Magnitude: Notes from Session 4 of TED Countdown Summit 2023

To rise to the challenge of climate change, we need big, bold, gigaton-scale solutions. Session 4 of TED Countdown Summit 2023 focused on the clean technologies that need to scale fast — and made space for ideas on radical climate leadership, the use of art for environmental activism and the push for climate-friendly alternatives to the world’s most-consumed foods.

The event: Talks from Session 4 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, hosted by TED’s Lindsay Levin and systems innovator Ryan Panchadsaram

When and where: Thursday, July 13, 2023, at the Fillmore Detroit in Detroit, Michigan

Speakers: Olivia Breese, Jim Snabe, John O’Donnell, Isabella Kirkland, Marcelo Mena, Jim Whitaker, Jessica Whitaker Allen, Tao Zhang

Energy innovator Olivia Breese imagines a “love story” between green electrons and water molecules, the result of which is a molecule that can store and release energy without emitting carbon dioxide — a flexible and vastly more sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. Similar to how wind energy has scaled up to become affordable and efficient, Breese calls for global investment in green molecule production. “A world which runs entirely on green energy, it’s not a luxury. It’s a necessity,” she says.

Throughout his career, Jim Snabe has helped lead companies working to accelerate decarbonization. Now, he’s also serving as Vision Council chair for the TED Future Forum (TFF), a new initiative focused on the role of business in advancing solutions to the climate crisis. He outlines TFF’s plans to be a catalyst and community for companies committed to stepping up with greater climate ambition, issuing an invitation for anyone interested in joining the massive, collaborative effort to transform the global economy. “If we want to avoid a climate disaster, we need much more radical leadership,” he says.

Electrified industrial heat is the next trillion-dollar market, but manufacturing needs constant heat, requiring a way to store energy when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Engineer John O’Donnell offers a solution: his company, Rondo, produces heat batteries consisting of thousands of bricks stacked in a grid, heated with renewable energy. When heated, a brick can store as much energy as a lithium battery per pound, but costs less and lasts longer. O’Donnell proposes that this “boring” (his word) but effective system could scale fast, helping to green industrial processes worldwide.

Investigating humanity’s relationship to nature, artist Isabella Kirkland paints species that once lived along the Hudson River in her work “Palisades,” showcasing the profound beauty and rarity of the diverse life that once inhabited our planet — and advocating for the conservation of that which is still here. “I think of my paintings as alarm clocks,” she says. “They’re reminders of what’s at stake; the only problem is we keep pushing the snooze button.” Using art as both a poignant record of loss (like her painting “Gone,” which depicts extinct flowers, fish and snails) and discovery (like her painting “Canopy,” which shows mosses, insects and tiny orchids all new to Western science), Kirkland highlights the danger that wildlife trade poses to nature. Creation is her form of activism, and she uses it to celebrate and advocate for all living creatures that were, are and will be, inviting us all to do the same.

Deadly and polluting methane that forms in massive landfills in places like Ghazipur, India, or Santiago, Chile, often causes fires — and heatwaves are only making the issue worse. Reducing these emissions is the most efficient way to lower Earth’s temperature within our lifetime, says biochemical engineer Marcelo Mena. But time is running out and this harmful gas needs to be cut in half by 2050 in order to effectively combat global warming. Working in more than 10 cities, Mena’s team created the Waste MAP (Methane Assessment Platform), which uses satellite information to pinpoint pollution sources ranging from organic waste, food production and enteric fermentation (a fancy way to say cow farts). Mena also introduces the enteric fermentation R&D accelerator: an ambitious, 200-million-dollar research effort to reign in livestock emissions and point the way toward a cleaner, safer future for everyone.

Rice is the world’s most consumed food source — and it accounts for 10 percent of the world’s methane emissions. Jim Whitaker (a fifth-generation rice farmer) and his daughter Jessica Whitaker Allen (a builder of conservation solutions) are seeking to grow sustainability awareness within the agricultural communities where they live in southeast Arkansas. Together, they’ve defined farming protocols that could slash rice’s environmental impacts, cutting water use, methane production and the need for fertilizer. While her dad works literally on the ground to refine irrigation methods, Jessica (a waterfowl conservationist by day) pursues funding to spread green practices — and SmartRice, a sustainable grain hybrid — first to their neighbors and, eventually, to the rest of the world. While it’s not easy to convince struggling farmers to invest in new methods, Jim and Jessica make strong arguments that the best way to preserve a farm’s bottom line is to preserve its land for future generations.

