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TED’s head of curation Helen Walters hosts Session 3 of TED2022: A New Era on April 11, 2022 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)
The quest to better understand human intelligence — and to build more advanced artificial intelligence — is complex, knotty and exhilarating. In a wonderfully eclectic session, seven speakers explored the concept of intelligence as it applies to everything from a brain-computer interface to dragonflies, AI-powered art and meditation.
The event: Talks from TED2022, Session 3: Intelligence, hosted by TED’s Helen Walters
When and where: Monday, April 11, 2022, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada
Speakers: Tom Oxley, Frances S. Chance, Andrew Ng, Holly Herndon, Dan Harris, Sofia Crespo, Jeanette Winterson
The talk in brief:
Tom Oxley speaks at Session 3 of TED2022: A New Era on April 11, 2022, in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Bret Hartman / TED)
Tom Oxley, neurotech entrepreneur
Big idea: A revolutionary, scalable way for those with paralysis and disability to communicate — directly with their minds.
How? At the end of 2021, Tom Oxley surrendered his Twitter to a paralysis patient so that he could tweet thoughts directly from his brain — literally, no finger movement involved — thanks to a tiny implant. Don’t worry: Oxley agrees not everyone should be allowed to post on social media directly from their brain. But for people with paralysis and disability, being able to text using a brain-computer interface (BCI) could be a life-changing privilege. With implants connected to screens via Bluetooth, the device is invisible to the outside world and its keyboard navigated with clicks directly coming from brainwaves. One of the biggest requests patients had before the BCI was for ways to reconnect with their loved ones through text, email, social media and control over their smartphone. But in its current stage, the BCI requires open-brain surgery and has an expiration date due to the brain’s rejection of the implant over time. So Oxley and his team redesigned the way in which the BCI collects crucial feedback from the brain — through a specially designed stent that sits in the bloodstream instead of an implant adhered to the tissue. Paired with an antenna inserted into the chest, the device communicates raw brainwaves to external devices such as a smartphone and translates and reassigns existing brain signals into relevant digital gestures. What does this mean for the future of humanity? Far out, sci-fi wonders made fact. But right now? Restoring the lives of those with disability and paralysis who feel trapped, giving them autonomy, independence and, most important, dignity.
Frances S. Chance speaks at Session 3 of TED2022: A New Era on April 11, 2022, in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Bret Hartman / TED)
Frances S. Chance, computational neuroscientist
Big idea: By studying and replicating the natural neurological specialities of insects, we can make great advancements in AI technology.
How? The human brain is incredibly complex: we each have 86 billion unique neurons in our brains that are constantly communicating with each other. When designing AI technology, it might make sense to look first to our own brains as the model, but Frances S. Chance believes we can gain much by thinking a lot smaller. Using VR technology, she studies African dung beetles, Sahara desert ants and dragonflies, because each is a natural expert in a different vital task. For example, dragonflies capture an astonishing 95 percent of the prey they hunt thanks to their innate talent at interception, or aiming for where the prey will be rather than where it is at any given moment. Chance has developed a model of this particular neural circuit that enables dragonflies to hunt so accurately and quickly, and she believes that if we can identify how these neurons function together, we can better understand how all brains make calculations and problem solve. This could have far-reaching effects for the field of AI — for instance, she imagines we could one day upgrade our GPS systems with Sahara desert ants’ remarkable navigation skills or create tiny drones that function like dragonflies for backyard mosquito reduction. The world of insects may be small, but the potential positive impact of insect-inspired AI on human technology could be enormous.
Andrew Ng, AI visionary
Big idea: Everyone — not just highly trained computer scientists and engineers at large tech companies — should have the opportunity to write the future of AI.
Why? AI systems are expensive to build and often require many highly skilled engineers (and millions of dollars) to maintain. Large tech companies have been better than anyone else at making that kind of investment pay off, but Andrew Ng thinks it’s time to change that. Gone are the days of needing huge data sets and thousands of lines of code to create effective AI, he says, as now just a few data points could help small business owners — like the half a million independent restaurants in the US — make decisions that will benefit their businesses. What would it be like if smaller, local businesses, had access to AI technology? Ng sees benefits in demand forecasting, product placement and supply chain and quality control, to name a few — all stemming from just a few data points uploaded to a custom system that knows what to look for. For example, a t-shirt manufacturer training a system to recognize tears in fabric would only need a few pictures and instructions to create a system capable of scanning a company’s entire inventory, helping them stop defective products from ever reaching shelves. “In the coming era for AI, we’ll be able to empower every individual to build AI systems for themselves,” Ng says.
Holly Herndon performs at Session 3 of TED2022: A New Era on April 11, 2022, in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Bret Hartman / TED)
Holly Herndon, multidisciplinary artist
Big idea: “Spawning,” the 21st-century corollary of sampling, gives musicians the ability to perform as somebody else based on AI-trained information about them.
How? Using a machine learning process called timbre transfer, musician Holly Herndon trained an AI on hours of her singing to create a digital twin of her voice. Known as Holly+, this twin can sing songs in Hendon’s voice that she herself has never before sung — and in languages she doesn’t speak. She muses about the potential of using another person’s voice as your instrument, a musical tradition she’s named “spawning,” and invites us to consider both its perils for intellectual property and its wild possibilities. Seattle-based musician and songwriter Pher joins her onstage for a mind-blowing demonstration of this new technology. Singing into two microphones — one that amplified his natural voice and another that mapped his voice onto a live version of Holly+ — Pher performs an epic, one-person duet of his song “Murky.”
Dan Harris speaks at Session 3 of TED2022: A New Era on April 11, 2022, in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)
Dan Harris, meditation advocate
Big idea: Meditation, and becoming your own supportive coach, can silence your inner demons and help you become a more loving person.
