism after an afternoon’s work in the kitchen. (Yikes.) So, what are we to do? In conversation with Chris Anderson, Bostrom outlines four possible responses: restrict tech development (not very feasible, he notes); eliminate bad actors (also unfeasible, considering the many obstacles to success); mass surveillance (uncomfortable, but potentially palatable if done right); and global governance (risky, but if we’re lucky, it could help us survive). In short: if we want power, we better figure out how to limit it.
• Quote of the talk: “You could put me down as a frightened optimist.”

Ella Al-Shamahi, paleoanthropologist and standup comedian

• Big idea: Science has a geography problem.
• How? We’re not doing frontline scientific exploration in a massive chunk of the world: the regions  governments have deemed too unstable. But many of these places, especially in Africa and the Middle East, have played a big role in the human journey. Al-Shamahi’s family is from Yemen, a place that’s so under-studied it’s akin to near-virgin territory. She can’t go there — but she did take an epic, risky journey to study Socotra, an island off Yemen known as the Galápagos of the Indian Ocean. Ninety percent of the reptiles and 30 percent of the plants there exist only, well, there — and the story of early humans there is barely told. Al-Shamahi is hoping to return to Socotra and, with the help of local collaborators, continue to explore.
• Quote of the talk: “Science was about going out into the unknown. It was about truly global exploration even if there were risks. When did it become acceptable to make it difficult for science to happen in ‘unstable places?'”

Victor Vescovo, undersea explorer

• Big idea: New submersible designs can let us explore depths of the world’s oceans that have never been seen before.
• How? Vescovo joined TED’s science curator David Biello to discuss his experiences of deep sea exploration. Vescovo believes his team — packed into their two-person, self-designed submersible — is the very first to have dived to the bottom of the Southern Ocean, the expanse of water surrounding Antarctica that’s known for particularly hostile conditions. His submersible is engineered as a sphere, the shape best able to handle the immense pressure of deep sea dives; it’s built to make multiple journeys to the ocean floor. When you go that deep, Vescovo says, it’s possible to discover a whole lot of new species. He describes his project as “kind of the SpaceX of ocean exploration, but I pilot my own vehicles.” And if you hadn’t heard of the robust assfish before today? You’re welcome.
• Quote of the talk: “There are only two rules to diving in a submarine. Number one is close the hatch securely. Number two is go back to rule number one.”

Hannah Gadsby, serious comedian

• Big idea: Comedy has rules. Break them. Tell your story.
• How? Gadsby was a “pathologically shy virtual mute with low self-esteem” when she first tried standup comedy. And “before I’d even landed my first joke, I knew I really liked stand-up and stand-up really liked me.” But it was only when she quit comedy, and broke its rules, that she could tell her own story and build a true connection with her audience — not as a mindless, laughing mob but as individuals who could carry her story along with her. Read more about Hannah Gadsby’s TED Talk.
• Quote of the talk: “The point was not simply to break comedy, but to reshape it to better hold everything I wanted to share.”

“It was no one’s job to ask: What could go wrong?” Roger McNamee speaks at TED2019

Nine days before the 2016 US presidential election, Roger McNamee went to Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg — whom he’d introduced, back in 2007 — and told them they had a problem. He’d seen a Facebook group, associated notionally with the Bernie Sanders campaign, distributing misogynistic, viral memes in a way that looked like someone was paying for them to spread. And a corporation had recently been expelled from the platform for selling data on people who had expressed an interest in Black Lives Matter — selling that data to police departments.

Their response: “These are isolated things.”

Then the election happened. In the shadow of Brexit. And Facebook did the opposite of what McNamee, a venture capitalist and early investor in Facebook, prescribed: which was to embrace the victims and tell them exactly what political ads they had seen, when they saw them and who paid for them. And even after an internal investigation showed them the scope of Russian interference in the election — and how they had targeted a specific group of 126 million people in the last gasp of the election — Facebook was slow to act and opaque with their users.

“I don’t want to re-litigate 2016. What I’m worried about is that now anybody can do that,” McNamee says, speaking to Head of TED Chris Anderson during a live taping of the TED Interview podcast at TED2019. Their conversation covered Silicon Valley’s pursuit of attention and profit, monopolies, outrage, filter bubbles, surveillance and more.

“We live in a time where there are no rules and there’s no enforcement, and there are really smart people [using] all this unclaimed data and all this unclaimed opportunity,” McNamee says. “At the beginning, it seemed to throw off nothing but goodness. By the time the bad stuff hit, we were so deep into it that it was really hard to reverse field.”

The effect of bad actors online has spilled offline, McNamee says. “You did not need to be on Facebook in Myanmar to be dead. You just needed to be a Rohingya,” he says. “You did not need to be on Facebook or YouTube in Christchurch, New Zealand, to be dead. You just need to be in one of those mosques. This stuff is affecting people who are not on these platforms in ways we cannot recover from.”

And it’s not just Facebook, and there are things that are less serious than dead that are still serious and affecting people’s lives. “Do you know how [Google Maps and Waze] get route timing for all the different routes?” McNamee asks. “Some percentage of the people have to drive inferior routes in order for them to know what the timing is … That’s behavioral manipulation.”

So is there a fix to get us around the problems caused by the unchecked power of these tech giants — to put a check on the greed and cutthroat race for attention?

“It has to start with the people who use the products,” McNamee says. “At the end of the day, we’ve been willing to accept a deal that we do not understand. The actual thing that’s going on inside these companies is not that we’re giving a little bit of personal data and they’re getting better ad targeting. There is way more going on here than that. And the stuff that’s going beyond that is having an impact on people’s lives broadly.”

McNamee doesn’t believe that the people in charge of the tech giants are inherently bad. “[Mark Zuckerberg] is one good night’s sleep away from the epiphany where he wakes up and realizes he can do more good by fixing the business model of Facebook than he can with a thousand Chan Zuckerberg Initiatives.”

“I’m not talking about intent, I’m talking about action,” he continues. “What winds up happening, because of the way the incentives of the business model work, you wind up getting creepy outcomes … You can have unintended bad consequences for which you are are still responsible,” McNamee says.

Opening the conversation up to include the audience, journalist Carole Cadwalladr, Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie, Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy and many others had a chance to share their thoughts on the problems — and some solutions.

McNamee ends on an optimistic note — emboldened, he says, by recent events like teacher labor actions that have worked, the air traffic controllers whose partial sick-out helped end the government shutdown and Elizabeth Warren’s introduction of an antitrust policy that had Republicans feeling jealous:

“What I find is that everybody I meet — whether they’re on Fox or MSNBC, whether they’re on conservative talk radio or NPR, whether I’m in Nashville, Austin, Atlanta, or I’m in San Francisco or New York — everybody sits there and goes: ‘I get it. There’s something wrong. And we all have a role to play in this.'”

This interview was presented by Klick Health, sponsors of the TED Interview podcast, now heading into its second season.

Life in the Tech Playground at TED2019

How much technology can you live with? In a series of playful exhibits at TED2019 curated by TED’s tech curator Alex Moura, you can explore how tech integrates with — and perhaps improves — your home. We start in a typical living room … or is it:

The Laughing Room: Welcome to a sitcom where you are the character! In this living room, microphones pick up your conversations — or punchlines, if you want to offer them — and route them through an AI that has been trained on hours of stand-up comedy routines. In the knowledge that machine learning is only as good as the data you train it on, the MIT team behind the project (which includes TED2019 speaker Jonny Sun) fed its AI routines from women and gender nonconforming comedians and comedians of color to eliminate sexist and racist jokes. After its algorithm determines how funny you are, you receive the appropriate amount of the canned laughter … or the silence of rejection! Test it out with the phrase “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” which is apparently hilarious every time.

temi: Meet temi — the little rolling robot who’s a personal assistant who’s also a home entertainment system. Having a robot follow you around might seem like a bit of a Black Mirror proposition, but temi is paired with Alexa voice recognition technology, so your companion can play music and podcasts for you as you walk around hands-free.

1000 Paintings in Your Pocket: Art consulting service Sugarlift want to help you find art for above the couch. Using an augmented reality app, you can browse work from emerging artists and photographers, and hold up your phone to preview how it’ll look on your own wall. Beyond the AR fabulousness, your purchase supports emerging artists and their careers.

Furniture: Rove Concepts

Next stop, the kitchen.

Brava: Brava’s countertop oven cooks with light, or to be precise, a highly controllable infrared heat. The oven expands what can be cooked in an oven — for instance, you can sear a steak (but still have it medium rare inside). At TED, you can sidle up to the Brava oven to try an 8-minute pizza.

We move to the bedroom, which is designed for comfort and sleep enhancement … but also includes a wild new gaming accessory that might keep you up nights:

MekaMon: With multiple modes and actions, the crablike crawler MekaMon aims to be the world’s first gaming robot. Battle enemies in AR environments with MekaMon’s mobile spider-like frame.

ChiliPad: Rather than wait for the air-conditioning to kick in, the ChiliPad takes a different approach to comfortable sleep. Like a mini-waterbed, it sits on top of a mattress and regulates the temperature of your bed with water circulated by a small plug-in unit.

Somnox Sleep Robot: While it may feel a bit weird to cuddle a soft, cushiony robot, the bean-shaped Somnox Sleep Robot’s slow breathing motions are designed to gradually regulate yours, helping you to relax.

AstroReality: AstroReality bring specially designed notebooks to life through augmented reality, so you can explore the solar system in 3D using your own digital device. Check out the Martian glaciers …

DigiDoug: Ever wake up from a bizarrely vivid dream that leaves you wondering what’s real and what’s not? Now you can experience that in your waking life by talking with DigiDoug, a live 3D digital manifestation of TED2019 speaker Doug Roble!

Don a VR headset and you’ll find yourself on a virtual TED stage with a 3D version of Roble. The difference between this and any other VR? Created with data gathered through a year of intense video recording, Roble’s digital self is mirroring his own actions in real time. Tucked away behind our Tech Playground bedroom, the actual Roble is wearing the kind of full body motion capture suit actors usually use for visual effects, and responding to you in… well, digital person.

Don’t look down though. As you haven’t put in the same level of data-intensive preparation, in DigiDoug’s universe you are simply a disembodied generic floating head.

Imagination: Notes from Session 6 of TED2019

What can we envision, together, to create a world with more joy, love, humanity? At Session 6 of TED2019, we take a deep dive into the world of imagination with some of the authors, designers, architects and filmmakers who are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

The event: Talks from TED2019, Session 6: Imagination, hosted by TED’s Helen Walters and Chee Pearlman

When and where: Wednesday, April 17, 2019, 11:15am, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC

Speakers: Jacqueline Woodson, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Jonny Sun, Sarah Sze, Rahul Mehrotra and Bjarke Ingels

The talks in brief:

Jacqueline Woodson, award-winning author and savorer of stories

• Big idea: Reading slowly is a simple, fulfilling way to counter the whiplash of technology and the speed of life today.
• How? Take your sweet time, says Jacqueline Woodson. Stories should not only be honored but savored, too. They help us travel through place and time, through the fictional and real-life perspectives of those who have experienced the past (and, sometimes, the future). In the pages of well-imagined books and generations-old oral histories, storytelling weaves together communities, fosters understanding and allows us to look deeply at the world around us. All we need to do is give these narratives the space and time to flourish and take root in our lives.
• Quote of the talk: “Isn’t that what it’s all about: finding a way at the end of the day to not feel alone in this world, and a way to feel like we’ve changed it before we leave?”

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, documentary filmmaker and storyteller

• Big idea: Film can make positive change by exposing people to alternate views of the world, shifting how we think about ourselves, our cultures, our societies.
• How? Obaid-Chinoy wanted to do something about violence against women in her native Pakistan. So she directed A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, which documents the country’s tradition of honor killings. It made waves globally, winning an Oscar and even inspiring Pakistan’s prime minister to denounce honor killings, but it wasn’t enough. Obaid-Chinoy took her film on the road, visiting small towns and villages with a mobile cinema. With a big screen plastered to the outside of a truck and a mini theater inside, the mobile cinema offered a safe space for women in segregated communities to watch. Side by side, through film, Obaid-Chinoy and her team encouraged conversation about the harmful traditional practice of honor killings.
• Quote of the talk: “In small towns and villages across Pakistan, there is a revolution. 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.”

Jonny Sun, illustrator, author, screenwriter, all-round creative person

• Big idea: The Internet can feel like a lonely, chaotic place. But in learning to be more vulnerable with each other online, we find that we are alone together.
• How? Sun’s not here to tell you that social media is a force for unalloyed good. But it does have something important to offer us: each other. In sending jokes and endearing, misspelled, illustrated observations on the human condition “out to the void,” he has found that the void is often willing to talk back, reminding us of our shared human-ness, even if only for a moment. Read more about Jonny Sun’s talk here.
• Quote of the talk: “If someone shares that they feel sad or afraid or alone … 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.”

Sarah Sze, an artist who has worked in places like the Seattle Opera House and the NYC subway system and whose work encompasses painting, sculpture, video and installation

• Big idea: Art is a way to explore and express the wonders of the materials of our lives — along with their fragility and mutability.
• How? Sze crafts immersive pieces — some as tall as buildings, splashed across walls or orbiting through galleries. They contain vast constellations of stuff as she plays with scale, time and memory and blurs the lines between what is art and what is everyday life. Just as our human experience is a visual palimpsest, a constantly redrawn sketch of all that we do, see and remember, Sze’s work strives to embody these actions and the tensions that exist among them.
• Quote of the talk: “Female cheetahs are faster than male cheetahs and the reason is because, while they’re smaller, they have bigger hearts. That is a true fact and that may be the only true fact in here. The rest of it is art.”

Rahul Mehrotra, architect, urban designer, professor of design

• Big idea: When it comes to designing cities, we’re obsessed with permanence and predictability. Yet by studying impermanent settlements, we can learn to build cities that are more adaptable, efficient and sustainable.
• How? Every 12 years, a megacity springs up around the confluence of the India’s Yamuna and Ganges rivers. It houses the seven million pilgrims who live there for the 55-day duration of the Kumbh Mela religious festival. The city is fully functional yet impermanent and reversible — built in ten weeks and completely disassembled after the festival. In studying this singular event, Mehrotra realized that our preoccupation with permanence is shortsighted, locking resources into “permanent” solutions to problems that could be irrelevant within a decade. The ideal future of urban design? Elastic settlements with flexible elements that can travel, evolve or even disappear as the situation demands, leaving the lightest possible footprint on this fragile planet.
• Quote of the talk: “We need to make a shift in our imagination about cities. … We need to use our resources more efficiently to extend the expiry date of our planet. We need to change urban design cultures to think of the temporal, the reversible, the disassemblable.”

Bjarke Ingels, architect and designer

• Big idea: By designing architecture that adapts and shifts, we can create stronger communities and better prepare for the changing climate.
• How? From a toxin-free power plant (with a rooftop you can ski on!) to a floating ocean city powered by solar energy, Ingels is expanding architecture’s vision. By tapping into our human adaptability, he shows how we can design buildings and habitats that are beautiful, accessible and resilient to climate change. We need to imagine vibrantly and design flexibly, he says — and, in doing so, we can forge a sustainable future for all.
• Quote of the talk: “This is our collective human superpower: that we have the power to adapt to change and we have the power to give form to our future.”

Jonny Sun: Making the internet a bit less lonely

“For many people,” says Canadian illustrator and author Jonny Sun, “the internet can feel like a lonely place.”

“A big endless, expansive void, where you can constantly call out to it, but no one’s listening. … But it turns out the void isn’t this endless, lonely expanse at all. Instead it’s full of all sorts of other people. Also staring out into it, and also wanting to be heard.”

Despite its problems — which he knows to be real and challenging and dangerous — Twitter has, for Sun, been a place of profound personal connection. A place to make friends.

“I think that’s partly because there’s this confessional nature to social media… it can feel like you’re writing in this personal, intimate diary that’s completely private. Yet at the same time you want everyone in the world to read it… The joy of that is that we get to experience things from perspectives of people who are completely different from ourselves. Sometimes that’s a nice thing.”

But it does require listening. And listening to the right people.

Seeing so many others tweet openly about going to therapy, and about its benefits, made Sun reflect that perhaps it could be an option for him too. It had been stigmatised offline, but became normalised when people talked about it online. Their vulnerability reached out to him.

“When someone shares that they’re 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.”

As an artist and writer, Sun looks to make the “comfort of being vulnerable” a more accessible concept. When he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to start his doctorate at MIT, Sun found himself in a new place and feeling a little… alien. So he began to draw a little alien. Called jomny. Soon, jomny’s misspelled and heartwarmingly honest adventures began to reach a wider and wider audience online.

Sometimes these are just short jokes that he tweets out: “if i could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, i would. i am very lonely”

Others are simple questions that generate profound responses, like: “How many people in your life have you already had your last conversation with?”

“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. And something really nice started happening. Instead of just replying to me, people started replying to each other, to share their own experiences and comfort each other.”

“I feel silly and stupid sometimes for valuing these small moments of human connection in times like these,” he says, but “these little moments of humanness are not superfluous. They’re the reasons why we come to these spaces. They are important and vital.”

One day, feeling particularly hopeless about the world, he tweeted: “at this point, logging onto 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… 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.”

Vulcan Holodome at TED2019: An immersive 360-degree world… without a headset?

Have you ever loved a painting so much you wanted to step inside it? While the world of VR is usually utilised to take us to inaccessible locations like the depths of the ocean or the surface of the Moon, Vulcan’s Holodome offers the opportunity to enter the world of an impressionist painting in one of two experiences previewing at TED2019.

Unlike the usual headset-based VR experience, the Holodome is a fully immersive environment you can explore with your fellow adventurers, unhindered by wearable equipment. Inspired by a love of Monet’s works, the late chair of Vulcan, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, wanted to create a way to step inside them. One where you can walk across the painter’s Poppy Field as it undulates around and beneath you, and Woman with a Parasol disappears over a nearby rise. 

“With Holodome, our goal is to transport people into immersive adventures across real and imagined worlds, from the highest mountaintop to an impressionist landscape to the boundaries of space, without the need for mounted headgear,” says Kamal Srinivasan, Vulcan’s director of product management.

Back in the real world, there’s nothing like the disappointment of finally getting to see an artwork that you truly love and realizing that it is much smaller than you imagined, and obscured behind a crowd five deep at the gallery. Inside the Holodome, the rich colors and textures of Monet’s work are all-encompassing, almost tangible. Moving seamlessly through 12 of the painter’s works, the experience takes you soaring over a waterlily pond to greet cliffs where the sun slowly sets. 

For those with motion sickness — yes, some of our team felt a little queasy, while others found it helpful that you can look down at a real floor and ground yourself. As with any 360-degree experience, it takes a little getting used to. Things are definitely best viewed from the center of the dome, but powered as it is by four 4k projectors, you don’t want to look directly up from this spot or you’ll be staring down some very bright lights.

The community aspect of the experience really kicks in with Mount Everest, where audiences travel with two climbers attempting to scale the mountain without bottled oxygen — a feat so far achieved by fewer than 200 people. Seeing others react as an avalanche barrels toward you, and turning at someone’s exclamation of surprise to take in the breathtaking vista of the Himalayas at your back, makes much more sense to experience as a group than alone in a headset. It’s also much easier to move around when you’re not worried about bumping into anyone or anything!

It is definitely worth choosing your experience carefully — Mount Everest is mostly shot following its protagonists on one side of the dome, documentary style, and you might sometimes turn to find yourself simply facing the inside wall of a tent, but Museum of Masters: Claude Monet makes it worth turning to see all that’s around you.

It’s easy to see where the Holodome will come into its own in the world of gaming. The ability to set out as a team, when you can all see and interact with each other and your environment without any communication delay, has us all asking, When’s the escape room experience coming?

While the technology is still being refined, its name seems to be no accident; the holodeck of Star Trek, where we can be bodily immersed in a world without the aid of wearable technology, may be closer than we think.

Pollution Pods: A tasting menu of our planet’s air quality, at TED2019

You’ve walked into a cavernous, darkened concrete space. There, centered on the floor, looking a bit like an alien lander, is a glowing plastic multi-domed structure filled with swirling mist and light. Your first instinct, because you’re human, is to find a way inside.

Pass through a plastic curtain into the first of five geodesic domes, where you’re greeted by the artist who created it, Michael Pinsky, and a whiff of cool, crisp air with a hint of — is that tar?

What you’re experiencing is a simulation of the air in Tautra, Norway, on a winter day. As you expect, it’s clear and quite Norwegian. The hint of tar? It’s from the friction of tires on the roads; because the air is so clean, you can smell this faint effect. The scents have been created with help from International Flavors & Fragrances, while a filter from Airlabs is scrubbing the air at scale. The air quality index (AQI) — an international measurement index, used by collaborator Plume Labs — is in the single digits here in the Tautra dome (lower numbers are better).

Pass through a plastic curtain, walk through a plastic tunnel, pass through another curtain, and you’re in a misty, gray simulation of London on a February day, with an AQI rating of about 60–65. “There’s more pollution when it’s colder than warmer,” says Pinsky, who lives in London himself. “Hot air pushes the band of pollution up; cold air brings it down to street level.” This murky mist has a strong smell of diesel, which, Pinsky says, has been getting worse in London as drivers switch to diesel to hit 2020 targets for carbon dioxide emissions. “There’s little industry in London; if you got rid of combustion engines, that would end the pollution problem,” he says. “During the Anti-Brexit March, pollution fell to about 6.”

You gratefully leave this cold mist only to stumble into the warm, smoky stew of New Delhi. “It’s basically the worst,” says Pinsky. “You’re smelling diesel, large particulates from the unsealed roads, and smoke from burning plastic. As well, you get smoke from crop burning nearby. Delhi has it all.”

Dome 4 is Beijing in November. What are we smelling in this chilly haze? “Coal and wood for domestic heating — most apartments don’t have central heating.” On the flip side, there’s less diesel in the air than there once was, says Pinsky. “China is slowly getting around to dealing with diesel.”

We end up in dome 5, which smells … unusual. This dome represents São Paulo, where the main transport fuel is ethanol, “a vinegary, fruity smell,” says Pinsky. On top of that, the city has high levels of ozone, which, you may be concerned to learn, “burns the fat off your nostril hairs that help you smell properly.” The air smells clean enough, but “if you were here for 20 minutes, you’d start to feel it,” says Pinsky.

Leaving each dome and entering the next feels like taking your first step into the open air after leaving the airport, when the smoke and smell of a new city hits you full force. The overall effect of the five-dome trip, Pinsky suggests, is a dégustation, a tasting menu of air quality from around the world, each with its own distinct character.

As you leave the domes, you’re presented with a second menu, of six things you can do to care for the planet — to help more of our cities be like Tautra and less like New Delhi. You may consider becoming a weekday vegetarian, buying fewer clothes and mending what you have, switching to an electric vehicle, eating locally grown food, becoming a master recycler, or committing to become a climate evangelist. After your tour of the planet’s air, it feels more important than ever to take a few steps toward a cleaner world.

Watch artist Michael Pinsky’s TED Talk >>

Mindshift: Notes from Session 5 of TED2019

To kick off day 3 of TED2019, five speakers explored big shifts: challenging accepted wisdom on love, giving, leadership, truth — and illegal substances.