A Chinese saying goes: “There is no pleasure in eating without meat.” Every year, China consumes 26 percent of the world’s meat, 43 percent of its pork and 45 percent of its seafood. But unlike other major meat-eating countries like the United States, China has yet to embrace more climate-friendly alternative proteins because, as Tao Zhang explains, consumers there regard mock meat as a cheap, unhealthy and flavorless substitute. Since the world can’t solve climate change without China, Zhang sees swaying Chinese eaters towards these new proteins as a climate-positive business opportunity. He discusses the potential impact of investing in food innovation in China, emphasizing why more research and development are needed to create, market and distribute tasty, affordable, regionally appropriate and meat-free proteins.

A New Era: Notes from Session 2 of TED Fellows Talks at TED2022

Session 2 of TED Fellows talks brought us yet another incredible group of individuals doing wildly different things in wildly different places. Eleven speakers and one performer took us across the globe to share their bold plans for social impact, technological innovation, cultural shifts and more.

The event: Talks from Session 2 of TED Fellows Talks at TED2022, hosted by TED’s Shoham Arad and Lily James Olds

When and where: Sunday, April 10, 2022, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Channing Gerard Joseph, Clementine Jacoby, Jawad Sharif, Adjany Costa, Olga Kitaina, Wiatta Thomas, Robert Katzschmann, Albert Cahn, Heejae Lim, Kiana Hayeri, Melaku Belay

Music: With infectious rhythms, “Blinky” Bill Sellanga delivers another killer set of his songs “Jam Now Simmer Down” and “Dracula” to open up the session of talks.

The talks in brief:

Channing Gerard Joseph, author, queer culture historian

Big idea: Learning Black queer history is crucial to understanding our shared history.

Why? Black queer communities have largely been erased from history — perceived as immoral, deviant and even dangerous. Thus many don’t know how Black queer people have shaped American history — people like Bayard Rustin who organized the 1963 March on Washington or Francis Thompson who helped shaped the course of Reconstruction and support for the 14th Amendment. Take the fight for queer liberation, for instance. The accepted narrative is that it all started with the Stonewall Inn uprising, which sprouted Pride celebrations … but that isn’t exactly true, says Joseph. The foundation of self-acceptance and solidarity needed for the courageous, confident community to take root had been fostered long before thanks to William Dorsey Swan, the first drag queen. Joseph shares the little-known yet storied history of Swan and the birth of drag, tracing its origins back to the Emancipation Day Parade, a celebration of freedom for Black Americans. Today, drag is mainstream, from documentaries like Paris Is Burning to television shows such as Pose and RuPaul’s Drag Race, without much of a nod to its revolutionary beginnings. The power to choose how we define ourselves is more important than ever. As long as the term queen lives on, it pays homage to a century-and-a-half long celebration of African American liberation, says Joseph. But that also begs the question: How many other Black queer stories have been erased from historical record, and what could those stories teach us about who we are?

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Clementine Jacoby, criminal justice technology entrepreneur

Big idea: Despite checking all the boxes and meeting all the requirements, hundreds of thousands of people are stuck in prison or on parole due to the faulty, incomplete databases that form the backbone of the criminal justice system. By connecting these stale and scattered databases, we can get these people out of the prison system and help ensure they stay out.

How? From policymakers to parole officers, everyone in the criminal justice system agrees that bad data keeps people stuck in the system. The reason is simple: vital information related to drug testing, fines, housing and employment is kept in siloed and stale databases, leading to information bottlenecks. Tracking down all the data requires a level of time and energy that is difficult to maintain by parole officers due to their already overwhelming work schedules. At Recidiviz, an engineering nonprofit, Clementine Jacoby works to connect the five databases that control parole and release eligibility. One of her tools helps parole officers identify who is eligible for parole, who is missing a final requirement and who needs the most help. They launched the tool in Idaho, and after just six months, five percent of people on parole and probation were moved to lower levels of supervision — or out of the criminal justice system entirely. Data won’t entirely fix the US criminal justice system, but it can help the 200,000 people stuck in it due to slow data, offer corrections leaders new ways to gauge program success and inform policymakers of better ways to understand the impacts of both new and engrained justice system laws.

