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.

Imagination: Notes from Session 6 of TED2019

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

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

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

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

The talks in brief:

Jacqueline Woodson, award-winning author and savorer of stories

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

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, documentary filmmaker and storyteller

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

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

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

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

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

Rahul Mehrotra, architect, urban designer, professor of design

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

Bjarke Ingels, architect and designer

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

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

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

The talks in brief:

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

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

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

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

Janet Iwasa, Molecular animator and TED Senior Fellow

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

Matt Cutts, Software engineer and public servant

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

Lucy Farey-Jones, Technology strategist

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

Bjarke Ingels, (Interplanetary) architect

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

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

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

Rob Gore, Emergency room doctor

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

Stefan Sagmeister, Designer

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

John Werner, TEDxBeaconStreet organizer

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

Andrea Barrica, Sex tech entrepreneur

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

David Kwong, Magician and cruciverbalist

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