The event: Talks from TED2019, Session 5: Mindshift, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson and Corey Hajim

When and where: Wednesday, April 17, 2019, 8:45am, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC

Speakers: Rick Doblin, Katie Hood, Elizabeth Dunn, Claire Wardle and Michael Tubbs

Also announced: The TED2020 Idea Search launches today! Have a great idea you want to share with the world? Learn more and apply today >>

The talks in brief:

Rick Doblin, psychedelics researcher and founder of the nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)

• Big idea: Psychedelics, when used responsibly, have the potential to alter our brain chemistry for the better and help us heal from psychological traumas such as PTSD and addiction.
• How? Rick Doblin has led the crusade to lift the decades-old ban on psychedelic research. Psychotherapy paired with substances like LSD and MDMA (ecstasy) shows promise for the treatment of PTSD, depression, substance abuse and more. By reducing the activity in certain parts of the brain, psychedelics allow people to experience a shift in perspective that leads to a heightened sense of unity, shared humanity, altruism, emotional awareness and even spiritual connection. Doblin hopes that psychedelics, viewed through the lens of science and medicine, can help bring about a true global renaissance of positive, healing experiences.
• New (old) word: “Psychedelic,” meaning mind-manifesting
• Quote of the talk: “Humanity now is in a race between catastrophe and consciousness. The psychedelic renaissance is here to help humanity to triumph.”

Katie Hood, CEO of the One Love Foundation and relationship revolutionary

• Big idea: There’s a crucial difference between healthy and unhealthy love, and there are sure-fire ways to recognize the difference.
• How? There are five signs of unhealthy love: intensity, isolation, extreme jealousy, disrespect and volatility. Isolation could mean that your partner takes away your independence, pulling you away from your family and friends. Volatility within an unhealthy relationship can look like constant ups and downs, as well as unpredictable and shocking behavior. Katie Hood believes that there’s a way to combat these unhealthy behaviors — and it’s not as hard as we may think. To build and maintain healthy love, a few core elements must be present: open communication, mutual respect and trust. No one is perfect — we all have bad moments where we don’t treat those we love the way we should. But by practicing these core elements as much as possible, we can put ourselves on the path to better and healthier love.
• Quote of the talk: “For too long, we’ve treated relationships as a soft topic, when relationship skills are actually one of the hardest and most important skills to master in life. Not only can knowledge about unhealthy signs help you avoid falling down the rabbit hole of unhealthy love, understanding and practicing the art of being healthy can improve nearly every aspect of your life.”

Elizabeth Dunn, happiness researcher and author

• Big idea: Humans have evolved to feel a boost of joy when we help others. We can lean into that joy by making a personal connection with those we help, amplifying our happiness and inspiring us to do more.
• How? Elizabeth Dunn’s research revolves around how giving to others makes us happier, but she realized: she rarely felt happy donating to charity herself. That changed when Dunn helped support a family of Syrian refugees as they prepared to relocate to Canada. She saw how her time and resources helped the family settle into their new home and felt encouraged to do “whatever it took to help them be happy.” Instead of feeling like we’re donating into a distant void, we can nurture lasting relationships — and increase our happiness — by seeking a personal touch when we give back.
• Quote of the talk: “If you’re running a charity, don’t reward your donors with pens and calendars. Reward them with the opportunity to see the impact that their generosity is having and to connect with the individuals and communities they’re helping.”

Claire Wardle, misinformation expert, executive chair of First Draft and head of CIVIC

• Big idea: We can halt the spread of untrustworthy, dangerous online content by coordinating a global network of internet users and organizations to rebuild our information commons.
• How? Major tech companies are taking their best shot at solving the issue of misinformation, but let’s be honest: no one wants them to be the guardians of truth and fairness online (and neither do they). While governments are calling for regulation to clean up the information ecosystem, it’s struggling to keep up with tech’s pace of change. What’s the missing link? We, the citizens of the internet — everyday users, journalists, educators, software developers and beyond. Wardle offers one such way we could band together to accelerate solutions: by “donating” our social data, for instance, we could enable researchers gain a bigger view of this problem. Could people and organizations collaborate to build a new infrastructure for quality information, following the model of Wikipedia? This project would span the globe — and the very future of the internet could depend on it.
• Quote of the talk: “Can we build out a coordinated, ambitious response that matches the scale and complexity of the problem? I really think we can. Together, let’s rebuild our information commons.”

Michael Tubbs, mayor of Stockton, California

• Big idea: We can build new civic structures without the curse of racism — and built-in bad outcomes.
• How? Once we view our neighbors as no different from ourselves, we can begin to restructure our societies. Through governing strategies that recognize the racist systems that place people in compromised situations — and that view impoverished and violent communities with compassion — Michael Tubbs is helping to lower Stockton’s per capita murder rate (which rivals Chicago’s) and raise the city’s economic prospects.
• Quote of the talk: “When we see someone different from us, they should not reflect our fears, our anxieties, our insecurities, the prejudices we have been taught, our biases, but we should see ourselves. We should see our common humanity.”

Want to speak at TED2020? Enter our worldwide Idea Search

If you have an idea the world needs to hear, put your name forward to speak at next year’s TED conference! We’ve just opened applications in our TED2020 Idea Search, a worldwide hunt for the next great idea.

The theme of TED2020 is UNCHARTED. The future is more uncertain than it’s ever been; we’re looking for people who will give us a clue as to where we’re heading — and how we’ll get there.

Are you working on an invention, design or vision that will really change the way things are done?
Do you have a thoughtful approach to the world’s shared frustrations?
Are you an explorer who’s discovered something strange and amazing?

If any of these questions resonate with you, apply today!

Wherever you are, whatever your time zone, you can beam in to the TED World Theater to share your idea during several upcoming events. Applications are open now, with the first deadline on May 29, 2019.

Want inspiration? Here are just a few speakers who were discovered during past talent searches:

Richard Turere: My invention that made peace with the lions (2.3m views)
Ashton Applewhite: Let’s end ageism (1.4m views)
OluTimehin Adegbeye: Who belongs in a city? (2.2m views)
Zak Ebrahim: I am the son of a terrorist. Here’s how I chose peace (5.2m views and a TED Book)

And some past Idea Search talks that went viral on TED.com:

Christopher Emdin: Teach teachers how to create magic (2.27 million views)
Lux Narayan: What I learned from 2,000 obituaries (1.65m views)
Lara Setrakian: 3 ways to fix a broken news industry (1.1m views)
Todd Scott: An intergalactic guide to using a defibrillator (1.1m views)

In Case You Missed It: Highlights from day 2 of TED2019

Here’s what happened on Tuesday of TED2019. A few news-making highlights first:

Jack Dorsey proposed a new way Twitter could work — by following topics and not individual people and brands. Hmm. Also, fun fact: If he had it to do over again, he would not have built the Like button. Watch for Jack Dorsey’s Q&A with Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers on TED.com today.

Digital Domain’s Doug Roble showed, for the first time outside his studio, a jaw-dropping digital animation tool mapped to a live human actor. This avatar-creating wonder tool could revolutionize filmmaking … and also your next video chat.

The Audacious Project unveiled eight ambitious projects to change the world — from a data-backed approach to fighting racist activity, to a sweeping global drive to breed plants that are better for the planet. Between them — and thanks to a good old-fashioned fund drive last night — they raised a collective $283 million, and each project now has enough seed funding to launch. But they’re only halfway to a collective goal of — wait for it — $567m.

And some larger themes emerged …

Changing, fast and slow: In Chris’s indelible image, Twitter is a ship, Jack Dorsey is the captain, and a few of the passengers have come up from steerage to ask if Dorsey might consider, perhaps, turning away from the path of the iceberg. As Chris says: “You’re showing this extraordinary calm, but we’re all standing outside saying, Jack, turn the f*cking wheel.” Jack’s response: “Quickness will not get this job done.” He’s looking for deeper, systemic change (including a few suggested moves that some Twitter users did not love). Rafael Casal had the same question — “How fast should change happen?” — after he touched off a Twitter firestorm around an issue of racial unfairness. He made one brief point on the platform; it gained traction over a weekend; and it got ugly real fast. Now, he asks: Is social media just too quick on the trigger to allow for nuanced discussion of social change? Working at another timescale altogether, Safeena Husain spoke about a deep investment in the far future — by educating young girls today, starting with the 1.4 million girls in India who never go to school. Investing now, today, in the potential of these girls could have a material effect on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, aimed at creating a better world by 2030. Why not start now?

Playing with personas: As Doug Roble demos his jaw-dropping tool to create detailed, real-time digital renderings of a person — in this case, Doug himself, plus an alternate personality named Elbor — a thought arises: Will this next-gen avatar lead to more deepfakes, more fraudulent online personalities? (The likely answer: Yes, but honestly, what won’t?) Meanwhile, from the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Roger Hanlon told us about shape-shifting cephalopods who change their skin color and texture in a blink, to hide, to mate, to blow human minds. Hanlon suggests their smart skin, and their ability to deploy it in sophisticated ways and in a flash, is an alternative form of intelligence, driven by their strange and wonderful and very, very large brains.

Service and meaning: Matt Cutts worked at Google for almost 17 years, and he took what he thought would be a six-month break to join the US government’s digital service. Three-plus years later, he’s still in government, finding deep meaning and satisfaction in solving problems that affect real people’s lives. At TED Unplugged, he makes the case to his fellow technologists that if you want to really make an impact, you should leave Silicon Valley, wave goodbye to those crazy perks and free meals, and enter a world where office furniture isn’t a given — but the impact is. Julius Maada Bio, the president of Sierra Leone, offered his own take on the meaning of service. He first took power in a military coup, but his goal, he says, was always to return the country to democratic rule. His other major goal: “Sierra Leone must be a secure, peaceful and just society where every person can thrive and contribute.” Over the past decades, he’s moved steadily toward that objective. Plant biologist Joanne Chory is committed to an equally large and far-seeing goal: developing plants that capture carbon better and for longer than common crops do now which will help mitigate our planet’s creeping carbon levels. Her vision, her sense of mission and her nothing-can-stop-me persistence are genuinely inspiring.

Curiosity makes us human: Educator Brittany Packnett meditates on confidence, the hidden skill that powers many of our other skills. Confidence is what helps you put plans into action, and what helps you keep moving even after you fail. What builds confidence? One key factor, she says, is curiosity, the desire to push beyond who you are and what you know. Mentalist Derren Brown taps into the curiosity of the audience by guessing our innermost questions (and even one guy’s password). How did he do it? He’ll never tell. Appearing via robot, David Deutsch meditates on another force that moves us: the drive for new “explanatory knowledge.” As humans, we desire to understand things and explain them and change them and make them new. As he says: “From the human perspective, the only alternative to that living hell of static societies is continual creation of new ideas, behaviors, new kinds of objects.”

Watch the first TED Talk released from TED2019: Carole Cadwalladr.

Taking a welcome break in the n:ow machine at TED2019

I’ll admit it: I’m one of those annoying people who meditates, who likes to talk to non-meditators about meditation, who gets cranky when I don’t meditate, and who likes to talk to non-meditators about how cranky I get when I don’t meditate.

So the n:ow machine from DuPont beckoned to me like an oasis amid the busyness of TED2019, where it’s hard to find time to sit still, let alone meditate. Its tantalizing promise: Step inside this igloo-sized dome for 3 minutes and 14 seconds for a “4-D transformative meditative experience,” as Erica Jensen put it. Jensen is the director of tactile operations — an awe-inspiring job title befitting the n:ow machine — at R/GA, the ad agency that collaborated with DuPont to create the exhibit especially for this year’s TED conference in Vancouver.

Inside the dome are three recliners, each carefully positioned so that you’re facing the ceiling and not the other participants — it was like being in a mini-planetarium. The film started at what Jensen says is “the microbial level,” but the visuals reminded me more of the pulsing, orange-y-ness you see when you close your eyes against the sun.

Suddenly, I found myself in the ocean among hypnotically waving fronds of seaweed. From there, I traveled up to a city with skyscrapers and streets and cars (even an ice cream truck!) and ascended up into the sky until I reached something that looked like the International Space Station.

Haptics made my chair subtly vibrate. A soothing soundtrack played while a hushed woman’s voice — she sounds like she does voiceovers for commercials for cruises or bath products — said things like, “We’re about to travel vast distances to the most important place on earth. It’s not a location but a time: now.”

When I spoke to Jensen afterwards, she told me the settings in the short film were chosen to highlight parts of DuPont’s varied portfolio: the sea interlude showcased its sustainable seaweed program (the company is one of the world’s largest buyers of seaweed for its hydrocolloids, or gels); the city, its autonomous electric vehicle efforts, as well as its creation of emulsifiers and stabilizers that better preserve ice cream (who knew?); and the space station uses its tough, heat-resistant material Kevlar. In keeping with the overall theme of the machine, Jensen says, “These innovations and inventions are happening now; they’re not in the future.”

After TED2019, the n:ow machine will go on the road to other TED events, the DuPont office in Shanghai, and other locations, so as many people as possible can enjoy it. And while sitting in the n:ow machine wasn’t the same as meditation, it provided me with a shot of badly needed calm.

Audacity: 8 big, bold ideas for global change unveiled in Session 4 of TED2019

In the program guide for Session 4 of TED2019, “Audacity,” a group of eight mysterious figures stands silhouetted in black. That’s because the speakers in this session were a total surprise — to those in TED audience and to those tuning in via Twitter Live from around the world. These eight speakers all have big, bold ideas for global change — and they’re representing eight projects that are receiving the support of The Audacious Project in 2019. Over the next three to six years, these ideas have the potential to change broken systems and impact millions of lives in a positive way. And each needs your support. After each idea, find out how you can get involved.

The event: Session 4 of TED2019, hosted by Chris Anderson, Head of TED, and Anna Verghese, Executive Director of the Audacious Project

When and where: Tuesday, April 16, 2019, 5pm, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC

Speakers: Phillip Atiba Goff, Joanne Chory, Claudia Miner, David Baker, Safeena Husain and Julie Cordua, with special videos on ideas from Ellen Agler and Mark Tercek

Music: Emeli Sandé singing three beautiful songs: “You Are Not Alone,” “Extraordinary Being” and “Read All About It Part III”

The talks in brief:

Phillip Atiba Goff, behavioral scientist and president of the Center for Policing Equity

• Big idea: In the US, Black people are two to four times more likely than white people to be targets of police force. The problem, says Phillip Atiba Goff, is that we think of racism as contaminated hearts and minds — when racism is really about behaviors. “When we change the definition of racism from attitudes to behaviors, we transform that problem from impossible to solvable,” says Goff. “Because you can measure behaviors.” Like any other organization, police departments can set goals for more equitable behavior — and hold themselves accountable to reaching them.
• The Audacious project: Goff and his team at the Center for Policing Equity work with police departments and communities, city by city, to collect data on police behavior and set goals to make it more fair. They’re building a CompStat for Justice — a data system that shows police departments where they’re going, who they’re arresting and much more. The data that CPE collects can help police chiefs develop strategies for changing their department’s behaviors, and to date, they’ve seen staggering results. So far, CPE has delivered products to 25 cities, leading to an average of 33 percent fewer force incidents. Over the next five years, the Center for Policing Equity hope to bring their tools to police departments that collectively serve 100 million people across the US, effectively reaching one in three Americans.
• Quote of the talk: “I’ve experienced the fear of seeing an officer unclip their gun, and the panic of realizing someone might mistake my 13-year-old godson as old enough to be a threat. So when a chief — or a pastor or an imam or a mother — calls me after an officer shoots another unarmed Black child, I understand the pain in their voice.” See what you can do for this idea »

Joanne Chory, plant biologist and director of the Plant Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies

• Big idea: To most of us, CO₂ is a villain, the greenhouse gas responsible for rising global temperatures. But to Joanne Chory, one of the world’s most prominent plant biologists, CO₂ is simply the thing that plants take in during photosynthesis, and convert into oxygen and sugars. For millions of years, plants have kept Earth’s CO₂ levels in check — and Chory believes they can do it now, even as human beings release more CO₂ into the atmosphere than ever before. Plants could help us fight climate change.
• The Audacious project: Chory’s team at the Salk Institute wants to train plants to sequester carbon better, and for longer. They’re developing the science to create plants with more of a natural polymer called suberin in their roots, as this cork-like substance works as a stable carbon-storage device. They’re also looking to grow plants with deeper, more robust root systems, to really amplify their sequestering ability. Salk will start by creating these traits in model plants, and then will be able to transfer them to major crop plants like corn, soybean and cotton. If these superstar plants could occupy fields around the world, they could hold massive amounts of carbon in the ground, to achieve a 20 to 46 percent reduction of excess CO₂ every year.
• Quote of the talk: “I’ve come to appreciate plants as the amazing machines they are — they literally suck CO₂ out of the air. They’ve been doing it for 500 million years, and they’re really good it!” See what you can do for this idea »

Ellen Agler, public health leader, CEO of the END Fund and author of Under the Big Tree

• Big idea: Parasitic worms have been around for thousands of years, causing disease and limiting human potential. Today, more than 1.5 billion people in the world are at risk for worms, 600 million of them in Africa. And yet worms are very easy to treat — it takes just one to three pills, given once or twice a year. Ellen Agler and her team at the END Fund know that governments across Africa want to gain traction on this problem. By amplifying work already in progress, the END Fund thinks we can be the generation that ends disease from worm infections for good.
• The Audacious Project: Over the next six years, the END Fund will deliver deworming treatment to 100 million people. But that’s really just the start. The END Fund looks at the problem of delivering deworming treatments through a systems lens, bringing together the right partners, lowering the cost of treatment, focusing on prevention, helping with monitoring and evaluation, and treating overlooked people, like young children and women of reproductive age. Every step of the way, the END Fund will support governments and nurture local leadership, creating a roadmap toward local ownership of deworming programs.
• Quote of the video: “If the World Health Organization’s 2020 goals for worm control are met, African economies would see a $35 billion boost in productivity within ten years.” See what you can do for this idea »

Claudia Miner, historian, education entrepreneur and executive director of Waterford’s UPSTART project

• Big idea: Fifty years ago, the United States achieved a watershed moment when it started bringing early education to low-income children through Head Start. Today, however, there are still 2.2 million children in the US — half of all 4-year-olds — who don’t have access to an early education program, because they live too far from one, speak another language or face a financial or logistical hardship. On day one of kindergarten, these children may already be years behind their peers. And they may not ever catch up.
• The Audacious project: At Waterford.org, Claudia Miner and her team have created a kindergarten readiness project called UPSTART that bridges these access gaps. In just 15–20 minutes a day, children without access to in-person early education engage with personalized software that lets them learn at their own pace, from home. This isn’t mindless screen time — UPSTART lessons are educational and engaging, and the program coaches parents to take on the role of their children’s first teacher. UPSTART has a 90 percent completion rate, and a longitudinal study has shown that the gains students make last well into third and fourth grade. UPSTART has been piloted in 15 states so far, and several have opted to fund it because it’s been so effective. Over the next five years, Waterford will pilot UPSTART in all 50 states, serving a quarter of a million children, and make deep inroads toward state funding.
• Quote of the talk: “Our Audacious idea is to make UPSTART available across the country — not to replace anything. We want to serve children who otherwise would not have access to early education.” See what you can do for this idea »

David Baker, professor of biochemistry and director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine

• Big idea: “Proteins carry out all of the essential functions in our bodies,” says David Baker. These miniature machines digest our food, contract our muscles, fire our neurons and so, so much more. But proteins are also tricky. They’re built of long strings of amino acids that “fold up” into specific shapes that allow them to do their job. And because scientists haven’t been able to crack the code of how proteins fold, we’ve only been able to make small modifications to proteins that already exist. Being able to create new proteins would open up incredible possibility.
• The Audacious project: Baker’s research team at the Institute for Protein Design has developed the ability to design new proteins. And they want to launch the protein design revolution. Their goal is to become the Bell Laboratories of this new field, doubling their faculty and attracting top talent to train the next generation of scientists. Specifically, IPD will work toward five grand challenges: (1) universal vaccines for flu, HIV and cancer, (2) advanced medications for chronic pain, (3) protein nano-containers that bring medicines to specific cells, (4) smart protein therapeutics that recognize unhealthy cells, and (5) next-generation nanoengineering for solar energy capture. They stand to change the world of medicine and so much more.
• Quote of the talk: “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 they found around them.” See what you can do for this idea »

Mark Tercek, global environmental leader and CEO of The Nature Conservancy

• Big idea: Island and coastal nations need to protect their waters in order for our oceans, globally, to stay healthy. But these countries hold high debt loads and often aren’t able to prioritize ocean protection over other needs. Mark Tercek and his team at The Nature Conservancy see a way to solve both problems at once. Their idea is to buy a nation’s debt at a discount and restructure it to give them lower debt payments, in exchange for the government’s commitment to protect 30 percent of its coastal areas.
• How: The Nature Conservancy has been a pioneer in debt-for-nature conservation, working since 2001 to negotiate deals like this for the protection of tropical forests. In 2016, they tried this approach in the Seychelles, restructuring $22 million in debt in exchange for the protection of 400,000 square kilometers of ocean — an area the size of Germany. It’s been incredibly successful, but the deal took years to complete. Now The Nature Conservancy plans to build a team that can close these deals much more quickly. Over the next five years, they will negotiate deals in 20 island and coastal nations, and together create more than 4 million square kilometers of marine-protected areas.
• Quote of the video: “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.” See what you can do for this idea »

Safeena Husain, social entrepreneur and executive director of Educate Girls

• Big idea: Working in India, Safeena Husain has met girls named Aa chuki (“not wanted”), Antim Bala (“the last girl”) because that’s what her family hoped she’d be, and Naraz nath (“angry”) because her community was so angry she was born a girl. It’s not just poverty and cultural norms that bar girls from receiving an education: it’s collective mindsets. Even though girls’ education has been shown to have a long list of positive effects — it impacts nine of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals –many girls in the world are still barred from receiving an education. India is home to one of the largest populations of out-of-school girls, with more than 4.1 million girls outside the classroom.
• The Audacious project: Husain and her team at Educate Girls work in remote regions in India, going door-to-door to find all out-of-school girls. They do individual counseling with parents, and hold neighborhood and village meetings to change those mindsets. Their Team Balika (“team for the girl”) volunteers use an app to collect data — and their predictive model reveals that just five percent of India’s villages are home to 40 percent of the out-of-school girls. Their plan is to work specifically in these 35,000 villages for amplified impact. By doing this, they will enroll a staggering 1.6 million girls in school in the next five years. And they will work to keep them there.
• Quote of the talk: “I believe that girls’ education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet to help solve some of the world’s most difficult problems.” See what you can do for this idea »

Julia Cordua, social entrepreneur and CEO of Thorn

• Big idea: Thorn works on a problem that isn’t easy to talk about: the sexual abuse of children in images and videos on the internet. This is clearly a human problem. But it’s also, says Julie Cordua, a technology problem. In the late 1980s, child pornography was nearly eliminated — because of tighter laws, it was too risky for abusers to trade it through the mail. But with the advent of the internet, both supply and demand skyrocketed. In 2018, there were 45 million reports of child sexual abuse content in the US alone — twice the number of reports of the year before. “Law enforcement focuses on just their jurisdiction. Companies look at just their platform,” says Cordua. “Whatever they learn along the way is rarely shared.” A unified response is necessary.
• The Audacious project: Thorn is building technology to connect the dots between the law enforcement agencies, NGOs and tech companies who are the responders in this invisible crisis. Their tools collect the hashes of known sexual abuse content — essentially, the digital fingerprint of each file — and catalog it. As they collect more and more hashes of known content, it will allow law enforcement to spot new material quickly, and swing into action to try to find the child being abused. And the system will only get smarter — when a company sees a known hash posted, for example, they can scrub that user’s account and potentially discover hashes for other unknown material. Thorn’s goal is to be able to identify new material in seconds — which will open the door to eliminating this content from the internet altogether.
• Quote of the talk: “The abusers win when we look at one piece of the puzzle at a time. … This Audacious project is a declaration of war against one of humanity’s darkest evils.” See what you can do for this idea »

And with these eight projects revealed, it’s time for the audience to get involved. Each project has a significant gap between what’s been committed to it so far and what’s needed to complete it. Anderson and Verghese called on the audience at the TED Conference and watching online to donate to the projects that most moved them, and pledges started rolling in, scrolling on the screens on stage.