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Jawad Sharif, documentary filmmaker

Big idea: Documentary film is a space for debate and dialogue that challenges the danger of reducing reality to a singular story.

How? As a filmmaker, Jawad Sharif amplifies the unheard voices of his homeland Pakistan. “I decided to show this richness by telling the stories of communities that didn’t fit in the single narrative of my country — a narrative that dictates how we have to think and how we have to live.” says Sharif. His filmmaking has led him to the second-highest mountain in the world, K-2, where he followed the path of Pakistani mountaineers like Hassan Sadpara, who make dangerous treks carrying the luggage of foreign climbers. His art introduced him to Faqeer Zulfiqar, one of the only musicians in Pakistan who plays the ancient boreendo instrument. It also led him to Sarah Gill, Pakistan’s first transgender doctor — a massive achievement in the face of discrimination. Sharif’s documentary films give voice to the free thinkers of his country. By countering a narrative that nurtures fundamentalism, he uses this medium as both an act of defiance and an act of creation.

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Adjany Costa, Indigenous conservation champion

Big idea: To preserve key ecosystems around the world, global conservation efforts should center the voices of those in communities that are most vulnerable.

How? In places like the Angolan village of Luchaze, generational knowledge, storytelling and ancient wisdom play a key role in community wellbeing — but conservationist Adjany Costa notes that these cultural customs are often left out of environmental conservation strategies. This is what she refers to as “community-based conservation washing.” Similar to the greenwashing associated with many climate actions efforts, it doesn’t consider the environmental, social and economic realities of a place or people. Costa has observed the immediate effects of this exclusionary approach while working in Angola’s Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation area: the KAZA wetlands are teeming with flora and fauna, but its sources in Eastern Angola remain unprotected. Encouraging a new way to think about conservation in Indigenous communities, she asks: What if instead of trying to impose a one-size-fits-all plan on communities, we allow them to use their centenary knowledge to inform policies and practices that are uniquely suited to their way of life? This approach is at the heart of her conservation work, which seeks to empower villagers — like the Luchaze people — to spearhead their own conservation efforts, by teaching them about alternative livelihoods, bridging storytelling gaps that have been created by war and putting the power of decision making back into their hands. Costa acknowledges that while help may come from outside sources, it is ultimately the trust that these communities instill in themselves that will allow them to cultivate a sense of ownership over their land and livelihood. “Lasting conservation comes from within, from believing, from belonging, from dreaming,” she says.

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Olga Kitaina, psychologist, entrepreneur

Big idea: In Russia — with its cultural memory of psychiatry as an instrument of oppression — psychotherapy is a way to move forward from the burden of the past and trauma of the present. 

How? During the Soviet Union, psychiatry was often used as a political tool. Since then, Russia has seen major reforms in the use of psychiatry to help instead of traumatize — yet problems remain. Stigmas surrounding mental health endure, and proper channels for support have never been developed. There’s nothing protecting people from scams and fraud, and the lack of proper licensing has allowed the likes of tarot card readers and astrologers to claim the title of psychologist. Kitaina saw an opportunity to remedy that gap and developed an assessment platform to get people the proper professional help they need. As factors such as stress and global issues increase, her goal is to minimize the risk of people giving up on therapy,  negatively impacting well-being on both an individual and global scale. On top of that, Kitaina believes that without access to professional help, the biggest losses are the worsening quality of connections between people, the lack of self-awareness and the increase in hatred and violence that flourishes in its stead. Psychotherapy is about more than one individual finding help for their individual issues, she says == when one of us is wounded, all of us share that wound; by knowing ourselves, we become better human beings in our interconnected world, with a real hope of peace.

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Wiatta Thomas, agribusiness entrepreneur

Big idea: It’s time to abandon the individualistic mindset that often accompanies entrepreneurship and build a better one, founded on working together. 

