Connectors: Notes on Session 11 of TED2024

The final session of TED2024 took an emotional dive into how we can connect better — on an individual and global scale. From how to fight healthier with loved ones to how to find greater meaning in life, speakers shared powerful, personal truths from which everyone can learn.

The event: Talks from Session 11 of TED2024: The Brave and the Brilliant, hosted by Chris Anderson, Monique Ruff-Bell and Helen Walters

When and where: Friday, April 19, 2024, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Isaac Saul, Julie Gottman, John Gottman, Rory Stewart, Kesha, Brian S. Lowery

Community talks: TED community member Farhad Mohit explored the apparent dichotomy of his Iranian-American identity, suggesting we can have space for both individualism and interdependence, continuous innovation and presence in the now. Later, Afghan activist Nila Ibrahimi shared her experience using song to protest — and ultimately reverse — oppressive laws in Afghanistan just before the Taliban took control. She sent a powerful message to the Taliban about the infinite strength of girls’ voices, whether in Afghanistan or abroad.

Wrap-up: Tony Award-winning Broadway and film star Anthony Veneziale performed a funny, musical recap of TED2024, beginning with an imitation of imma, the AI influencer, and ending with a song about “Why we TED” (although he suggested the conference be renamed TAID, replacing the E for entertainment with AI, which was mentioned over 330 times during the week).

The talks in brief:

Whether it’s “undocumented” vs. “illegal” immigrant or “pro-life” vs. “anti-abortion,” people commonly use language to signal affiliation with a political tribe. Isaac Saul of Tangle News, an independent, reader-funded platform, explains how we can communicate better across the political spectrum by avoiding alienating language and gaining a better understanding of one another’s definitions.

Julie and John Gottman, cofounders of the Gottman Institute and The Love Lab, have made the study of relationships their life’s work. They share how healthy couples fight, starting with one radical idea: don’t fight to win — fight to understand.

Former UK Member of Parliament Rory Stewart shares what’s wrong with most governments’ global development efforts, advocating for a simpler alternative: give unconditional cash deposits to those in need. This proven method allows people to invest in the future they choose — and comes without the patronizing belief that the philanthropists know best.

Songwriting is a direct line of communication with the truth, says pop star, songwriter and activist Kesha. Before performing a new song, “Cathedral,” she explores the roots of hits like “TikTok” and “Praying,” explaining why the best songs get at deep, emotional truths.

What makes for a meaningful life? Social psychologist Brian S. Lowery explores three ideas that most modern researchers agree are tied to the experience of meaningfulness — coherence, purpose and significance — and shows why playing even a small role in others’ lives can be a powerful source of meaning.

Session 11 began with a town hall where TED attendees shared takeaways and opinions on what they heard this week, covering subjects such as quantum computing, DEI, conflict resolution, the power of AI and more.

TED2024, held April 15-19, 2024, in Vancouver, BC, Canada, is a week of talks, discovery sessions, excursions, dinners, performances and more celebrating “The Brave and the Brilliant.” Special thanks to our strategic partners PwC, Adobe, Schneider Electric and Northwestern Mutual.

Enchanters: Notes on Session 10 of TED2024

Session 10 of TED2024 plumbs the depths of human emotions, celebrating the beauty of community art, the everyday bravery of family life, the power of sound and more.

The event: Talks from Session 10 of TED2024: The Brave and the Brilliant, hosted by TED’s Helen Walters

When and where: Thursday, April 18, 2024, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Jaime Rojo, Lily Yeh, Mark Grimmer, Kelly Corrigan, Felipe Sánchez Luna, Kylan Gibbs, Lear deBessonet

Performance: Joined onstage by a marching band, broadway legend Brian Stokes Mitchell belts “The Impossible Dream (The Quest)” accompanied by pianist Todd Almond — and participation from TED-attendees-turned-singers throughout the TED Theater.

The talks in brief: 

Photographer Jaime Rojo shares his experience photographing the migration of monarch butterflies across North America each year, diving into the latest research behind how these mesmerizing insects make their multi-thousand-mile journey.

From Rwanda to North Philadelphia to the Chinese countryside, barefoot artist Lily Yeh uses the world’s streets and walls as her canvas, collaborating with local communities to weave beauty and healing through the vibrant tapestry of their collective stories and talents.

We are living in the age of immersive experiences, says Mark Grimmer, cofounder of 59 Productions. Redefining narrative possibilities, he shares several multidisciplinary projects, including a multi-sensory exhibit of David Bowie that re-animated his kaleidoscopic career through a whirlwind of objects, costumes and videos — and showed what happens when diverse ideas collide.

Kelly Corrigan ponders the “Olympic achievements” of everyday bravery: the mundane triumphs each of us racks up simply navigating life’s tribulations, big and small. While bravery may consist of simply hanging around and listening (regardless of whether times are tough or boring), its reward is a “maximum dosage” of total human emotion.

In an astounding sonic experience, Felipe Sánchez Luna takes the audience on a journey of music and code, mixing notes and rhythms with ones and zeroes. His composition combines real recordings with data, AI-driven music and human creativity to tap into the transformative power of sound to evoke a deeper, emotional understanding of our world.

Video games are increasingly immersive, but they can still make you feel like you’re in a “closed” system, taken from one scripted point to another based on the buttons you press. Inworld cofounder Kylan Gibbs is helping expand this world with “AI agents” — characters powered by AI that have depth, realism and “brains.” He explains how these agents generate new game outcomes unique to each player’s decisions, augmenting our ability to tell stories.

Church pageants, football games and Mardi Gras aren’t just spectacles — they’re universal human experiences. Theater director Lear deBessonet‘s productions ignite the communal, healing thrill of collective expression by drawing their huge casts (often involving scores of performers) from a cross-section of their host communities.

TED2024, held April 15-19, 2024, in Vancouver, BC, Canada, is a week of talks, discovery sessions, excursions, dinners, performances and more celebrating “The Brave and the Brilliant.” Special thanks to our strategic partners PwC, Adobe, Schneider Electric and Northwestern Mutual.

Trailblazers: Notes on Session 7 of TED2024

We’re about halfway through TED2024, and Session 7 was a whopper — covering everything from preventative medicine for one of the world’s rare diseases to quantum computing, the future of audio computing and a sprinkle of musical improvisational comedy.

The event: Talks from Session 7 of TED2024: The Brave and the Brilliant, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson and host of TED Radio Hour Manoush Zomorodi

When and where: Wednesday, April 17, 2024, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Sonia Vallabh, Diabaté Abdoulaye, Reggie Watts, Hartmut Neven, Tammy Ma, Jason Rugolo

The talks in brief:

Biomedical researcher Sonia Vallabh’s life was turned upside down when she learned she had the genetic mutation for a rare and fatal illness, prion disease, which could strike at any time. Fifteen years later, Vallabh’s search for a cure has led her to new insights about the importance of preventative medicine.

Malaria is a disease as old as humankind, says scientist Diabaté Abdoulaye. He shows the path to a malaria-free world by harnessing the potential of “gene drive” technology — which augments the genetics of mosquitos to reduce disease transmission — combined with community support and funding.

“No one loves perception more than people who are conscious,” jokes musician and comedian Reggie Watts. In an absurdist ode to improvisation, he beatboxes, raps, loops his own rhythms and philosophizes on how we’re all making it up as we go along.

By replacing the binary logic of ones and zeroes with the laws of quantum physics, quantum computing allows us to perform computations with way fewer steps. Hartmut Neven, the founder and lead of Google Quantum AI, sees exciting commercial applications on the horizon; imagine, for instance, a phone that could warn you if you enter a room with dangerous viruses or detect allergens in your food.

In 2022, physicist Tammy Ma and her team used a giant laser to achieve a scientific breakthrough: fusion ignition, or the combining of two hydrogen atoms for energy generation. She explains the science behind this groundbreaking success and explores what’s needed to make a fusion-powered world a reality.

Deeptech inventor and designer Jason Rugolo introduces a new hands-free, screen-free computer you can wear on your ears and talk to like a friend. In contrast to digital assistants like Siri — which require you to issue specific commands — Rugolo shows how audio computers will use LLMs and machine learning to understand your intentions and engage with you like a person.

TED2024, held April 15-19, 2024, in Vancouver, BC, Canada, is a week of talks, discovery sessions, excursions, dinners, performances and more celebrating “The Brave and the Brilliant.” Special thanks to our strategic partners PwC, Adobe, Schneider Electric and Northwestern Mutual.

System Changers: Notes on Session 3 of TED2024

Many of the world’s systems, big and small, could use an upgrade. In a dynamic Session 3 at TED2024, six speakers explore how to do just that — taking on everything from global development and capitalism to robots and vertical farming.

The event: Talks from Session 3 of TED2024: The Brave and the Brilliant, hosted by TED’s Helen Walters

When and where: Tuesday, April 16, 2024, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Karthik Muralidharan, Daniela Rus, Rumman Chowdhury, Hiroki Koga, Zeynep Ton, Pete Stavros

Special appearance: Lily James Olds, the director of the TED Fellows program, announces the 2024 cohort of TED Fellows, whose work spans five continents and represents 11 countries — including, for the first time, Georgia. Read more about them here.

The talks in brief:

Spoiler: There is such a thing as a free lunch in global development, says economics professor Karthik Muralidharan. Although key indicators like school enrollment rates reached historic highs, most children are surviving, not thriving. He explains that with smarter resource allocation and evidence-based interventions, we can achieve more — without spending more.

Despite breathtaking advances, the worlds of AI and robotics remain siloed. Roboticist and computer scientist Daniela Rus describes how “liquid networks” — a more flexible, efficient and sustainable AI paradigm — promise to shatter the barrier between AI and robotics, creating a future where bespoke machines shape our everyday lives.

Will AI systems dominate our lives, or will they enhance human agency? Rumman Chowdhury, CEO and cofounder of Humane Intelligence, says that for AI to achieve its full potential, we must invite non-experts into the development process and empower people to shape and train new technologies.

Inside a vertical farming facility, you can control every environmental factor (temperature, humidity, light, pollination, etc.). You can also experiment regularly, improving practices to generate the sweetest strawberries year-round, says Hiroki Koga, CEO of Oishii. He shares how innovations in big data are making vertical farming an affordable, eco-friendly alternative to traditional farming.

Essential work doesn’t pay well, but MIT management professor Zeynep Ton believes it should. She points to companies like Costco or the Spanish supermarket chain Mercadona, which have reduced costs and worker turnover — and increased profits and productivity — by paying their workers decent, livable wages.

What if all employees had stock ownership in the companies they worked for? Investor Pete Stavros turned over stock ownership of a manufacturing company to its 800 workers, drastically improving the company’s productivity, profitability and the lives of its workers — a testament to the power of employee ownership.