Together, these eight projects will require $567 million in funding. And between presentations to donor groups earlier in the year and pledges made tonight, they have now raised $283,561,215. Each project is at least halfway funded, and will able to launch. Now … to watch them in action.

Short talks, big ideas: The talks of TED Unplugged at TED2019

In a fast-paced session of talks curated by TED arts and design curator Chee Pearlman and hosted with improv leader Anthony Veneziale, 12 members of the TED community shared ideas in a special format: each had to keep their talks under six minutes, with auto-advancing, timed slides. And yes, the mic does cut after six minutes!

The talks in brief:

Brickson Diamond, entrepreneur and co-chair of the Blackhouse Foundation

• Big idea: Finding our tribe sometimes takes a deeper level of connection.
• How? We need to look for the hooks — the secrets and struggles we share but don’t talk about — to connect with and get closer to each other.
• Quote of the talk: “If you dig deep, you reach far.”

Cady Coleman, astronaut who has flown on the Space Shuttle twice and lived on the International Space Station for almost 6 months (and delivered the first TED Talk given in space)

• Big idea: Space is where mission and magic come together.
• How? The day after her 50th birthday, Cady Coleman climbed aboard a Russian rocket and was launched into space. During her time at the International Space Station, she did experiments that expanded the frontiers of science, seeking answers to questions we could never arrive at on earth.
• Quote of the talk: “Space belongs to all of us. It’s a place that’s magic for all of us.”

Janet Iwasa, Molecular animator and TED Senior Fellow

• Big idea: Try to visualize the things that can’t be seen.
• How? By creating visualizations of molecules that are too small for even the most powerful microscopes to see, Janet Iwasa reveals the hidden mechanisms that power the world.
• Quote of the talk: “Invisible molecular worlds are vast and largely unexplored. To me, these landscapes are just as exciting to explore as a natural world that’s visible all around us.”

Matt Cutts, Software engineer and public servant

• Big idea: Silicon Valley likes to talk about making the world a better place, but technologists can make a real impact by joining the government.
• How? By doing things like moving government systems from paper to digital, Cutts and his team have been able to speed up processes to help people get what they need when they need it.
• Quote of the talk: “These days I believe less in silver bullets and more in people who show up to help.”

Lucy Farey-Jones, Technology strategist

• Big idea: Our willingness to accept AI in our lives is changing — radically.
• How? Lucy Farey-Jones created a list of potential AI applications — from AI house cleaners and package deliverers to cyborgs, AI lawyers and even AI sex partners — and ranked them based on how comfortable people are with them. What she’s found is a growing comfortability with AI taking over.
• Quote of the talk: “The trojan horse of AI is already in our living room.”

Bjarke Ingels, (Interplanetary) architect

• Big idea: We should move to Mars.
• How? Bjarke Ingels was challenged to design a city on Mars by 2117. If you strip away the biosphere, Mars and Earth are actually very similar, he says. What would we need to have in order to move there? Nutrients, water, a vegetarian diet and more than a bit of creativity. Ingels is starting with a prototype “city” in Dubai, exhibiting many of the technologies that would be necessary for life on Mars.
• Quote of the talk: “Martians are vegan.”

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Marine biologist, launching the first think tank for ocean cities

• Big idea: Parrotfish are absolutely amazing.
• How? In five ways: they have a mouth shaped like a parrot’s beak that’s strong enough to chew coral; they poop fine white sand, over 380 kilograms of it each year; they have style: striped, teal, magenta and polka-dotted, with multiple “wardrobe changes” throughout their lives; most species have the ability to change from female to male over the course of their lives; and sometimes, when they cozy up into reefs, they secrete a mucous bubble that masks them from predators, protecting them throughout the night. But they’re under threat by overfishing and the destruction of coral reefs.
• Quote of the talk: “I am never going to give up working to protect and restore this magnificent planet. I’m not motivated by hope — but rather by a desire to be useful.”

Rob Gore, Emergency room doctor

• Big idea: There’s a joy in caring for others, but not at the expense of caring for self.
• How? Toxic stress impacts the body in devastating ways. After the death of a friend brought on episodes of panic attacks, Rob Gore sought therapy, where he learned how to use stress as a tool and to empathize with people without taking their problems on.
• Quote of the talk: “I wasn’t supposed to be invincible.”

Stefan Sagmeister, Designer

• Big idea: Beautify isn’t in the eye of the beholder, and it isn’t only skin-deep.
• How? Why should we bother chasing beauty if everyone has a different idea of what it is? Turns out, we agree on what’s beautiful more than we think. For example, almost everyone prefers a circle over a square. And by simply painting a neglected underpass in Brooklyn with the word “Yes,” Sagmeister and colleagues transformed the space into a hot spot for wedding photos.
• Quote of the talk: “There’s wide agreement around the world, throughout different cultures and throughout different times, of what we find is beautiful.”

John Werner, TEDxBeaconStreet organizer

• Big idea: We can work together for the betterment of all.
• How? John Werner got 61 of his fellow students to not take a college final exam, taking their professor up on a prisoner’s-dilemma challenge where everyone could get an A if nobody took the exam. His class was the only one in 10 years to pull this off.
• Quote of the talk: “If we organize and we set our minds to it, we can do extraordinary things and get A’s when things really matter.”

Andrea Barrica, Sex tech entrepreneur

• Big idea: There’s nothing wrong with sexual pleasure and with having sex because it feels good.
• How? Why don’t we know more about the clitoris? Probably because its only job is to experience pleasure, and we’re traditionally taught about sexuality solely in terms of reproduction.
• Quote of the talk: “Everybody deserves access to information about their bodies and the organs inside their bodies — especially the ones that give us pleasure.”

David Kwong, Magician and cruciverbalist

• Big idea: Failure is an illusion.
• How? You can rely on your skillset to maintain control even when things go wrong — just like magicians whose tricks sometimes don’t go as planned. There’s always a Plan B.
• Quote of the talk: “Success depends not on hiding missteps but using them to leverage the steps moving forward.”

Intelligence: Notes from Session 3 of TED2019

Session 3 featured a dazzling celebration of intelligence — from the knowledge coded in our DNA (and a new way we could rewrite it) to one of the most astonishing tech demos ever seen at TED. Let’s jump right in.

The event: Talks and performances from TED2019, Session 3: Intelligence, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson.

When and where: Tuesday, April 16, 2019, 11:15am, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC.

Speakers: David Deutsch, David R. Liu, Brittany Packnett, Roger Hanlon, Derren Brown and Doug Roble

The talks in brief:

Physicist, author, Oxford professor and father of quantum computing David Deutsch, who delivered his talk via a remote-controlled robot

• Big idea: Within a few short centuries, humans have permanently transformed the Earth. Yet for billions of years, the rest of the cosmos has remained largely unchanged. Why is that? The answer lies in the one thing that fundamentally sets us apart: our ability to attain knowledge.
• How? As humans, we can wrap our minds around just about any problem imaginable. (It’s why Einstein could predict the existence of black holes without ever seeing one, for instance.) Deutsch calls this unique skill of ours “explanatory knowledge,” and it’s driven the immense progress of the past few hundred years — inventions, new behaviors, novel ideas — along with the physical, large-scale changes we’ve left to the Earth. In other words: humans are small beings that can have a massive impact on big things. On the cosmic scale, however, it’s a different story: massive, powerful things strongly affect lesser things, and not vice versa. (A comet that hits the sun is vaporized, while the sun carries on as before.) The last 13 billion years have been dictated by this principle, leading to very few grand cosmological changes — i.e., little novelty — in the universe. Yet we have the power to buck that trend, Deutsch says: with our explanatory knowledge, we can push back against the “great monotony” of the universe, reshape the future of the galaxy — and start looking beyond.
• Quote of the talk: “Humans are not playthings of cosmic forces. We are users of cosmic forces.”

David R. Liu, chemist, biologist, pioneer of genome editing

• Big idea: We hear a lot about CRISPR, the chemical scissors with which we can cut genetic code. But what if we could use CRISPR to find flawed DNA sequences — and instead of snipping them out, simply correct them? Base editing could be that red editing pencil, and once fully developed, it could cure many genetically transmitted diseases.
• How? Liu and his colleagues created chemically engineered proteins that correct sequence-scrambling mutations in DNA. Having made its corrections, this base editor then “tricks” the cell into building stable DNA out of the new sequence. For now, only a few editors exist, and have only been used in plants and animals. But once more are discovered — and scientists solve some formidable practical challenges — they could revolutionize genetic medicine.
• Quote of the talk: “Thanks to a relentlessly dedicated group of students who were creative enough to engineer what we could design ourselves, and brave enough to evolve what we couldn’t, base editing has begun to transform that science fiction-like aspiration into an exciting new reality.”

Brittany Packnett, educator and activist

• Big idea: Confidence is key to pursuing our goals. How can we develop and maintain it — especially in the students who most need it as they grow? Prioritize three things — permission, community and curiosity.
• How? As a teacher of low-income students of color, Packnett noticed that her students weren’t developing the confidence they needed to navigate the world. She realized that to build the muscles of confidence, you need three things: the permission to grow, a community to lean on and support you, and the curiosity to explore and grow in confidence. When we create environments that fulfill these three needs, Packnett says, we can boost our confidence — and accomplish our dreams.
• Quote of the talk: “Confidence is the difference between being inspired and actually getting started, between trying and doing until it’s done. Confidence helps us keep going, even when we’ve failed.”

Roger Hanlon, marine biologist and expert on camouflaged deep-sea creatures

• Big idea: Cephalopods, like squid, octopus and cuttlefish, evolved without vertebrae in the murky mystery of the deep. Their remarkable neurological systems may be evidence of an entirely new type of evolutionary intelligence.
• How? These creatures have astonishing intellect and cognitive skills: decision-making, dynamic camouflaging, memorization — they even experience REM sleep (and potentially dream) — much of which is made possible by their advanced RNA. Cephalopods, they’re sort of like us! Hanlon and his team see huge potential in studying their big brains and marvelous, morphing skin (an octopus’s brain, for example, contains 35 lobes and 80 million neurons, while its skin is home to 300 million neurons). These evolutionary tricks might just lead to breakthroughs in AI, fabrics, cosmetics and beyond.
• Fun fact: While on the hunt for prey, cephalopods can make more than 200 complex camouflaging decisions in the scope of two hours. And they do this multiple times a day.

Derren Brown, illusionist and mentalist

• Big idea: Magic is a great analogy for how we dream up reality in our own heads, forming a story and then mistaking that story for the truth.
• How? Brown’s talk includes a performance that … well, you’ll have to see it to believe it. He describes the practice of mentalism as “the dubious art of getting inside your head.” Humans are, he says, story-forming creatures: we live by the stories we tell ourselves, or the ones we inherit — that we need to be successful to be loved, perhaps, or that we have a terrible secret we must keep. They are, to us, utterly convincing. Brown’s job is also to tell us a story that we’ll believe, but performing reminds him to avoid reducing people to neat characters in the actual world and “to be more alive and alert to the complexity and subtlety of what’s real.”
• Quote of the talk: “We’d worry a lot less about what other people think about us if we realized how seldom they do.”

Doug Roble, senior director of software R&D at Digital Domain, the Academy Award–winning visual effects studio in Los Angeles, California

• Big idea: The future of motion capture is here and it looks … just like us.
• How? The usual suspects: machine learning, deep neural networks and gargantuan amounts of data. Over a year of intense video recording, Roble offered all the facial expressions he could muster to create an exact digital rendering of himself. In an astonishing demo, he debuts the software in real time — for the first time ever outside his team’s LA studio — with a complete 3D character of his likeness, accurate down to his pores and wrinkles. The implications of this technology are, he admits, as far-reaching as they are fearsome. By transposing 3D fantastical film characters onto the big screen, the future of film could grow even brighter — but there’s also the threat of designing deepfakes indistinguishable from their real-life counterparts.
• Fun fact: Roble’s team had to collect an immense of data — like, really, an immense amount. Learn more about part of that data-gathering process (the sphere of bright lights) as it was presented in Paul Debevec’s 2009 TED Talk, “Animating a photo-real digital face.”
• Quote of the talk: “Why did we do this? First of all, it is just crazy cool.”

Power: Notes from Session 2 of TED2019

Power drives everything. Whether it’s political, economic, online — power makes the rules and makes things move. At Session 2 of TED2019, we explore how different centers of global power are dramatically playing out across the world stage.

The event: Talks and performances from TED2019, Session 2: Power, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers

When and where: Tuesday, April 16, 2019, 8:45am, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC.

Speakers: Rafael Casal, Jack Dorsey, Adena Friedman, Peter Beck and Julius Maada Bio

The talks in brief:

Rafael Casal, poet, filmmaker, actor (you know him from Blindspotting), activist, incorrigible Tweeter

• Big idea: Online protest travels fast. Justice can be delivered quickly — but the argument can also quickly devolve into a loud, angry mess. How do we mix activism and nuanced debate?
• How? Rafael Casal tells the cautionary tale of a 2016 Twitter firestorm he helped spark. The hashtag he started — #MakeRoomForOak, a campaign for the actor Oak Onaudowan, who was asked to step down as the lead of a new Broadway show — blew up, kicking off a debate about representation and diversity in the arts. But within a week, the hashtag turned into an ugly shouting match, coopted by misinformation, threats and abuse. This, says Casal, is part of a massive cultural shift in what activism looks like. We’re still on the social media learning curve, and, sure, the nuance gets lost sometimes. But these debates are bringing long-unheard issues to center stage — and making impact. It’s on us to keep failing loud, teaching others to succeed and steadily arriving at justice.
• Quote of the talk: “Our messy moments online are not just a mess, but evidence of work being done to protest the injustices that are long overdue for some volume.”

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, CEO and chair of Square, and a cofounder of both

• Big idea: Twitter was built around the concept of follows, likes and retweets. This focus has created a network culture that rewards what Chris Anderson calls the “eloquently obnoxious” — and harassment and political manipulation. Is it possible to rebuild Twitter to de-emphasize virality and encourage diversity, respect and healthy participation?
• How? By identifying four key metrics for conversation health, Twitter can begin to discourage bad behavior and encourage learning and a diversity of opinions. But Twitter is also studying fundamental shifts to their platform, including deemphasizing statistics (followers, retweets) and allowing users to follow their interests rather than individual accounts — opening the door for a wider spectrum of opinions. Read a full recap of Jack’s interview with TED’s Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers here.
• Quote of the talk: “We can’t build a business that is successful unless we have a diversity of perspective inside of our walls, that actually feel these issues every single day — and that’s not just with the team … it’s also within our leadership.”

Adena Friedman, President and CEO of Nasdaq

• Big idea: Capitalism is getting the blame for some of the world’s most entrenched problems, like income inequality and climate change. And yes, it’s far from perfect, but it’s the best option we have right now: a system that provides freedom and choice, and in return drives the economy forward.
• How? Global markets let people put their money behind ideas that make society better, Friedman says. Since the public can buy a piece of companies, they have the chance to become partial owners and have a say in that company’s future. What’s more, new tech is causing new markets to form that could change our lives for the better. Imagine a micro-insurance policy where you could upload your personal data and get quotes for a plan. You’d be empowered to pick from competing offers from multiple sellers — and be able to control your personal data (and even reap benefits from it). Markets can help level the playing field, Friedman says — we just need to imagine more and new ways to do it.
• Quote of the talk: “We can create markets of tomorrow for people, with people, for the benefit of more people.”

Peter Beck, engineer, CEO of Rocket Lab

• Big idea: We’re in the dawn of a space revolution. If we leverage breakthrough tech (like tiny spacecraft and 3D-printed engines), we can dramatically increase access to space — and improve life for all of us on Earth.
• How? Rocket Lab plans to launch thousands of rockets into space in the near future. But how to do it? By shrinking spacecraft to the size of a fingertip (obviously) and by ramping up launches to once every 72 hours. There’s bound to be technical and bureaucratic hurdles to overcome, Beck says — but we’ll be able to access space like never before. Soon, Rocket Lab will open up the search for extraterrestrial life, spark more learning about the solar system and help create a global internet network — on every millimeter of Earth.
• Quote of the talk: “There’s a revolution in the space industry — not a revolution of the big, but of the small.”

Julius Maada Bio, president of Sierra Leone

• Big idea: When Maada Bio first gained political power in 1996, he wanted to transform Sierra Leone into a country that would be secure, peaceful and fair — especially the disenfranchised youth. More than 20 years letter, he reflects on how he did just that.
• How? To create a truly prosperous nation, Maada Bio realized that he’d need to invest in developing a skilled workforce. He traveled across the country, engaging citizens who had become disillusioned with the country’s politics. He talked to talented young people, who shared their knowledge and vision for a better future. The result? Maada Bio has helped launch a free education program, promote STEM scholarships for women and girls and, among other key investments, dedicate a percentage of the national budget toward health care for all citizens. Because in the end, he says, leadership is about having faith in his people — and championing the beauty of their big, bold ideas.
• Quote of the talk: “So in my mind, this is what leadership is about: a mission to listen with empathy to the craziest 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.”

How Twitter shapes global public conversation: Jack Dorsey speaks at TED2019

Jack Dorsey is a bit of an enigma. The CEO of Twitter and Square, Dorsey is known for his amazing sense of calm in turbulent times — while his network takes a serious chunk of the blame for the divisiveness seen around the world, both online and off.

At TED2019, head of TED Chris Anderson and TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers join Dorsey to discuss Twitter, the health of the global conversation and how the service could change what it incentivizes users to do — moving away from outrage and mob behavior and towards productive, healthy conversation. Online, users were asked to send in questions via Twitter using the hashtag #AskJackAtTED, and their questions were displayed live on screens behind the stage.

So to start: What worries Jack? “The health of the conversation,” he says. “Our purpose is to serve the public conversation, and we have seen a number of attacks on it. We’ve seen abuse, we’ve seen harassment, we’ve seen manipulation, automatic and human coordination, misinformation … What worries me most is our ability to address it in a systemic way that is scalable.”

And an undue portion of that abuse and harassment is directed toward people of color, specifically black women, Pennington Rodgers notes. How is Twitter creating a safe space for these people?

“It’s a pretty terrible situation when you’re coming to a service where, ideally, you want to learn something about the world, and you spend a majority of your time reporting abuse, receiving harassment,” Dorsey says. “Last year, we decided that we’re going to apply a lot more machine learning, a lot more deep learning to the problem, and try to be a lot more proactive, so we can take the burden off the victim completely.”

Dorsey says that, as of today, about 38 percent of abusive tweets are flagged by algorithms, so users don’t actually have to report them: “That’s up from 0 percent about a year ago.” But humans still review anything that’s flagged before taking it down.

Twitter is also focusing on representation within the company itself. “We can’t build a business that’s successful unless we have a diversity of perspective inside our walls that actually feel these issues every single day.”

What else could change to shift behavior on the platform, to combat harassment and the feeling that Twitter is some sort of gladiatorial combat zone, where harassment and insults reign supreme? “If I had to start the service again, I probably would not emphasize the follower count as much. I would not emphasize the ‘like’ count as much. I don’t think I would even create ‘like’ in the first place — because it doesn’t actually push what we believe now to be the most important thing, which is healthy contribution back to the network.”

Turning to Twitter’s role in elections, Dorsey describes a project to measure conversational health. The company worked with Cortico, a nonprofit affiliated with the MIT Media Lab, to create four measurable indicators of conversational health: shared attention, shared reality, receptivity and variety of perspective. “Implicit in all four of these is the understanding that, as they increase, the conversation gets healthier and healthier,” he says.

But the service needs help — not just indicators — fast. One of the questions flooding in from the online audience asks a question many are asking: What is Twitter doing to get rid of Nazis and other hate groups?

Dorsey says that the company is focused on conduct, like patterns of harassment, more than content. While Twitter has taken some action on the KKK, the American Nazi Party and others, he acknowledges there’s plenty of work left to do, and that people can’t do it alone.

“I don’t think our rules are very understandable,” Dorsey says. “We’re simplifying the rules so that they’re human-readable, so that people can actually understand, themselves, when something is against our terms and when something is not … Our big focus is on removing the burden of work from the victims — both the humans receiving the abuse and the ones having to review it.”

Looking ahead, Dorsey wants Twitter to be a place for reflective engagement, even if that means sacrificing time spent on the site — a major driver of ad revenue. “More relevance means less time on the service, and that’s perfectly fine,” he says.

That said, getting users (and keeping them) on the site every day is definitely important. “Our goal right now, the metric that’s most important, is one around daily active usage,” Dorsey says. “Are we actually delivering something that people value every single day?”

But that doesn’t necessarily mean people will see things they value every day. What about those who are drawn in by the outrage, by the chance to add fuel to the fire, pushing daily active usage — and anger — up?

“You can’t just optimize around one metric,” Dorsey admits. “Ultimately we want to get a metric that says: ‘I learned something from Twitter, and I’m walking away with something valuable.'”

Beyond metrics, how can Twitter dial up the urgency and move on the threats posed to democracy and culture by some of its users?

“We could do a bunch of superficial things, but we need the changes to last,” Dorsey says. “That means questioning how the system works and how the framework works and what is needed for the world today, given how quickly everything is moving … Quickness will not get the job done; it’s focus, it’s prioritization; it’s understanding the fundamentals of the network and building a framework that scales and that is resilient to change — and being open about where we are so we can continue to earn trust.”

In Case You Missed It: Highlights from day 1 of TED2019

The theme of TED2019 is “Bigger than us,” and day 1 did not disappoint. Even though it had just three sessions, they were chock full of compelling ideas and calls for action. Here are seven takeaways: 

We’re shining light into some really dark places. Sheperd Doeleman, head of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, takes us inside the new (and iconic) black hole image and the epic effort involved in making it. The petabytes (1 petabyte = 1 million GB) of data that were used to construct the image came from a network of telescopes operated by 200 people in 60 countries who, he says, “effortlessly sidestepped the issues that divide us.” (Here’s a thought: Let’s get competing political candidates to work on science projects … together!) And two TED Fellows showed documentary projects that exposed hidden truths: Taghi Amirani shares footage from his just-finished Coup 53, which reveals the British and American conspiracy that overthrew the Iranian government in 1953 and shaped the country’s fate (and his family’s), while Nanfu Wang speaks about One Child Nation, her film about the traumas caused by China’s one-child policy.

And some places still need illumination. British journalist Carole Cadwalladr describes her investigation into the Facebook ads that targeted people with lies prior to the 2016 Brexit vote, but most of the evidence of what occurred remains locked in the “black boxes” of Facebook, Google and Twitter. She urges them to release their data, saying: “It’s a crime scene, and you have the evidence.” Writer Baratunde Thurston shares examples of people in the US who had the police called on them because they were “living while black” — when they went to a swimming pool, donated food to the homeless or played golf, “concerned” observers phoned 911 to report them. Systemic racism underlies these 911 calls, and even though changing it may sound impossible, Thurston has hope. He believes that if we can see the humanity of people targeted by racism, we can change our actions; when we change our actions, we change the story; and when we change the story, we can change the system.

The words we use matter. We’re living in polarizing times, and many fractures occur during our conversations. By tweaking what we say, political pollster Frank Luntz shows how to keep our discussions open and respectful. One standout from his suggestions: instead of saying the passive “I’m listening,” try the active, empathic “I get it.”

Businesses need to look beyond balance sheets and focus on their people. TED Fellow Jess Kutch created coworker.org, a platform that helps employees organize. While it tends to scare executives, Kutch says corporate leaders should view organizing as a positive — it’s what she calls “productive conflict,” offering “an opportunity to build a better workplace, a stronger business and an economy that works for all of us.” (Besides, she notes, the people most passionate about changing their workplace tend to be the people who love their workplace the most.) … Creating a company that puts employees first is part of what Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya calls his “anti-CEO playbook.” Other actions in his playbook: Asking communities what they need instead of demanding tax breaks and concessions from them; being accountable to one’s customers rather than one’s shareholders; and taking sides on political issues — because, he says, businesses should use their power to make a difference.