Why? Despite so much money being poured into development in African countries, Wiatta Thomas saw youth failing to launch sustainable agribusinesses due to a lack of access to resources, markets and technology. She recognized this as a symptom of the individualistic entrepreneurial mindset of the American startup scene, and founded Aquafarms Africa — a business incubator that adapts the traditional entrepreneurial approach to a community-focused model. “In attempting to mimic the West, we’ve lost the value of continuing to go forward together,” Thomas says. She and her team share assets like land, water and energy with entrepreneurs looking to launch agribusinesses. This helps farmers grow locally and see an increase in profits in highly sought-after products like yellow and red peppers, lowering the prices for the communities they are being sold to. We need investors to move on from a capitalistic mindset to a mutualistic one, says Thomas, to regenerate the planet, rather than destroy it for short-term profit.

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Robert Katzschmann, soft-bodied roboticist

Big idea: Instead of building machines out of rigid, noisy materials, let’s build biomimetic machines out of soft, living materials that are adaptive and quiet.

How? Imagine a boat that propels by moving its “tail” from side to side, just like a fish. That’s the kind of machine Robert Katzschmann’s lab builds: pliable-bodied robots that imitate natural movements with artificial muscles. Their biomimetic robotic fish, SoFi, can explore the ocean without propellers, pumping water back and forth inside a deformable tail to imitate the swimming motion of a fish. Now the lab is taking it a step further, outfitting SoFi with artificial muscles that transform electrical energy into movement; when a voltage is applied to SoFi’s “muscles,” they tighten and shorten, just like biological muscle. The possibilities of this technology are thrilling — for instance, robots made of living cells that could heal themselves and proliferate — and promise to more safely integrate into the natural environment while cutting down on noise and pollution.

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Albert Cahn, anti-surveillance advocate

Big idea: We’re tracked nearly everywhere we go through the everyday tech we use. The threat is way worse than you imagine, says Albert Cahn — but the solution is simpler than you might think.

How? You may know that advertisers can sell a log of every link you click and place you go on the internet. But did you know the government can buy this kind of data, too? For instance, thanks to commercially available GPS data, the New York City Police Department could buy data on everyone who attended a Black Lives Matter protest, and Texas officials could do the same for visitors to an abortion clinic. And what companies won’t sell, Cahn says, officers can take by force — a product of the US crudely applying its 18th-century Constitution to 21st-century technology. To subvert the immense power this gives the government and police, Cahn proposes “legal firewalls”: laws that wouldn’t fight how our data is collected but rather how it’s exploited by the government. This would look like the creation of new legal codes dictating that our digital lives are outside the bounds of surveillance — and outlawing government data purchases, geofence warrants and police access to other pools of data. Now is the time to take action, Cahn says; otherwise, surveillance will soon be irrevocably embedded into the fabric of society.

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Heejae Lim, education technology entrepreneur

Big idea: A parent is a child’s first teacher. We can do a better job of tapping into the incredible potential of families in education.

How? “When teachers and families work together, everyone wins,” says education technology entrepreneur Heejae Lim. Inspired by the tireless efforts of her own mother, who served as de facto translator for Korean immigrant families in their community in England, Lim and her team created a communication app that helps multilingual and underserved families create connections with their children’s teachers in their own languages. Teachers write communications in English and families receive it in their own languages, and vice versa. “We break down the language barrier and bridge cultural and knowledge differences by explaining education concepts and prompting and enabling teachers and parents to talk to each other,” Lim says. All pointing towards the goal of helping the four in five students in the US who come from low-income or immigrant families can thrive.

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Kiana Hayeri, documentary photographer

Big idea: After a 20-year US occupation and subsequent transition to Taliban rule, the people of Afghanistan continue to face harrowing realities in the face of war and displacement. But many remain hopeful that their country will one day heal.

How? Moved to uncover what life looks like in Afghanistan after its two-decade occupation by the US, documentary photographer Kiana Hayeri traveled across Kabul to chronicle the lives of those who were left to grapple with the aftermath of war. Through a series of vivid images, Hayeri shares what she discovered along the way: a pained mother whose grief was physically debilitating; young sons armed with guns, risking their lives for cause and country; teenagers incarcerated for political charges. In stunning detail, she recounts their stories and transports us to monumental moments — like a military raid on Afghanistan’s National Institute of Music, where a young girl’s dreams of playing music were shattered, and an airport suicide bombing that claimed the lives of more than 100 Afghans. Her journey came to a crushing end the day the Taliban took control of Kabul, and she recalls the mixture of guilt and heartbreak that she felt as she had to leave the country she lived and worked in. Despite death, devastation and deferred dreams, Hayeri hopes for the day when Afghanistan will have the chance.