TED2024, held April 15-19, 2024, in Vancouver, BC, Canada, is a week of talks, discovery sessions, excursions, dinners, performances and more celebrating “The Brave and the Brilliant.” Special thanks to our strategic partners PwC, Adobe, Schneider Electric and Northwestern Mutual.

Meet the 2024 class of TED Fellows

In this complex world, it’s easy to believe that the future is out of our hands. But there are some who understand that the future doesn’t just happen — it’s made. Among these are the TED Fellows: innovators, activists, artists, inventors and dreamers. The TED Fellows program, now celebrating its fifteenth year, provides communication training, professional tools, network-building opportunities and amplification on the global stage to early-stage innovators working across multiple disciplines in over 100 countries.  

We are thrilled to announce the 2024 cohort of TED Fellows, whose work spans five continents and represents 11 countries — including, for the first time, Georgia. This year’s TED Fellows include an entrepreneur who is reshaping health care in conflict zones, an engineer who created a cold chain solution saving lives in rural African communities and a scientist pioneering new, safer AI technologies — to name just a few. 

Each TED Fellow was selected for their remarkable achievements, the potential impact of their work and their commitment to community building. TED is honored to welcome these new Fellows into this dynamic global network of 500+ Fellows creating meaningful change in their communities and the world.

Mohamed Aburawi
Health systems entrepreneur | Libya + Canada
Mohamed Aburawi is a surgeon and founder of Speetar, a digital health platform reshaping health care in conflict zones across the Middle East and Africa, especially his native Libya. Through this work, Speetar is helping to dismantle barriers to quality care and advocate for health care as a fundamental human right.

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Sahba Aminikia
Composer, artistic director | Iran + US
Iranian-born composer, pianist and educator Sahba Aminikia is the founder and artistic director of Flying Carpet Children Festival, an annual mobile arts festival and artist residency for refugee children escaping conflict zones.

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Joel Bervell
Medical mythbuster | Ghana + US
Joel Bervell is a medical student educating people about health care disparities and biases through viral social media content. By sharing stories and studies with his audience of more than one million about the neglect of marginalized groups, he advocates for change in the health care system.

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Lehua Kamalu
Ocean navigator | Hawaii + US
Lehua Kamalu is a captain and navigator of traditional Hawaiian ocean-voyaging canoes. She preserves and teaches these ancient sustainable navigation practices by integrating them into digital storytelling and daily life for future generations.

Huiyi Lin
Visual artist, poverty researcher | Singapore + China
Huiyi Lin is an economic policy researcher and one half of Chow and Lin, an artist duo using statistical, mathematical and computational techniques to address food insecurity and poverty. Chow and Lin combine research, design and photography to raise awareness about global inequality in visually arresting ways.

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Ramin Hasani
AI scientist, entrepreneur | US, Austria + Iran
Ramin Hasani is cofounder and CEO of Liquid AI, where he helped invent liquid neural networks: a new AI technology inspired by living brains and physics. These revolutionary networks are more flexible and efficient than current AI solutions, shaping the future of machine learning and artificial intelligence research.

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Paule Joseph
Chemosensory researcher, nurse | Venezuela + US
Taste and smell researcher Paule Joseph explores how conditions such as COVID-19, obesity, neurodegenerative disorders and substance abuse affect the chemical senses. Her lab combines clinical research, behavioral neuroscience, genomics and molecular biology, offering insights on how taste and smell affect our daily lives.

 

Norah Magero
Mechanical engineer | Kenya
Norah Magero is a mechanical engineer and creator of VacciBox, a cold chain solution saving lives in rural communities. She is working to build an Africa that manufactures and produces its own climate-health care technology.

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Royal Ramey
Wildland firefighter | US
Royal Ramey is the cofounder of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program (FFRP), a nonprofit providing career opportunities to formerly incarcerated firefighters in California. A 12-year wildland firefighter veteran, Ramey draws on his own lived experience, rethinking job training for the formerly incarcerated and addressing the challenges they face re-entering the workforce.

Daro Sulakauri
Photojournalist, visual artist | Georgia
Photojournalist Daro Sulakauri chronicles social and political issues in the Caucasus. By focusing on issues that are considered taboo, such as early marriages and the impact of Russian occupation, she defends against the erasure of Georgian culture, history and borders.

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Erika Moore Taylor
Equity bioengineer | US
Biomedical engineer Erika Moore Taylor researches how ancestry and sociocultural data affect disease development. Unlike many researchers, she accounts for diverse populations when building regenerative tissue models to create more equitable disease models.

Mind Expanders: Notes on Session 2 of TED2024

AI is reshaping how we interact with the world around us and within us, expanding creative possibilities and bringing us closer together by dissolving barriers of all kinds. But anyone who’s paying attention can spot its obvious flaws and potential pitfalls.

From trailblazing platforms making software accessible to micro-robotics revolutionizing health care (including a mind-blowing demo you won’t want to miss), Session 2 of TED2024 explored the frontiers of tech with visionary entrepreneurs, scientists and creators. They offered glimpses of what good AI could do for the world when governed with empathy and curiosity.

The event: Talks from Session 2 of TED2024: The Brave and the Brilliant, hosted by head of TED Chris Anderson and creative technologist and host of The TED AI Show Bilawal Sidhu

When and where: Tuesday, April 16, 2024, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Vinod Khosla, Fei-Fei Li, Thomas Dohmke, Niceaunties, Alex Luebke, Vivek Kumbhari, Helen Toner

A special challenge: President and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund Andrew Steer announces the AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge, a groundbreaking initiative set to distribute up to $100 million in grants to harness AI in the fight against climate change and nature loss.

The talks in brief:

Vinod Khosla is a self-proclaimed techno-optimist who believes in the power of “foolish ideas.” He shares his predictions for how technology will continue improving human lives, discussing expanded medical care through AI doctors, a massive robotic workforce, planes that can travel 4,000 miles per hour and more.

AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li proposes that the progress of AI’s understanding of spatial intelligence – the ability to derive predictions and insight from objects’ relationships to one another – is catalyzing robotic learning, bringing us closer to a world where AI not only sees and creates but also interacts with the world around us.

Software development has long been the purview of specialized workers. By removing the barrier between programming languages and human ones, GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke shows how AI is poised to change that forever. He demos never-before-seen software his team has been developing that promises to empower people to create code using just their spoken words — in any language.

From sushi-bedecked cars with legs to elderly women wearing cat-shaped masks made of cereal, artist Niceaunties’ surreal “Auntieverse” — a mind-bending homage to “auntie culture” prevalent in Asian communities — charmingly showcases the creative potential of human-AI partnerships.

Meet PillBot: a wireless micro-robot that can go inside the human body and take a look around. In a (literally) stomach-turning demo, engineer and entrepreneur Alex Luebke swallows a PillBot and physician-scientist Vivek Kumbhari navigates it around his stomach with a game controller, showing how the device allows direct visualization of internal organs and could move us past the age of invasive, expensive endoscopies.

No one understands AI — not even experts, says policy expert Helen Toner. But that doesn’t mean we can’t govern it. She makes the case that people and policymakers need to push for more research into AI interpretability (measuring what these systems can do) as well as regulations that require AI companies to share what they’re building and why.

TED2024, held April 15-19, 2024, in Vancouver, BC, Canada, is a week of talks, discovery sessions, excursions, dinners, performances and more celebrating “The Brave and the Brilliant.” Special thanks to our strategic partners PwC, Adobe, Schneider Electric and Northwestern Mutual.

Flipside futures: The talks of TED@BCG 2023

Today is good, but tomorrow can always be better. There are new possibilities for our future if we use our uniquely human creativity. In a day of talks and performances, 16 leading minds gathered to flip expected thinking on its head and map out how we might build a brighter future.

The event: TED@BCG: Flipside Futures is the fourteenth event TED and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) have co-hosted to uplift forward-thinking speakers from around the globe. Hosted by TED’s head of media and curation Helen Walters.

When and where: Thursday, November 16, 2023 at the BCG office in Paris, France

Speakers: Catalina Lotero, Adam Whybrew, Jessica Apotheker, Diarra Bousso, Hanjo Seibert, David Kwong, Sylvester Chauke, Annalee Newitz, Adriann Negreros, Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju, Slava Balbek, Paul Hudson, Beth Viner, Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, Sagar Goel, Bonnie Hancock

Opening and closing remarks: Francois Candelon, the global director of the BCG Henderson Institute and TED@BCG 2018 speaker, welcomes the audience while Olivier Scalabre, the head of BCG France and TED@BCG 2016 speaker, closes out the day.

The talks in brief:

Catalina Lotero, purposeful designer

What might Latin America look like if colonization hadn’t broken the evolution of its ancient iconography? Catalina Lotero presents stunning images of “Pre-Columbian futurism” that infuse Latin American design with Indigenous symbolism — a testament to the power of aesthetics to rewrite historical narratives and envision new futures.

Adam Whybrew, depression truth-teller

We can’t get rid of anxiety and depression, so we might as well talk about it, says Adam Whybrew. He shares how talking about his own debilitating mental health struggles with his coworkers created unexpectedly positive outcomes, offering a comforting message of hope for those in need of support. 

Jessica Apotheker, marketing expert

Research shows AI is poised to explode marketers’ performance — but there’s a problem, says Jessica Apotheker. AI may make marketers more productive but, if not harnessed correctly, it might also homogenize and clog the marketing landscape.

Diarra Bousso, designer, mathematician

Growing up in Senegal, getting a new outfit for Diarra Bousso was never an impulse purchase; her clothes were made to order by local artisans and designed to last. Through her brand, Diarrablu, she’s working to bring this sustainable fashion model to modern e-retail, using digital tools to crowdsource designs, limit excess inventory and reduce overconsumption and waste.

Hanjo Seibert, economic crime fighter

Hanjo Seibert spends his time fighting economic crime, a wide field ranging from drug trafficking and human trafficking to fraud, cybercrimes, tax evasion and more. He explains how gangsters, criminals and terrorists launder their money through this shady underground economy — and how all of us can take small steps to make it harder for them to do so.

David Kwong, magician 

“We live in a time that’s more wondrous than our ancestors ever could have imagined, and technology isn’t the barrier to unlocking that wonder: it’s the key,” says David Kwong. He explores how tech elevates our capacity for bewilderment — and invites an audience member to the stage for some ChatGPT-powered magic.

Sylvester Chauke, branding disruptor

After years of brand building, marketing veteran Sylvester Chauke realized that his industry had sold the world on overconsumption, with devastating consequences. He shares how marketers could instead promote sustainability and responsible consumerism with “honest ads.”

Annalee Newitz, journalist, sci-fi author

“Escapist stories allow us to reimagine our relationship with the places we live,” says Annalee Newitz. Inviting you to the whimsical world of sci-fi, cosplay (short for “costume play”) and goblincore (an internet-born aesthetic that celebrates the “ugly” side of nature), Newitz shares why, sometimes, the best way to solve our problems is to escape them.