Ethics shouldn’t be an afterthought. While Cadwalladr calls out the tech giants and Ulukaya calls for humanity in business, a slew of TED Fellows echo the theme of responsibility. MIT researcher Arnav Kapur demos a technology that can communicate a person’s thoughts — but he stressed it’s not mind reading. It picks up only “deliberate speech” while “control resides with the user.” … Cofounder and executive director of The Good Food Institute Bruce Friedrich says humans have a responsibility to the earth not to tax it with the consequences of meat consumption. He’s championing research and investment into plant-based and cell-based meat. … Finally, astrodynamicist Moriba Jah speaks about our planet’s responsibility to, well, the rest of the universe. There are more than 500,000 objects in space put there by humans — “most of us what we launch never comes back,” he says. The world’s nations should pool their efforts and data to track the trash.  

Music can be used to teach history and biology. Teachers might want to take a lesson from these TED Fellows. Amma Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin shares a rousing excerpt from her in-progress musical At Buffalo, which examines black identity through the events of the 1901 World’s Fair in Buffalo, New York. And biologist Danielle N. Lee led the crowd in a version of Naughty by Nature’s “O.P.P.” to illustrate the concept of “extra-pair copulation.” (Trust us — it was amazing.)  

Fishing cats are the cutest cat you’ve never heard of. Oh yes, they are.

That concludes this highly abbreviated rundown of the day’s doings, which also included walking Easter Island statues, innovative ways of creating new medications, a Kenyan music festival with the winning name of “Blankets and Wine” (sign us up!), an astrophysicist who is taking how she studies stellar explosions and applying them to city lights and the criminal justice system, restoring the Maldives with canvas “bladders,” spoken word from the sublime Sarah Kay and Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and much more.

Truth: Notes from Session 1 of TED2019

The world feels fragile these days, a bit wobbly. How do we figure out a way forward? At TED2019, we’re taking a painfully honest look at what’s going on, laying out shared values, exploring a common purpose — and seeing how we can build something meaningful together: an idea, vision, ambition that’s bigger than us.

The event: Talks and performances from TED2019, Session 1: Truth, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson and Helen Walters.

When and where: Monday, April 15, 2019, 5pm, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC.

Speakers: Sarah Kay, Sheperd Doeleman, Carole Cadwalladr, Frank Luntz, Baratunde Thurston and Hamdi Ulukaya.

Music: Swedish folk duo First Aid Kit, performing three original songs: “King of the World,” “Nothing Has to Be True” and “My Silver Lining.”

The talks in brief:

Sarah Kay, poet and educator

• Big idea: What does it mean to embrace the beauty of life around us?
• How? In a thoughtful and stirring spoken-word piece, Sarah Kay encourages us to welcome the beauty of the universe, however it may appear. From starlings bursting into flight to the enormous heart of a blue whale, the poetry of life is within our reach.
• Quote of the talk: “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.”

Sheperd Doeleman, director of the Event Horizon Telescope project

• Big idea: We have the first image of a black hole … and that’s awesome!
• How? 100 years ago, Einstein predicted we would see a circle of bright light around a black hole, should we ever image one. Last week, Doeleman’s global team of 200 researchers across 60 countries announced just that. Using an international array of telescopes synced with atomic clocks, the Event Horizon Telescope imaged the supermassive black hole that lies at the center of a galaxy 55 million light years away. The ring of light we see in the image is the orbit of photons (particles of light) around the black hole. The dark region in the center is the event horizon, and our entire solar system would fit inside it. Doeleman discusses his team’s findings with TED’s Chris Anderson. (You can learn more about how this image was created from Katie Bouman, who created an algorithm central to the project’s success.)
• Quote of the talk: “Black holes really are the central mystery of our age because that’s where the quantum world and the gravitational world come together.”

Carole Cadwalladr, investigative journalist for the Guardian and Observer and Pulitzer Prize finalist

• Big idea: Online platforms need to be accountable for their potential to influence voters.
• How? Targeted Facebook ads played a decisive role in the Brexit referendum. But when Cadwalladr and her colleagues wanted to see what British voters saw in the leadup to the 2016 referendum, they found that while some people mentioned seeing “quite scary stuff about immigration” on Facebook, it was difficult to know what ads they had been shown, or how they had been targeted. Cadwalladr uncovered that a company called Cambridge Analytica used data illegally harvested from Facebook to target these ads at voters deemed most susceptible to influence. As she says: “It was the biggest electoral fraud in Britain for 100 years.” Cadwalladr calls for Mark Zuckerberg and other social media leaders to stand accountable for how their platforms can be used to influence democracy. Read a full recap of her talk here.
• Quote of the talk: “It is not about left or right, or Leave or Remain, or Trump or not. It’s whether it’s actually possible to have a free and fair election ever again. As it stands … I don’t think it is.”

Frank Luntz, communications advisor, pollster and wordsmith whose work coining terms like “climate change” and the “death tax” helped to define contemporary American politics

• Big idea: It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear. To effectively communicate, we need to change the words we use that alienate people we disagree with.
• How? Luntz provides a list of words to lose and words to use — for those on both the left and right. For example, instead of saying “tolerance,” which implies mere acceptance without embracing, we should be talking about “mutual respect,” which says that you have something to learn from everyone. And instead of “human capital,” which communicates that people are just a profit center, we should be talking about “human talent,” which respects individuals. Luntz also calls on American presidential candidates in 2020 to commit to no-negativity campaigns, and he urges each of us listen, learn and use language to lead.
• Quote of the talk: “Populism is a great way to get elected, and it is a horrible way to govern.”

Baratunde Thurston, humorist, activist and writer of the New York Times bestseller How to Be Black

• Big idea: White supremacy isn’t confined to those who consciously believe it. It’s implicit in the structure of our society — from the police to white people who call the cops on people of color merely because they make them feel uncomfortable. But we can change that structure — by changing our narratives.
• How? By making a game out of analyzing all-too-familiar headlines — e.g., “White Woman Calls Police on Eight-Year-Old Black Girl Selling Water” or “White Woman Calls Cops on Black Woman Waiting for Uber” — Thurston shows how African Americans are being punished for their mere existence. And by rewriting the headlines, we can imagine new outcomes for those narratives, change our behavior accordingly and, perhaps, begin to dismantle white supremacy.
• Quote of the talk: “Systems are just collective stories we all buy into. When we change them, we write a better reality for us all to be a part of. I am asking us to use our power to choose.”

Hamdi Ulukaya, founder and CEO of Chobani

• Big idea: The CEO playbook that has powered corporate America for decades is broken. We need a new playbook — an “anti-CEO playbook” — that benefits employees and local communities, instead of making shareholders rich. And consumers can use their power to help create it.
• How? There are four key values of the anti-CEO playbook: community, responsibility, gratitude and accountability. Companies can — and should — help build up struggling communities, instead of simply seeking out areas with tax breaks or incentives. That’s why Ulukaya built his second yogurt factory in a rural town in Idaho. Anti-CEOs should also hold themselves accountable to their consumers. After all, Ulukaya says, consumers have the buying power to support brands that treat their employees well. Taken together, when consumers refuse to buy from companies that put profit in front of people — and when CEOs follow the new playbook — we can create a better way of doing business.
• Quote of the talk: “Today’s playbook says: business exists only to maximize profit and make shareholders rich. I think that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. The truth is: business should take care of employees first.”

Social media is a threat to democracy: Carole Cadwalladr speaks at TED2019

The day after the Brexit referendum, British journalist (and recently announced Pulitzer Prize finalist) Carole Cadwalladr went to her home region of South Wales to investigate why so many voters had elected to leave the European Union.

She asked residents of the traditionally left-wing town of Ebbw Vale, a place newly rejuvenated by EU investment, why they had voted to leave. They talked about wanting to take back control — a Vote Leave campaign slogan — and being fed up with immigrants and refugees.

Cadwalladr was taken aback. “Walking around, I didn’t meet any immigrants or refugees,” she says. “I met one Polish woman who told me she was practically the only foreigner in town. When I checked the figures, I discovered that Ebbw Vale actually has one of the lowest rates of immigration in the country. So I was just a bit baffled, because I couldn’t really understand where people were getting their information from.”

A reader from the area got in touch with her after her story ran, to explain that she had seen things on Facebook, which she described to Cadwalladr as “quite scary stuff about immigration, and especially about Turkey.” This was misinformation that Cadwalladr was familiar with — the lie that Turkey was going to join the EU, accompanied by the suggestion that its population of 76 million people would promptly emigrate to current member states.

She describes trying to find evidence of this content on Facebook: “There’s no archive of ads that people see, or what had been pushed into their news feeds. No trace of anything … This entire referendum took place in darkness because it took place on Facebook.” And Mark Zuckerburg has refused multiple requests from the British parliament to come and answer questions about these ad campaigns and the data used to create them, she says.

“What I and other journalists have uncovered is that multiple crimes took place during the referendum, and they took place on Facebook,” Cadwalladr says.

The amount of money you can spend on an election is limited by law in Britain, to prevent “buying” votes. It has been found that the Vote Leave campaign laundered £750,000 shortly before the referendum, which they spent on these online disinformation campaigns.

“This was the biggest electoral fraud in Britain for a hundred years, in a once-in-a-generation vote that hinged on just 1 percent of the electorate,” Cadwalladr says.

Cadwalladr embarked on a complex and painstaking investigation into the ad campaigns used in the referendum. After spending months tracking down an ex-employee, Christopher Wylie, she found that a company called Cambridge Analytica “had profiled people politically in order to understand their individual fears, to better target them with Facebook ads, and it did this by illicitly harvesting the profiles of 87 million people from Facebook.”

Despite legal threats from both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, Cadwalladr and her colleagues went public with their findings, publishing them in the Observer.

“Facebook: you were on the wrong side of history in that,” Cadwalladr says. “And you are on the wrong side of history in this. In refusing to give us the answers that we need. And that is why I am here. To address you directly. The gods of Silicon Valley; Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg and Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Jack Dorsey, and your employees and your investors, too … We are what happens to a western democracy when a hundred years of electoral laws are disrupted by technology … What the Brexit vote demonstrates is that liberal democracy is broken, and you broke it.”

Cadwalladr offers a challenge to tech companies: “It is not about left or right, or Leave or Remain, or Trump or not. It’s about whether it’s actually possible to have a free and fair election ever again. As it stands, I don’t think it is. And so my question to you is: Is this what you want? Is this how you want history to remember you? As the handmaidens to authoritarianism that is on the rise all across the world? You set out to connect people and you are refusing to acknowledge that the same technology is now driving us apart.”

And for everyone else, Cadwalladr has a call to action: “Democracy is not guaranteed, and it is not inevitable. And we have to fight. And we have to win. And we cannot let these tech companies have this unchecked power. It’s up to us: you, me and all of us. We are the ones who have to take back control.”

Looking at stars: Notes from Session 2 of TED2019 Fellows talks

The event: An afternoon session of talks and performances from TED Fellows, hosted by TED Fellows director Shoham Arad and TED Senior Fellow Jedidah Isler.

When and where: Monday, April 15, 2019, 2pm, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC.

The talks, in brief:

Erika Hamden, an astrophysicist who builds telescopes at the University of Arizona.

• Big idea: When we look at the universe we can see stars, but what we can’t see are most of the known atoms that form the universe. Learning more about those atoms, such as hydrogen, would go a long way in telling us how galaxies and stars are created, and how the universe evolved.
• How? Over the past 10 years, Hamden and her team have been building FIREBall, a UV telescope that can observe extremely faint light from huge clouds of hydrogen gas in and around galaxies. It hangs on a cable from a giant balloon from 130,000 feet in the stratosphere, at the very edge of space, for one night, to help observe these atoms. 
• Quote of the talk: “I work on FIREBall because what I want to take our view of the universe from one of mostly darkness, with just light from stars, to one where we can see and measure nearly every atom that exists.”

Christopher Bahl, molecular engineer and protein designer.

• Big idea: New, exciting kinds of medicine made from very small and stable proteins, called constrained peptides, are nontoxic and highly potent for the treatment of disease. However, it’s expensive and time-consuming to reengineer constrained peptides found in nature to work as drugs.
• How? Bahl solves this problem by using computational design to build constrained peptides totally from scratch, using open source design software. The software can position individual atoms incredibly accurately, so that the peptide molecules are custom-tailored for drug development. So far, constrained peptides have been designed to safely neutralize influenza virus, protect against botulism poisoning and block cancer cells from growing.
• Quote of the talk: “Ultimately, I believe that designed peptide drugs will allow us to break free from the constraints of our diseases.”

Alexis Gambis, a filmmaker and biologist, as well as founder and executive director of film festival Imagine Science Films and creator of streaming film platform Labocine.

• Big idea: Storytelling through film can playfully help explain important scientific advancements and social issues, and science can be used as a lens through which to understand our own humanity.
• How? Gambis makes surreal, magical realist films grounded in real scientific fact while straddling experimental, documentary and fiction genres. Son of Monarchs tells a story of immigration and identity while incorporating current evolutionary biology research on the colors, patterns of a butterfly wing, climate justice and CRISPR. His heartfelt portrayal of scientists shifts stereotypes to make them more human and relatable.
• Quote of the talk: “We need more real science in fictional movies to create more eclectic, more inclusive, more poetic portrayals of science and scientists in the world.”

Hiromi Ozaki, an artist who explores the social and ethical implications of emerging technologies.

• Big idea: Recent developments in biotechnology and genetic engineering have made things possible that in the past we attributed only to gods and mythologies. Today, we have the knowledge of the pragmatics of science to create the magic of art.
• How? To create a real-life version of the Red String of Fate – string that binds romantic partners in an Asian lore – Ozaki worked with a geneticist to genetically engineer a silkworm with the DNA of a red glowing coral, adding the love hormone oxytocin. After rendering the mythical real, Ozaki brought it back into the realm of pop culture, making a bio-mythical film featuring an aspiring genetic engineer who creates the Red Silk to win the heart of her crush.
• Quote of the talk: “We managed to create something that we thought only existed in the world of mythology, through science.”

Muthoni Drummer Queen, musician and founder of two East African festivals: Blankets & Wine and Africa Nouveau.

• Big idea: Kenya is suffering from an identity crisis that, at its heart, has an attitude of exclusionism of otherness — a relic of its colonial past. It needs cultural spaces that celebrates and embraces its misfits.
• How? Muthoni Drummer Queen argues that Kenya’s creative industries have a huge role to play in building an inclusive, national pride. She points to examples in Kenyan film, radio, television music and fashion, as well as the music festivals she founded that have offered a platform to a diversity of talents and identities while creating a creative economy, and calls for more progress in these areas so that jobs can be created and Kenyan ideas exported world-wide.
• Quote of the talk: “We cannot build a nation unless we truly love it, and we cannot love it until we love ourselves.”

Moreangels Mbizah, a lion conservationist and founder of Carnivore Conservation Zimbabwe.

• Big idea: Most conservationists working to protect wildlife in Zimbabwe are not from the countries or communities they serve. Yet the communities that live near this wildlife are the people best positioned to protect them.
• How? While local people grow up near wildlife, they often don’t come into contact with it unless they travel out to nature preserves. Mbizah suggests that conservationists should bring schoolchildren to national parks for a chance to connect with wildlife, while offering environmental education and teaching conservation skills. Most of all, conservation must include the economies of the people who share the land with wildlife. Locals play an important role in fighting poaching and illegal wildlife trade, so it’s important to embed conservation skills into these communities.
• Quote of the talk: “Sometimes change can only come when the people most affected and impacted take charge.”

Leila Pirhaji, a biotech entrepreneur and founder of ReviveMed, an AI-driven metabolomics platform focused on discovering drugs for metabolic diseases.

• Big idea: Many diseases, including fatty liver disease, are driven by metabolites – small molecules in our body like fat, glucose or cholesterol. To develop therapies that treat metabolic disorders, we need to study and understand metabolites, but identifying the vast numbers of metabolites in our bodies would require many experiments, which could take decades and billions of dollars.
• How? Pirhaji is developing an AI platform that can identify and understand a large set of metabolites from individual patients’ blood or tissues. It’s now working to develop treatments for diseases driven by metabolic dysregulation.
• Quote of the talk: “By collecting more and more data from metabolites and understanding how changes in metabolites lead to developing diseases, our algorithms will get smarter and smarter to discover the right therapeutics for the right patients.”

Moriba Jah, a space environmentalist and inventor of the orbital garbage monitoring software AstriaGraph.

• Big idea: We have a space garbage problem: Around half a million objects, some as small as a speck of paint, orbit the Earth and there’s no consensus on what’s in orbit or where. 
• How? The ever-growing density of untracked flying debris poses a danger to the satellites and space vehicles being launched, yet we don’t yet have tools or policies to monitor and manage them. Jah’s AstriaGraph is an open and transparent database of space objects that aggregates multiple sources of space information. The database lets scientists quantify, assess and predict the behaviors of objects in space, to inform evidence-based space policy and decision-making.
• Quote of the talk: “In the absence of a framework to monitor activity in space, we risk losing the ability to use space for humanity’s benefit.”

Brandon Anderson, a data entrepreneur and inventor of the police-reporting platform Raheem.

• Big idea: People in the United States interact with police nearly 63 million times a year, but with 18,000 separate police departments in the US, those interactions aren’t methodically tracked — too often with tragic results. That needs to change.
• How? The majority of people who experience police violence, says Anderson, do not report it. So when he lost his life partner to police violence during a routine traffic stop, the former military engineer built Raheem, a platform that lets citizens log interactions with police, including the officer’s identity. During its pilot run in San Francisco, Raheem collected twice as many reports in three months as the city had collected in a year. This data is used by police oversight boards to write policies governing police performance, while public defenders use it as evidence against violent police officers.
• Quote of the talk: “We all deserve a world where we feel safe to live freely, a world where we feel safe to love freely. We are not only fighting for our right to live. We are fighting for our right to love.”

Skylar Tibbits, a designer, computational architect and founder of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT.

• Big idea: As we react to climate change, how can we adapt and build resilience? Perhaps by studying natural materials that assemble themselves and adapt to their environment
• How? Tibbits’ lab was asked to weigh in on this question: Could self-assembly be used to tackle sea level rise in the fragile islands of the Maldives, where climate change is causing land loss? As they watched the motion of the waves and the topography of the reef cause natural sandbars to form, Tibbits and his colleagues realized they could use these natural forces to build sandbars where they’re needed, by assembling underwater forms that work with the tides to pick up the sand where it can accumulate. Think of it as a movable, adaptable reef.
• Quote of the talk: “It’s a different model for climate change: One that’s about adaptation and resilience rather than resistance and fear.” 

Danielle N. Lee, a behavioral biologist, educator and STEM advocate.

• Big idea: Lee uses hip hop to communicate science concepts and terms to audiences that popular science often overlooks.
• How? Take “O.P.P.” by Naughty By Nature, released in 1991 – a song whose lyrics about monogamy (or lack of it) perfectly mirror an evolutionary biology discovery of around the same time: that songbirds – once thought to be strictly monogamous – engaged in what’s politely called Extra Pair Copulation. “You down with EPC? / Yeah, you know me!”
• Quote of the talk: “Hip hop song references are a really good tool for teaching concepts to students from hip hop culture or urban communities. I use it intentionally, tapping into vocabulary they already know and systems they already comprehend. In the process is it ratifies them – us, our culture – as knowledge purveyors.”

Andrew Nemr, tap dancer and dance oral historian, artistic director of the Vancouver Tap Dance Society

• Big idea: The audio aspect of the craft of tap dance is just as essential as the visual.
• How? Dancing us into TED2019, Nemr and ensemble perform a choose-your-own-adventure dance, inviting audience members to close their eyes and open them throughout the piece, as they feel led.
• Quote of the talk: “I want the audience to experience the form without the visual component, so that they can understand that the music-making part of tap dance is equally important.”

“One with each other”: Notes from Session 1 of TED2019 Fellows talks

The event: Talks and performances from TED Fellows, celebrating the 10th anniversary of this life-changing, world-changing program. Session 1 is hosted by TED Fellows director Shoham Arad and TED Senior Fellow Jedidah Isler.

When and where: Monday, April 15, 2019, 10:30am, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC.

Opening: We begin the day by sharing a powerful moment with Dr. Robert Joseph, a Hereditary Chief of the Gwawaenuk First Nation, and Kristen Rivers of the Squamish Nation, who welcome us to Vancouver with a simple message: Let us be one with each other.

The talks, in brief:

Ashwin Naidu, conservationist and founder of the Fishing Cat Conservancy

• Big idea: Mangroves are crucial to the health of the planet, but they’re endangered by unsustainable aquaculture. What to do? Empower the locals in South and Southeast Asia to conserve mangrove ecosystems by celebrating the charismatic fishing cat.
• How? Naidu’s Fishing Cat Conservancy helps locals find sustainable livelihoods and move away from destructive agriculture practices, giving them strong incentives to protect and restore mangrove swamps — so that the swamps can keep gobbling up CO2 from the atmosphere, offering storm surge protection and serving as a habitat for fish and wildlife. The fishing cat, aka the “tiger of the mangroves,” helps put a charismatic face on this complicated effort. 
• Quote of the talk: “Deforestation, extinction and climate change are global problems that we can solve by giving value to our species and ecosystems, and by working together with the local people who live next to them.”

Jess Kutch, founder of the digital labor organizing platform Coworker.org

• Big idea: Got an idea to make your workplace better? Coworker.org helps employees organize and engage in “productive conflict” with management.
• How? A surprising amount of the time, employees who ask most loudly for workplace improvements are those who love their jobs the most. Using Coworker.org, staffers can plan campaigns to raise wages and advocate for themselves and their colleagues.
• Quote of the talk: “We all need to be challenging and changing the parts of our work lives that are broken.“

Brandon Clifford, ancient technology architect and founder of the design studio and research lab Matter Design

• Big idea: Ancient civilizations’ ability to move massive objects (like Stonehenge’s standing stones or Easter Island’s Mo’ai heads) seems impossible to the point of magic. But we can learn those mechanisms — and apply them to contemporary design and construction.
• How? In public performances, Clifford demonstrates ancient techniques for moving massive objects – like his 16-foot-tall McKnelly Megalith sculpture that “walks” with ropes and the 4,000-pound Janus, which can be manipulated by a single person to spring to life and bob and spin in a dance.
• Quote of the talk: “In an era where we design buildings to last 30, maybe 60 years, I’d love to learn how to create something that can entertain for an eternity.”

Nanfu Wang, documentary filmmaker who tells stories about human rights in China

• Big idea: The human stories behind China’s one-child policy shine a light on the program’s devastating psychological and social effects — and on the power of propaganda.
• How? Wang grew up during the era of the one-child policy; she was ashamed of having a younger brother. Now a documentary filmmaker, she made One Child Nation to investigate the policy’s effects on people in her community, including her village’s midwife, who believes she performed tens of thousands of abortions and sterilizations. In 2019, the film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
• Quote of the talk: “With each person I filmed, I saw how deeply the hearts and minds of people can be influenced by propaganda and how their willingness to make sacrifices for the greater good can be twisted into something very dark and tragic.”