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Melaku Belay, choreographer, dancer

Big idea: Ancient, traditional dances are always in the process of becoming anew. They connect us to the past while they tell stories of the present.

How? Melaku Belay begins with a traditional Ethiopian Eskista dance to the soundscape of Mercato workers pounding recycled metal into new objects in the open-air market. Originating in a moment of danger and improvisation, Eskista is “beauty born out of the desire to survive,” Belay says in his native Amharic, which is translated live onstage by filmmaker and anthropologist Mehret Mandefro, and the sound of the Mercato workers is in honor of the Indigenous trade, knowledge and creativity that thrives there. The improvised Eskista saved the once-homeless Belay when he performed the dance for years in Addis Ababa, dreaming up his present reality of sharing Eskista around the world, telling stories that express a spirit of pride that Ethiopia was never colonized as opposed to stories of hunger or war. Bridging the past, present and future, Belay ends by dancing Eskista to jazz, an African diasporic tradition that resonates with the Ethiopian spirit of freedom. “I love my traditional dance because it is alive in the moment and it leads us to the future,” Belay says.

A New Era: Notes from Session 1 of TED Fellows Talks at TED2022

The TED Fellows program is built around a deep belief in and commitment to socially engaged innovation and human ingenuity. The mission: to shift the balance of power by supporting whole individuals, both personally and professionally. At Session 1 of TED Fellows talks at TED2022, 11 speakers and two performers shared world-changing ideas and innovations from the fields of astrophysics, conservation, social change, art and so much more.

The event: Talks from Session 1 of TED Fellows Talks at TED2022, hosted by TED’s Shoham Arad and Lily James Olds

When and where: Sunday, April 10, 2022, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Jessie Christiansen, Adetayo Bamiduro, Gautam Shah, Micaela Mantegna, Ryan Gersava, Enzo Romero, Bree Jones, Lam Ho, Kyra Gaunt, Bektour Iskender, Constance Hockaday

Music: Visual artist and composer Paul Rucker put his strikingly masterful cello technique on display with a haunting yet meditative rendition. And musician “Blinky” Bill Selanga thrilled the audience with his Afrocentric beats and dynamic energy, performing “Kilamu” and “Ama Aje”.

The talk in brief:

Jessie Christiansen, planet hunter

Big Idea: The discovery of 5,000 exoplanets (and counting) is more than impressive; their data could answer timeless questions about our very existence.

How? When Jessie Christiansen joined NASA’s Kepler mission in 2010, she’d already spent four years combing through 87,000 stars, searching for an exoplanet. On her second day of the mission, she’d found her first and second. As of March 2022, 5,000 exoplanets have been found, and the new data means we can finally ask bigger questions: Can planets exist without a star? Can they orbit each other? How many are like Earth? How are planets made? And perhaps most famously: Where do we come from, and how did we get here? “There’s a saying that this generation was born too late to explore the Earth and too soon to explore space. That’s not true anymore,” Christiansen says.

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Adetayo Bamiduro, motorcycle financing entrepreneur

Big idea: Africa is being left behind in the transition to clean mobility. Motorcycles are the secret to a cleaner, more profitable future for the continent.

How? By 2050, Lagos, Nigeria will outgrow many cities in the world including New York City and Mexico City, becoming home to more than 32 million people. Currently, Lagos and other African mega-cities like it suffer from inadequate road infrastructure, pollution, congestion and poor conditions. One of the many impacted by these issues is the African motorcycle taxi driver, who is excluded from the formal economy, left to the mercy of polluting vehicles and high costs due to exploitative loans sharks. At MIT, Bamiduro met his business partner, and together they embarked on a fix: an integrated approach to the design, manufacturing and financing operations targeted at highly vulnerable informal groups. Broken down into three parts, their solution provides motorcycle taxi drivers with access to electric vehicles and batteries, maintenance and insurance and emergency assistance, helping more than 15,000 drivers renew their livelihoods. By 2025, their goal is to provide electric mobility solutions to 150,000 drivers, paving the way towards a more sustainable and prosperous future for the world’s youngest and fastest-growing continent.

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Gautam Shah, conservationist

Big idea: Wildlife conservation efforts could be more successful if we create and strengthen our relationships with other species. Advanced technologies like the metaverse could play an essential role.