Adriann Negreros, change management expert

Nearly three billion people have frontline jobs: work that requires them to be in person, whether it’s as baristas, Uber drivers, factory floor workers or anything else. Adriann Negreros is on a mission to make these jobs more rewarding by getting employees what they need but often lack – like respect, better pay, more flexibility and safety gear that actually fits.

Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju, food systems advocate

Sub-Saharan Africa needs more meat consumption to solve its nutrition challenges, says Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju. Instead of building feedlots, she makes a case for scaling meat and milk production in the region by supporting its millions of nomadic livestock herders. 

Slava Balbek, architect, humanitarian

The Russian invasion of Ukraine forced architect Slava Balbek to rethink the nature of his craft. From a tool that develops localized blueprints to rebuild your home to the construction of comfortable, stylish temporary housing, Balbek and his team are exploring the healing power of architecture with a simple motto: “Dignity no matter what.”

Paul Hudson, healthcare innovator, in conversation with Lindsay Levin, the head of TED Countdown

Rather than resisting AI, Paul Hudson has welcomed the opportunity to let it completely disrupt Sanofi, the healthcare and pharmaceutical company he leads. In conversation with Lindsay Levin, he discusses how AI can propel daily decision-making, its impact on data transparency and the role it might play in decarbonizing the pharmaceutical industry.

Beth Viner, culture strategist

We often venerate dreamers: the innovators who smash through barriers. But for every dreamer, says Beth Viner, a team of doers works hard to transform that vision into reality. The best companies succeed by harnessing this synergy.

Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, economist 

Economic models always seem to predict disaster, creating financial losses that could have been avoided if shoppers and business owners were more rationally optimistic, says economist Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak. He calls for everyone to be their own judge, evaluate the doomsday narratives with a careful eye and embrace the inevitable uncertainty.

Sagar Goel, skill-building strategist

People are worried that AI will replace them at work — but upgrading skills and lifelong learning can help. Sagar Goel shares insights from a partnership with the Singaporean government on a digital reskilling program that helped people gain experience for jobs for which they previously wouldn’t have qualified.

Bonnie Hancock, Ironwoman, paddler, record breaker

In 2020, Bonnie Hancock began paddling her sea kayak in a clockwise loop around Australia. It took her 254 days to circumnavigate the continent, breaking the previous world record by more than two months. She shares the ups and downs of her 12,700-kilometer journey — including brushes with crocodiles, sharks and hypothermia — and how she learned to find resilience and beauty in the toughest moments.

Moving on up: Talks from day 3 of TEDWomen 2023

For the final day of TEDWomen 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia, a multidisciplinary group of experts took on the challenges and opportunities of navigating change — from reimagining migration for political power and addressing the real threats of AI to championing inclusivity, celebrating nature’s wildness and pondering life’s myriad complexities through art.

The event: Sessions 4 and 5 of TEDWomen 2023, hosted by TEDWomen editorial director Pat Mitchell, TED’s head of curation Helen Walters and activist, filmmaker and entrepreneur Maya Penn

When and where: Friday, October 13, 2023, at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia

Speakers: Charles M. Blow, Sasha Luccioni, Ruha Benjamin, Melonie D. Parker, Sherrell Dorsey, Mary Ann Sieghart, Dyhia Belhabib, Rebecca McMackin, Lucy McBath, Valerie Montgomery Rice, Maira Kalman, Freada Kapor Klein, Sheila Ngozi Oparaocha, Chantale Zuzi Leader

Music: Darkwave artist Abra captivated the TEDWomen audience with her signature blend of gothic, R&B and electronic music.

Societal progress often feels like two steps forward, one step back — how do we change that? New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow calls for a peaceful, reverse migration of Black Americans to southern US states, to write over legacies of oppression and wield political power to change history.

We’ve all heard it recently: “AI could kill us all.” Instead of catastrophizing, AI ethics researcher Sasha Luccioni wants to address AI’s more pressing risks — like carbon emissions, copyright infringement and biased data — by creating tools and legislation that promote transparency.

In the era of superintelligent AI, are health care and housing for all really beyond reach? From the outcry against Atlanta’s “Cop City” to tech-driven democracy in Barcelona, researcher Ruha Benjamin imagines a future where tech and people-power work in tandem, not in opposition.

How can we create safe and inclusive work cultures for all? Google’s chief diversity officer Melonie D. Parker joins journalist and host of the TED Tech podcast Sherrell Dorsey in a nuanced conversation about creating a sustainably inclusive company where every employee can thrive.

We still take women less seriously than men, says author, journalist and broadcaster Mary Ann Sieghart. She explains how we can tackle what she calls the “authority gap” by questioning our biases against women’s intelligence (like judging a woman by the pitch of her voice) and actively promoting female experts.

Criminal groups use sophisticated technology to perpetrate crimes on the ocean: drug smugglers pilot autonomous submarines; pirates use satellites to detect ships they plan to capture and ransom. Maritime crime fighter Dyhia Belhabib introduces Heva, a tool that uses AI to aggregate international criminal records with the goal of detecting and stopping maritime crime.

Ecological horticulturist Rebecca McMackin explores the beauty of letting your garden run wild, surveying the success she’s had increasing biodiversity on the piers of Brooklyn Bridge Park and offering tips for creating wildlife-friendly habitats at home.

Following the death of her only son, US Congresswoman Lucy McBath was elected to office with one major goal: pass comprehensive gun safety legislation. She shares the power of a personal story to bridge divides and make real, impactful change.

“There are challenges and fears that catapult us to become the greatest versions of ourselves, to become great leaders,” says health equity advocate and president and CEO of Morehouse School of Medicine Valerie Montgomery Rice. She shares three lessons in leadership and shows how they can guide anyone hoping to break through fear, stand up for what’s right and build opportunity for all.

Multidisciplinary artist Maira Kalman delivers a delightfully wry, sneakily profound reflection on time, death, work, art, family, dreams and more. Backed by her wise, witty illustrations, her talk seems to embody the entirety of life itself, in all its absurd glory.

Impact investor Freada Kapor Klein is building fairness into the core of tech companies. Her VC fund, Kapor Capital, only invests in businesses that commit to hiring diverse teams, fostering inclusive workplaces and creating products and services that close opportunity gaps.

The dominant narrative of energy transition has a problem, says energy equity expert Sheila Oparaocha: it ignores the billions of people without energy access. For just and inclusive climate solutions, Oparaocha says we must empower women and prioritize universal access to sustainable energy.

After surviving devastating violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chantale Zuzi Leader found safety in the US. She urges everyone to consider the problem of displacement with curiosity and compassion — and offers refugees like her a powerful message of hope: “It is possible to break through.”

Life, love and finding a path: Talks from day 2 of TEDWomen 2023

Day 2 of TEDWomen 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia featured an interdisciplinary array of ideas from speakers who are disrupting poverty, creating bold art, restoring Indigenous rights, exploring bioluminescence in nature and much more.

The event: Sessions 2 and 3 of TEDWomen 2023, hosted by TEDWomen editorial director Pat Mitchell and activist, filmmaker and entrepreneur Maya Penn

When and where: Thursday, October 12, 2023, at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia

Speakers: Tracie Revis, Diana Greene Foster, Aisha Nyandoro, Andre Dickens, Rosita Najmi, Esha Chhabra, Paige Alexander, Jay Bailey, Karinna Grant, Laetitia Ky, Glenn Close, Laurel Braitman, Wan Faridah Akmal Jusoh, Gary Barker, Lindsay Morris, Reed J. Williams, Maria E. Sophocles

A warm welcome: From Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, who shared how the city has partnered with the Carter Center on a campaign called Inform Women, Transform Lives, which is aimed at raising awareness about women’s right to information.

Music: An enchanting, genre-bending performance of her songs “Universe,” “Statues” and “Liberation” by singer-songwriter and producer Buzz.

Tracie Revis’s ancestors were forcibly removed from their homeland in what is currently known as Georgia. Now, she’s working to reclaim part of that land, the Ocmulgee Mounds, and turn it into Georgia’s first national park and preserve, which would be co-managed by the Muscogee Creek tribe — tapping into the immense power of their ancestral homeland to heal generational trauma.

Does having an abortion negatively impact a woman’s life? Demographer Diana Greene Foster’s research, known as The Turnaway Study, shows that women who want abortions and get them experience better mental and physical health and socioeconomic well-being than those who are denied.

For Black mothers receiving guaranteed income through the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, a first-of-its-kind guaranteed income program in the US, a steady check meant having the power to uplift those around them. Inspired by their example, poverty disruptor Aisha Nyandoro wants people to redefine wealth in terms of the good it can create.

Don’t fret about your leadership style, says global development economist Rosita Najmi — focus instead on your leadership languages. She explains why the best leaders are “multilingual,” fluent in the languages of business, philanthropy and public policy.

“Sustainability” has become a business buzzword, but environmental business journalist Esha Chhabra thinks it’s time to dig deeper. She outlines the growing wave of regenerative companies — which take a far more holistic approach to operations, with every aspect of business driving towards solving a social problem — and shows how many of them are already making big changes in fashion, energy, food, agriculture and beyond.

Access to information is the key to unlocking human rights for all, says equality champion Paige Alexander. Leading The Carter Center, she and her team are connecting women to vital resources to get educated, start businesses and transform lives around the world.

When creating an incubator for Black entrepreneurs, Jay Bailey drew inspiration from Motown and HBCUs — two great models for economic mobility. What do they have in common? Bailey says both cultivate belonging and give people the freedom to believe.

What if you could buy the latest fashions without crowding your closet or growing your carbon footprint? Digital fashion entrepreneur Karinna Grant says that future is already emerging: NFTs and augmented reality are expanding possibilities for creative consumption while decreasing waste.

Artist Laetitia Ky creates incredible sculptures using the hair on her head (and a bit of wire), transforming it into surprising forms — an umbrella, a sunflower, wings, a raised fist — that promote bodily autonomy and self-acceptance.

In 2009, Jessie Close confessed to her sister, actor Glenn Close, that her son’s struggle with schizophrenia had filled her with thoughts of suicide. She recounts how this revelation inspired their mental health advocacy organization, Bring Change To Mind, which is seeking to transform society’s negative perceptions of mental illness.

“Life is just one endless sushi conveyor belt of things that are going to test you and teach you at the same time,” says writer Laurel Braitman. Sharing the story of growing up as her dad battled cancer, she shares wisdom on why you can’t have joy without sorrow, bravery without fear.

There are more than 2,000 firefly species that we know of, and they’re found on every continent except for Antarctica. Wan Faridah Akmal Jusoh explores the mysteries of these luminous beetles — which are an essential part of a healthy ecosystem — and details her quest to discover new firefly species and safeguard them as their habitats disappear.

From childhood, boys have violent impulses imbued in them by a society that emphasizes independence at any cost. Unsurprisingly, most violent crimes are committed by men. Gary Barker shares ways to overcome violence by cultivating male empathy.