Taghi Amirani, documentary filmmaker

• Big idea: The true story of Operation Ajax, the 1953 coup staged by the CIA and MI6 to overthrow Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, has been shrouded in mystery. Until now.
• How? It’s been 10 years in the making, and literally last week, Taghi Amirani completed Coup 53 with the help of renowned film editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, American Graffiti). Together they sifted through 532 hours of footage, video tapes, archival material — and CIA documents — that changed the fate of Iran.
• Quote of the talk: “There’s nothing new in the world except the history you do not know” — Harry Truman

Gangadhar Patil, journalism entrepreneur and founder of 101Reporters

• Big idea: In India, rural reporters are on the front lines of important stories, but their work often goes unnoticed by national news outlets. Connecting local reporters to national publishers can get their stories heard.
• How? Patil’s platform, 101Reporters, trains local reporters and connects them with national outlets. They get paired with experienced editors on each story, helping them build skills, gain credibility — and command higher fees. This empowers rural reporters to pursue tough stories on topics like corruption and poverty. The goal? To get one reporter from each of India’s 5,000 subdistricts into the network.
• Quote of the talk: “In a country like India, transparency is key to ensure justice to everyone — especially the poor, who are often ignored.”

Federica Bianco, urban astrophysicist and professional boxer

• Big idea: Astrophysicists have amazing data analysis skills — why not ask them to analyze other datasets closer to home?
• How? Bianco and her colleagues at the Urban Observatory use astrophysical data analysis methods to study earthbound problems, like measuring urban energy use, air pollution levels, even figuring out what causes prosecutorial delays. And there’s a twist: Bianco flips the mathematical models used to detect urban pollution, for instance, to examine the reflections of star explosions on interstellar dust.
• Quote of the talk: “To study a system as complex as the entire universe, astrophysicists are experts at extracting simple models and solutions from large and complex data sets. So what else can I do with this expertise?”

Marc Bamuthi Joseph, writer and performer

• Big idea: What’s it like to send a child out into the world, knowing they might not come home?
• How? Bamuthi Joseph performs a jazz-inflected spoken-word piece, a black father’s tender and wrenching internal reflection on the pride and terror of seeing his son enter adulthood as he gets his driver’s license at the DMV.
• Quote of the talk: “Sixteen is younger than Trayvon and older than Emmett Till.”

Ivonne Roman, police captain and cofounder of the Women’s Leadership Academy

• Big idea: The benefits of having women in the police force are well documented. But there’s a wide gender disparity in the US: only 13 percent of police officers are female. One simple test could make a difference.
• How? At their local police academies, women fail the standard physical fitness test at rates between 65% and 80%, ending their careers before they begin. Roman Women’s Leadership Academy trains women to prepare for the current physical fitness exams — while simultaneously advocating for fitness tests that take gender differences into account.
• Quote of the talk: “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 police woman reduces the use of force among other officers … yet they’re more successful in diffusing violent or aggressive behavior overall.”

We take an interstitial break to watch a trailer from the new film from Blitz the Ambassador, a TED Senior Fellow: The Burial of Kojo. The visually astonishing film was just released on Netflix after being acquired by Ava DuVernay’s company, Array Releasing. Preview it above.

Arnav Kapur, technologist and inventor of the AI device AlterEgo

• Big idea: What if we could integrate AI into the human body to give voice back to people who have lost their ability to speak?
• How? At MIT Media Lab, Kapur is inventing a wearable AI device with the potential to translate human thought into speech. The device, which looks a bit like a telephone headset, picks up the neural signals formed when a person thinks words to themselves — without actually speaking aloud or opening their mouths. The device could one day help people who have lost their voices (due to ALS, strokes or spinal cord injuries, say) to converse with machines. 
• Quote of the Talk: “What if we reimagine computing, the internet and AI as an internal ‘second self’ of the human condition — as a direct extension of our cognition — freeing us to interact with the world around us instead of unplugging us from our environment?”

Bruce Friedrich, food innovator and founder of the Good Food Institute

• Big idea: People love meat, and they likely aren’t about to stop eating it. But how can we make meat production sustainable? Bypass the cow, and turn plants and cells directly into meat.
• How? The Good Food Institute takes an all-hands-on-deck approach to encouraging governments and corporations – including traditional meat companies – to support a new “clean meat” production industry. There are two solutions in development, both expensive and in early stages: plant-based meat products, like the Impossible Burger, and meat grown directly from cells. Given the serious threats to public health of climate change and antibiotic resistance, now is the time to change the way we produce meat.
• Quote of the talk: “It’s past time to create the next global agricultural revolution.”

Laurel Braitman, writer-in-residence at the Stanford University School of Medicine

• Big idea: Folks in the medical field spend years on clinical training, almost at the expense of all else — including their own mental health. Telling and sharing personal stories through writing can be a first step in alleviating the complex pressures they’re under.
• How: Studies show medical students have high levels of depression and some of the highest suicide rates in the United States. So Braitman encourages medical students and physicians to dig deep to find, write and share their own true and vulnerable personal stories. The result: healthcare professionals can connect more meaningfully with themselves, patients and colleagues — and catalyze empathy for improved mental health.
• Quote of the talk: “Communicating with each other with vulnerability and listening with compassion is, I believe, absolutely the best medicine that we have.”

Amma Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin, scholar and artist who develops theatrical works based on historical documents

• Big idea: America’s ideas of racial superiority and inferiority were deliberately scripted, rehearsed and performed at the 1901 World’s Fair in Buffalo, New York.
• How? Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin’s theatrical work-in-progress, At Buffalo, is based on hundreds of archival documents from the Pan-American Exposition, a World’s Fair held in Buffalo. The musical brings to life the fair’s performances and debates, which produced three conflicting narratives of what it meant to be black in the US at the time — including an important exhibit on contemporary Black life by pioneering sociologist W.E.B. Dubois. Reframing the historical record as entertainment confronts audiences with the disturbing realities of American racism in 1901 – and how they still affect us today.
• Quote of the talk: “The 1901 Fair’s legacies persist in more ways than we can imagine.”

Discover 8 big ideas for global change — as they’re revealed live at TED2019

You’ve watched lots of TED Talks. But have you ever watched a full session of the TED Conference, from beginning to end?

On Tuesday, April 16, 2019, at 8pm ET/5pm PT, you’re invited to join us for a full session of talks from TED2019, beamed live to you from our theater in Vancouver, British Columbia. This session, themed “Audacity,” is a very special one — during it, we’ll be revealing the eight projects for global change that will receive support through The Audacious Project. These ideas are big: The projects and the amazing human beings who will tell you about them have been distilled from 1,500 applications, and they take on some of the toughest challenges humanity faces. We believe that, collectively, they stand to change entire systems and transform million of lives for the better.

Come join us for this session — watch on Twitter @TEDTalks and chime in on the conversation with TED fans and others around the world. Hear these powerful talks and find out how you can get involved in putting these ideas into action.

Watch the session here on April 16 at 8pm ET/5pm PT »

Greta Thunberg nominated for Nobel Peace Prize and other TED news

The TED community is brimming with new projects and ideas. Below, a few highlights.

Youth climate change protests kick off across the world. Students from 112 countries skipped school in mid-March to join climate activist Greta Thunberg’s School Strike for Climate demanding government action on climate change. The global event was part of the Fridays for Future movement ignited by Thunberg in August 2018 when she protested in front of Sweden’s parliament for three weeks. Thunberg was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by members of Norway’s parliament for her work spearheading youth climate action. “Greta Thunberg has launched a mass movement which I see as a major contribution to peace,” said MP Freddy André Øvstegård, one of the nominators. Thunberg was also recently nominated for France’s Prix Liberte (Freedom Prize) and was awarded Germany’s Golden Camera award. (Watch Thunberg’s TED Talk.)

How many questions do kids ask in a day? Writer Emma Marris considers the effects of decision fatigue — by sharing every question her two kids asked her in a single day that required a decision. “My modern American lifestyle with its endless variety of choices … breeds decision fatigue. But it is my kids that really fry my brain,” she writes. From breakfast music choices to food requests, Marris notes how each seemingly inconsequential ask adds up — totaling a full 108 decisions! Read her piece on The Last Word on Nothing. (Watch Marris’ TED Talk.)

Six TED speakers featured at TIME 100 Summit. Chef José Andrés, civil rights activist Tarana Burke, mogul Arianna Huffington, artist JR, investor Kai-Fu Lee and biologist Pardis Sabeti will speak at the TIME 100 Summit in New York City on April 23. Alums of the TIME100 list in years past, they will introduce this year’s honorees at the Summit, which celebrates the 100 people named on TIME’s annual World’s Most Influential list. “The TIME 100 is not just a list of the world’s most influential people — it’s an opportunity to connect them,” said TIME’s editorial director, Dan Macsai. “And when you connect extraordinary people, they can do extraordinary things.” (Watch TED Talks from Andrés, Burke, Huffington, JR, Lee and Sabeti.)

A new coalition for ocean protection and prosperity. Alongside a number of leading environmental organizations, marine ecologist Enric Sala is a launch partner of the Blue Prosperity Coalition, a new coalition devoted to conserving at least 30% of the ocean and using marine spatial planning to develop and safeguard ocean economies. “We don’t need to choose between the economy or the environment,” said Sala. “By providing the right level of protection, we can restore marine environments and the local economies and livelihoods that depend on them.” (Watch Sala’s TED Talk.)

 

Have a news item to share? Write us at contact@ted.com and you may see it included in this round-up.

One year in, The Audacious Project ideas make ever-bigger waves

One year ago, TED launched The Audacious Project — an initiative to help change-makers with big, bold ideas for tackling global challenges find the support to make their visions a reality. What’s happened since has been amazing. Thousands of people in the US are awaiting trials at home rather than in jail cells now because of the work of The Bail Project … almost a million farm families are enjoying better harvests in Sub-Saharan Africa because of One Acre Fund’s efforts … and read on for more stories like these. Put simply, these seven ideas are affecting lives around the world.

Our next group of audacious ideas will be revealed at TED2019 — watch live on Tuesday, April 16, at 8pm ET/5pm PT through AudaciousProject.org to discover the change-making ideas that will achieve liftoff this year. In the meantime, enjoy the latest updates from the 2018 projects.

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4,000 bails paid — and quickly counting

The Bail Project’s bail disruptors are now working in 11 sites across the US, where collectively they have paid bail and provided pretrial support for more than 4,000 people. They are working with their clients to ensure they can return to court, get access to any social services they need, and remain with their families and communities while awaiting trial. In the video above, some of these disruptors share why this work is so meaningful to them. “After eight and a half months of sitting in jail, I decided to take a plea bargain for time served just so I could go home,” said David Gaspar, now a bail disruptor in Indianapolis. “When I found out about The Bail Project, I just remember wishing I had someone like that in my corner.”

Over the next few months, The Bail Project will launch in several new sites, including Chicago and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Check out the latest media coverage in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, which looks at the beginnings of The Bail Project in the Bronx, where one of the jails residents are sent to is New York City’s massive floating jail barge. And don’t miss the second episode of BET’s new docu-series Finding Justice, which features the joint efforts of local activists, formerly incarcerated people, and The Bail Project’s St. Louis team to close the “The Workhouse,” the city’s infamous jail.

 

MethaneSAT having impact long before liftoff

MethaneSAT, the satellite to track invisible methane emissions, is on track to launch in 2021. Technical and science advisory groups have been assembled for the project, and two leading aerospace industry companies are now under competitive contract to refine the design. The team is also moving forward on a project that will help build global consensus around the validity of the satellite’s data — by flying over areas where methane emissions are known, scientists from Harvard and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory will test and refine the algorithms MethaneSAT will use for emission detection.

But even before MethaneSAT’s launch, EDF is driving toward its goal of curbing oil and gas methane emissions. The organization is actively working with oil and gas companies to encourage them to prioritize lowering their methane emissions. With EDF’s encouragement, Shell, ExxonMobil and BP have all announced their support for stronger methane regulations and urged the Trump administration and the US Environmental Protection Agency not to weaken current restrictions as planned. “It’s the right thing to do for the planet,” said Susan Dio of BP America. MethaneSAT will be a key tool for encouraging this kind of corporate accountability, helping companies and governments take action on this dangerous greenhouse gas.

 

Living Goods + Last Mile Health focus on partnership

Living Goods and Last Mile Health’s partnership is bringing quality health care to the doorsteps of millions of people in East and West Africa who haven’t had access to traditional clinics. In 2018, the two organizations empowered 12,000 community health workers with the technology and training to deliver care to an astonishing 7.9 million people. For Last Mile Health, an area of focus was malaria, which has been the leading cause of sickness and death in Liberia. With improvements in prevention, diagnosis and treatment — including CHWs bringing care to rural areas — malaria cases have been reduced by about one-third across the country. Living Goods, meanwhile, is helping CHWs begin to provide family planning and immunization services across Uganda and Kenya, while treating common childhood illnesses and supporting pregnant mothers. They also focused on leveraging the data CHWs collect to inform government systems and policies, and optimize how CHWs are supported and supervised.

Both organizations stress the importance of working with governments to implement community health worker programs, and in 2019 they’re hoping to bring this idea to other countries too. Registration is now open for the first course of the Community Health Academy, “Strengthening Community Health Worker Programs to Deliver Primary Care.” The course is offered in partnership with HarvardX and edX. “It’s taught by a network of faculty from around the world,” Raj Panjabi said in an interview this week. “We sent film crews to Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Liberia so health systems leaders can learn from other health systems leaders. Enrollment for the course began earlier this month, and already, people from over 90 countries have signed up.”

 

One Acre Fund offering small-scale farmers choice

One Acre Fund believes in treating the small-scale farmers they work with as clients. In a blog post, they shared a bit more about what this means: giving farmers choices on what to buy for their homes and farms, giving them the credit to pay over time, and allowing them to think through how they want to diversify and build their business. This ethos shows in the video above too, with the story of Rwandan farmer Drocella Yandereye, who has chosen to invest in quality seeds and in a solar light to help her and her children move about the house in the evenings. These investments have not only helped Drocella make enough income to buy livestock, but they’ve helped her to build a new home for her family.

While One Acre Fund’s growth continues to be healthy — in this op-ed from the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Andrew Youn looks at The Audacious Project’s effect on that — there’s also reason for concern. Farmers in countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Uganda are already feeling the effects of climate change that scientists predict years down the road in other regions. The organization is working to help make farmers more resilient in the face of droughts and volatile weather.

 

A third expedition to the ocean’s twilight zone

A team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Ocean Twilight Zone project have just returned from a mission aboard OceanX’s research vessel, the M/V Alucia, off the coast of the Bahamas. Their goal was to explore a new region of the twilight zone (previous cruises were in the Northwest Atlantic and Northeast Pacific) in order to examine how life can differ by location. Scientists conducted biological sampling, made submersible dives to observe organisms in their natural habitat, and collected water samples from various depths to perform eDNA analysis, a forensic tool that allows scientists to look at what might be in the water even if they weren’t able to physically catch the animals themselves. The team worked with OceanX to share their journey through video diaries and photographs. And Quartz Media was also on board, showing others what the twilight zone holds.

A special issue of WHOI’s Oceanus magazine is dedicated to the science, people and technology involved in its exploration of the twilight zone. Sign up for a free one-year subscription to get the special issue. As it was coming off the press, a team from WHOI attended the Second Session of the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC2) on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction at the UN. In addition to introducing delegates to the twilight zone, WHOI laid the groundwork for the twilight zone to be included in a treaty governing marine resources outside of any nation’s exclusive economic zone. When IGC3 rolls around in August, they hope to make the twilight zone the subject of a side event that will explore its importance more fully.

 

GirlTrek on the road to Selma

GirlTrek is making the final stops of its Road to Selma revival wellness tour, with events in Los Angeles on April 4 and Chicago on April 6. Over the past year, they have visited 50 cities in the US, holding teach-ins to get attendees thinking about their health, and to train them to organize walking groups in their communities. GirlTrek has reached an incredible number of women along the way. In just 10 days in February — as they made stops in Sacramento, Oakland and Atlanta — they trained nearly 1,000 new organizers.

GirlTrek’s goal is to train 10,000 organizers to lead a movement of one million Black women walking daily. They will continue with a three-day Summer of Selma training event, taking place Memorial Day weekend 2019, in the Alabama city that’s sacred ground for the Civil Rights movement. In 2020, GirlTrek will hold the first Summer of Selma festival, with attendees retracing the historic 54-mile walk from Selma to Montgomery, then joining a three-day celebration. Last week, Vanessa Garrison appeared on Buzzfeed News’ AM to DM to talk about the event and the importance of starting with that iconic walk. “At this moment in our country, we have to recognize that we have been here before,” she said. “For us, it’s important that we remember our history and that we … pull from the power of our ancestors and our foremothers and the powerful organizers who came before us, so we can start to address the problems of today. This is nothing compared to the road we have already traveled.”

 

Sightsavers has resources to begin work in 12 countries

Over the past year, with funding from The Audacious Project and other sources, Sightsavers has raised an unprecedented $105 million to take on the ancient eye disease trachoma. In a blog post, Richard Branson shared why he’s proud Virgin Unite is a part of the effort, as it will help end blinding trachoma in 10 countries and accelerate progress in several others. “It’s a goal that’s achievable through teamwork by bringing together affected communities with governments, donors, pharmaceutical companies and international organizations,” said Branson.

UK Aid Match is also helping Sightsavers achieve this vision. Through May 15, 2019, they will be matching every pound donated to Sightsavers, up to £2 million. While the donations themselves will be used to support work wherever need is greatest, the matched funds will go toward work to prevent and treat trachoma in Tanzania, where images for the video above were taken. “Everyone who donates to Sightsavers’ End Is in Sight appeal could help us get one step closer to consigning this awful disease to the history books,” says Sightsavers head Caroline Harper.

From TED2019 speakers: 14 websites and links that you didn’t know you needed in your life

We’re excited about the lineup for TED2019: “Bigger than us”. So excited that we compiled a list of websites, links and pages from this year’s speakers that you didn’t know you needed. But you do.

1. AI Weirdness

Adventures in the often hilarious antics of AI algorithms as they try to imitate human datasets, like firework names or Dungeons and Dragons character bios. Here’s a gem from a neural network doing its best Julia Child impression:

Or perhaps you’re more in the mood for horseradish brownies?

Found thanks to speaker: Janelle Shane

2. One Love

Want to learn how to love better? Peruse this collection of tips, advice and practical resources about building healthy relationships — and spotting unhealthy ones. You can even order a box of chocolates that will give you a “taste” of different relationship behaviors, like manipulation or respect. Because you deserve a healthy relationship and chocolate, too.

Found thanks to speaker: Katie Hood

3. “Cephalopod dynamic camouflage”

Chameleons are the masters of disguise, right? Wrong. This quick overview of the camouflage skills of cephalopods (octopuses, cuttlefish and squids) will make your jaw drop. See how they rapidly camouflage against almost any background: colorful coral reefs, kelp forests, sand, seagrass beds …

Found thanks to speaker: Roger Hanlon

4. The Laughing Room

An interactive art installation meets a social psych experiment. This “artificially-intelligent room” is designed to look like a sitcom set, but with a twist: the room analyzes participants’ patterns of laughter and plays a laugh track based on that data. Jump in at around minute 30 of the livestream and enjoy the awkwardness.

Found thanks to speaker: Jonny Sun

5. Please Feed the Lions

A poetry-spewing lion sculpture in London’s Trafalgar Square. Need we say more?

Found thanks to speaker: Es Devlin

6. “Sleep and Human Aging”

Our sleep patterns change as we grow older. Why is that? This study offers a wealth of answers (and will make you feel better about taking more naps).

Found thanks to speaker: Matthew Walker

7. Please Like Me

You’re probably familiar with Hannah Gadsby’s critically acclaimed Netflix special, Nanette, but have you seen the four seasons of her Hulu series, Please Like Me? If you need a show to fill that 25-minute comedy slot in your TV life, start watching now.

Found thanks to speaker: Hannah Gadsby

8. “Life, Interrupted”

Reflections on family, love and activism from Suleika Jaouad, a young writer diagnosed with leukemia at the age of 22. An invaluable resource for those battling cancer.

Found thanks to speaker: Suleika Jaouad

9. Robogamis

The days of big, clunky robots are over. These folding robots are inspired by origami, can morph into 2D or 3D shapes and we need one to play with.

Found thanks to speaker: Jamie Paik

10. “Smartphone use undermines enjoyment of face-to-face social interactions” (PDF)

The first concrete evidence that phone use may spoil our enjoyment of real-world social interactions. You probably already knew that, but now you have the facts to back it up. So, really: put your phone away at dinner! (You can also listen to the study being read if you want to stop looking at your phone right now.)

Thanks to speaker: Elizabeth Dunn

11. Global Change

The climate is changing. This much we know. But how can we prepare for the human health risks connected to climate change, like heat waves and rising sea levels? Explore this vast trove of resources to find out — and get involved in what could be the public health challenge of the century.

Found thanks to speaker: Kristie Ebi

12. “A digital gangster destroying democracy: the damning verdict on Facebook”

A withering summary of the British Parliament’s 2019 report on fake news and disinformation, from the journalist who uncovered the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica story. Read the parliament’s full report here.

Found thanks to speaker: Carole Cadwalladr

13. “David Deutsch on the infinite reach of knowledge”

Do you like having your mind slightly blown? Good, we do too. This episode of The TED Interview explores how humanity’s ability to attain knowledge first developed — and how it could take us across galaxies.

Found thanks to speaker: David Deutsch

14. “Fireworks”

A remix of the song “Fireworks” by Swedish duo First Aid Kit … as though the song were playing on the radio while actual fireworks exploded in the distance. Surprisingly calming.

Found thanks to performer: First Aid Kit

And a bonus for making it this far: travel back in time to TED7 … how far we’ve come since then!

Brené Brown plans a Netflix special, and more TED news

The TED community is busy as ever! Below, a few highlights.

Brené Brown special planned for Netflix. As she announced on Instagram, vulnerability expert Dr. Brené Brown has partnered with Netflix for a one-hour special: The Call to Courage. In the show, Dr. Brown will explain how to embrace vulnerability as a source of power and choose “courage over comfort in a culture defined by scarcity, fear and uncertainty.” According to Oprah Magazine, Dr. Brown will also share lessons and feedback from her hugely popular 2010 TEDx Talk, The power of vulnerability. The special was filmed in front of a live audience at UCLA, and will premiere on Netflix on April 19. (Watch Dr. Brown’s 2012 TED Talk on shame.)

A new headscarf collection from Halima Aden. In collaboration with Turkish clothing brand Modansia, model and activist Halima Aden will launch a new collection of hijabs at the 2019 Istanbul Modest Fashion Week in April. This collection marks Aden’s first foray into fashion design following her groundbreaking modeling career and humanitarian work. “I’m focused on the next generation. I want to one day see a hijabi at the Met Gala. I want to see a hijabi being a lead actress,” she said in a profile with Paper. “Think of all the many firsts that are still out there. What can I do to encourage girls to dream big, to bring it home?” (Watch Aden’s TED Talk.)

Helping to train better child welfare workers. Social scientist Jessica Pryce will join the newly established National Child Welfare Workforce Institute’s advisory board, in addition to her role as the director of the Florida Institute for Child Welfare. As a member of the national board, Pryce will help design curriculum to better train child welfare professionals. As Pryce said in a statement: “Serving on the advisory board will be a wonderful opportunity to engage with other leaders from around the country while being at the forefront of workforce innovation.” (Watch Pryce’s TED Talk.)

UK Royal Mint debuts Stephen Hawking–inspired coin. The physicist Stephen Hawking has been honored on a new commemorative 50-pence coin in the United Kingdom. Designed by Edwina Ellis, the coin was inspired by Hawking’s significant discoveries researching black holes; the face features Hawking’s name, a minimalist rendering of a black hole and the Bekenstein–Hawking equation, Hawking’s famed theorem that describes the entropy of a black hole. The coin will not be circulated in public currency; it is available for purchase on the UK Royal Mint website. Hawking passed away at 76 years old in 2018. (Watch Hawking’s TED Talk.)