How? “If we want to preserve all life on Earth, we need to create relationships with all life on Earth,” says Gautam Shah, whose combined passion for wildlife and technology makes him acutely aware of the disconnect between humans and other species. Technology has helped us collect lots of data about our fellow non-human inhabitants of Earth, but Shah observes that this data hasn’t been fully contextualized for the millions of people around the world who express interest in wildlife. His solution? A unique digital identity for animals that allows them to exist in virtual spaces like the metaverse, bringing their stories closer to us. By digitally recreating the events that happen in nature — from elephant migration to deforestation — Shah believes that humans could use the metaverse to feel less detached from and more engaged with their natural environment.

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Micaela Mantegna, video game lawyer

Big idea: How do we save the metaverse from becoming a bad internet sequel? Basic human qualities of kindness and connection.

How? “The metaverse is here and is already on fire,” says Micaela Mantegna. At a cross-section between augentmented and physical reality, the metaverse has the frightening potential of inheriting the worst traits of the internet, with VR and neurotechnology using involuntary data to create, as Mantagna puts it, “a capitalism of corporeal surveillance.” To save us from this fate, a coordination of engineering and law, based on kindness and connection, must be implemented to ensure content portability across different software environments and identical legal standards throughout. “It’s not every day that humanity has the chance to create new a reality, so, my invitation to you: let’s make it a good one,” she says.

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Ryan Gersava, social innovator, educator

Big idea: Building a world where all people — including those with disabilities and chronic illnesses — can find belonging starts with healing. 

How? Social innovator, educator Ryan Gersava is one of the nearly billion people worldwide living with a disability, which often leads to chronic illness and decreased chances of employment, lack of social protection and extreme poverty. His healing journey led him to start an online vocational school in the Philippines, Virtualahan, which provides training to people with disabilities, recovering addicts and others who struggle to find employment. So far they’ve graduated hundreds of people in more than 60 cities and provinces all over the Philippines, setting them up to earn an average of 40-60 percent above minimum wage. Now he’s calling on organizations to invest in talent with disabilities, and for all of us to investigate our biases around disability and chronic illness, which makes it difficult and painful for people to disclose their conditions. “There’s no need to suffer in silence anymore,” Gersava says. “I invite you to be part of this movement.”

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Enzo Romero, bionic innovator

Big idea: Prosthesis for developing nations should be designed locally, with the needs of the communities they are built for in mind.

Why? As a child born without his right hand, Enzo Romero was astonished and inspired by the prosthetics he would see his favorite movie characters (like Luke Skywalker) wearing. But in his home country of Peru, they are far too expensive for the majority of amputees. With the intent of creating functional and affordable options, Romero and his team at LAT Bionics isolated the most used occupational gestures: pinch, cylindrical and lateral, and designed mechanical and myoelectric prostheses around them. Their devices, such as the Maki, which runs on mechanical activation, and the Pisko, which runs on electronic activation, cost a fraction of what imported tech does. Why? The parts are 3D printed with materials mainly sourced from recycled plastic bottles. “We have the capacity to develop our own technology, having the necessities of our people in mind, so then people with disabilities and limited resources can live life again,” Romero says. 

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Bree Jones, equitable housing developer

Big idea: Development and homeownership opportunities in overlooked neighborhoods are possible — without the displacement of existing residents.

How? Systemic barriers like redlining have (and continue to) keep Black communities from building wealth through real estate and other assets. Housing advocate Bree Jones explains how developing neighborhoods often are subjected to two trajectories: people move away and the area is deemed a risky investment, so either the quality of life there decays or the neighborhood is gentrified and new residents capitalize off of the distress of legacy residents by scooping up undervalued real estate and selling it back at a higher price. To end these toxic cycles of the racial wealth gap, Jones founded Parity, a nonprofit that creates upfront demand for homeownership in neighborhoods experiencing hyper vacancy by tapping into existing social networks. They’re doing this by leading the purchase and construction of vacant homes and selling them at affordable prices; helping people attain creditworthiness; and preventing displacement, allowing current residents to accrue wealth they can pass on to the next generation. “We’re healing the social fabric of the neighborhood as we’re rebuilding the built environment,” Jones says.