After bringing her son to a summer camp for gender-nonconforming children, photographer Lindsay Morris launched a project to share the kids’ stories with the world. One of them, Reed J. Williams, is now a powerful advocate for transgender youth. Together, Morris and Williams reveal two sides to the LGBTQ+ experience — one as a mother, one as a trans woman — and offer poignant insight into the power of community.

Gynecologist Maria E. Sophocles explains the science behind menopause — and its unsexy impacts in the bedroom. From estrogen to advocacy, she offers some solutions for women to bridge “the bedroom gap” and get back to comfortable, pleasurable sex.

Momentum: Notes from Session 7 of TED Countdown Summit 2023

TED Countdown Summit 2023 concluded with a wide-ranging session featuring eight inspiring takes from around the world on how to ensure a fast, fair transition to a clean energy future.

The event: Talks from Session 6 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, hosted by TED’s David Biello and Lindsay Levin with journalist Orlando P. Bailey.

When and where: Friday, July 14, 2023, at the Fillmore Detroit in Detroit, Michigan

Speakers: Kala Constantino, Rebecca Collyer, Rich Powell, Zainab Usman, Amir Nizar Zuabi, Sims Witherspoon, Ramón Méndez Galain, Mike Posner

There’s a green energy wave swelling in the Philippines. Kala Constantino, director of the ecology advocacy group Tara Climate Foundation introduces us to a cross-section of the actors working to build a grid for cheap and clean renewable power throughout Asia. Electricity consumers in the Philippines pay one of the highest bills in Southeast Asia due to imported fossil fuels. Yet, as an island nation, the country also loses hundreds of millions of dollars every year to the impacts of climate disasters aggravated by carbon emissions. Activists have already encouraged the government to set aside funds for renewables and slow down the construction of coal-fired plants. With their help, Constantino hopes to see the Philippines become energy independent through solar and wind power, which will not only reduce electricity costs but also create jobs in a new, profitable sector.

Rebecca Collyer is the executive director of 2023 Audacious Project grantee ReNew2030, a global coalition to scale the use of wind and solar energy. In conversation with TED science curator David Biello, Collyer explores how to ensure the transition to renewable energy is fast and fair — a crucial task, as the power sector produces more carbon emissions than any other sector in the world. She shows how, by mobilizing governments, businesses and local communities around the world, ReNew2030 aims to scale wind and solar power capacity by 2030 and set the world up for a climate-secure future — all while creating local jobs and clean air.

We’ve all heard of the dangers of NIMBY-ism (“not in my backyard”). Climate innovation leader Rich Powell takes it a step further, saying that the true barrier to immediate implementation of clean energy projects is BANANA-ism: “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.” This means that critical infrastructure like windmills, nuclear plants and flexible power grids can get bogged down for years in the permitting process — or killed by wealthy lobbyists seeking to keep wind farms or solar panels away from their property. Powell believes that the quickest way to solve our clean energy crisis is to remove these barriers, while keeping environmental protections like the Clean Water Act. If voters and regulators can find common ground, then he says we’ll be well on our way toward replacing our existing power grid with one focused on renewables.

Solving the climate crisis requires collective action on a global scale, but today’s economy is becoming fractured between four regions: the US, China, Europe and the rest of the world. Political economist Zainab Usman says the solution lies with policymakers, business leaders and activists. Working together worldwide, they can distribute low-carbon technology globally; prioritize consumer welfare to make green tech more accessible; and set global standards to govern the sourcing of strategic, nonrenewable materials (such as the minerals in solar panels and other green products). With these goals, Usman says, we don’t have to live out the divided, dystopian future predicted by George Orwell and other such writers long before.

Tapping into the power of theater and its ability to turn pressing issues into human stories that spark hope, theater director and playwright Amir Nizar Zuabi shares the journey of Little Amal — a 10-year-old refugee girl (who is actually a 13-foot puppet) that went on an epic, 5,000-mile migration across eight countries in a globe-trotting art piece called “The Walk.” She embodied the broken global refugee system that has left so many people vulnerable and displaced. Inspired by the impact Little Amal had on the communities she passed through, Zuabi unveils for the first time his next piece: “The Herds,” a massive migration of animal puppets that will start in West Africa and end in Norway, set to begin their travels in 2025. Evolving as they move, the herds will take on new species native to each country they encounter, raising awareness about climate change and the threat it poses to animals and humans alike in a devastating, powerful and beautiful way.

Sims Witherspoon wants to use artificial intelligence to tackle climate change. When building a sustainable future, she believes AI can help us better understand the impact of climate change on Earth’s ecosystems, accelerate the breakthrough science we need to create a carbon-free energy supply and speed up the transition to renewable energy sources. Witherspoon explains how she and her team recently partnered with Google to develop an AI that accurately predicts wind availability on one of Google’s wind farms. They trained a neural net on weather forecasts and Google’s historical turbine data and then deployed it on the wind farm to test its accuracy. Their AI ultimately performed 20 percent better than Google’s existing system, and Google has since decided to scale the technology — a win for the company and the planet.

Fifteen years ago, Uruguay was experiencing an energy crisis; today, the tiny nation produces 98 percent of its electricity from renewable sources — and even exports extra energy to countries like Argentina and Brazil. Former particle physicist Ramón Méndez Galain charted the country’s transition to renewables as head of the country’s National Energy Agency. He shares how they achieved energy stability with widespread political support by shifting away from fossil fuels toward clean energy sources like wind, solar and sustainable biomass made from rice hulls, bagasse and pulp. Uruguay also developed technologies to predict the availability of intermittent sources, like wind and solar, to determine which energy sources to rely on and when. Although the transition required massive effort, coordination and innovation, the country can now depend on a stable, sustainable and, yes, profitable energy sector.

Singer-songwriter Mike Posner performs two hit songs, “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” and “Could You Do the Same,” and delivers an inspiring talk about how he walked nearly 3,000 miles across the United States. A lot happened along the way, he says — including a life-threatening rattlesnake bite — but the journey left him with five crucial life lessons and a sense of deep, true happiness.

Renewal: Notes from Session 5 of TED Countdown Summit 2023

For Session 5 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, seven speakers underscored the urgency for collective action, highlighting the growing frequency and severity of extreme weather events; insights on the electric vehicle revolution; the interconnectedness of deforestation, pandemics and climate change; the crucial role of leadership in climate justice and more.

The event: Talks from Session 5 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, hosted by TED’s Logan McClure Davda and journalist Orlando P. Bailey

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

Speakers: Al Roker, Cynthia Williams, Neil Vora, Ludmila Rattis, Louise Mabulo, David Lammy, Justin J. Pearson

Music: Multidisciplinary artist, musician, creative producer and Flint, Michigan native Tunde Olaniran explores themes of identity, injustice and empowerment across the worlds of music, dance, film, literature and performance art. Joined on the TED Countdown stage by four incredible dancers, Olaniran smolders through a set of songs powered by experimental electronic beats.

Al Roker is known as “America’s weatherman,” and he’s been in the weather business for a long time, reporting live from some of recent history’s worst storms and natural disasters. All this has made one thing abundantly clear to him: extreme weather is increasing in frequency and severity, and the consequences will be devastating. Offering a comprehensive overview of the knock-on effects of extreme weather, Roker encourages all of us to take small collective actions and unite in our efforts to address climate change in order to create a more sustainable, hopeful future for all.

Cynthia Williams‘s family has long worked in the auto industry — her grandfather started with General Motors during the 1940s boom, followed by her father a generation later along with nearly all her uncles. They witnessed a total transformation in the era of transportation, and today, as a sustainability executive for Ford, Williams is seeing another: the electric vehicle revolution. She explains how the car industry is already advancing towards a sustainable future by building new carbon-neutral manufacturing plants and training hundreds of thousands of workers. They’re also investing in supportive infrastructure (making sure EV charging stations are as plentiful and convenient as gas stations) and developing products that consumers want. Electric vehicles are sustainable, says Williams; they should be desirable, too.

The first rule of physicians is to do no harm — and that extends to trees, says actor and activist Rainn Wilson as he introduces Neil Vora, who leads pandemic prevention at Conservation International. Having worked at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for more than a decade previously, Vora shares his unique journey of transitioning from treating patients to protecting forests and the species in them. Highlighting the importance of preventing pandemics (not just reacting to them), Vora exposes three crucial ways deforestation impacts human health: (1) Animals living alongside humans are more likely to carry germs that can infect us; (2) When people move into deforested areas, there is more exposure to new viruses; (3) And animals are more likely to spread illness when their homes are threatened. “We have solutions to address deforestation. And if we implement them wisely, we can prevent outbreaks and mitigate climate change,” Vora says.

Ecologist Ludmila Rattis reveals the surprisingly fruitful benefits of letting nature take care of business, sharing how the digestive habits of tapirs in Amazonia spread seeds throughout the region, regenerating the forest. As tapirs walk, they eat fruit, slowly digest them and then poop, transporting the fruit seeds to new land. In a single tapir dropping, Rattis’s lab found an average of 733 seeds belonging to up to 24 different species. Creatures like dung beetles help reduce the competition in this concentrated pile of life — spreading the seeds as they roll, tunnel and bury the poop — and show how the somewhat undignified parts of nature are intertwined with our planet’s future more than we realize.

Louise Mabulo grew up on seemingly strange advice from her parents and grandparents about planting toward a full moon or burying a rock under root crops for a better yield. While others tended to regard her family’s beliefs as superstitious, Mabulo has since discovered the profound wisdom in them. She works in restorative agroforestry, and through her initiative, The Cacao Project, which works to build sustainable and climate-resilient livelihoods for farmers, she’s seen even the most bizarre stories proven true. Crops planted during a full moon do bear more fruit; root crops do thrive when planted with rocks because rocks keep the soil loose enough for air pockets to form and encourage growth. Invisible knowledge, Mabulo says, might hold the key to helping us adapt our ecosystems to a changing climate. It also affirms our spiritual and cultural connection with nature and our place in it.

In a wide-ranging and inspirational interview, Tennessee state representative Justin J. Pearson and British MP David Lammy discuss the pressing issue of climate justice and the nuances of leadership within the movement. Pearson shares his journey in the movement that began with a fight against a pipeline project in Memphis, Tennessee, emphasizing the significance of empowering the most affected communities and acknowledging the interconnectedness of different social issues. Lammy explains the need for a collective focus on large-scale issues and the role of climate justice as a unifying objective that transcends identity politics. They collectively emphasize the necessity for unifying and authentic leadership — and the need to hold powerful nations accountable for environmental action.

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.

Lessons: Notes from Session 2 of TED Countdown Summit 2023

What lessons are already available to us as we tackle climate change? For Session 2 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, science, solutions and the role of industry in stemming the threat of the climate emergency took center stage.