Esther Perel named Vivid Ideas Festival Game Changer. Psychotherapist and relationship guru Esther Perel will give a keynote speech on modern love and the digital age at the Vivid Ideas Festival in Sydney, Australia, in June 2019. Festivalgoers can expect to gain some insight into “modern love, lust, our desire for connection and delicate matters of the heart” from Perel’s unique experience and perspective. The annual festival, which spans nearly three weeks, celebrates the intersection of art, technology and commerce; built around an extravagant light show, the festival boasts concerts, workshops and lectures. (Watch Perel’s TED Talk.)

Have a news item to share? Write us at contact@ted.com and you may see it included in this round-up.

TED announces Carla Zanoni as first Director of Audience Development

TED, the nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, has tapped Carla Zanoni as its first-ever Director of Audience Development, effective April 1, 2019. Formerly the Editor of Audience and Analytics at the Wall Street Journal, Zanoni will lead TED’s audience acquisition and growth strategies across its global, multi-channel footprint, with an emphasis on expanding analytics, social media and digital community development. Zanoni will report to Colin Helms, TED’s Head of Media.

“With an audience reach of over 120 million people worldwide, TED has built an incredible community centered around watching, listening, sharing and discussing powerful ideas,” said Helms. “We’re evolving from being simply being known for ‘TED talks’ to a multifaceted ideas platform that includes a half-dozen hit podcasts, thousands of community-organized TEDx events, and a growing library of over 100,000 talks. This is in addition to animated TED-Ed videos and original short-form shows. With the exponential growth of our content library, it’s become vital that we deepen our audience relationships and empower their discovery of ideas worth spreading. We’re thrilled to have Carla join TED and help us imagine the future of our globally connected community.”

“TED knows audience inside out, and they know how to grow community,” said Zanoni. “I am inspired to lead the charge of this next era of their audience engagement — and to create new ways for us to come together, which is vital in today’s divided landscape. I’m thrilled to join the visionary and thoughtful team at TED.”

Zanoni brings more than a decade of experience in audience development. Prior to joining TED, she was the first global Audience & Analytics Editor to be named on the masthead of the Wall Street Journal, where she worked to transform the newsroom to be data-informed in its daily work and strategic decisions. During her tenure, she created and led the audience engagement, development, data analytics and emerging media team focused on diversifying and growing the Journal’s readership. She also launched the Wall Street Journal on multiple storytelling platforms including Snapchat Discover, the Facebook Messenger bot and Amazon Echo.

Zanoni previously led national digital and social strategy at DNAinfo.com. She wrote for numerous regional and national publications and helped launch the first newspaper dedicated to New York City politics (now called City and State). Zanoni is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of General Studies and School of Journalism. She is working on her first book.

These young women might just save the planet

One of anthropologist Margaret Mead’s most famous quotes instructs us: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” We might amend Mead’s observation to honor a group of thoughtful, committed teenagers across the world who are standing up for their lives (and their future lives) in extraordinarily powerful and moving ways.

Valentine’s Day marked the one-year anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida. In the aftermath of that tragic shooting that claimed 17 lives, surviving students rejected their representatives’ “thoughts and prayers” and organized a nationwide school walkout on March 14, 2018. Ten days later, the March for Our Lives drew over a million people from around the country to Washington to rally for safe schools and gun control. And the Parkland students have continued throughout the year to travel this country and the world, advocating for stricter gun regulations.

In Sweden, a teenage girl named Greta Thunberg observed the actions of the Parkland students and took an action of her own: deciding to skip school every Friday in order to lobby the Swedish government into action on climate change.

Since Greta began her solo protest, it’s estimated that more than 70,000 students around Europe and the world have joined her protest each week, in over 270 towns and cities. Pictures of Greta and other young activists have made their way around on social media (Greta has nearly 300,000 followers on Instagram), inspiring other teens to join her in protest.

Strikes have been organized all over Europe, the United States, India and Australia over the past five months. The movement is notable in that it is being led by teenage girls. Katrien Van der Heyden of Brussels, whose 17-year-old daughter, Anuna de Wever, organizes marches there, observed to BuzzFeed: “’It’s the very first time in Belgium that a [mass movement was] started by two women and not about feminist rights.’ When the protests drew tens of thousands, Van der Heyden said, she was stunned to see as many boys as girls in the crowds, “and yet no one ever challenged the leadership of the female organizers.”

Seventeen-year-old Jamie Margolin, the founder and executive director of Zero Hour, a group organizing the US protests for the International Day of Action planned for March 15, told BuzzFeed that climate activism has given young women a chance to be heard.

“’There aren’t very many spaces that I can be in charge of, and what I’m going to say is going to be heard,’ Margolin said. Her group is led largely by young women of color, which she said should come as no surprise, because people who are already vulnerable are going to be disproportionately hit by climate change.”

Recently, TED posted Greta’s TEDxStockholm talk which she gave in November. Her talk has been up three weeks and has already been viewed over 1.2 million times. In it, she explained why she decided to skip school and protest, saying:

“I school striked for the climate. Some people say that I should be in school instead. Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ‘solve the climate crisis.’ But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change.”

At the end of her talk, Greta says she’s not going to end on a positive, hopeful note, like most TED talks.

“Yes, we do need hope, of course we do. But the one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.”
                                                                                                                — Greta Thunberg

As I observe Greta and Jamie and all the other girls taking up leadership and the young boys who are marching and protesting with them,  no longer waiting for some adult with a plan or for corporations or governments to take actions, but creating their own actions, I feel more hope than I have felt in a long time that we — all of us at every age — will also take up actions to address the climate crisis before it’s too late.

My daughter in law, Laura Turner Seydel, signs off every email with the Native American proverb: We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. The world’s children are reminding us that we have a big debt to repay and an earth to repair and restore. Time’s up on our loan of the earth.

Inspired,

— Pat

Meet the Spring 2019 class of TED Residents

On February 25, TED welcomed its latest class to the TED Residency program, an in-house incubator for breakthrough ideas. These 11 Residents will spend 14 weeks at TED’s New York headquarters, working and thinking together.

New Residents include:

• A community organizer preserving disappearing languages
• An LGBTQ+ digital activist educating kids and their parents about gender and identity
• A social scientist chronicling how climate change impacts intimate details of our lives
• A game developer moving in-real-life social-deduction games onto digital platforms
• A former medical clown examining why performance art helps people get better
• A venture capitalist predicting that adaptability will become the new watchword for success

Lindsay Amer is a content creator (pronoun: they/them) who makes educational videos for kids — and their parents. Their critically acclaimed web series, Queer Kid Stuff, gives children a vocabulary to help them express themselves. Amer is also developing a full-length screenplay for a family-friendly queer animated musical.

Daniel Bögre Udell is the cofounder and director of Wikitongues, a community organization that tackles language preservation by recording oral histories. UNESCO estimates that of the world’s 7,000 known languages, about 3,000 are at risk of being lost. He’s prototyping a toolkit to make it easier for people to get started on language preservation.

Young men from the Bronx, New York, balance dual lives, says Kenneth Chabert. Often, they have to establish a reputation in their neighborhoods in order to survive, while also doing well in school so they can get out. Chabert addresses their quandary through his organization, Gentleman’s Retreat, which teaches a select group of young men emotional and conversational intelligence, helps them get into into top colleges and universities, and provides experiences to extend their horizons.

Social entrepreneur Robert Clauser wants to pair nonprofits with the ready resources (both human and financial) of corporations, in a kind of philanthropic matchmaking.

Digital game developer and programmer Charlotte Ellett thinks that social deduction exercises such as Werewolf and Mafia aren’t just party games. As the cofounder of C63 Industries, she works on tools and competitive, mind-bending PC games to help people develop their social skills.

Venture investor and writer Natalie Fratto explores how adaptability may be a form of intelligence. To grapple with constant technological change, she believes, our Adaptability Quotient (AQ) will soon become the primary indicator of success — leaving IQ and EQ in the dust.

Jessica Ochoa Hendrix is the CEO and cofounder of Killer Snails, an educational game startup that creates award-winning tabletop, digital and virtual reality games and brings science to life in K-12 schools. To date, she has piloted her curriculum in more than 50 schools across 26 states, under the auspices of the National Science Foundation.

Priscilla Pemu, MD, is an academic general internist who has developed a clinical platform to help patients with chronic diseases improve their health outcomes. Her patients receive digital health advice coupled with a coach from their church or community to hold them accountable — with stellar results! She now analyzes the conversations between participants and coaches to figure out what worked and how.

Michael Roberson, an adjunct professor at the New School and at Union Theological Seminary, is a longtime organizer in New York City’s ballroom community — which drew mainstream notice courtesy of Madonna’s 1990 “Vogue” video and Jennie Livingston’s 1991 documentary Paris Is Burning, and has since developed into a global subculture. Roberson is also a creative consultant for the FX series Pose. He believes that the family dynamics created within ballroom culture can teach the rest of us how to develop healthy communities.

Emmy Award winner Matt Wilson spent a decade as a medical clown at Memorial Sloan Kettering, helping children with life-threatening illnesses. He now researches how arts and performance improve health. He recently graduated from NYU with a master’s degree exploring the phenomena he has witnessed. (PS: He’s also a sword swallower!)

Britt Wray, PhD, is a science writer and broadcaster who crafts stories about science, society and ethics. In her forthcoming book, she argues that climate change is creating intimate dilemmas in our lives, including whether and how to raise children. She’s the cohost of the BBC podcast Tomorrow’s World and is a contributing host on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s flagship science show The Nature of Things.

The new spring crew is joined by alumni from previous Residency classes, back to continue the important work they do. Among them is the founder of a sustainable food venture, a designer creating solutions for animals, and a playwright looking at the role technology plays in art. The returning group includes: Heidi Boisvert, Anindya Kundu, Mohammad Modarres, Kat Mustatea, Marlon Peterson, Mariana Prieto and Michael Rain.

Register for the first course of the Community Health Academy

More than a billion people in the world lack access to basic health care. It’s a hard truth that Raj Panjabi pointed to as he accepted the TED Prize in 2017 — globally, there’s a shortage of accredited health workers, and many people living in remote areas are all but cut off from care. There’s a proven way to making sure they get it: Train locals to serve as community health workers, giving them the skills to bridge between their neighbors and the health care system. Trained community health workers can extend health care to millions of people.

Panjabi’s wish was to launch the Community Health Academy, a global platform dedicated to training, connecting and empowering community health workers and health system leaders. Today, the Academy opens registration for its first leadership course, offered in partnership with HarvardX and edX: “Strengthening Community Health Worker Programs to Deliver Primary Health Care.” The course will introduce the key concepts of national community health worker programs and look at some of the common challenges in launching and building them. It includes lessons from a wide variety of instructors — from former Liberia Minister of Health Dr. Bernice Dahn to healthcare pioneer Paul Farmer — diving into their experience building national community health worker programs. Through case studies of countries where these programs have worked — including Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Liberia, where Panjabi’s Last Mile Health operates — participants will learn how to advocate for, start and optimize community health worker programs.

This course was created by health systems leaders for health systems leaders. It can be taken individually, but learners are also encouraged to gather with colleagues within or across organizations to share their insights. The goal: to set up leaders in more countries to build community health worker programs and bridge the gaps in care.

Stay tuned for more courses from the Community Health Academy. Because as Panjabi put it in his talk, “For all of human history, illness has been universal and access to care has not. But as a wise man once told me: no condition is permanent. It’s time.”

Announcing the speaker lineup for TED2019: Bigger than us

TED has unveiled its ambitious speaker lineup for the April conference, themed “Bigger than us.” Why? As Head of TED Chris Anderson puts it: “The theme ‘Bigger than us’ can mean so many things. AI. The arc of history. Ideas and things at a giant scale. Cosmology. Grand ambition. An antidote to narcissism. Moral purpose….”

Browse the lineup >>

The lineup includes path-breaking scientists and technologists (like soil scientist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey), smart entertainers (like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and America Ferrera and Derren Brown and director Jon M. Chu), artists and activists (like Brittany Packnett and Jonny Sun and Sarah Sze and Judith Jamison), and the thinkers and visionaries (like Hannah Gadsby and Edward Tenner) who can help us pull it all together.

Because, as our positioning statement has it, the political and technological turmoil of the past few years is causing us to ask bigger, deeper, more challenging questions. Like … where is this heading? what really matters? is there more I should be doing?

Together, we’ll be exploring technologies that evoke wonder and tantalize with superhuman powers, mind-bending science that will drive the future as significantly as any politician, the design of cities and other powerful human systems that shape our lives, awe-inspiring, mind-expanding creativity and, most of all, the inspiring possibilities that happen when we ask what ideas are truly worth fighting for, worth living for.

Contact with aliens by 2036? Astronomer Seth Shostak wants to believe — and does

Astrophysicist and astronomer Seth Shostak made a daring bet in his 2012 TED Talk: We’ll find extraterrestrial life within 24 years or he’ll buy you a cup of coffee. This isn’t just wishful thinking — technological advances over the past few decades have amplified the scope of space exploration monumentally, allowing us to search the stars in ways we never have before. We spoke to Seth about his work at the SETI Institute, our cultural fascination with aliens and why he thinks we’re closer than ever to finally finding ET. 

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

What have you been working on lately?

I do a lot of writing, a lot of talking and, of course, the science and speculation: What would be the best strategy to find ET?

We’ve been looking at a list of about 20,000 so-called red dwarf stars. Red dwarves are just stars that are smaller than the sun, and there are a lot of them. Just like there are a lot more small animals than big ones, there are a lot more small stars than big ones. The other thing is that they take a long time to burn through their nuclear fuel, so they live for billions and billions of years, which means that on average they’re older than stars like the sun.

 

“The bottom line is, the search has become much, much, much faster. If you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, it pays to go through the hay faster.”

 

With a star, if the planets around it are billions of years older than our own solar system, maybe the chances are greater that they’d cooked up some intelligence and is sending a signal we might pick up. That’s what we’re doing at the moment in terms of our SETI work.

So, how’s the hunt? How much closer are we?

When people say, “Well, so what’s the difference now between what you guys are doing and what Frank Drake — who did the first SETI experiment back in 1960 — did?” the difference is technology and science.

We can now build receivers that can listen to a lot more radio dials at once. Frank Drake had a receiver that could only listen to one channel at a time, sort of like your TV. We don’t know where ET might be on the dial, and we don’t know where that transmission might be, so we’ve got to really listen to lots of frequencies at once, lots of channels. The receivers we’re using today monitor 72 million channels simultaneously; you can sort of sift through the radio dial for any given star system much more quickly. The bottom line is, the search has become much, much, much faster. If you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, it pays to go through the hay faster.

The other thing that’s changed is the astronomy. When SETI began, nobody knew whether there were planets around other stars, if they were common, or maybe only one star in a thousand had planets. Nobody knew because we hadn’t found them yet. But since that time we have. We’ve found lots of planets, and what we found is that the majority of all stars have planets. Planets are as common as cheap motels. That’s good news because it means you don’t have to wait for somebody to discover planets around some other star and aim your antennas in that direction — we can just take a whole bunch of stars based on other criteria, like here are the 10,000 nearest stars or the nearest 20,000 red dwarf stars. We’re not worried too much about whether the stars have planets or not, because we know most of them will have planets. That’s a big step.

Those are the things that have changed — the technology and the science. Both of those, from my point of view, encourage me to think that we may find something within 20 years.

That’s a really exciting prediction. In your talk, you said that any civilization that we get in contact with or receive signals from will be far more advanced than us. Why haven’t we heard from them yet?

Two things: Maybe they have, and we just haven’t pointed the antennas in the right direction and to the right frequency! That’s the whole premise of SETI — that as we sit and talk, there are radio waves going through your body that would tell you about some Klingons if only you had a big antenna pointed in the right direction and you knew the right spot on the dot.

The other part is that I don’t know that they would be motivated to contact us unless they knew we were here. Maybe it’s an expensive project for them. Like, “Hey, what do you think — should we build a big transmitter and just ping the nearest million stars for 20 years at a time?” You know, that could be a big project. But if they knew that there was intelligent life here on Earth, maybe they would try and get in touch because maybe they want to sell their used cars or something.

The facts are that they probably don’t know that we’re here. How would they know that homo sapiens exist? They could start picking up our radar, television and FM radio — signals that actually go out into space. They could do that beginning in the Second World War when all that technology was developed. But that was only 70 years ago. If they’re more than half that distance — so 35 light years away — there hasn’t been enough time for those signals to get to them and for them to say “Oh, well, we’re going to answer those guys.” That means it’s very unlikely that anybody knows we’re here yet even if they want to find us. Unless they’re very close to us, they won’t succeed. They probably lost their funding and they don’t get any respect at parties.

And by the way, you might like to mention that to your friends, next time they tell you that they’ve been abducted by aliens. You could say, “Well, that’s peculiar. You know the Earth has been here for four and a half billion years, and they just now showed up to abduct you?” I mean, why now? It’s hard to believe that they might be relentlessly targeting our society — they might be, that’s the hope. That they might just have very strong transmitters that you could pick up anywhere nearby. That’s what we’re hoping for.

ʻOumuamua, the first interstellar visitor, has been a source of fascination since it was first discovered in 2017. Some speculate that it could be a sign of extraterrestrial life and last December, SETI, among others, conducted a radio search but didn’t hear anything. What do you think ʻOumuamua is?

It’s become an interesting public issue because Avi Loeb at Harvard likes to talk about these things, that it could be the Klingons and the space crafts. That’s not impossible, but it’s like you hearing a noise from the attic — I mean, it could be ghosts, but that’s probably not the most likely explanation. The other thing is that every time we find something unexplained in the heavens many people — or some people at least — will say it’s alien activity because that’s a handy explanation. It accounts for everything because you can always say “Well, the aliens can do anything, right?” There is that tendency to blame the aliens for everything.

This thing came in and it went right through our solar system, right around the sun. You could say, “All right, it’s just a random rock kicked out of somebody else’s solar system,” but what are the chances that that rock is going to actually hit ours? The chances of that are pretty small. It’s like standing in Park Slope, Brooklyn and throwing a dart up into the air and hitting a particular nickel lying on the sidewalk down by the Brooklyn or Manhattan bridges [ed note: ~3 miles away]. It could happen but it’s pretty unlikely. Unless you throw lots of darts — if you throw a gazillion darts into the air, then you’re probably going to hit that nickel. What Loeb is saying is that either there’s just lots and lots of these rocks cruising this part of the galaxy — which could be, but that seems a little unreasonable — or maybe somebody is deliberately sending them our way. If you’re deliberately aiming at that nickel, then you have a higher chance of hitting it.

 

“Aliens probably don’t know that we’re here. How would they know that homo sapiens exist?”

 

To say that it can’t be a comet because we didn’t see any evidence of that is subject to criticism based on the fact that we didn’t see much of anything on this thing because it was found very, very late and it’s very small and very far away. We never saw this as more than a dot. There’s no reason at this point to say, “You know what, Bob, no two ways about it — this has got to be artificial!”

It seems hard to draw conclusions because no one can collect any more evidence — ʻOumuamua is on its way out at this point, right? It seems all we can do is speculate at this point.

It’s now somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. You can’t even see it with the biggest telescope anymore. Loeb admits that and says we’ll find more. We’re probably gonna find another one within a year or two, and this time, everybody will be on the alert to start studying it right away and if it’s possible, maybe send a rocket in its direction with a probe.

Has this discovery changed your approach at all?

There’s simply no shortage of intriguing new discoveries all the time. Two or three years ago, it was Tabby’s Star. Jason Wright at Penn State said, “It could be an alien megastructure,” so we turned our antennas in that direction. We didn’t find any evidence of an alien megastructure either. The point of ʻOumuamua is that you have one more case where you find something unusual that could conceivably be aliens. It would be hubris, of course, to sort of weed these things away and say, “It’s not likely to be E.T.” With that kind of reasoning, you’ll never find E.T.! It’s a reminder that the evidence may come out of left field and you shouldn’t dismiss it just because of where it came from.

It’s been almost 60 years now we’ve been pointing the antennas in the directions of nearby stars that may have habitable planets, all the usual stuff. It just seems more and more possible to me that the real thing to do is spend more time looking for other kinds of evidence — not radio signals because they may not be broadcasting radio signals our way. They might be doing all sorts of other things like hollowing out asteroids and sailing them around or building alien megastructures or constructing something big and brawny. They could be building something that’s noisy enough or big enough or bright enough — conspicuous in some way — that you could find it without having to count on them directing some sort of radio transmission our way.

 

“There is that tendency to blame the aliens for everything.”

 

Many of your contemporaries are going to come down hard on you when you speculate about something that might or might not be true, as opposed to writing a paper on something that you’ve just measured. When you do that they’re going to say: “Okay, you’re making up stories and you’re just doing it to get the column inches.” And I think that that’s myopic, because it’s those ideas that provoke a lot of investigation and eventually, in many cases, they actually solve the problem.

What is your favorite part of your job?

I enjoy thinking about the possibility of SETI. Because we haven’t found anything, it’s still all possibility. I talked to a film writer who’s writing a screenplay, and he wanted to get the aliens right — whatever that means — what can you say about them? I mean, we haven’t found any, so you can say whatever you want.

I give a lot of talks and I try to give at least one in ten to kids. I like them because they are completely honest. You talk to them and if they don’t find it interesting, they just put their heads down on the desk. Adults will not do that. But if they are interested they’ll ask any question. There’s no such thing as a stupid question for a kid. When you talk to kids, you notice that maybe one in fifty of them, something lights up; they hear something that gets their imaginations going that they’ve never heard before.

What do you think we’re looking for? Why do you think we’re so fascinated with this concept of extraterrestrial life?

I honestly think it’s a hardwired feature, just the way kids are interested in dinosaurs. You’d have a hard time finding kids that aren’t interested in dinosaurs — and why is that? Do they just have a need to know about sauropods? Well, that’s just part of their brain. We’re kind of hardwired to be afraid of falling. That’s undoubtedly a throwback to our simian existence in the trees, climbing around, and if you fell, it was probably the end of you. You have all sorts of mechanisms that tense up and react very quickly if you begin to fall. The same would be true in terms of paying attention to any creatures with big teeth. It probably pays for you to be interested in big teeth and other potential dangers.

I think that’s why kids are interested in dinosaurs, and I think we’re also interested in aliens for pretty much the same reason. Namely that, if you have no interest in whether somebody is living on the other side of that hill outside town, then you’re very likely to someday see them come over the hill and maybe take your land or kill you. It might pay you to pay some attention to potential competitors or, looking on the bright side, potential mates. I think that that’s why we’re all interested in aliens up to a certain age. It’s hard to find somebody who’s not interested in aliens at all.

Imagine If: A session of talks in partnership with the U.S. Air Force

The event: TED Salon: Imagine If, curated by Bryn Freedman and Amanda Miller, TED Institute

The partner: U.S. Air Force

When and where: Thursday, February 21, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York City

Music: Rapper Alia Sharrief, performing her songs “My Girls Rock” and “Girl Like Me”

The big idea: Imagination is a superpower — it allows us to push beyond perceived limits, to think beyond the ordinary and to discover a new world of possibilities.

New idea (to us anyway): We may be able to vaccinate against PTSD and other mental illnesses.

Good to be reminded: Leaders shouldn’t simply follow the pack. They need to embrace sustainability, equality, accountability — not just the whims of the market.

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Brenda Cartier, Director of Operations at Headquarters Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) and the first female Air Commando selected for the rank of general

• Big idea: “Precision-guided masculinity” allows us to maintain a killer instinct without discarding the empathetic, “feminine” traits that mitigate the “collateral damage” of toxic masculinity.
• How? Viewing gender as a spectrum of femininities and masculinities allows us to select traits as they fit each situation, without tying our identities to them. As we learn to balance our personalities, we become well-rounded human beings and create more just societies.
• Quote of the talk: “This new narrative breaks us out of a one-size-fits-all approach to gender, where we link male bodies and masculinity and female bodies and femininity. ‘Precision-guided masculinity’ begs us to ask the question: ‘Who is it that is employing those masculine traits to protect and defend?'”