How? Have you ever been stuck in a “toilet vortex”? That’s how Dan Harris describes the feeling of taking out your self-criticisms on others. After spending more than two decades as an anchor for ABC News, an on-air panic attack sent his life in a new direction. Harris overcame his skepticism to embrace meditation, and now he explores how to quiet that inner critic with quiet reflection and positive self-talk. After a particularly scathing 360 review from his friends and colleagues, he took a chance on loving-kindness meditation, even if he wasn’t into all the touchy-feely stuff. We all take our trips down the toilet vortex, Harris says, but he hopes he can get you to engage in what he calls the “cheesy upward spiral” instead. In his experience, it’s made him a better colleague and communicator. “Self-love, properly understood not as narcissism but as having your own back, is not selfish,” he says. “It makes you better at loving other people.”
Sofia Crespo speaks at SESSION 3 at TED2022: A New Era. April 10-14, 2022, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED
Sofia Crespo, neural artist
Big idea: By merging AI and art, artists can create work alongside technology that helps us imagine and render the unknown — and reconnect with our own natural world.
How? Sofia Crespo’s artwork uses AI to envision and create creatures that are both familiar and strange, such as insects with elephant trunks, birds with petals for necks. Humans have always created artistic renditions of the unknown — in the Middle Ages, illustrators would often draw the exhilarating creatures described by explorers who had returned from expeditions. These artistic renditions looked like hybrid animals, much like Crespo’s art. AI, she says, helps her explore the boundaries of what she can imagine. The AI distills and rearranges patterns, leading to stunning images of animals that look like they were lifted from myth. For her project Artificial Natural History, Crespo fed thousands of illustrations from natural history archives to a neural network, which then designed new 3D variations of the images. The animals looked mysteriously realistic, which led Crespo to design their anatomy and scientific definitions. This inspired her latest project, Artificial Remnants, which seeks to celebrate the natural diversity of Earth and highlight endangered animals that don’t receive as much attention. Using text-based prompts, Crespo tasked a neural network trained with millions of images of the natural world to generate 3D renditions of actual endangered creatures, resulting in incredible mash-ups of natural elements. Crespo believes that these chimeras can help us expand our imagination about the ecosystems we live in. Though we may not spend our lives exploring new lands on risky expeditions, our imaginations are boundless — and AI can help us bring those ideas to life.
Jeanette Winterson speaks at Session 3 of TED2022: A New Era on April 11, 2022, in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)
Jeanette Winterson, writer
Big idea: We have the chance to change human nature for the better.
How? Believe it or not, through AI — but not the “geeks will inherit the earth” kind, says Jeanette Winterson. When she talks about AI, she means “alternative intelligence”: a blurring of the boundaries between human and machine, leaving both changed for the better. From this perspective, the wildly diverse possibilities for machine learning and computing power — like the creation of “hybrid humans” whose brains are linked to the internet (and each other) — provides an opportunity for humanity to break away from “us vs. them” binary thinking and step into a new age of cooperation. It’s a thrilling vision of the future, but first the whole world would need to come together — working across race and gender, the sciences and the arts — to bring this alternative intelligence to life.
The TED Theater at TED2022: A New Era on April 11, 2021 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Stacie McChesney / TED)
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Daring, bold, systems-disrupting change requires big dreams and an even bigger vision. For Session 5 of TED2020, the Audacious Project, a collaborative funding initiative housed at TED, highlighted bold plans for social change from Southern New Hampshire University, SIRUM, BRAC, Harlem Children’s Zone, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), Project CETI and One Acre Fund. From aiding the ultra-poor to upending medicine pricing to ensuring all communities are visible on a map, these solutions are uniquely positioned to help us rebuild key systems and push the boundaries of what’s possible through breakthrough science and technology. Learn more about these thrilling projects and how you can help them change the world.
“We can create radical access to medications based on a fundamental belief that people who live in one of the wealthiest nations in the world can and should have access to medicine they need to survive and to thrive,” says Kiah Williams, cofounder of SIRUM. She speaks at TED2020: Uncharted on June 18, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)
Kiah Williams, cofounder of SIRUM
Big idea: No one should have to choose between paying bills or affording lifesaving medications.
How? Every day in the US, people must make impossible health decisions at the intersection of life and livelihood. The result is upwards of ten thousand deaths annually — more than opioid overdoses and car accidents combined — due to the high prices of prescription drugs. Kiah Williams and her team at SIRUM are tapping into an alternative that circumvents the traditional medical supply chain while remaining budget-friendly to underserved communities: unused medication. Sourced from manufacturer surplus, health care facilities (like hospitals, pharmacies and nursing homes) and personal donations, Williams and her team partner with medical professionals to provide prescriptions for conditions, ranging from heart disease to mental health, at flat, transparent costs. They currently supply 150,000 people with access to medicine they need — and they’re ready to expand. In the next five years, SIRUM plans to reach one million people across 12 states with a billion dollars’ worth of unused medicine, with the hopes of driving down regional pricing in low-income communities. “We can create radical access to medications based on a fundamental belief that people who live in one of the wealthiest nations in the world can and should have access to medicine they need to survive and to thrive,” Williams says.
Shameran Abed, senior director of the Microfinance and Ultra-Poor Graduation Program at BRAC, shares his organization’s work lifting families out of ultra-poverty at TED2020: Uncharted on June 18, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)
Shameran Abed, senior director of the Microfinance and Ultra-Poor Graduation Program at BRAC
Big idea: Let’s stop imagining a world without ultra-poverty and start building it instead.
How? At the end of 2019, approximately 400 million people worldwide lived in ultra-poverty — a situation that goes beyond the familiar monetary definition, stripping individuals of their dignity, purpose, self-worth, community and ability to imagine a better future. When he founded BRAC in 1972, Shameran Abed’s father saw that for poverty reduction programs to work, a sense of hope and self-worth needs to be instilled alongside assets. He pioneered a graduation approach that, over the course of two years, addressed both the deficit of income and hope in four steps: (1) supporting the basic needs with food or cash, (2) guiding the individual towards a decent livelihood by providing an asset like livestock and training them to earn money from it, (3) training them to save, budget and invest the new wealth, (4) integrating the individual socially. Since starting this program in 2002, two million Bangladeshi women have lifted themselves and their families out of ultra-poverty. With BRAC at a proven and effective nationwide scale, the organization plans to aid other governments in adopting and scaling graduation programs themselves — helping another 21 million people lift themselves out of ultra-poverty across eight countries over the next six years, with BRAC teams onsite and embedded in each country to provide an obtainable, foreseeable future for all. “Throughout his life, [my father] saw optimism triumph over despair; that when you light the spark of self-belief in people, even the poorest can transform their lives,” Abed says.