The event: Talks from Session 2 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, hosted by TED’s Lindsay Levin and David Lammy, Member of Parliament for Tottenham, England and Shadow Foreign Secretary

When and where: Wednesday, July 12, 2023, at the Fillmore Detroit in Detroit, Michigan

Speakers: Jonathan Foley, Emma Nehrenheim, Cedrik Neike, Susan Lozier, Morten Bo Christiansen, Bo Cerup-Simonsen, Mike Duggan, Laprisha Berry Daniels

To solve climate change, the International Monetary Fund estimates that the global community needs to invest between three and six trillion dollars annually in climate solutions. Where should that money go and which projects should we fund? Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown, uses a science-based framework to outline a plan for investing with maximum impact. First, we need to prioritize immediate actions with cumulative benefits, like stopping deforestation and cutting methane leaks. Next, we should focus our spending on cutting carbon emissions now over investing in distant high-tech solutions. Third, we must prioritize geographical hotspots with an outsized effect on climate change, like the Amazon rainforest or high-emission factories. And finally, we should invest in solutions that benefit people’s well-being, promote food security and increase access to clean water and sanitation.

Batteries will be fundamental to powering a sustainable world — but only if we don’t repeat the same mistakes of past industrialization, says battery recycler Emma Nehrenheim. She outlines the environmentally intensive impact of battery production — particularly from the extraction of minerals for lithium-ion batteries, which provide energy for electric vehicles and other key aspects of life — and proposes a shift towards a circular battery economy that uses and reuses already existing materials, vastly reducing the industry’s carbon footprint and need for mineral extraction.

We are running out of time to save our planet from climate change — and the metaverse can help. Using virtual tools like AI to cheat time in the real world, Cedrik Neike explains how “digital twin technology” (think simulated giga factories that are one-for-one digital copies of real ones) can help solve real-world problems more efficiently by providing a digital space to test solutions, without pollution. Using the example of virtually ideating the production of safer and faster-charging batteries and then bringing those learnings to the physical world, Neike points to the potential of industrial metaverses to revolutionize industries and redesign entire cities — from transportation, agriculture and housing — addressing massive challenges and avoiding the creation of excess waste at the same time.

Oceanographer Susan Lozier dives into the importance of the ocean’s natural circulation, which overturns water in a way that naturally captures carbon and regulates global temperatures. She shares the incredible research being done internationally to track changes in this overturn, as warming global temperatures could slow the circulation, lessen carbon uptake and increase the rate of climate-related disasters. While a collapse in this age-old system isn’t likely until 2100, Lozier warns of the dangers faced by future generations if we don’t change course now, calling for climate action to lower temperatures within the next 10 years.

As leader of the decarbonization team for A.P. Moller – Maersk, Morten Bo Christiansen is drawing an organizational roadmap to net zero that could help transform the global shipping industry. In conversation with TED’s Lindsay Levin, Christiansen shares his company’s ambitious goal to decarbonize their heavy-emitting business by 2040, highlighting how they’ve started implementing solutions like using green methanol as fuel in their container ships and deploying electric trucks in the US. He also points out the challenges in scaling green fuel production, price issues due to the high cost of green fuels and the need for collaborations across the value chain to manage these obstacles. Despite these challenges, Christiansen remains optimistic, making the case that the added cost to consumers for using green shipping methods is far outweighed by the urgently needed environmental benefits.

In conversation with TED’s Lindsay Levin, Bo Cerup-Simonsen, CEO of the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, discusses the essential role of their center in orchestrating systemic, global collaboration to tackle large-scale environmental challenges. Discussing the center’s origins, purpose and the strides it’s made in technological, commercial and regulatory spaces, Cerup-Simonsen highlights the push towards green alternatives, like green methanol and ammonia, in global shipping. Through tangible initiatives like “green corridors,” which enable end-to-end zero-carbon shipping between selected ports, they’re fostering cross-industry collaboration to accelerate the green transition and sharing lessons learned in combating the uncertainty hindering decisive action from companies and nations.

Mike Duggan is serving his third term as mayor of Detroit, and he’s dead set on building the city’s climate responsiveness. His proposal is a unique one: to transform blighted, vacant lots into solar farms throughout the city. He describes how, with the buy-in of Detroiters themselves, he plans to start building these farms in different neighborhoods with the aim of powering all of Detroit’s municipal buildings and cleaning up dilapidated, vacant land from the city’s manufacturing past.

Like many cities, Detroit is already feeling the effects of climate change. In the past 10 years, two major floods have cost the city more than a billion dollars in damages. The challenge of climate change may be daunting, but human beings have moved from place to place and adapted to changes in climate (both environmental and social) throughout history. For inspiration, public health social worker Laprisha Berry Daniels mines the survival strategies her grandparents learned after leaving the Jim Crow South to settle in Detroit. The climate crisis may be unprecedented, but Daniels says we can still prepare for it by embracing the lessons of the past. First, we must accept the reality of climate change and prepare for it. Second, we should embrace the power of mutual aid. Lastly, we should empower communities to adapt through community-led planning.

Celebrating the unbridled power of imagination: Notes on Session 11 of TED2023

Session 11 of TED2023 was a celebration of the unbridled power of imagination. What is imagination, exactly? According to poet and session co-host Sarah Kay, it’s the ability to notice, see and observe what is — and then to dream, build and expand on what is not but could be. Eight speakers and one performer led the way in doing just that for this classically eclectic evening session.

The event: Talks from Session 11 of TED2023: Possibility, hosted by poet Sarah Kay and TED’s head of curation Helen Walters

When and where: Thursday, April 20, 2023, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Lonneke Gordijn, Vinu Daniel, Misan Harriman, Melissa Villaseñor, Imran Chaudhri, Lucas Rizzotto, Ersin Han Ersin

Opening poem: Poet Sarah Kay shares some of the amazing things she sees “wandering the streets of Bewilderville” in New York City, encouraging us all “to pick up when the universe calls.”

Performance: A self-described “dance floor demon,” singer-songwriter Tolliver rocks the house with a performance of “Say What” and “I’m Nervous.”

The talks in brief:

Nature is never static, says experiential artist Lonneke Gordijn, whose work with creative partner Ralph Nauta is informed by that principle. Together they’ve created artworks that evoke nature and border on magic, founding Studio Drift to tap into the world’s mysteries. Gordijn describes Shylight, an installation of lights that float down from the ceiling, opening and closing, interacting like flowers, and how it became an ongoing art piece exploring different mechanisms and rhythms that spark different reactions in their audience. Fascinated by murmurations (creatures going places, leaderless, moving together), Gordijin shares the evolving process of their research-backed, software-driven environmental art piece made of a building-sized swarm of drones that flew across the desert at Burning Man, enchanting all. Unexpectedly, she reveals a massive block of concrete hiding in the shadows of the TED Theater, as — like magic — it becomes weightless and begins to float over Gordijn … over the audience … almost like it came to life and was trying to find its way back home.

What if we could put waste to work building a better world? Climate-responsive architect Vinu Daniel is doing exactly that, having developed new, natural building techniques that utilize local, discarded materials such as plastic, tires and mud to create magnificent yet utilitarian spaces. His design firm, Wallmakers, builds dreamlike homes, schools and more that blend with the landscape, showing what’s possible when we build with our planet in mind.

Given a warm video introduction by his friend, Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, arts advocate Misan Harriman‘s love for rich cultural experiences was ignited in his youth by the internet. It was an “endless library of the extraordinary,” he says, especially for a dyslexic Nigerian boy like himself who felt under-stimulated in his boarding school classes. Harriman went from observer of content to artist after he saw an image of Coretta Scott King at the funeral of her late husband Martin Luther King Jr. — it showed him that photography had the power to expose the work we need to do in this life. When George Floyd was murdered, Harriman took his camera to the protests that erupted in London and captured one of the greatest civil rights movements in our lifetimes — and Martin Luther King III shared one of his images on social media and millions saw what his work illuminated. Pointing to the hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa, he urges us all to take an unflinching look at what needs to be done in the world around us — and then do something.

While Saturday Night Live alum Melissa Villaseñor earned comedic success through her uncanny celebrity impressions, too often she felt the laughs weren’t for her but rather for the characters. She shares how she learned to combine personal vulnerability with her classic voice bits (think: Sandra Bullock, Britney Spears, Dolly Parton and many more), centering her identity and family story on stage. Through her touching, hilarious journey, Villaseñor encourages everyone to be themselves and believe in their dreams — even if you don’t know what to do after you achieve them.

From the desktop computer to the laptop to the smarthphone to the smartwatch, in recent decades our devices have grown smaller and more powerful. User experience visionary and Humane cofounder Imran Chaudhri says the next step in this progression will be far more radical. Using the power of AI, our devices will disappear completely, and the human-technology relationship will become “screenless, seamless and sensing.” To make his point, Chaudhri previews his company’s unreleased device, which sits in his breast pocket and can translate his words — and voice — into French, ask for local shopping suggestions and assess if a chocolate bar meets his dietary restrictions. He forecasts a future where AI-powered tech will do away with screens, helping us to be more present and efficient in our everyday lives.

What is the relationship between art and technology? In the past, says mixed reality experiential artist Lucas Rizzotto, artists often imagined new realities that engineers later built (think of the influence of sci-fi writers, for instance). But as powerful technology grows more accessible, Rizzotto wants to reverse this formula by encouraging artists to express themselves through technology — because it’s perspective, even more than technical skill, that leads to a vision worth creating. He shares how his own free-ranging exploration has led to various unexpected and delightful innovations: a suit you can play like an instrument and a game for lonely people now being adapted as group therapy. “When you take the technology we don’t understand and approach it as an artist, you do things a conventional engineer would never do,” Rizzotto says.

What’s it like to be a tree — to host a vast web of relationships that anchor an entire ecosystem? In a mind-blowing talk, artist Ersin Han Ersin asks us to step into a giant sequoia tree, peering through its bark into the tapestry of life within. He gives a tour of his multisensory, mixed-reality installations — co-created with the art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast along with teams of scientists, programmers, structural engineers and more — and shares how they explore the concept of umwelt, or the unique sensory world of different organisms. The work is an effort to rethink the primordial relationship between plants, animals and fungi — and to dismantle the myth of human separation from the natural world. “We are as much trees as trees are us,” he says.

New levels of AI creativity … and some hard questions: Notes on Session 10 of TED2023

The uses of AI are seemingly limitless, a fact perhaps most easily apparent in the world of art. While some artists fear their skills could be replaced by computer-generated creations, others have embraced machine learning collaborations, spawning mind-boggling works of the imagination. In Session 10 of TED2023, five speakers explore the creative possibilities opened up by AI and discuss the pros and cons of a world where everyone — even computers — can create.