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Rebecca Brachman, neuroscientist, TED Fellow and pioneer in the emerging field of preventative psychopharmacology

• Big idea: Brachman and her team have discovered a new class of drugs called “resilience enhancers” that could change the way we treat mental illness like depression and PTSD. These drugs wouldn’t just treat symptoms of the diseases, she says — they could prevent them from developing in the first place.
• How? Brachman’s research applies the fundamental principle of vaccination to mental illness, building up a person’s ability to recover and grow after stress. For example, imagine a Red Cross volunteer going into an earthquake zone. In addition to the typhoid vaccine, she could take a resilience-enhancing drug before she leaves to protect her against PTSD. The same applies to soldiers, firefighters, ER doctors, cancer patients, refugees — anyone exposed to trauma or major life stress. The drugs have worked in preliminary tests with mice. Next up, humans.
• Quote of the talk: “This is a paradigm shift in psychiatry. It’s a whole new field: preventative psychopharmacology.”

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Michele Wucker, finance and policy strategist, founder and CEO of Gray Rhino & Company

• Big idea: Catastrophic events sometimes catch us by surprise, but too often we invite crises to barrel right into our lives despite countless, blaring warning signs. What keeps us from facing the reality of a situation head-on?
• How? Semantics, semantics, semantics — and a healthy dose of honesty. Wucker urges us to replace the myth of the “black swan” — that rare, unforeseeable, unavoidable event — with the reality of the “gray rhino,” the common obvious catastrophes, like the bursting of a financial bubble or the end of a tempestuous relationship, that are predictable and preventable. She breaks down the factors that determine whether we run from problems or tackle them, and lays out some warning signs that you may be ignoring one of those charging rhinos right now.
• Quote of the talk: “Think about the obvious challenges in your own life and how you deal with them. Do you stick your head in the ground like an ostrich and ignore the problems entirely? Do you freak out like Chicken Little over all the tiny things, but miss the big giant wolf coming at you? Or do you manage things when they’re small to keep them from going out of control?”

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Halla Tómasdóttir, CEO of Richard Branson’s B Team and former Icelandic presidential candidate, interviewed by curator Bryn Freedman

• Big idea: Corporate leaders — and the businesses they run — are in a crisis of conformity that favors not rocking the boat and ignores big issues like climate change and inequality. We need new leadership to get us out of this crisis.
• How? It’s not enough for corporate leaders to simply follow the pack and narrowly define the missions of their organizations. If CEOs want to avoid the pitchforks of the masses, they must also ensure that their businesses are global citizens that embrace sustainability, equality, accountability — not just the markets.
• Quote of the talk: “At the end of the day, we need to ask ourselves who are we holding ourselves accountable for — and if that isn’t the next generation, I don’t know who.”

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Sarah T. Stewart, planetary scientist at the University of California, Davis, and 2018 MacArthur “Genius” fellow

• Big idea: How did the Moon form? Despite its proximity, we don’t actually know! Adding to the mystery: the Earth and Moon are composed of the same stuff, a rarity we’ve found nowhere else in the universe. In trying to solve the mystery, Sarah T. Stewart discovered an entirely new not-quite-planet.
• How? Stewart and her team smash planets together in computer simulations to learn more about how they were created. While trying to uncover the Moon’s origin, they discovered that the early Earth may have been involved in a massive collision with a Mars-sized planet, which then created a “synestia:” a super-heated doughnut of molten material previously unknown to science, out of which the Moon was born.
• Quote of the talk: “I discovered a new type of astronomical object. It’s not a planet; it’s made from planets.”

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Kashfia Rahman, Intel International Science and Engineering Fair winner and Harvard freshman

• Big idea: Teenagers aren’t necessarily chasing thrills when they make bad decisions. Rather, repeated exposure to risk actually numbs how they make choices.
• How? After wondering why her peers were constantly making silly and irresponsible decisions, Kashfia Rahman decided to conduct an experiment testing how her fellow high school students responded to risk. She found that habituation to risk — or “getting used to it” — impacts how teenagers make choices beyond their cognitive control. With this insight, she believes we can create policies that more holistically tackle high-risk behavior among teenagers.
• Quote of the talk: “Unforeseen opportunities often come from risk-taking — not the hazardous negative risk-taking I studied, but the good ones, the positive risks,” she says. “The more risks I took, the more I felt capable.”

Two TEDsters nominated for Oscars and more TED community news

As usual, the TED community is making headlines. Below, some highlights.

A close look at the beauty and pain of hospice care. End Game, a short documentary that follows the last few days of terminally ill patients, is up for an Oscar this weekend. The heart-rending film highlights the work of doctors and caregivers — including BJ Miller — reimagining what palliative care and hospice work can be. In a column for Hollywood Reporter, Motion Picture and Television Fund head Bob Beitcher says, “End Game’s Dr. BJ Miller embodies the commitment and compassion that is crucial to cutting-edge palliative care, helping families and patients travel the difficult journey together.” The film is streaming on Netflix. (Watch Miller’s TED Talk.)

Also up for an Oscar? Period. End of Sentence. Entrepreneur Arunachalam Muruganantham kickstarted a cultural revolution in India with his sanitary pad machine, and now the tale is a compelling Netflix documentary. The Oscar-nominated short doc explains how Muruganantham’s invention empowers rural women, providing them with both clean sanitary napkins and reliable employment, while reducing stigma. “The strongest creature created by God in the world is not the lion, not the elephant, not the tiger … the girl,” says Muruganantham in the film. (Watch Muruganantham’s TED Talk.)

Nita Farahany co-leads AI seminars for congressional staff. Alongside Vincent Conitzer and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ethicist Nita Farahany kicked off the three-part Duke in DC seminar series on artificial intelligence for a congressional audience. Farahany, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University, spoke on the potential impact of AI and human collaboration on policy. Questions ranged from predictive policing methodologies to the role of government in AI development. As quoted on Duke’s website, Farahany said, “Because AI is still in such a nascent phase of its development, and because we as a society are going to increasingly face ethical and legal dilemmas from its use and development, there is an important role for government in the field.” (Watch Farahany’s TED Talk.)

Stroke of insight: A choral work based on Jill Bolte Taylor. Identical twin composers the Brothers Balliett have written a new three-part piece for a choral orchestral and mezzo soprano called Fifty Trillion Molecular Geniuses — based on neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor’s book and TED Talk. The Cecilia Choir of New York will premiere the piece with soloist Amanda Lynn Bottoms at Carnegie Hall in early May. Tickets are available now. (Watch Taylor’s TED Talk.)

Mark Kelly runs for US Senate. Retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly has launched a campaign in Arizona’s 2020 senatorial special election. Kelly and his wife, former congressional rep Gabby Giffords, announced the campaign with a video highlighting Kelly’s career as an astronaut and pilot, his family roots and his pivot toward gun control activism following an assassination attempt on Giffords in 2011. Kelly describes the issues he cares for most including health care, job and economic growth and the environment. “We’ve seen this retreat from science and data and facts, and if we don’t take these issues seriously, we can’t solve these problems,” he says. (Watch Kelly and Giffords’ TED Talk.)

The Explorers Club Medal awarded to Kenneth Lacovara. For his discoveries of some quite remarkable dinosaur fossils, paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara will be honored at the 115th Explorers Club Annual Dinner. The Explorers Club Medal, the group’s highest award, is presented to those who have made “extraordinary contributions directly in the field of exploration, scientific research, or to the welfare of humanity.” Other TEDsters who have received the honor include Sylvia Earle, Jane Goodall and James Cameron. In a statement for Rowan University Lacovara said, “I’m honored and humbled to be joining a group of medalists that includes so many of the heroes and adventurers who inspired me as a child … I am fortunate to have played a small role in uncovering our wondrous past.” (Watch Lacovara’s TED Talk or see his TED Book, Why Dinosaurs Matter.)

Have a news item to share? Write us at contact@ted.com and you may see it included in this round-up.

TED original podcast WorkLife with Adam Grant is back with Season 2 (and a sneak peek trailer)

The breakaway hit returns March 5, delving deeper into how we work and the psychology of making work not suck

Organizational psychologist, bestselling author and TED speaker Adam Grant returns March 5 with Season 2 of WorkLife with Adam Grant, a TED Original podcast series that takes you inside the minds of some of the world’s most unusual professionals to discover the keys to a better work life. Listen to a sneak peek trailer now and subscribe.

WorkLife was among Apple Podcasts’ most downloaded new shows of 2018, and the trailer gives a taste of what’s in store for 2019 – from celebrating the potential of black sheep in the workplace (as Pixar did) to bouncing back from rejection and examining whether it’s actually possible to create an a*hole-free office.

Each new WorkLife episode dives into different remarkable, and often unexpected, workplaces – among them the US Navy, Duolingo and the Norwegian Olympic alpine ski team. Adam’s immersive interviews take place in the field as well as the studio, with a mission to empower listeners with insightful and actionable ideas that they can apply to their own work.

“I’m exploring ways to make work more creative and more fun,” says Adam, the bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take. “We spend almost a quarter of our lives in our jobs, and I want to figure out how to make all that time worth your time.”

Produced by TED in partnership with Transmitter Media, WorkLife is TED’s first original podcast created in partnership with a TED speaker. Adam’s talks “Are you a giver or a taker?” and “The surprising habits of original thinkers” have together been viewed more than 15 million times in the past three years.

TED’s continued expansion of its content programming beyond its signature TED-talk format in both the audio and video space. Other recent TED original content launches include The TED Interview, a podcast hosted by Head of TED Chris Anderson that features deep dives with TED speakers; Small Thing Big Idea, a Facebook Watch video series about everyday designs that changed the world; and the Indian primetime live-audience television series TED Talks India: Nayi Soch, hosted by Bollywood star and TED speaker Shah Rukh Khan.

WorkLife with Adam Grant Season 2 debuts Tuesday, March 5 on Apple Podcasts, the TED Android app, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. Season 2 features eight episodes, roughly 30 minutes each. It’s sponsored by Accenture, Bonobos, Hilton and JPMorgan Chase & Co. New episodes will be made available every Tuesday.

Calling all GlobalXplorers: Get ready to go to India

Today, GlobalXplorer, the citizen science platform created by satellite archaeologist Sarah Parcak with the 2016 TED Prize — which allows users live out their Indiana Jones fantasies and search for archaeological sites from home — announced the location of its second expedition. The location will be: India!

GlobalXplorer’s first expedition took users to Peru, where they searched 150,000 kilometers of land and identified thousands of features of archaeological interest, including more than 50 new Nazca Lines and 324 sites determined by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture to be of high interest. The exploration of India will be even more sweeping in scope.

India is a large country with 29 states, spread out over 3.287 million square kilometers. Working with the Archaeological Survey of India (a branch of India’s Ministry of Culture) and alongside Tata Trusts and the National Geographic Society, GlobalXplorer’s new expedition will cover the entire country, state by state. This vast work will be accomplished with the help of machine learning. Over the past year, GlobalXplorer has been working with technology partners to train AI to weed out tiles that either contain no archaeological features or that are not able to be properly searched because of dense cloud cover or an impenetrable landscape. Platform users will take on the next step: looking at tiles with potential signs of archaeological features. Searching this most promising fraction of tiles will be no small task. Parcak estimates that, with the help of the crowd, this mapping will be done in less than three years.

“Folks we are about to announce country #2 for @Global_Xplorer I am SO excited. What’s your guess?” she tweeted at 6:30am this morning. Then later she revealed: “So thrilled to be able to share: Globalxplorer will be heading to India next!”

More information on when the expedition begins will be coming soon. In the meantime, read lots more — including how GlobalXplorer is using a blockchain-enabled app to keep antiquities safe — on Medium. And watch the video below to get excited about what you might find.

Stacey Abrams’ State of the Union response and more updates from TED speakers

The TED community is brimming with new projects and updates. Below, a few highlights.

Stacey Abrams responds to the US State of the Union. Politician Stacey Abrams spoke from Atlanta on behalf of the Democratic party following the State of the Union address. In her speech, she focused on the fight against bigotry, bipartisanship in a turbulent America and voter rights. The right to vote is especially important to Abrams — last November, she lost the Georgia gubernatorial election by 55,000 votes, a loss that some pundits have attributed to voter suppression. “The foundation of our moral leadership around the globe is free and fair elections, where voters pick their leaders, not where politicians pick their voters,” she said. “In this time of division and crisis, we must come together and stand for, and with, one another.” Watch the full speech on The New York Times website or read the transcript at USA Today. (Watch Abrams’ TED Talk.)

Remembering Emily Levine. The extraordinary humorist and philosopher Emily Levine has passed away following a battle with lung cancer. Reflecting on life and death, Levine said, “’I am just a collection of particles that is arranged into this pattern, then will decompose and be available, all of its constituent parts, to nature, to reorganize into another pattern. To me, that is so exciting, and it makes me even more grateful to be part of that process.” Read our full tribute to Levine on our blog. (Watch Levin’s TED Talk.)

Could you cut the tech giants from your life? In a new multimedia series from Gizmodo, journalist Kashmir Hill details her six-week experiment quitting Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google — and shares surprising insights on how entwined these companies are in daily life. With help from technologist Dhruv Mehrotra, Hill blocked access to one company for a week at a time using a custom VPN (virtual private network), culminating with a final week of excluding all five tech companies. In just her first week of cutting out Amazon, Hill’s VPN logged over 300,000 blocked pings to Amazon servers! Check out the whole series on Gizmodo. (Watch Hill’s TED Talk.)

Exploring the historical roots of today’s biggest headlines. Alongside artist Masud Olufani, journalist Celeste Headlee will launch a new series at PBS called Retro Report that will explore current news stories, “revealing their unknown — and often surprising — connections to the past.” Each one-hour episode will trace the history of four news stories, including Colin Kaepernick’s NFL protests, modern-day drug approval laws and the US government’s wild horse care program. Retro Report will launch on PBS this fall. (Watch Headlee’s TED Talk.)

Customizable vegetables now for sale. Grubstreet has a new profile on Row 7, the seed company co-founded by chef Dan Barber that wants to change the way farmers, chefs and breeders collaborate and connect. Alongside breeder Michael Mazourek and seeds dealer Matthew Goldfarb, Barber hopes to design seeds that have the flavors chefs want, along with the qualities (like high yield and disease resistance) that farmers are looking for.  “We’re trying to deepen the context for the seeds, and this conversation between breeders and the chefs,” Barber said. By prioritizing taste and nutrition, Row 7 plans to engineer ever-evolving seed collections that meet the needs of both farmers and chefs. Row 7’s first seed collection is now available for purchase. (Watch Barber’s TED Talk.)

A promising new report on tobacco divestment. The Tobacco-Free Finance Pledge, led by oncologist Bronwyn King, has a new signatory: Genus Capital Investment, a leading Canadian fossil-free investment firm. Genus released a new report — based on a six-year study — about the financial impacts of divesting from tobacco stocks and removing tobacco from its portfolios. They found that over the past 20 years, tobacco divestment did not negatively affect index portfolios, and that in the past five years, portfolios that excluded tobacco actually outperformed the market. In a statement, King said, “This new research adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that investors do not need to invest in tobacco to achieve excellent returns.” Spearheaded by Tobacco Free Portfolios and the United Nations Environment Programme, the Tobacco-Free Finance Pledge was launched last year and has over 140 signatories and supporters. (Watch King’s TED Talk.)

An HBO feature on superhuman tech. On Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, bionics designer Hugh Herr presented his team’s latest prosthetics and explained why he thinks bionics will soon revolutionize sports. Herr spoke to Soledad O’Brien about a future of enhanced athletic ability, saying “There’s going to be new sports … power basketball, power swimming, power climbing. It’ll be a reinvention of sports and it’ll be so much fun.” In a teaser clip, O’Brien tried on a pair of lower-leg exoskeletons developed at Herr’s MIT lab; the full episode can be viewed on HBO. (Watch Herr’s TED Talk.)

 

Have a news item to share? Write us at contact@ted.com and you may see it included in this round-up.

Remembering Emily Levine

“That’s what’s so extraordinary about life: It’s a cycle of generation, degeneration, regeneration.”

The humorist Emily Levine has died, after an extraordinary life spent questioning the very nature of reality. A philosopher-comic, she tore apart classics and physics and pop culture, and then, in trickster fashion, stuck them together in ways that created not just a shock of recognition but (as she explained herself back in 2002) a shock of re-cognition, of thinking in a new way. Her goal was to short-circuit your mind, to shake you out of your silly old and/or thinking with a little bit of and/and. Not for nothing did she call herself “the Evel Knievel of mental leaps.”

She worked as a TV writer and producer, a filmmaker and as a connector, a locus for like-minded kooks. She was a force, a word that we hope will make sense on many levels.

Most recently, she turned her attention to the process of dying itself, as she faced down a diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer. As always, it sent her searching through the widest possible array of sources. She read quantum physics (” — well, I read an email from someone who’d read it, but — “), she re-visited Hannah Arendt and an old joke, and tossed everything into the blender of her sharp wit. And it all began to make sense, life, living, dying, death. In her own words: “’I’ am just a collection of particles that is arranged into this pattern, then will decompose and be available, all of its constituent parts, to nature, to reorganize into another pattern. To me, that is so exciting, and it makes me even more grateful to be part of that process.”

Launching today: The Way We Work, in partnership with Dropbox

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of TED’s latest original video series, The Way We Work. In this 8-episode series, a range of business leaders and thinkers offer their direct, practical wisdom and insight into how we can adapt and thrive amid changing workplace conventions.

In these brief, to-the-point videos, you can get answers to your questions on workplace romance … why you should work from home … the side hustle revolution … and how to make applying for a job less painful. It’s a smart exploration of the way we work right now. This series is made possible with the support of Dropbox.

Watch the playlist of The Way We Work >>

Reggie Watts’ virtual reality dance party and more TED news

The TED community is busy with new projects and news — below, some highlights.

A virtual reality dance party at Sundance. Musician and comedian Reggie Watts and artist Kiira Benzing debuted their new project “Runnin’” at the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier exhibit. “Runnin’” is an “immersive, interactive music video” backed with a hypnotic techno beat by Wajatta (the musical duo of Watts and composer John Tejada). The project welcomes players into a “retro-future world,” coupling VR technology and the magic of dance into an experience of pure creativity. In an interview with the Sundance Institute, Watts said, “I always wanted Wajatta to be able to create videos that really embody the music in a fun way.” Check out the artist feature for a sneak peek at the visuals for the project and listen to a live performance of “Runnin’.” At the New Frontier exhibit, Nonny de la Peña also premiered a virtual reality photo booth and data artists Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin contributed to a project called “Emergence”. (Watch Watts’ TED Talk, de la Peña’s TED Talk, Milk’s TED Talk and Kobin’s TED Talk.)

Global science commission urges radical, planet-wide diet. The EAT-Lancet Commission, co-chaired by sustainability expert Johan Rockström and scientist Walter Willett, released a new report on the state of food production, environmental degradation and global sustainability. The commission, which is composed of 37 leading scientists from around the world, warns of serious consequences to current consumption patterns and offers a newly designed “planetary health diet” to help accelerate a “radical transformation of the global food system.” According to the report summary, the dietary shift will require doubling the consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts globally — and reducing sugar and red meat consumption by more than half. “To have any chance of feeding 10 billion people in 2050 within planetary boundaries, we must adopt a healthy diet, slash food waste and invest in technologies that reduce environmental impacts,” said Rockström in an interview with AFP. (Watch Rockström’s TED Talk.)

#WeKnowYouCare campaign launches. Advocacy organization Caring Across Generations, co-directed by activist Ai-jen Poo, launched its latest campaign, #WeKnowYouCare, which celebrates the 16 million men who act as caregivers for their families in America. By sharing video narratives from male caregivers, the campaign aims to highlight nuanced stories of masculinity and address why men who caregive are particularly vulnerable to isolation and lack of support. “Men were actually really quite harmed by the gender norms related to caregiving, in that it’s harder for them to ask for help, it’s harder for them to actually get the support that they need to do what is a very emotionally challenging — and otherwise [difficult] — thing to do,” said Poo in an interview with Bustle. (Watch Poo’s TED Talk.)

The hidden meanings of laughter. Neuroscientist Sophie Scott dives deep into the wonder of laughter on an episode of NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast; alongside host Shankar Vedantam, Scott discusses the animal kingdom, social bonds and the bizarre and beautiful science behind laughter. “Wherever you go in the world, you’ll encounter laughter. It has at its heart the same meaning. It’s very truthful, and it’s telling you something very positive. And that’s always a sort of wonderful thing to encounter,” she said. (Listen to the full episode.) (Watch Scott’s TED Talk.)

Have a news item to share? Write us at contact@ted.com and you may see it included in this round-up.

Education Everywhere: A night of talks about the future of learning, in partnership with TED-Ed

The event: TED Salon: Education Everywhere, curated by Cloe Shasha, TED’s director of speaker development; Stephanie Lo, director of programs for TED-Ed; and Logan Smalley, director of TED-Ed

The partner: Bezos Family Foundation and ENDLESS

When and where: Thursday, January 24, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York City

Music: Nora Brown fingerpicking the banjo

The big idea: We’re relying on educators to teach more skills than ever before — for a future we can’t quite predict.

Awesome animations: Courtesy of TED-Ed, whose videos are watched by more than two million learners around the world every day

New idea (to us anyway): Poverty is associated with a smaller cortical surface of the brain. 

Good to be reminded: Education doesn’t just happen in the classroom. It happens online, in our businesses, our social systems and beyond.

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The talks in brief:

Kimberly Noble, a neuroscientist and director of the Neurocognition, Early Experience and Development Lab at Columbia University

• Big idea: We’ve learned that poverty has a measurable effect on the cortical surface of the brain, an area associated with intelligence. What could we do about that?
• How: Experience can change children’s brains, and the brain is very sensitive to experience in early childhood. Noble’s lab wants to know if giving impoverished families more money might change brain function in their preschool kids.
• Quote of the talk: “The brain is not destiny, and if a child’s brain can be changed, then anything is possible.”

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Olympia Della Flora, associate superintendent for school development for Stamford Public Schools in Connecticut, and the former principal at Ohio Avenue Elementary School in Columbus, Ohio

• Big idea: Healthy emotional hygiene means higher academic scores and happier kids.
• How: With help from local colleges and experts, the teachers at Ohio Avenue Elementary learned new ways to improve kids’ behavior (which in turn helped with learning). Rather than just reacting to kids when they acted out, teachers built healthy coping strategies into the day — simple things like stopping for brain breaks, singing songs and even doing yoga poses — to help kids navigate their emotions in and out of the classroom.
• Quote of the talk: “Small changes make huge differences, and it’s possible to start right now. You don’t need bigger budgets or grand, strategic plans. You simply need smarter ways to think about using what you have, where you have it.”

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Marcos Silva, a TED-Ed Innovative Educator and public school teacher in McAllen, Texas; and Ana Rodriguez, a student who commutes three hours every day to school from Mexico

• Big idea: Understanding what’s going on with students outside of school is important, too.
• How: Silva grew up bringing the things he learned at school about American culture and the English language back to his parents, who were immigrants from Mexico. Now a teacher, he’s helping students like Ana Rodriquez to explore their culture, community and identity.
• Quote of the talk: “Good grades are important, but it’s also important to feel confident and empowered.”

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Joel Levin, a technology teacher and the cofounder of MinecraftEdu

• Big idea: Educators can use games to teach any subject — and actually get kids excited to be in school.
• How: Levin is a big fan of Minecraft, the game that lets players build digital worlds out of blocks with near-endless variety. In the classroom, Minecraft and similar games can be used to spark creativity, celebrate ingenuity and get kids to debate complex topics like government, poverty and power.
• Quote of the talk: “One of my daughters even learned to spell because she wanted to communicate within the game. She spelled ‘home.'”