Pop-soul singer Emily King performs her songs “Distance” and “Sides” at TED2020: Uncharted on June 18, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)
Lending her extraordinary voice to keep the session lively, singer and songwriter Emily King performs her songs “Distance” and “Sides” from her home in New York City.
Chrystina Russell, executive director of SNHU’s Global Education Movement, is helping displaced people earn college degrees. She speaks at TED2020: Uncharted on June 18, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)
Chrystina Russell, executive director of SNHU’s Global Education Movement
Big idea: Expand access to accredited, college-level education to marginalized populations by reaching learners wherever they are in the world.
How? Education empowers — and perhaps nowhere more so than in the lives of displaced people, says executive director of SNHU’s Global Education Movement (GEM) Chrystina Russell. Harnessing the power of education to improve the world lies at the foundation of GEM, a program that offers accredited bachelor’s degrees and pathways to employment for refugees in Lebanon, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda and South Africa. Today, the humanitarian community understands that global displacement will be a permanent problem, and that traditional education models remain woefully inaccessible to these vulnerable populations. The magic of GEM, Russell says, is that it addresses refugee lives as they currently exist. Degrees are competency-based, and without classes, lectures, due dates or final exams, students choose where and when to learn. GEM has served more than 1,000 learners to date, helping them obtain bachelor’s degrees and earn incomes at twice the average of their peers. Only three percent of refugees have access to higher education; GEM is now testing its ability to scale competency-based online learning in an effort to empower greater numbers of marginalized people through higher education. “This is a model that really stops putting time and university policies and procedures at the center — and instead puts the student at the center,” Russell says.
David Gruber shares his mind-blowing work using AI to understand and communicate with sperm whales. He speaks at TED2020: Uncharted on June 18, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)
David Gruber, marine biologist, explorer, professor
Big idea: Through the innovations of machine learning, we may be able to translate the astounding languages of sperm whales and crack the interspecies communication code.
How? Sperm whales are some of the most intelligent animals on the planet; they live in complex matriarchal societies and communicate with each other through a series of regionally specific click sequences called codas. These codas may be the key to unlocking interspecies communication, says David Gruber. He shares a bold prediction: with the help of machine learning technology, we will soon be able to understand the languages of sperm whales — and talk back to them. Researchers have developed a number of noninvasive robots to record an enormous archive of codas, focusing on the intimate relationship between mother and calf. Using this data, carefully trained algorithms will be able to decode these codas and map the sounds and logic of sperm whale communication. Gruber believes that by deeply listening to sperm whales, we can create a language blueprint that will enable us to communicate with countless other species around the world. “By listening deeply to nature, we can change our perspective of ourselves and reshape our relationship with all life on this planet,” he says.
“Farmers stand at the center of the world,” says Andrew Youn, sharing One Acre Fund’s work helping small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. He speaks at TED2020: Uncharted on June 18, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)
Andrew Youn, social entrepreneur
Big idea: By equipping small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa with the tools and resources they need to expand their work, they will be able to upend cycles of poverty and materialize their innovation, knowledge and drive into success for their local communities and the world.
How? Most small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are women who nourish their families and communities and fortify their local economies. But they’re often not able to access the technology, resources or capital they need to streamline their farms, which leads to small harvests and cycles of poverty. The One Acre Fund, a two-time Audacious Project recipient, seeks to upend that cycle by providing resources like seeds and fertilizer, mentorship in the form of local support guides and training in modern agricultural practices. The One Acre Fund intends to reach three milestones by 2026: to serve 2.5 million families (which include 10 million children) every year through their direct full-service program; to serve an additional 4.3 million families per year with the help of local government and private sector partners; and to shape a sustainable green revolution by reimagining our food systems and launching a campaign to plant one billion trees in the next decade. The One Acre Fund enables farmers to transform their work, which vitalizes their families, larger communities and countries. “Farmers stand at the center of the world,” Youn says.
Rebecca Firth is helping map the earth’s most vulnerable populations using a free, open-source software tool. She speaks at TED2020: Uncharted on June 18, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)
Rebecca Firth, director of partnerships and community at Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)
Big idea: A new tool to add one billion people to the map, so first responders and aid organizations can save lives.
How? Today, more than one billion people are literally not on the map, says Rebecca Firth, director of partnerships and community at Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), an organization that helps map the earth’s most vulnerable populations using a free, open-source software tool. The tool works in two stages: first, anyone anywhere can map buildings and roads using satellite images, then local community members fill in the map by identifying structures and adding place names. HOT’s maps help organizations on the ground save lives; they’ve been used by first responders after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake and in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, by health care workers distributing polio vaccines in Nigeria and by refugee aid organizations in South Sudan, Syria and Venezuela. Now, HOT’s goal is to map areas in 94 countries that are home to one billion of the world’s most vulnerable populations — in just five years. To do this, they’re recruiting more than one million mapping volunteers, updating their tech and, importantly, raising awareness about the availability of their maps to local and international humanitarian organizations. “It’s about creating a foundation on which so many organizations will thrive,” Firth says. “With open, free, up-to-date maps, those programs will have more impact than they would otherwise, leading to a meaningful difference in lives saved or improved.”
“Our answer to COVID-19 — the despair and inequities plaguing our communities — is targeting neighborhoods with comprehensive services. We have certainly not lost hope, and we invite you to join us on the front lines of this war,” says Kwame Owusu-Kesse, COO of Harlem Children’s Zone. He speaks at TED2020: Uncharted on June 18, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)
Kwame Owusu-Kesse, CEO, Harlem Children’s Zone
Big idea: In the midst of a pandemic that’s disproportionately devastating the Black community, how do we ensure that at-risk children can continue their education in a safe and healthy environment?