The event: Talks from Session 10 of TED2023: Possibility, hosted by head of TED Chris Anderson

When and where: Thursday, April 20, 2023, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Shou Chew, Eileen Isagon Skyers, Bilawal Sidhu, Refik Anadol, K Allado-McDowell

Hot on the heels of his congressional testimony, TikTok CEO Shou Chew sits down with head of TED Chris Anderson to discuss the roots of TikTok: what it does, how it works and what it’s doing to protect its users. Chew reaffirms his platform’s dedication to offering creativity, inspiration and fun to millions, while addressing the privacy concerns that have led many in the United States to call for a ban. Far from being a potential data gold mine for the Chinese government, Chew says, all new information on US users harvested by the app’s revolutionary interest-predicting algorithms is housed in servers within the US — although he admits it will take the rest of 2023 to delete old data stored in servers elsewhere. Meanwhile, TikTok continues to prioritize safety, particularly for its youngest users, by limiting access to sensitive material, gently offering suggestions to reduce screen time and moderating content (a Herculean task performed by AI algorithms in tandem with 10,000 human moderators).

From bizarre lifeforms to imaginary influencers, we’ve seen AI create all sorts of images, says media art curator Eileen Isagon Skyers — but how do we engage with art made by machines? She points to artists, metaphors and narratives that are pushing the boundaries of AI, including Mario Klingemann’s “Memories of Passersby I”: a machine that uses neural networks to generate a seemingly infinite stream of portraits trained on images from the 17th to 19th centuries. Isagon Skyers shows how AI can be a gateway beyond the human imagination (and physical reality), like artist Sophia Crespo‘s AI-generated “Neural Zoo” which depicts chimeras that don’t exist. She points to Sara Ludy’s multi-media digital art that explores immateriality, Ivona Tau’s AI-generated images that could be mistaken for photographs and Claire Silver’s collaborative paintings she creates with machines. In order to grapple with an increasingly technological future, we need to see what’s being made at the intersection of human and machine creativity, says Isagon Skyers.

Creative technologist Bilawal Sidhu is on a lifelong quest to blur the lines between reality and imagination. As a kid, this meant making videos manipulated with computer graphics and visual effects. Now, with advances in AI, this quest is getting supercharged, he says. He offers a tour of the techniques he’s been playing with, including Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF), which create volumetric 3D scenes based on 2D images, and ControlNet, which lets users guide an AI image generation process and essentially re-skin reality. The end result? Young creators no longer need to master expensive tools and esoteric knowledge, he says. Creation will be democratized, and all that’s required is a vision and a knack for co-creating with AI models.

Vividly colorful images of artificial coral reefs ripple on a massive screen behind media artist and director Refik Anadol as he describes his project “Coral Dreams”: AI-generated imagery of corals, created by an algorithm trained on more than 100 million images. Anadol uses machine learning algorithms by harnessing large, publicly available data sets and transforming them into visualizations that tap into humanity’s collective memories — essentially preserving the disappearing parts of nature while also creating artificial realities. With data as his paintbrush, Anadol evokes the feeling of being digitally immersed in nature: projects like “Floral Dreams” use AI trained on 75 million floral images, while “scent of our dreams” uses an algorithm trained on more than half a million scents. As the lines between physical and virtual, nature and technology blur, generative AI helps us create new multi-sensory realities and reflect on the world we live in. Deeply inspired by the leaders of the Yawanawá tribe in Brazil, Anadol asks, “Could we use AI to preserve and learn about ancient knowledge about nature?”

“Are we at risk of losing what makes us most human? How can we preserve and even enhance the best in ourselves with AI?” asks writer, musician and AI collaborator K Allado-McDowell. They believe the answer lies in creation, collaboration and care. Having written three books with the aid of AI, Allado-McDowell says nurturing creative relations with these programs can help open the mind, bringing to life ideas that could never have been born of a single creator. Collaboration is important for shaping a well-rounded and diverse future of AI, as the voices that are fed into machine learning help shape its output, too. Finally, Allado-McDowell believes AI should most prominently be used to discover new ways to help people heal, through both art and science, emphasizing care as a north star.

In a fascinating discussion on the state of art in the age of AI, artists Eileen Isagon Skyers, Bilawal Sidhu, Refik Anadol and K Allado-McDowell share how they’re using tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E to fuel their creativity. With questions from head of TED Chris Anderson, the four creators dig into a range of topics: the repercussions of a market flooded with people who can now make art within seconds, the potential need for new copyright rules, and the role of creative constraints when working with AI tools. They end by sharing what excites them most about this novel, exploratory phase of artistic creation. The field is wide open, says K Allado-McDowell: it’s up to anyone to become a genre-defining mastermind of the form.

Discovering how our brains might soon get upgraded: Notes on Session 6 of TED2023

In a mind-bending Session 6 of TED2023, neurotech, mental health and breakthroughs in brain-computer interfaces took the mainstage, with seven incredible speakers sharing ideas on how our brains may soon get an upgrade.

The event: Talks from Session 6 of TED2023: Possibility, hosted by TED’s head of curation Helen Walters

When and where: Wednesday, April 19, 2023, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Luis von Ahn, Andy Dunn, Francesca Hogi, Gus Worland, Maya Shankar, Nita Farahany, Conor Russomanno

The talks in brief:

We often think of education as an equalizing force, but unequal access to education actually worsens inequality. Motivated by his experience in his native Guatemala, educational equity technologist Luis von Ahn embarked on an ambitious mission: to boost access to education globally. The brainchild of that effort, Duolingo, now has hundreds of millions of users. But in designing Duolingo, von Ahn faced a big problem: How could an app designed to actually teach you something compete with platforms like TikTok and Instagram, some of the most addictive things humans have ever created? If Duolingo was the “broccoli” of smartphone apps, von Ahn decided he would have to “make broccoli taste like dessert.” The result: an app that harnesses the psychological techniques of social media and mobile games for a good cause.

Mental health truth-teller Andy Dunn began suffering from manic episodes due to bipolar I disorder in his early 20s, around the same time he was creating his immensely successful online retail company Bonobos. Such mental health issues have been shown to appear at higher rates among entrepreneurs, often applauded for their “crazy” ideas while their darker “shadows” are ignored. Dunn shares his journey to mental wellness and offers a vision of a future where entrepreneurs are “able to dream crazy dreams” while also being held accountable, in and out of the boardroom. He calls for more accessible, affordable healthcare for all and asks everyone to consider the truly conditional nature of love and leadership. “Entrepreneurs are not gods, even when we think we are,” says Dunn.

“You were born knowing how to love,” says love coach, podcast host and TED community member Francesca Hogi. She spent 10 years speaking to thousands of individuals about their romantic hopes and dreams, uncovering the pervasiveness of false marketing that claims “while you can’t buy love, you can buy your worthiness to be loved.” Hogi says this propaganda makes us believe love is external and scarce, instead of internal and infinite. To find true love, she says to begin with cultivating love for yourself within, and “transcend the shallow fantasy of love you’ve been sold for so long.”

Lots of people talk about the need to be physically fit, but mentally fit? Not as much. Radio host Gus Worland is trying to change that by helping people develop the skills and “emotional muscle” needed to recognize when they’re struggling, learn how to talk about it and be vulnerable enough to ask for help. With his nonprofit Gotcha4Life, Worland is spreading this work in the hopes of ending suicide and breaking the stigma around mental health issues. He shares the story of his best friend and mentor, who took his own life years ago and issues a call to everyone to “look after their own villages” and check in on the most important people in their lives – today. Where to start? It can be as simple as sending this text message to the people that mean the most to you, Worland says: “I love you. I miss you. See you soon xoxo.”

Who are you, and how do you transform in the face of change? Cognitive scientist Maya Shankar shares three questions you can ask to find out who you are when the world feels like it’s shifting under your feet. First: “How does this change change what you’re capable of?” Next, “How might this change change what you value?” And third: “How might this change change how you define yourself?” Shankar shares stories — and the science behind change — of people who stepped out of their comfort zones and rigid mindsets and found themselves changed for the better. Maybe through their experiences, and Shankar’s own story as well, a new, lesser-traveled yet more rewarding and expansive path rich with possibility awaits.

While we can track the minutiae of our bodies (heart rate, blood pressure, temperature and even whether we’re snoring too loud) via a host of wearables and other devices, there is very little technology that allows us to track our brain activity. All of that is about to change. Neurotechnology ethicist Nita Farahany demonstrates how we’re witnessing the dawn of technology that will allow us to record our most private data: the electromagnetic pulses that map our thoughts and desires. This information will then unlock (and, indeed, is already unlocking) the potential to self-program ourselves via brain stimuli that could help us treat everything from depression to epilepsy. There’s a catch, however. Who is collecting our brain data, and how will they use it? Farahany argues that without a recognized and protected “human right for cognitive liberty,” we could just as easily benefit from healing as we could also fall prey to microtargeting, surveillance and manipulation.

Years ago, when he was a student at Parsons, neurotechnologist and inventor Conor Russomanno dreamed of peering into the workings of his own brain and created a low-cost, single-channel EEG machine to do just that. From this initial breakthrough, Russomanno has developed technology that utilizes not only the brain but also neglected muscles of the human body to create mind-blowing human-computer interfaces. With the help of collaborator Christian Bayerlein, who is wheelchair-bound due to a motor disorder, Russomanno demonstrates a system that allows Bayerlein to fly a drone over the astonished audience, using vestigial muscle control coupled with an optical headset equipped with neurosensors. Russomanno’s work emphasizes that his ultimate dream — a two-way brain-computer interface — depends as much on our entire nervous system (cognition, or “the mind”) as it does on the brain itself.

More than $1B catalyzed for 2023 Audacious Projects

Today, The Audacious Project, a collaborative funding initiative housed at TED, announced that more than one billion dollars has been committed to its newest cohort of projects. This is a significant funding milestone in the initiative’s five-year history and comes at a critical time on key issues such as climate change, migrant rights and criminal justice reform.

The 2023 Audacious Project grantees are:

• CAMFED: Helping girls in Sub-Saharan Africa thrive in school — and beyond
• Canopy: Scaling the use of next-generation pulp in key supply chains to conserve endangered forests
• Clean Slate Initiative: Clearing arrest and conviction records to unlock opportunity
• Global Fishing Watch: Leveraging the power of data to safeguard the ocean by making the invisible visible
• Innovative Genomics Institute: Engineering microbiomes with CRISPR to improve our climate and health
• Jan Sahas’ Migrants Resilience Collaborative: Unlocking life-enhancing benefits and services for India’s domestic migrant workers
• ReNew2030: Accelerating renewable energy for a climate-secure future
• Restore Local, A project of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), led by the World Resources Institute: Accelerating locally-led land restoration of Africa’s vital landscapes and forests
• Think of Us: Transforming foster care in the US through the power of lived experience
• Upstream USA: Increasing equitable access to high-quality contraceptive care across the US

“With our 2023 Audacious Project cohort, some of the most complex and challenging problems we’re facing right now – transitioning to renewable energy, increasing access to reproductive health care, transforming our foster care system and more – are being met by some incredible idea-makers,” said Anna Verghese, Executive Director of The Audacious Project. “Each one offers an approach to shift the status quo and the systems they operate in, and will hope to breathe possibility and transformation into these critical issues.”