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Jarrell E. Daniels, criminal justice activist and Columbia University Justice-In-Education Scholar

• Big idea: Collaborative education can help us create more justice.
• How: A few weeks before his release from state prison, Daniels took a unique course called Inside Criminal Justice, where he learned in a classroom alongside prosecutors and police officers, people he couldn’t imagine having anything in common with. In class, Daniels connected with and told his story to those in power — and has since found a way to make an impact on the criminal justice system through the power of conversation.
• Quote of the talk: “It is through education that we will arrive at a truth that is inclusive and unites us all in a pursuit of justice.”

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Liz Kleinrock, third-grade teacher and diversity coordinator at a charter school in Los Angeles

• Big idea: It’s not easy to talk with kids about taboo subjects like race and equity, but having these conversations early prevents bigger problems in the future.
• How: Like teaching students to read, speaking about tough topics requires breaking down concepts and words until they make sense. It doesn’t mean starting with an incredibly complex idea, like why mass incarceration exists — it means starting with the basics, like what’s fair and what isn’t. It requires practice, doing it every day until it’s easier to do.
• Quote of the talk: “Teaching kids about equity is not about teaching them what to think. It’s about giving them the tools, strategies and opportunities to practice how to think.”

Meet the 2019 TED Fellows and Senior Fellows

The TED Fellows program turns 10 in 2019 — and to mark this important milestone, we’re excited to kick off the year of celebration by announcing the impressive new group of TED2019 Fellows and Senior Fellows! This year’s TED Fellows class represents 12 countries across four continents; they’re leaders in their fields — ranging from astrodynamics to policing to conservation and beyond — and they’re looking for new ways to collaborate and address today’s most complex challenges.

The TED Fellows program supports extraordinary, iconoclastic individuals at work on world-changing projects, providing them with access to the global TED platform and community, as well as new tools and resources to amplify their remarkable vision. The TED Fellows program now includes 472 Fellows who work across 96 countries, forming a powerful, far-reaching network of artists, scientists, doctors, activists, entrepreneurs, inventors, journalists and beyond, each dedicated to making our world better and more equitable. Read more about their visionary work on the TED Fellows blog.

Below, meet the group of Fellows and Senior Fellows who will join us at TED2019, April 15-19, in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Alexis Gambis (USA | France)
Filmmaker + biologist
Filmmaker and biologist creating films that merge scientific data with narrative in an effort to make stories of science more human and accessible.

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Ali Al-Ibrahim (Syria | Sweden)
Investigative journalist
Journalist reporting on the front lines of the Syrian conflict and creating films about the daily struggles of Syrians.

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Amma Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin (USA)
Scholar + artist
Scholar and artist working across academia and the entertainment industry to transform archival material about black identity into theatrical performances.

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Arnav Kapur (USA | India)
Technologist
Inventor creating wearable AI devices that augment human cognition and give voice to those who have lost their ability to speak.

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Ashwin Naidu (USA | India)
Fishing cat conservationist
Conservationist and co-founder of Fishing Cat Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting fishing cats and their endangered mangrove habitat.

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Brandon Anderson (USA)
Data entrepreneur
Human rights activist and founder of Raheem AI, a tech nonprofit working to end police violence through data collection, storytelling and community organizing.

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Brandon Clifford (USA)
Ancient technology architect
Architectural designer and co-founder of Matter Design, an interdisciplinary design studio that uses the technology of ancient civilizations to solve contemporary problems.

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Bruce Friedrich (USA)
Food innovator
Founder of the Good Food Institute, an organization supporting the creation of plant and cell-based meat for a more healthy and sustainable food system.

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Christopher Bahl (USA)
Protein designer
Molecular engineer using computational design to develop new protein drugs that combat infectious disease.

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Erika Hamden (USA)
Astrophysicist
Astrophysicist developing telescopes and new ultraviolet detection technologies to improve our ability to observe distant galaxies.

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Federica Bianco (USA | Italy)
Urban astrophysicist
Astrophysicist using an interdisciplinary approach to study stellar explosions and help build resilient cities by applying astronomical data processing techniques to urban science.

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Gangadhar Patil (India)
Journalism entrepreneur
Journalist and founder of 101Reporters, an innovative platform connecting grassroots journalists with international publishers to spotlight rural reporting.

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Hiromi Ozaki (Japan | UK)
Artist
Artist creating music, film and multimedia installations that explore the social and ethical implications of emerging technologies.

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Ivonne Roman (USA)
Police captain
Police captain and co-founder of the Women’s Leadership Academy, an organization working to increase the recruitment and retention of women in policing.

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Jess Kutch (USA)
Labor entrepreneur
Co-founder of Coworker.org, a labor organization for the 21st century helping workers solve problems and advance change through an open online platform.

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Leila Pirhaji (Iran | USA)
Biotech entrepreneur
Computational biologist and founder of ReviveMed, a biotech company pioneering the use of artificial intelligence for drug discovery and treatment of metabolic diseases.

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Moreangels Mbizah (Zimbabwe)
Lion conservationist
Conservation biologist developing innovative community-based conservation methods to protect lions and their habitat.

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Moriba Jah (USA)
Space environmentalist
Astrodynamicist tracking and monitoring satellites and space garbage to make outer space safe, secure and sustainable for future generations.

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Muthoni Drummer Queen (Kenya)
Musician
Musician and cultural entrepreneur fusing traditional drum patterns and modern styles such as hip-hop and reggae to create the sound of “African cool.”

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Nanfu Wang (China | USA)
Documentary filmmaker
Documentary filmmaker uncovering stories of human rights and untold histories in China through a characteristic immersive approach.

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TED2019 Senior Fellows

Senior Fellows embody the spirit of the TED Fellows program. They attend four additional TED events, mentor new Fellows and continue to share their remarkable work with the TED community.

Adital Ela (Israel)
Sustainable materials designer
Entrepreneur developing sustainable materials and construction methods that mimic natural processes and minimize environmental impact.

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Anita Doron (Canada | Hungary)
Filmmaker
Filmmaker who wrote The Breadwinner, an Oscar-nominated coming-of-age story set in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

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Constance Hockaday (USA)
Artist
Artist creating experiential performances on public waterways that examine issues surrounding public space, political voice and belonging.

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Eman Mohammed (USA | Palestine)
Photojournalist
Photojournalist documenting contemporary issues, including race relations and immigration, often through a characteristic long-form approach.

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Erine Gray (USA)
Social services entrepreneur
Software developer and founder of Aunt Bertha, a platform helping people access social services such as food banks, health care, housing and educational programs.

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Kiana Hayeri (Canada | Iran)
Documentary photographer
Documentary photographer exploring complex topics such as migration, adolescence and sexuality in marginalized communities.

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Lauren Sallan (USA)
Paleobiologist
Paleobiologist using the vast fossil record as a deep time database to explore how mass extinctions, environmental change and shifting ecologies impact biodiversity.

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Pratik Shah (USA | India)
Health technologist
Scientist developing new artificial intelligence technologies for antibiotic discovery, faster clinical trials and tools to help doctors better diagnose patients.

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Premesh Chandran (Malaysia)
Journalism entrepreneur
Cofounder and CEO of Malaysiakini.com, the most popular independent online news organization in Malaysia, which is working to create meaningful political change.

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Samuel “Blitz the Ambassador” Bazawule (USA | Ghana)
Musician + filmmaker
Hip-hop artist and filmmaker telling stories of the polyphonic African diaspora.

Up for Debate: Talks from TED and Doha Debates

The world is more interconnected than ever before — and the need to bridge political and ideological divides has never been more urgent. Now is the time to examine the rules of genuine human engagement, to find common ground for respectful, passionate discourse and to celebrate civility.

That’s the idea behind TED Salon: Up for Debate, a session of talks hosted by TED Residency director Cyndi Stivers and presented in partnership with Doha Debates — a newly revitalized media venture that seeks to inspire action and collaborative solutions to global challenges through debate. On Wednesday, January 16, five speakers took the stage of the TED World Theater in New York City; meanwhile, five groups of people from around the world joined the session live via Shared_Studios‘s “Portals” project. In reclaimed shipping containers outfitted with AV equipment, the groups in Doha, Qatar; Kigali, Rwanda; Herat, Afghanistan; Hardy County, West Virginia; and Mexico City were invited to share their thoughts on hot topics in their parts of the world and respond to the talks in New York in real time.

After an opening song performed by the Brooklyn Nomads, the session kicked off with journalist Steven Petrow.

Civility shouldn’t be a dirty word. What does it mean to be a “civilist” — an archaic title describing an “individual who tries to live by a moral code” — in a world where “civility” is a dirty word? Voices on the right conflate civility with political correctness, believing it to be a tool for the left to demonize their opposition. On the left, civility is considered immoral if it allows for the acquiescence to injustice — think of Martin Luther King Jr. or the Suffragists, who made changes by speaking out. But does civility actually stifle debate? As Petrow sees it, civility doesn’t mean appeasement or avoiding important differences; it means listening and talking about those differences with respect. Reasonable discussions are crucial to a healthy democracy, he says, while hate speech, cyberbullying and threats are not; in fact, they suppress conversation by telling us, “Shut up or else.” What we need now are rules of engagement — “a Geneva Convention of civility to become better citizens.” He offers three ways citizens can work toward the greater good: de-escalate language; challenge policies and positions, not character; and don’t mistake decorum for civility.

The secret recipe to starting a movement. According to human rights organizer Rana Abdelhamid, there are three ingredients to creating an international movement: Start with what you know, start with who you know and, most important, start with joy. After a stranger aggressively tried to remove her hijab, the 16-year-old Abdelhamid (who happens to be a first-degree black belt) began teaching self-defense to women and girls in a community center basement. But she realized that she didn’t want the class to focus on fear — instead, she wanted her students to experience the class as an exercise in mental and physical well-being. That one class has evolved into Malikah, a grassroots organization spanning 17 cities in 12 countries that offers security and self-defense training that’s specific to wherever a person may live and how they walk through the world.

Next up, coming to us live from Doha, Qatar, a group of students who’ve gathered in a Shared_Studios Portal explains how the media has shaped their world — from employment to health to education and beyond. Some outlets have started promoting hate speech and fake news, they say, manipulating people in dangerous ways and sparking a debate about the role the media should play. We turn to the Portal in Mexico City, where students explain how, on the heels of their country’s recent transformative election, it’s becoming more important than ever to work together and understand that humanity is part of one force: “Now, kindness is the ultimate intelligence.”

Real dialogue is possible. Journalist Eve Pearlman is on a mission to bridge the political divide in the United States. With the help of her friend and fellow journalist Jeremy Hay, she founded Spaceship Media, dedicated to bringing together people on different sides of a political spectrum to create “dialogue journalism.” Their first dialogue asked Trump supporters from Alabama how they think Clinton voters in California perceive them — and vice versa. “By identifying stereotypes at the start of each project, we find that people begin to see the simplistic and often mean-spirited caricatures they carry,” Pearlman says, “and after that, we can move into the process of real conversation.” Pearlman and Hay want to bring trust back into journalism — moving away from clickbait reporting and toward transparency and care for the communities these journalists serve. When journalists and citizens come together in discussion, people that otherwise would have never met end up speaking with each other — and feeling grateful to know first-hand that the other side isn’t crazy, Pearlman says: “Real engagement across difference: this is the salve that our democracy sorely needs.”

Why we need to listen to millennials — all of them. Millennials aren’t a monolith, says author Reniqua Allen, but too often, we treat them like they are. By simplifying millennials to a worn-out stereotype of lazy, entitled avocado-toast lovers, Allen warns that we erase the vast multitude of millennial backgrounds and experiences, particularly the unique experiences of black millennials. Millennials are the largest, most diverse adult population in the country, she says, and 43 percent are non-white. While researching her book It Was All a Dream, Allen heard from black millennials like Joelle, who couldn’t attend her dream school because it was too expensive; AB, an actor who fears racial bias is limiting his success in Hollywood; and Simon, a tech company CFO who gave up a passion for photography because he didn’t have the financial safety net to take the risk. “These kind of stories — the quieter, more subtle ones — reveal the unique and often untold story of black millennials, show how even dreaming may differ between communities,” Allen says. Though black creatives, politicians and athletes are thriving, racist structures and ideologies haven’t gone away — and they affect the everyday experiences of millennials across the country. 

Next up, we check in with Kigali, Rwanda. The Rwandans in the Portal say that their most pressing issue is the trade war between Rwanda and the US. In 2016, the Rwandan government increased import duties on used clothing from the US in order to encourage domestic clothing production. Since then, the US has suspended certain trade benefits Rwanda receives under the African Growth and Opportunity Act — namely, those allowing Rwanda to export goods to the US without tariffs. They remind us that Rwanda is a young country; what’s on their mind is the need to build up self-dependence, in large part through the economic ability to dictate the prices of the goods they trade with the world. Meanwhile, in Herat, Afghanistan, participants in the Portal share how their community is trying to adapt to the international attitude. They’re eager for technology and social media to help meet and connect with people from other countries; they say that social media, in particular, has opened a gateway for women in Afghanistan.

Tweeting at a terrorist. Twitter is frequently “where you go to get yelled at by people you don’t know,” says counterterrorism expert and blogger Clint Watts. But it can also be a great place to interact with someone who’d otherwise be difficult to talk with — someone like Omar Hammami, a rapping terrorist who traded tweets with Watts in 2013. Hammami grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and Watts notes that had they ever met, “We probably would’ve shared a box of Krispy Kreme donuts.” Instead, Hammami joined the notorious terror group al Shabaab, where his Western background was exploited as propaganda — especially when he became a viral celebrity for his pro-jihad YouTube raps. Hammami eventually fell out with al Shabaab and, hunted by both counterterrorists and the mujahideen, hid in Somalia, where, bored and craving attention, he began obsessively tweeting. Using his training as a negotiator, Watts kept him talking, asking pointed questions about Hammami’s beliefs and goals in between banter about Chinese food and Reading Rainbow. Watts is clear to note, though, that they were never friends. Still, as Hammami’s murderous ex-comrades closed in to assassinate him, Watts wondered: “Did his thoughts reach for jihad and his faith, or did he reach for his family, his friends, his life back in Alabama, and the path he didn’t choose?”

The salon comes to a close with a Portal appearance from students in Hardy County, West Virginia. The most contentious topic in their area? Resistance to change. As one of the participants says: “People hold so tight to their family traditions and what they learned growing up.” Yet hope remains. The students see themselves as activists, looking to help those in their community who are brought down by discrimination and lack of acceptance.

Jim Yong Kim steps down from the World Bank and other news from the TED community

2019 is starting off big for the TED community — below, some highlights.

Jim Yong Kim resigns from the World Bank. In an unexpected move, Jim Yong Kim announced that he will be stepping down from his position as President of the World Bank by the end of the month. According to The New York Times, he will be joining a development-focused private investment fund, and plans to rejoin the board of Partners in Health, the nonprofit he co-founded in 1987. In a statement, Kim said, “It has been a great honor to serve as president of this remarkable institution, full of passionate individuals dedicated to the mission of ending extreme poverty in our lifetime.” (Watch Kim’s TED Talk.)

Feminist icon considered for BBC Wales statue. TV writer Elaine Morgan is one of five women being considered for the BBC’s Hidden Heroines statue project. Known for her blockbuster 30-year television writing career and for her book The Descent of Woman, which foregrounded women in the story of human evolution, Morgan disrupted male-dominated fields to forge her path in media. (She is also known for promoting a controversial theory that humans evolved from aquatic apes.) The statue would be the first of a real woman in Wales; the BBC has produced a learning resource kit on Morgan and the four other heroines. The decision will be made by public vote toward the end of January 2019. (Watch Morgan’s TED Talk.)

BAFTA nomination for a daring documentary. Free Solo, a film that documented rock climber Alex Honnold’s death-defying 2017 summit of El Capitan in Yosemite Park, was nominated for a BAFTA. Produced by National Geographic and Image Nation Abu Dhabi, the film follows Hannold over two years of zealous preparation, which culminated in his successful rope-free climb of the 3,200-foot El Capitan Wall. The trailer is available here; the award winners will be announced in February. (Watch Honnold’s TED Talk.)

A new study on Earth’s only walking fish. Ichthyologist Prosanta Chakrabarty is co-leading a new study at Louisiana State University on Cryptotora thamicola, the blind cavefish that can walk on land. The study, in collaboration with New Jersey Institute of Technology and the University of Florida, seeks to better understand how these fish have evolved. Chakrabarty’s team at LSU will perform genomic sequencing in order to discover more about the molecular makeup and history of the cavefish. In a statement, Chakrabarty said, “Combining robotics, genomics and CT morphological examinations, this collaboration could help us visualize evolution in a brand new light.” (Watch Chakrabarty’s TED Talk.)

A new interview on being brave. Girls Who Code founder and CEO Reshma Saujani spoke to the American Booksellers Association this week on her forthcoming book Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder. “My hope is that by sharing my story, and the lessons and stories I have learned from women across the country, booksellers will leave my talk empowered and excited to go flex their own bravery muscles.” she said. Saujani will also give a keynote speech at the ABA’s Winter Institute later this month. (Watch Saujani’s TED Talk.)

Seeking answers in an untimely death. Alongside producer Lina Misitzis, journalist Jon Ronson launched The Last Days of August, a new podcast investigating the death of adult entertainment star August Ames. In 2017, Ames faced severe backlash to a tweet perceived by many as homophobic; the following day, she committed suicide. Ames’ death sparked dialogue in the entertainment industry around cyberbullying, homophobia, and the impacts of social media. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Ronson said, “We had stumbled into a story where what we had to do was figure out the truth of why August died. We look at the huge things and the very small, subtle, nuanced, psychological things that contributed to her death. I can hope that people can see the humanness of that.” The full podcast can be streamed on Audible. (Watch Ronson’s TED Talk here.)

An advice column that “prescribes” poetry. Sarah Kay — alongside fellow resident poets Kaveh Akbar and Claire Schwartz — has begun Poetry Rx, a poetry-focused column for The Paris Review. Each week, the poets take turns suggesting the perfect poems to match specific emotions that readers write in about (such as commemorating a bittersweet accomplishment, exploring vulnerability, or other moments in the human condition). Read the full column here. (Watch Kay’s TED Talk.)

A new year, and new progress from The Audacious Project

In 2018, TED launched The Audacious Project — a new model with the goal of changing the way that change is made. By surfacing big, bold, ambitious ideas with the possibility to change systems and affect millions of lives, and then bringing together groups of donors and the public to support them, the program is already having incredible impact. Read on for updates on the first Audacious projects and their progress last year.

Celebrating 11 sites for The Bail Project

Over the course of last year, The Bail Project opened sites in nine new locations beyond its initial two — with its latest in Spokane, Washington, and Indianapolis, Indiana. With local teams of bail disruptors at each of these sites working hard to make sure that each person bailed out has what they need to return it to court — and to ease back into their lives with dignity — the organization has freed 3,300 people, reuniting them with their families and restoring the presumption of innocence so they can make decisions about their cases from a place of freedom rather than desperation. But beyond that, founder Robin Steinberg has helmed a sea change, making more and more people recognize that cash bail creates a two-tier criminal justice system — one for the rich and one for everyone else — and sharing The Bail Project’s vision of a more equitable alternative. Check out The Bail Project on Dateline. In addition, listen to Robin’s in-depth conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson on The TED Interview, or watch her recent Q&A at TEDxKCWomen about how cash bail affects women specifically.

As climate outlook darkens, EDF takes action

In the fall of 2018, a special report from climate experts across the globe stressed that, to avoid a crisis by 2040, humanity must take action now. MethaneSAT is poised to be a key player, and last year, EDF made big progress toward launching this satellite to map and measure global methane emissions. In addition to building their leadership team and validating the satellite’s design, they secured commitments from oil and gas companies to reduce their methane leaks. And since the start of this year, they’ve announced that two leading aerospace industry companies are now under competitive contract to refine the design and decide which will actually build MethaneSAT. 2018 was a year that brought a lot of attention to methane as a key environmental issue — California committed to reducing its methane emissions, and both Canada and Mexico issued ambitious regulations to limit emissions from oil and gas companies. Check out EDF’s 2018 year in review to see how MethaneSAT fits into the organization’s larger strategy and how it will enable even more action on this front, with a goal of reducing global methane emissions from the oil and gas industry 45% by 2025.

Major new funding for trachoma elimination

Sightsavers spent 2018 building on the momentum generated by the launch of The Audacious Project. In December, they announced their Accelerate Trachoma Elimination Programme, a now-$105 million fund dedicated to their idea of ending blinding trachoma, and they shared this news onstage at the Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100. This new program is unprecedented in scope, and will help eliminate trachoma in at least 10 countries while speeding up progress in others. Read about it in The Chronicle of Philanthropy. And check out these inspiring stories from Sightsavers’ network: Caroline Harper’s account of how taking a midlife gap year helped her find her calling, and the story of ophthalmic nurse Givemore Mafukidze, who lives in northern Zimbabwe and carries out eye health screenings.

Toward the Summer of Selma

In 2018, T. Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison of GirlTrek were named Game Changers by Women’s Health magazine, had The Root applaud them for their “literal movement for Black Women,” and were featured in a NowThis video that took more than 8 million viewers along the way for their 100-mile retracing of Harriet Tubman’s path of the Underground Railroad. In every month of last year’s walking season, GirlTrek registered more than 5,000 new trekkers. At the same time, the organization kicked off a 12-month, 50-city tour called the #RoadtoSelma, holding teach-ins across the US in anticipation of 2019’s Summer of Selma. The big event will be held in late May. It will begin with a trek along the historic 54-mile path from Selma to Montgomery taken by Civil Rights Movement leaders in 1965, and will end with a three-day festival — from May 24 to 27, 2019 — that promises to be the “Woodstock of Black Girl Healing.”

New views of the ocean’s twilight zone

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) kicked off its unprecedented exploration of the ocean’s twilight zone in 2018. Its first expedition launched a new vehicle, the Deep-See, and brought back more than 22 terabytes of data plus a haul of specimens and a wealth of new information from this largely unexplored part of the ocean. Check out The New York Times’ look at some of the most interesting findings. Meanwhile, a second expedition — NASA EXPORTS — is bringing new insights into the role that the twilight zone plays in Earth’s climate system by helping transport carbon from the ocean surface, where it can contribute to global warming, to long-term storage in the deep ocean. And WHOI has lots more planned for 2019.

800,000 farmers served, and counting

In 2018, One Acre Fund worked with more than 800,000 client families, helping them achieve food security and build better livelihoods. At the same time, they made it possible for smallholder farmers to adopt 200,000 solar lights and plant 15 million trees — a big win, as trees increase in value over time, require little labor, return vital nutrients to the land and sequester carbon. In addition, One Acre Fund was featured in Forbes and called a bottom-up model of development that works by South Africa’s IOL Business Report. At the heart of their efforts: technology that meets small-scale farmers where they are, enabling them to pay for services on mobile phones and receive receipts and advice via SMS. Read more about their approach on their blog.

Big wins for community health worker programs

At the close of 2018, Living Goods and Last Mile Health were on track to digitally empowered 14,000community health workers (CHWs) in East and West Africa, which would mean more than 7.6 million people reached. Together, their community health workers delivered close to a million lifesaving treatments for children and supported more than 200,000 women through pregnancies. In addition to securing a new partnership with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to explore how CHWs can close the immunization gap in hard-to-reach areas across the globe, the two organizations also launched an advocacy campaign, called Communities at the Heart of Universal Health Coverage, that highlights the importance of investing in community heath programs to achieve universal health coverage. And in 2019, Last Mile Health will launch the first course of its Community Health Academy.