How? Kwame Owusu-Kesse understands that in order to surpass America’s racist economic, educational, health care and judicial institutions, a child must have a secure home and neighborhood. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, Harlem Children’s Zone has taken on a comprehensive mission to provide uninterrupted, high-quality remote education, as well as food and financial security, unfettered online access and mental health services. Through these programs, Owusu-Kesse hopes to rescue a generation that risks losing months (or years) of education to the impacts of quarantine. “Our answer to COVID-19 — the despair and inequities plaguing our communities — is targeting neighborhoods with comprehensive services,” he says. “We have certainly not lost hope, and we invite you to join us on the front lines of this war.”
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For Session 4 of TED2020, experts in biohacking, synthetic biology, psychology and beyond explored topics ranging from discovering the relationship between the spinal cord and asparagus to using tools of science to answer critical questions about racial bias. Below, a recap of the night’s talks and performances.
“Every scientist can tell you about the time they ignored their doubts and did the experiment that would ‘never’ work,” says biomedical researcher Andrew Pelling. “And the thing is, every now and then, one of those experiments works out.” He speaks at TED2020: Uncharted on June 11, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)
Andrew Pelling, biomedical researcher
Big idea: Could we use asparagus to repair spinal cords?
How? Andrew Pelling researches how we might use fruits, vegetables and plants to reconstruct damaged or diseased human tissues. (Check out his 2016 talk about making ears out of apples.) His lab strips these organisms of their DNA and cells, leaving just the fibers behind, which are then used as “scaffolds” to reconstruct tissue. Now, they’re busy working with asparagus, experimenting to see if the vegetable’s microchannels can guide the regeneration of cells after a spinal cord injury. There’s evidence in rats that it’s working, the first data of its kind to show that plant tissues might be capable of repairing such a complex injury. Pelling is also the cofounder of Spiderwort, a startup that’s translating these innovative discoveries into real-world applications. “Every scientist can tell you about the time they ignored their doubts and did the experiment that would ‘never’ work,” he says. “And the thing is, every now and then, one of those experiments works out.”
Synthetic designer Christina Agapakis shares projects that blur the line between art and science at TED2020: Uncharted on June 11, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)
Christina Agapakis, synthetic designer
Big idea: Synthetic biology isn’t an oxymoron; it investigates the boundary between nature and technology — and it could shape the future.
How? From teaching bacteria how to play sudoku to self-healing concrete, Christina Agapakis introduces us to the wonders of synthetic biology: a multidisciplinary science that seeks to create and sometimes redesign systems found in nature. “We have been promised a future of chrome, but what if the future is fleshy?” asks Agapakis. She delves into the ways biology could expand technology and alter the way we understand ourselves, exposing the surprisingly blurred lines between art, science and society. “It starts by recognizing that we as synthetic biologists are also shaped by a culture that values ‘real’ engineering more than any of the squishy stuff. We get so caught up in circuits and what happens inside of computers that we sometimes lose sight of the magic that’s happening inside of us,” says Agapakis.
Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius perform “White Lies” and “Turn It Around” at TED2020: Uncharted on June 11, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED.)
Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of indie pop band Lucius provide an enchanting musical break between talks, performing their songs “White Lies” and “Turn It Around.”
“[The] association with blackness and crime … makes its way into all of our children, into all of us. Our minds are shaped by the racial disparities we see out in the world, and the narratives that help us to make sense of the disparities we see,” says psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt. She speaks at TED2020: Uncharted on June 11, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)
Jennifer L. Eberhardt, psychologist
Big idea: We can use science to break down the societal and personal biases that unfairly target Black people.
How? When Jennifer Eberhardt flew with her five-year-old son one day, he turned to her after looking at the only other Black man on the plane and said, “I hope he doesn’t rob the plane” — showing Eberhardt undeniable evidence that racial bias seeps into every crack of society. For Eberhardt, a MacArthur-winning psychologist specializing in implicit bias, this surfaced a key question at the core of our society: How do we break down the societal and personal biases that target blackness? Just because we’re vulnerable to bias doesn’t mean we need to act on it, Eberhardt says. We can create “friction” points that eliminate impulsive social media posts based on implicit bias, such as when Nextdoor fought back against its “racial profiling problem” that required users to answer a few simple questions before allowing them to raise the alarm on “suspicious” visitors to their neighborhoods. Friction isn’t just a matter of online interaction, either. With the help of similar questions, the Oakland Police Department instituted protocols that reduce traffic stops of African-Americans by 43 percent. “Categorization and the bias that it seeds allow our brains to make judgments more quickly and efficiently,” Eberhardt says. “Just as the categories we create allow us to make quick decisions, they also reinforce bias — so the very things that help us to see the world also can blind us to it. They render our choices effortless, friction-free, yet they exact a heavy toll.”
Biological programmer Michael Levin (right) speaks with head of TED Chris Anderson about the wild frontiers of cellular memory at TED2020: Uncharted on June 11, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)
Michael Levin, biological programmer
Big idea: DNA isn’t the only builder in the biological world — there’s also an invisible electrical matrix directing cells to change into organs, telling tadpoles to become frogs, and instructing flatworms to regenerate new bodies once sliced in half. If Michael Levin and his colleagues can learn this cellular “machine language,” human beings may be one step closer to curing birth defects, eliminating cancer and evading aging.
How? As cells become organs, systems and bodies, they communicate via an electrical system dictating where the finished parts will go. Guided by this cellular network, organisms grow, transform and even build new limbs (or bodies) after trauma. At Michael Levin’s lab, scientists are cracking this code — and have even succeeded in creating autonomous organisms out of skin cells by altering the cell electrically without genetic manipulation. Mastering this code could not only allow humans to create microscopic biological “xenobots” to rebuild and medicate our bodies from the inside but also let us to grow new organs — and perhaps rejuvenate ourselves as we age. “We are now beginning to crack this morphogenetic code to ask: How is it that these tissues store a map of what to do?” Levin asks. “[How can we] go in and rewrite that map to new outcomes?”
“My vision for the future is that when things come to life, they do so with joy,” says Ali Kashani. He speaks at TED2020: Uncharted on June 11, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)
Ali Kashani, VP of special projects at Postmates
Big idea: Robots are becoming a part of everyday life in urban centers, which means we’ll have to design them to be accessible, communicative and human-friendly.