Each year, The Audacious Project scours the globe for big, bold ideas and collaborates with social entrepreneurs and philanthropists to drive impact on a grand scale. It is an effort that goes beyond funding, pushing for transformative change, systems overhaul and collaboration across multiple sectors. This new cohort will present their big ideas onstage at TED2023, joining an existing portfolio of 39 Audacious projects. Since 2018, more than four billion philanthropic dollars has been catalyzed to support these projects’ visions.

“We started The Audacious Project five years ago as an experiment to see what could happen when we invite changemakers around the world to dream as big as they dare, and then shape their boldest ideas into viable plans,” said Chris Anderson, Head of TED. “It’s absolutely thrilling to see this much money raised for these projects. I’m in awe of the teams behind them — and of the donors who are funding them. Our experiment is gaining traction, and we believe it can achieve even more in the coming years.”

Read more about The Audacious Project and its five years of impact.

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ABOUT THE AUDACIOUS PROJECT

 

Launched in April 2018, The Audacious Project is a collaborative funding initiative that’s catalyzing social impact on a grand scale. Housed at TED, the nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, and with support from leading social impact advisor The Bridgespan Group, The Audacious Project convenes funders and social entrepreneurs with the goal of supporting bold solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges. The funding collective is made up of respected organizations and individuals in philanthropy, including Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ELMA Philanthropies, Emerson Collective, MacKenzie Scott, Skoll Foundation, Valhalla Foundation and more.

Each year The Audacious Project supports a new cohort. The 2023 grantees are CAMFED, Canopy, Clean Slate Initiative, Global Fishing Watch, Innovative Genomics Institute, Jan Sahas’ Migrants Resilience Collaborative, ReNew2030, Restore Local, Think of Us and Upstream USA.

New “TED Radio Hour” three-part series explores “Mind, Body, Spirit”

For millennia, humans have debated the connection between the mind, body and spirit. But today, the phrase sounds trite — a hallmark of the #selfcare industry. Over three episodes of this special series on TED Radio Hour, TED speakers will investigate fresh perspectives on how we think, move and feel.

In the first hour: the mind. The brain is the most complex organ in the human body. It gives us control over our bodies and shapes our thoughts, memories and emotions. But how? And can we coach ourselves to think better? The series kicks off with an investigation into the different ways we think and understand the world, what new brain-computer interfaces could do for sharing our thoughts and a story about taming that voice in our head that makes us miserable. Plus, a poem about preparing your mind to be more open to creative ideas. Mind-blowing stuff? Hell yes. Guests explore the internal and external influences on our minds, including animal behaviorist and autism activist Temple Grandin, podcast host and meditation advocate Dan Harris, neurointerventionist Tom Oxley and poet Sarah Kay.

The second hour focuses on the body. We know it’s important to listen to our bodies and trust how we feel, but it’s not always easy. In part 2 of our series, TED speakers explore ideas about movement, pleasure and rest. Guests include choreographer Ryan Heffington, news anchor Lee Thomas, aerialist Adie Delaney and therapist KC Davis.

In the third and final episode we hear from speakers who’ve found unique ways to rekindle the human spirit and, as the saying goes, stay “true” to themselves. Guests include author, researcher and podcaster Tania Lunar, renowned artist JR and serial entrepreneur Artur Sychov. Their challenges include invasions of privacy, incarceration, exile and simply facing human mortality. Their tactics? Sidestepping linear time with innovation, embracing uncertainty by incorporating surprise into our daily lives and using beauty to overwhelm the ugly side of humanity. Their stories will spark your zest for life, too.

You can get all three episodes of our “Mind, Body, Spirit” series, as well as more episodes of TED Radio Hour, on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Open: The talks of TED@DestinationCanada

When we come together with open hearts and open minds, anything is possible. It was in this spirit that TED partnered with Destination Canada for a day of talks and performances featuring new ideas on living, seeing the world and reimagining our shared future.

The event: TED@DestinationCanada: Open is the first event TED and Destination Canada have co-hosted to spotlight leading minds who embody the incredible breadth and depth of Canadian culture. The event was hosted by TED senior curator Cyndi Stivers.

When and where: Thursday, February 23, 2023, at the TED Theater in New York City

Opening and closing remarks: From the Honourable Randy Boissonnault, Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance for Canada, and Gloria Loree, chief marketing officer of Destination Canada

Speakers: Alysa McCall, Azim Shariff, Normand Voyer, Matricia Bauer, Lori McCarthy, Paul Bloom, Cohen Bradley, Alona Fyshe, Rebecca Darwent, Michael Green, Cameron Davis, Jiaying Zhao, Kevin Smith and Kris Alexander

Music: In the verbal version of a dance-off, the Inuit duo Silla (made up of Charlotte Qamaniq and Cynthia Pitsiulak) perform the ancient art form of katajjaq, a type of Inuit throat singing found only in the Canadian Arctic. Later in the show, singer-songwriter Mélissa Laveaux delivers a musical treat, performing two mesmerizing songs alongside bassist Sébastien Richelieu.

The talks in brief:

As Arctic sea ice melts, polar bears are being forced on land – and they’re hungry. Biologist and conservationist Alysa McCall shares what to do when you find a polar bear digging through your trash and offers inspiring solutions for protecting both the bear’s shrinking habitat and their human neighbors.

Why do we think people who work hard are “good” — even if they produce little to no results? Social psychologist Azim Shariff calls this “effort moralization”: the intuitive connection we make between hard work and moral worth, regardless of what the work produces. He explores how this mindset plays out in our work environments — leading to things like workaholism — and encourages a shift towards effort that produces something meaningful, rather than just work for work’s sake.

Take a trip to Canada’s Arctic as natural product chemist Normand Voyer explores the mysterious molecular treasures hidden in plants thriving in frigid environments. These scarcely investigated organisms could hold the key to the world’s next wonder drug, he says — so long as we work quickly enough to discover them before their ecosystems are altered by climate change.

Adopted by a white family as a child, Indigenous artist and entrepreneur Matricia Bauer, or Isko-achitaw waciy / ᐃᐢᑯ ᐃᐦᒋᑕ ᐘᒋᕀ (she who moves mountains), lost touch with her Cree heritage. Beat by beat and bead by bead, Bauer reconciled lost parts of herself by exploring the songs, stories and crafts of her culture. On a decades-long journey of re-Indigenizing herself, Bauer recites a moving poem on the ways of eagles and hawks — and illustrates the power of embracing one’s true self.

In a love letter to her native Newfoundland and Labrador, cultural storyteller Lori McCarthy shares the secret magic of this Canadian province: the rich connection between the people, the land and the food. Sharing a glimpse of the tastes, sights and generations-old stories that thrive there, McCarthy invites you to become a part of wherever you go — which could start with something as simple as sitting with a local for a cup of tea.

Have you ever done something just because you knew it was wrong? In an invitation to examine your contrarian streak, psychologist Paul Bloom shares findings from “The Perversity Project”: stories he gathered from the public of harmless (but intentional) everyday misdeeds. From sticking a finger in your friend’s ice cream to a urinal that sparked the birth of conceptual art, Bloom makes the case that, sometimes, freeing yourself from the constraints of rationality and morality can be clever, creative and even beautiful.

Haida storyteller Cohen Bradley, who holds the names of Taaydal (“coming in big”) and Gidin Kuns (“powerful eagle”) in his clan and nation, shares his culture’s perspective on legacy, weaving together stories passed on by his ancestors with his own recent story of raising a memorial pole in his ancestral village. He demonstrates the resilience of his people’s legacy despite the devastating impact of colonialism.

Is AI really as smart as people give it credit for? Researcher Alona Fyshe delves into the inner workings of AI and the human brain, breaking down how talkative tech (like ChatGPT) learns to communicate so convincingly — or not.

Boxhand. Susu. Tontine. Potlatch. These are just some of the names from around the world for philanthropy centered on formal and informal ways of giving back. Philanthropic adviser Rebecca Darwent shares how community-led practices can revolutionize and overcome the systemic racism of the financial industry — and offers lessons from collective giving that could change the ways good is done.

Architect Michael Green — a mass timber pioneer who helped spark a renaissance in constructing tall buildings out of wood — introduces a new material called “FIVE,” which is derived from natural materials and based on the structure of trees and vascular plants. FIVE could revolutionize the way we build buildings, providing a strong and organic alternative to the traditional materials of concrete, steel, masonry and wood.

In a quick, inspiring talk, youth activist Cameron Davis explains why his generation — Gen Z, with its exposure to differing viewpoints online from an early age — is uniquely positioned to create meaningful change in the world by using their voices to challenge systemic biases, advocate for inclusivity and promote justice.

Is it possible for climate action to make you feel happy? Behavioral scientist Jiaying Zhao believes that’s the only way we’ll create lasting, sustainable change. From treat meals to feng shui fridges, she offers eight tricks to lower your carbon emissions while increasing your happiness.

Coastal explorer Kevin Smith tells the story of how a group of eco-tourism businesses in the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia collaborated to create one of the biggest marine debris cleanups in history. The initiative was born during the COVID-19 pandemic, when tours were temporarily shut down, resulting in these once-competitive businesses coming together to propose a solution to clean up the coast and protect their livelihoods.

Where academia fails, video games often succeed, says professor of game design Kris Alexander. With high-quality audio, text and video focused with clear objectives, video games swiftly captivate minds and drive motivation — unlike a lecture hall. In an engaging display of the merits of digital play, Alexander calls for us to rethink the foundations of education and embrace the qualities of video games that can level up our learning.

Brighter future(s): The talks from TED@BCG 2022

Predicting the future can sometimes feel impossible, but there are clear paths we can follow to take action on the issues of the day. In a day of talks and performances, 16 leading minds gathered to present promising and hopeful solutions to problems related to health care, the economy, modern leadership and more.

The event: TED@BCG: brighter future(s) is the thirteenth event TED and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) have co-hosted to uplift forward-thinking speakers from around the globe. Hosted by TED current affairs Curator Whitney Pennington Rogers and BCG managing director and partner Julia Dhar (a past TED speaker herself!).

When and where: Thursday, September 15, 2022 at the TED World Theater in New York City

Speakers: Aparna Bharadwaj, Gareth Thomas, Tolu Oyekan, Dave Sivaprasad, Phnam Bagley, Tessa Clarke, Alex Koster, Gitte Frederiksen, June Sarpong, Zineb Sqalli, Will Guidara, Cristina Junqueira, Elena Crescia, Keenan Scott II, Veronica Chau, Nithya Vaduganathan, Paul Catchlove

Music: Musician KERA performed their serene and soulful songs “Bright Future Ahead” and “Vitamin T” for the audience.