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Lam Ho, legal aid activist

Big idea: The way the American legal system works needs to change. Clients deserve to have agency over their own cases in court – and lawyers should support them with their knowledge of the law. 

How? As a lawyer, Lam Ho witnessed the same thing happen in courtrooms across the US: clients aren’t given the chance to contribute their perspective during their own legal proceedings. Ho’s mother didn’t have a say in her divorce because she didn’t have an attorney and Ho thought by becoming a lawyer he could help people like her but instead, Ho realized he became a part of the problem. Instead of forcing families with limited resources to accommodate lawyers and their voices being silenced, Ho wants the dynamic of the US legal system to flip. He founded Beyond Legal Aid so lawyers can change the system from within by allowing clients to be participants in the process –  rather than be subjected to it. By inviting clients to tell their own stories in court, their own way, justice can be created – even when the law is wrong. “We can give advice and empower them to navigate the law, but ultimately follow their lead and defer to their decisions.” says Ho. 

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Kyra Gaunt, ethnomusicologist

Big idea: Musical play could be an empowering experience for young Black girls through which they can learn to love their own voices and disrupt the trends of anti-Black, patriarchal music.

How? As an ethnomusicologist, Kyra Gaunt studies the consequences of intimate bedroom musical play in Black girls, trying to understand how they could preserve the integrity of their own voices while technology and the media often misrepresent them. After years of viewing thousands of viral dance videos posted to the internet, she has made a few disturbing realizations, like the fact that many girls perform to songs that are produced, engineered and written by men, singing along to lyrics that often express anti-Black, patriarchal sentiments. Music and dance are therapeutic in many ways, particularly for Black girls whose musical play happens during their formative years, but many songs topping today’s charts are peppered with musical mansplaining that can have damaging implications for girls as they grow up to navigate situations like dating. Gaunt believes that Black girls could disrupt the stereotypes and stigmas created by algorithms on online platforms by learning to love their own voice. Whether this means producing their own dance songs or supporting female musicians, they could chart their own revolution in sound.

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Bektour Iskender, independent news publisher

Big idea: Journalism is a sword and shield against international crime and its leaders.

How? What makes criminal organizations strong? Their strong cross-border connections. They operate over long distances, build efficient logistics and hide their wealth across man jurisdictions. Iskender is one of the founders of Kloop, a self-described, very unusual media organization that reveals these secret operations. Initially a new website and journalism school, Kloop evolved as its students grew older and more ambitious alongside the stories they sought to cover — and became part of an expansive media network reporting on international organized crime. Their investigations put Central Asia on the map like never before. His organization’s work uncovered a corruption scandal that rocked his home country of Kyrgyzstan and sparked protests that eventually forced the president himself to resign, among several other revelations. The story Iskender shares only exemplifies the takeaways he’d like the world to understand. First, journalism networks are incredibly efficient, important and provide safety. Two, support local media organizations all around the world for their unique insights and connections. Recently, Kloop had started to branch out, making a second home in Ukraine. Highlighting his points, Iskender posits that a better linked and funded local journalism collaboration could have saved many lives preceding Russia’s war in Ukraine. Which leads to his third and final point: We must expand the cross-border networks outside of the media world, too. Because every exposed corrupt official, every organized crime leader is a chance to protect our world not only from smugglers and thieves, but also dictators and warmongers.

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Constance Hockaday, artist

Big idea: To achieve our hopes and goals individually and as a society, we need to fundamentally remodel our leadership styles to be more inclusive, collaborative and compassionate.

How? Though we live in a diverse and ever-changing world, our leadership models are archaic, narrow-visioned and stagnant. To illuminate new modes of leadership, Constance Hockaday invited artists from various backgrounds to design, write, create and perform public addresses as part of her Artists In Presidents project. She learned that leadership begins when one can express their autonomy, agency and desires: we need to be able to believe that our hopes and ambitions for a better world are possible. Belief does not form in a vacuum and it cannot be sustained alone—it’s crucial that we come together to share and build our interconnected dreams. Leadership, Hockaday says, is the ability to listen to these hopes and goals, however fragmented or vague, and guide people towards the truth of what they want and how they can achieve it. Leadership is a commitment to people; it is a way to help those around us understand how their individual dreams for the future are aligned with community-created, shared visions for a better world.

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.

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.”

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.”