How? On the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles, delivery robots bustle along neighborhood sidewalks to drop-off packages and food. With potential benefits ranging from environmental responsibility to community-building, these robots offer us an incredible glimpse into the future. The challenge now is ensuring that robots can move out of the lab and fit into our world and among us as well, says Kashani. At Postmates, Kashani designs robots with human reaction in mind. Instead of frightening, dystopian imagery, he wants people to understand robots as familiar and friendly. This is why Postmates’s robots are reminiscent of beloved characters like the Minions and Wall-E; they can use their eyes to communicate with humans and acknowledge obstacles like traffic stops in real-time. There are so many ways robots can help us and our communities: picking up extra food from restaurants for shelters, delivering emergency medication to those in need and more. By designing robots to integrate into our physical and social infrastructures, we can welcome them to the world seamlessly and create a better future for all. “My vision for the future is that when things come to life, they do so with joy,” Kashani says.
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Hosts Rajesh Mirchandani and Chee Pearlman wave to “We The Future” attendees who watched the salon live from around the world through TED World Theater technology. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)
At “We the Future,” a day of talks from TED, the Skoll Foundation and the United Nations Foundation at the TED World Theater in New York City, 18 speakers and performers shared daring ideas, deep analysis, cautionary tales and behavior-changing strategies aimed at meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the global goals created in partnership with individuals around the world and adopted at the United Nations in 2015.
The event: We the Future, presented by TED, the Skoll Foundation and the United Nations Foundation to share ingenious efforts of people from every corner of the globe
When and where: Tuesday, September 24, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York, NY
Music: Queen Esther with Hilliard Greene and Jeff McGlaughlin, performing the jazzy “Blow Blossoms” and the protest song “All That We Are”
The talks in brief:
David Wallace-Wells, journalist
Big idea: The climate crisis is too vast and complicated to solve with a silver bullet. We need a shift in how we live: a whole new politics, economics and relationship to technology and nature.
Why? The climate crisis isn’t the legacy of our ancestors, but the work of a single generation — ours, says Wallace-Wells. Half of all the emissions from the burning of fossil fuels in the history of humanity were produced in the last 30 years. We clearly have immense power over the climate, and it’s put us on the brink of catastrophe — but it also means we’re the ones writing the story of our planet’s future. If we are to survive, we’ll need to reshape society as we know it — from building entirely new electric grids, planes and infrastructures to rethinking the way the global community comes together to support those hit hardest by climate change. In we do that, we just might build a new world that’s livable, prosperous and green.
Quote of the talk: “We won’t be able to beat climate change — only live with it and limit it.”
“When the cost of inaction is that innocent children are left unprotected, unvaccinated, unable to go to school … trapped in a cycle of poverty, exclusion and invisibility, it’s on us to take this issue out of darkness and into the light,” says legal identity expert Kristen Wenz. She speaks at “We The Future” on September 24, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York, NY. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)
Kristen Wenz, legal identity expert
Big idea: More than one billion people — mostly children — don’t have legal identities or birth certificates, which means they can’t get vital government services like health care and schooling. It’s a massive human rights violation we need to fix.
How? There are five key approaches to ensuring children are registered and protected — reduce distance, reduce cost, simplify the process, remove discrimination and increase demand. In Tanzania, the government helped make it easier for new parents to register their child by creating an online registration system and opening up registration hubs in communities. The results were dramatic: the number of children with birth certificates went from 16 to 83 percent in just a few years. By designing solutions with these approaches in mind, we can provide better protection and brighter opportunities for children across the world.
Quote of the talk: “When the cost of inaction is that innocent children are left unprotected, unvaccinated, unable to go to school … trapped in a cycle of poverty, exclusion and invisibility, it’s on us to take this issue out of darkness and into the light.”
Don Gips, CEO of the Skoll Foundation, in conversation with TEDWomen curator and author Pat Michell
Big idea: Don Gips turned away from careers in both government and business and became CEO of the Skoll Foundation for one reason: the opportunity to take charge of investing in solutions to the most urgent issues humanity faces. Now, it’s the foundation’s mission to identify the investments that will spark the greatest changes.
How?
By reaching deeper into communities and discovering and investing in social entrepreneurs and other changemakers, the Skoll Foundation supports promising solutions to urgent global problems. As their investments yield positive results, Gips hopes to inspire the rest of the philanthropic community to find better ways to direct their resources.
Quote of the interview: “We don’t tell the changemaker what the solution is. We invest in their solution, and go along on the journey with them.”
“By making aesthetic, some might say beautiful, arrangements out of the world’s waste, I hope to hook the viewer, to draw in those that are numb to the horrors of the world, and give them a different way to understand what is happening,” says artist Alejandro Durán. He speaks at “We The Future” on September 24, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York, NY. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)
Alejandro Durán, artist
Big Idea: Art can spotlight the environmental atrocities happening to our oceans — leaving viewers both mesmerized and shocked.
Why? From prosthetic legs to bottle caps, artist Alejandro Durán makes ephemeral environmental artworks out of objects he finds polluting the waters of his native region of Sian Ka’an, Mexico. He meticulously organizes materials by color and curates them into site-specific work. Durán put on his first “Museo de La Basura or Museum of Garbage“ exhibition in 2015, which spoke to the horrors of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and he’s still making art that speaks to the problem of ocean trash. By endlessly reusing objects in his art, Durán creates new works that engage communities in environmental art-making, attempting to depict the reality of our current environmental predicament and make the invisible visible.
Quote of the talk: “By making aesthetic, some might say beautiful, arrangements out of the world’s waste, I hope to hook the viewer, to draw in those that are numb to the horrors of the world, and give them a different way to understand what is happening.”
Andrew Forrest, entrepreneur, in conversation with head of TED Chris Anderson
Big idea: The true — and achievable! — business case for investing in plastic recycling.
How? Since earning his PhD in marine ecology, Forrest has dedicated his time and money to solving the global plastic problem, which is choking our waterways and oceans with toxic material that never biodegrades. “I learned a lot about marine life,” he says of his academic experience. “But it taught me more about marine death.” To save ourselves and our underwater neighbors from death by nanoplastics, Forrest says we need the big corporations of the world to fund a massive environmental transition that includes increasing the price of plastic and turning the tide on the recycling industry.
Quote of the talk: “[Plastic] is an incredible substance designed for the economy. It’s the worst substance possible for the environment.”
Raj Panjabi, cofounder of medical NGO Last Mile Health
Big idea: Community health workers armed with training and technology are our first line of defense against deadly viral surges. If we are to fully protect the world from killer diseases, we must ensure that people living in the most remote areas of the planet are never far from a community health worker trained to throttle epidemics at their outset.
How? In December 2013, Ebola broke out in West Africa and began a transborder spread that threatened to wipe out millions of people. Disease fighters across Africa joined the battle to stop it — including Liberian health workers trained by Last Mile Health and armed with the technology, knowledge and support necessary to serve their communities. With their help, Ebola was stopped (for now), after killing 11,000 people. Panjabi believes that if we train and pay more community health workers, their presence in underserved areas will not only stop epidemics but also save the lives of the millions of people threatened by diseases like malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea.
Quote of the talk: “We dream of a future when millions of people … can gain dignified jobs as community health workers, so they can serve their neighbors in the forest communities of West Africa to the fishing villages of the Amazon; from the hilltops of Appalachia to the mountains of Afghanistan.”
“Indigenous people have the answer. If we want to save the Amazon, we have to act now,” says Tashka Yawanawá, speaking at “We The Future” with his wife, Laura, on September 24, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York, NY. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)
Tashka and Laura Yawanawá, leaders of the Yawanawá in Acre, Brazil
Big idea: To save the Amazon rainforest, let’s empower indigenous people who have been coexisting with the rainforest for centuries.
Why? Tashka Yawanawá is chief of the Yawanawá people in Acre, Brazil, leading 900 people who steward 400,000 acres of Brazilian Amazon rainforest. As footage of the Amazon burning shocks the world’s consciousness, Tashka and his wife, Laura, call for us to transform this moment into an opportunity to support indigenous people who have the experience, knowledge and tools to protect the land.
Quote of the talk: “Indigenous people have the answer. If we want to save the Amazon, we have to act now.”
Alasdair Harris, ocean conservationist
Big idea: To the impoverished fishers that rely on the sea for their food, and who comprise 90 percent of the world’s fishing fleet, outside interference by scientists and marine managers can seem like just another barrier to their survival. Could the world rejuvenate its marine life and replenish its fish stocks by inspiring coastal communities rather than simply regulating them?
How? When he first went to Madagascar, marine biologist Alasdair Harris failed to convince local leaders to agree to a years-long plan to close their threatened coral reefs to fishing. But when a contained plan to preserve a breeding ground for an important local species of octopus led to rapid growth in catches six months later, the same elders banded together with leaders across Madagascar to spearhead a conservation revolution. Today, Harris’s organization Blue Ventures works to help coastal communities worldwide take control of their own ecosystems.
Quote of the talk: “When we design it right, marine conservation reaps dividends that go far beyond protecting nature — improving catches, driving waves of social change along entire coastlines, strengthening confidence, cooperation and the resilience of communities to face the injustice of poverty and climate change.”
Bright Simons, social entrepreneur and product security expert
Big idea: A global breakdown of the trustworthiness of markets and regulatory institutions has led to a flurry of counterfeit drugs, mislabeled food and defective parts. Africa has been dealing with counterfeit goods for years, and entrepreneurs like Bright Simons have developed myriad ways consumers can confirm that their food and drug purchases are genuine. Why are these methods ignored in the rest of the world?
How? Bright Simons demonstrates some of the innovative solutions Africans use to restore trust in their life-giving staples, such as text hotlines to confirm medications are real and seed databases to certify the authenticity of crops. Yet in the developed world, these solutions are often overlooked because they “don’t scale” — an attitude Simons calls “mental latitude imperialism.” It’s time to champion “intellectual justice” — and look at these supposedly non-scalable innovations with new respect.
Quote of the talk: “It just so happens that today, the most advanced and most progressive solutions to these problems are being innovated in the developing world.”
“Water is life. It is the spirit that binds us from sickness, death and destruction,” says LaToya Ruby Frazier. She speaks at “We The Future” on September 24, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York, NY. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)
LaToya Ruby Frazier, artist
Big Idea: LaToya Ruby Frazier’s powerful portraits of women in Flint, Michigan document the reality of the Flint water crisis, bringing awareness to the ongoing issue and creating real, positive change.
How? Frazier’s portraits of the daily lives of women affected by the Flint water crisis are striking reminders that, after all the news crews were gone, the people of Flint still did not have clean water. For one photo series, she closely followed the lives of Amber Hasan and Shea Cobb — two activists, poets and best friends — who were working to educate the public about the water crisis. Frazier has continued collaborating with Hasan and Cobb to seek justice and relief for those suffering in Flint. In 2019, they helped raise funds for an atmospheric water generator that provided 120,000 gallons of water to Flint residents.
Quote of the talk: “Water is life. It is the spirit that binds us from sickness, death and destruction. Imagine how many millions of lives we could save if [the atmospheric water generator] were in places like Newark, New Jersey, South Africa and India — with compassion instead of profit motives.”
Cassie Flynn, global climate change advisor
Big idea: We need a new way to get citizen consensus on climate change and connect them with governments and global leaders.
How? The United Nations is taking on an entirely new model of reaching the masses: mobile phone games. Flynn shares how their game “Mission 1.5” can help people learn about their policy choices on climate change by allowing them to play as heads of state. From there, the outcomes of their gameplay will be compiled and shared with their national leaders and the public. Flynn foresees this as a fresh, feasible way to meet citizens where they are, to educate them about climate change and to better connect them to the people who are making those tough decisions.
Quote of the talk: “Right now, world leaders are faced with the biggest and most impactful decisions of their entire lives. What they decide to do on climate change will either lead to a riskier, more unstable planet or a future that is more prosperous and sustainable for us all.”
Wanjira Mathai, entrepreneur
Big Idea: Corruption is a constant threat in Kenya. To defeat it there and anywhere, we need to steer youth towards integrity through education and help them understand the power of the individual.
Why? In 1989, the Karura Forest, a green public oasis in Nairobi, Kenya, was almost taken away by a corrupt government until political activist Wangari Maathai, Nobel Prize recipient and founder of the Greenbelt Movement, fought back fiercely and won. Continuing Maathai’s legacy, her daughter Wanjira explains how corruption is still very much alive in Kenya — a country that loses a third of its state budget to corruption every year. “Human beings are not born corrupt. At some point these behaviors are fostered by a culture that promotes individual gain over collective progress,” she says. She shares a three-pronged strategy for fighting corruption before it takes root by addressing why it happens, modeling integrity and teaching leadership skills.
Quote of the talk: “We cannot complain forever. We either decide that we are going to live with it, or we are going to change it. And if we are going to change it, we know that today, most of the world’s problems are caused by corruption and greed and selfishness.”
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TED returns with the second season of The TED Interview, a long-form podcast series that features Chris Anderson, head of TED, in conversation with leading thinkers. The podcast is an opportunity to reconnect with renowned speakers and dive deeper into their ideas within a different global climate. This season’s guests include Bill Gates, Monica Lewinsky, Tim Ferriss, Susan Cain, Yuval Noah Harari, David Brooks, Amanda Palmer, Kai-Fu Lee, Sylvia Earle, Andrew McAfee and Johann Hari. Plus, a bonus episode with Roger McNamee that was recorded live at TED2019.
Listen to the first episode with Bill Gates now on Apple Podcasts.
In its first season, The TED Interview played host to extraordinary conversations — such as the writer Elizabeth Gilbert on the death of her partner, Rayya Elias; Sir Ken Robinson on the education revolution; and Ray Kurzweil on what the future holds for humanity.
Season two builds on this success with new ideas from some of TED’s most compelling speakers. Listeners can look forward to hearing from Bill Gates on the future of technology and philanthropy; musician Amanda Palmer on how the future of creativity means asking for what you want; Susan Cain on introversion and other notable past speakers.
“Ideas are not static — they don’t land perfectly formed in an unchanging world,” said Chris Anderson. “As times change, opinions shift and new research is published, ideas must be iterated on. The TED Interview is a remarkable platform where past speakers can further explain, amplify, illuminate and, in some cases, defend their thinking. Season two listeners can expect a front-row seat as we continue to explore the theory behind some of TED’s most well-known talks.”
The TED Interview launches today and releases new episodes every Wednesday. It is available on Apple Podcasts, the TED Android app or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. Season 2 features 12 episodes, each being roughly an hour long. Collectively the Season Two speakers have garnered over 100 million views through their TED Talks.
The TED Interview is proudly sponsored by Klick Health, the world’s largest independent health agency. They use data, technology and creativity to help patients and healthcare professionals learn about and access life-changing therapies.
TED’s content programming extends beyond its signature TED Talk format with six original podcasts. Overall TED’s podcasts were downloaded over 420 million times in 2018 and have been growing 44% year-over-year since 2016. Among others, The TED Interview joins notable series like Sincerely, X, where powerful ideas are shared anonymously, which recently launched its second season exclusively on the Luminary podcast app.
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“Soil is just a thin veil that covers the surface of land, but it has the power to shape our planet’s destiny,” says Asmeret Asefaw Berhe at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 18, 2019, at Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: (Bret Hartman / TED)
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
“Free speech is just a starting point,” says Andrew Marantz onstage at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, April 18, 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED
Kristie Ebi, public health researcher, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, scientist and “dirt detective” studying the impact of ecological change on our soils
Host David Biello speaks with soil scientist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe and public health researcher Kristie Ebi during Session 8 of TED2019: Bigger Than Us. April 18, 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Kristie Ebi and Joanne Chory in conversation with TED’s science curator David Biello
Speaking from the audience, Joanne Chory joins the conversation with soil scientist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe and public health researcher Kristie Ebi at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, April 18, 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED
Edward Tenner, writer and historian
Matt Walker, sleep scientist
Karen Lloyd, microbiologist
Before his talk, historian Edward Tenner reviews his notes one last time backstage at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 18, 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Lawrence Sumulong / TED
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Biologist Danielle N. Lee teaches a memorable lesson on animal monogamy during TED Fellows Session 2 at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 15, 2019 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Dian Lofton / TED)
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.
Erika Hamden shows a view of the Moon next to, at lower left, a giant balloon carrying a space telescope she and her team designed. She speaks during TED Fellows Session 2 during TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 15, 2019 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)
Christopher Bahl, molecular engineer and protein designer.
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.
Hiromi Ozaki, an artist who explores the social and ethical implications of emerging technologies.
Muthoni Drummer Queen, musician and founder of two East African festivals: Blankets & Wine and Africa Nouveau.
Conservationist Moreangels Mbizah worked with the famous Cecil the lion — until he was shot by a trophy hunter. How can we prevent the next tragedy? By enlisting locals to protect the species they coexist with. Mbizah speaks during TED Fellows Session 2 at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 15, 2019 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)
Moreangels Mbizah, a lion conservationist and founder of Carnivore Conservation Zimbabwe.
Leila Pirhaji, a biotech entrepreneur and founder of ReviveMed, an AI-driven metabolomics platform focused on discovering drugs for metabolic diseases.
Moriba Jah shares a visualization of space junk during TED Fellows Session 2 at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 15, 2019 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)
Moriba Jah, a space environmentalist and inventor of the orbital garbage monitoring software AstriaGraph.
Brandon Anderson, a data entrepreneur and inventor of the police-reporting platform Raheem.
Skylar Tibbits, a designer, computational architect and founder of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT.
Danielle N. Lee, a behavioral biologist, educator and STEM advocate.
Andrew Nemr, tap dancer and dance oral historian, artistic director of the Vancouver Tap Dance Society
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TED and Optum partnered to cultivate the dialogue and collaboration that’s needed to understand and guide changes in healthcare. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)
Healthcare is at a turning point. Big data, evolving consumer preferences and shifting cost structures are just a few of the many complex factors shaping the opportunities and challenges that will define the future. How can we all become forces for positive change and progress?
For the first time, TED partnered with Optum, a health services and innovation company, for a salon focused on what happens when we trust our ideas to change health and healthcare for the better. At the salon, held on July 31 at the ARIA Las Vegas, six speakers and a performer shared fresh thinking on how we can make a health system that works better for everyone.
Empathy shouldn’t be a nice-to-have, says Adrienne Boissy — it’s a hard skill that should be integrated into everything we do. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)
How we can put empathy back in healthcare. Many in healthcare believe that empathy — imagining another person’s feelings and then doing something to help them — is a “soft skill,” and not an important factor in the success or failure of medical treatments. But according to Adrienne Boissy, chief experience officer for the Cleveland Clinic Health System, empathy is a critical part of healthcare that, when cultivated, delivers proven, positive impacts to everything from controlling high blood pressure to the outcomes of diabetes. Best of all, it’s something that healthcare workers can learn, in order to “bake caring fixes back into every single part of the healthcare system.” Boissy knows that patients and doctors both suffer under current healthcare systems and their long wait times, communications gaps, and the endemic pressures that lead to staff burnout. To address these problems in her health system, Boissy implemented some big fixes, like same-day appointments for patients, communications training for doctors and less bureaucratic pressure. Her strategies are designed to build empathy back into the healthcare system and “transform the human experience into something much more humane.”
The myth of obesity and the need for a social movement. The global obesity crisis has reached epidemic proportions — but its root cause may not be what you think. Obesity expert Lee Kaplan has studied the issue for nearly 20 years, and the misconceptions around obesity have remained fairly constant throughout: if people simply ate less and exercised more, the thinking goes, they’d be able to control their weight. But the reality is much more complex. “Numerous studies demonstrate that each of our bodies has a powerful, and very accurate, system for seeking and maintaining the right amount of fat,” Kaplan says. “Obesity is the disease in which that finely tuned system goes awry.” There are many types of obesity, with many causes — genetics, brain damage, sleep deprivation, medications that promote weight gain — but in the end, all obesity reflects the disruption of this internal system (controlled by the body’s adipostat). In order to begin solving this massive health crisis, Kaplan calls for us to stop stigmatizing obesity and take collective action to improve the lives of those affected. “We need to change the public perception of blame and responsibility, and support a social movement that will lead to real progress,” Kaplan says. “In so doing, we will begin to see society shrink before our eyes.”
If we design healthcare systems with trust, innovation and ambition, says Dr. Andrew Bastawrous, we can create solutions that change the lives of millions of people worldwide. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)
Innovating the healthcare funding and distribution model. While working in an eye care clinic in Kenya, Andrew Bastawrous was frustrated to find that because of rigid funding regulations, he wasn’t able to help people in desperate need who didn’t have “the right problems.” Though specific resource allocation makes business sense, Bastawrous says, inflexible rules often block healthcare organizations from adapting to shifting situations on the ground. This makes it difficult to deliver even simple medical treatments — for example, though we’ve had glasses for over 700 years, 2.5 billion people still don’t have access to them. That’s why Peek Vision, the eye care organization Bastawrous co-founded and leads, is set up as both a company and a charity — an innovation that allows them to sustainably create healthcare products and serve the communities who need them most. Peek Vision’s successful partnership with the Botswana government to screen and treat every child in the country by 2021 shows that this model can work — now, it needs to be scaled globally. If we design health care systems with trust, innovation and ambition, Bastawrous says, we can create solutions that fulfill the needs of financial partners and improve the lives of millions of people worldwide.
One pill to rule them all? We live in the age of the “quantified self,” where it’s possible to measure, monitor and track much of our physiology and behavior with a few taps of a finger. (Think smartwatches and fitness trackers.) With all this information, says Daniel Kraft, we should be able to make the shift into “quantified health” and design truly personalized medicine that allows us to synthesize many of our medications into a single pill. Onstage, Kraft revealed a prototype that would not only engender an easier time taking medications but also print the drugs he envisions right in the home. “I’m hopeful that with the help of novel approaches like this, we can move from an era of intermittent data, reactive one-size-fits-all therapy,” he says, “improving health and medicine across the planet.”
When it comes to health, we’re not as divided as we think we are, says Rebecca Onie. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)
Divided on healthcare, united on health. The American conversation around healthcare has long been divisive. Yet as health services innovator Rebecca Onie reveals in new research, people in the US are not as polarized as they think. She launched a new initiative to ask voters around the country one question: “What do you need to be healthy?” As it turns out, across economic, political and racial divides, Americans are aligned when it comes to their healthcare priorities: healthy food, safe housing and good wages. “When you ask the right questions, it becomes pretty clear: our country may be fractured on healthcare, but we are unified on health,” she says. The insights from her research demonstrate how our common experience can inform our approach to pressing healthcare questions — and even bring people across the political spectrum together.
Medicine isn’t made by miracles. Our narratives of our greatest medical and healthcare advances all follow the same script, Darshak Sanghavi says: “The heroes are either swashbuckling doctors fighting big odds and taking big risks, or miracle drugs found in the unlikeliest of places.” We love to hear — and tell — stories based on this script. But these stories cause us to redirect our resources toward creating hero doctors and revolutionary medications, and by doing so, “we potentially harm more people than we help,” Sanghavi says. He believes we should turn away from these myths and focus on what really matters: teamwork. Incremental refinements in treatments, painstakingly assembled by healthcare workers pooling their resources over time, are what really lead to improved survival rates and higher-quality lives for patients. “We don’t need to wait for a hero in order to make our lives better,” Sanghavi says. “We already know what to do. Small steps over time will get us where we need to go.”
Jessica Care Moore performs her poem “Gratitude Is a Recipe for Survival” to close out the salon. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)
She has decided to live. Poet, performer and artist Jessica Care Moore closes out the salon with a performance of “Gratitude Is a Recipe for Survival” — a vigorous, personal, lyrical journey through the mind and life of a professional poet raising a young son in a thankless world.
TEDSalon Optum - July 31, 2018 at ARIA Resort & Casino, Las Vegas
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