The talks in brief:

Aparna Bharadwaj, global consumer strategist

Big idea: People can benefit from finding the hidden connections and secret similarities.

Why? Businesses tend to focus on what separates consumers in one country from another. Aparna Bharadwaj shows that it’s much more interesting for businesses to instead look for unexpected similarities across borders. Her research has revealed insights like: Chinese and Indonesians like to share snacks in groups, rather than eating alone; car-buying habits in China look similar to those in Nigeria, motivated by status more than utility; and Americans and Russians share similar motivations when shopping for clothes, looking for on-trend apparel instead of performance wear. “These are patterns where you least expect them,” Bharadwaj says, as businesses wouldn’t normally think to group consumers in these countries together. These commonalities go beyond commercial opportunities — they provide a message of hope for the world. “If only people knew that we are similar in the most profound ways, in our everyday activities … maybe we would understand and empathize with each other,” she says.

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Gareth Thomas, former pro rugby player, stigma challenger

Big idea: Together, we can tackle stigma.

How? The tattoo on Gareth Thomas’s knee is dark, ghoulish and threatening — a skeleton that represents the imminent death he felt when he first was diagnosed with HIV. The wings beneath it symbolize the freedom he felt once he finally found his voice: “Like a dead man coming back to life,” he says. The crown atop the skull embodies leadership against discrimination and misinformation. Each adornment represents his journey living, celebrating and reclaiming his truth in the face of stigma and shame. Now he’s on a mission to fight for the same for others. Thomas demystifies and redefines what it means to live with HIV, urging us to normalize conversation around all vilified conditions. The more people who know the facts — and stand up against stigma — the more the truth can spread, reducing shame and giving the world more of a fighting chance to make right what has been wrong for so long.

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Tolu Oyekan, inclusive finance promoter

Big idea: To meet developmental goals on the African continent (and beyond), historically non-profit objectives must be treated with the same urgency that for-profit initiatives enjoy. 

How? In the for-profit sector, a business’s top priority is ensuring that the benefits of their efforts outweigh the investments. Tolu Oyekan believes that non-profits should borrow a page from their playbook. He sets up a crucial example of this approach: access to financial services across his native Nigeria is extremely scarce. Oyekan shows us how data-driven and scalable solutions can transform banking for rural and urban communities alike. Treating this critical lack of access with a lean approach that empowers citizens, Oyekan explains how agent banking — an individual acting on behalf of a bank and providing financial services from established local businesses — could be an affordable fix, as opposed to expensive solutions like adding physical ATMs and bank branches. This way, people can access banking resources at their local grocery store, barber shop or anywhere an agent sets up shop. “When we include the profit motive in the development work that we do, we can go fast and far, together, to address development challenges and change the world for the better,” Oyekan says.

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Dave Sivaprasad, coastline resilience advocate

Big idea: When it comes to mitigating the impact of climate change on coastal areas, it’s not about finding a singular solution — it’s about finding the right mix of solutions.

Why? Around forty percent of humanity lives near a coast, and their livelihoods are dependent on the conditions of the environment. From flooding and ocean acidification to stronger storms and changes in wind patterns, Dave Sivaprasad lays out the ever-increasing risks climate change poses to these areas. To deal with these more intense conditions, he shares a multitude of approaches coastal populations can implement to brace themselves for the (metaphorical and literal) storm. Sea walls, stone barriers, mangrove restoration, land reclamation are all viable options, but the challenge is choosing the right mix to meet each community’s needs. “No two coasts are alike” says Sivaprasad — and neither are their respective paths to climate resilience.

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Phnam Bagley, designer and creative director

Big idea: With creative thinking and innovative design, people traveling beyond Earth could eat nourishing, flavorful food reminiscent of home.

How? When astronauts are hurtling through space, they typically eat what Phnam Bagley kindly calls “goop-in-a-bag.” The lack of gravity, limited storage and distance from Earth make it difficult for an explorer to enjoy a fresh, delectable meal. Meal time becomes even more complicated when you plan to send astronauts to Mars, a roundtrip journey of 2.5 to 3 years. To take on the challenge of making better astronaut grub, Bagley and her team designed the Space Culinary Lab with flavor, nutrition and practically in mind. The system can mix coffee granules, hot water, ghee and collagen powder to make a coffee with both satisfying flavor and healthy omega-3 fatty acids. A hydroponic garden grows lettuce and microgreens for salad, while lasers cook rehydrated freeze-dried chicken with the same enticing pattern of grilled meats. For snacks, they grow carbon-negative microalgae like spirulina onsite, then mix it with oats, nuts, powdered berries and spices. Bagley’s designs have the potential to make space feel more human. They could improve life here on Earth as well, replacing non-regenerative agricultural methods with low-resource creative cooking.

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Tessa Clarke, sharing economy entrepreneur

Big idea: There’s a super simple solution to the climate crisis – sharing.

Really? Household consumption is directly responsible for 65 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Tessa Clarke thinks the most effective solution is something humans have been doing for thousands of years: sharing more and wasting less. Globally, one-third of all the food we produce each year is thrown away, a trillion-dollar squandering that ends up in landfills, producing carbon dioxide’s deadlier cousin, methane. And half of that waste comes from households. According to leading scientists, solving the food waste problem is even more important than transitioning to electric cars, solar panels or plant-based diets. To take on the problem, Clarke cofounded Olio, a free app that connects local communities around giving food away before it’s thrown away. They’ve empowered people to share 66 million portions of food, and this is just a tiny fraction of what’s possible. Users can also share home items, books, appliances, toys and more. “Sharing instead of shopping needs to become the default,” she says.

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Alex Koster, mobility and software visionary

Big idea: The automobile industry is busy building the “Software Dream Car.”

How? The future of the automotive industry goes beyond clean fuels — software is poised to be a transformational force as well. If we take driverless cars as an eventual given, it’s time to dream up what their interior spaces will look like, says Alex Koster. As computer vision technology continues to advance, we’re moving towards what he calls the “Software Dream Car” — an augmented reality vehicle that fuses science fiction and luxury into a real-world environment overlaid with information and entertainment. What we see out our window will be limited only by our imaginations, says Koster, as our cars pilot us through rich virtual worlds in addition to taking us from point A to point B.

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Gitte Frederiksen, leadership champion

Big question: Modern organizations are complex, multidirectional organisms, so why are we so invested in hierarchical leadership structures?

Some thoughts: When it comes down to it, leaders are only human. And when there’s only a small group of leaders moving at their own speed, bottlenecks are inevitable, organizational decisions flounder and leaders lose sight of the great ideas that often lie unnoticed in the margins. Gitte Frederiksen offers an innovative solution: leadership networks without labels, replacing the power of the few with the influence of many by emphasizing sharing and kindness. These complex human networks not only increase feelings of ownership, reduce stress and create better products, but they’re also “more beautiful, more multidimensional, more dynamic, more like nature,” says Frederiksen.

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June Sarpong, diversity leader

Big idea: The next big disruption in business is in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

How? “Rock star” leaders are those that disrupt business as usual — and June Sarpong thinks the same strategy can be used to move us forward on DEI. It all starts with uncomfortable connections, breaking with the status quo and developing a vision for a better future. When it comes to the workplace, people in power need to make the big leaps first. Consider FX Networks, which disrupted its previously lily-white programming roster and invested significantly in diverse directors and writers. In the process, it created critically and commercially successful content – which Sarpong says is truly “rock star behavior.”

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Zineb Sqalli, gender and climate researcher

Big idea? The next few decades will see trillions invested in infrastructure improvement in the name of fighting climate change, but women will only benefit from these policies and programs as much as men if we are intentional about their inclusion.

How? Climate action has historically been designed with a “gender neutral” lens, but continuing in this manner could set gender equality back by fifteen years, says Zineb Sqalli. We need to consider women’s specific needs upfront, involve women in the design process and measure results so that we can correct course if needed. Cities like Vienna, Austria have already done this. With a diverse urban planning board, Vienna restructured its parks so teenage girls would feel more welcome; created a public campaign to educate the city on the new approach; and integrated a gender assessment into social housing and infrastructure contracts. These changes benefit everyone. By abandoning the gender neutral mindset and intentionally designing for women, Sqalli says, we could build both an environmentally sustainable and gender equitable world.

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Will Guidara, restaurateur, author

Big idea: Unreasonable hospitality turns ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences.

How? What does it take to earn the title “best restaurant in the world?” Ask Will Guidara, and he might tell you that the secret is a two-dollar, off-menu hot dog. Guidara is the former owner of Eleven Madison Park, a restaurant that claimed this distinction in 2017 under his leadership by pursuing a strategy of “unreasonable hospitality.” It all started when Guidara overheard a table of out-of-town guests regretting that their trip to New York City hadn’t included a taste of one of the city’s finest (and cheapest) culinary classics: a New York City hot dog. Eleven Madison Park is an exceptionally fancy establishment, but Guidara decided that if his guests wanted a hot dog, he’d make it happen. He ran out to the street, bought a hot dog from a sidewalk vendor and persuaded his chef to serve it. This simple gesture gobsmacked his guests — and it forever changed Guidara’s approach to service. He recounts other incredible experiences the Eleven Madison Park orchestrated for their patrons and offers strategies for anyone to make their hospitality a little more “unreasonable” — whether it be serving a guest or buying a gift (and creating a memory) for a loved one.

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Cristina Junqueira, entrepreneur, in conversation with Elena Crescia, social entrepreneur

Big idea: To disrupt an industry’s status quo, take customers’ pain seriously. 

How? “It felt a little bit like going to prison,” says Cristina Junqueira, describing the heightened security and long wait times that were typical at Brazilian banks when she cofounded her online bank, Nubank. She was drawn to banking by this pain, which she identified as an opportunity to disrupt a stagnant industry in need of improvement. Fast forward nine years and Nubank has redefined how Brazilians access their money and participate in commerce. In conversation with social entrepreneur Elena Crescia, Junqueira discusses the transformative impact her decision to center customers’ experience has had in Brazil. According to Junqueira, Nubank serves more than five million people who had never previously engaged with the country’s financial system. The company’s efficient digital platform is imitable, she says, but what’s harder to emulate is Nubank’s customer-first mindset. As she puts it: “That’s where the real competitive advantage lies.”

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Keenan Scott II, playwright, poet, TED Fellow

Big idea: As a kid, Keenan Scott Il loved words, stories and superheroes — a passion that fueled his journey to becoming a celebrated playwright, producer, director and actor.

How? In every superhero narrative, says Keenan Scott II, there’s always an event that pushes the superhero to realize their power. For Scott, it was a poetry assignment in his eighth-grade English class. He struggled with dyslexia as a kid, but he soared when it came time to write a poem. He discovered that he already understood advanced literary devices like simile, assonance and slant rhyme because he’d encountered these techniques in the music he loved by artists like Tupac Shakur and Lemon Andersen. Scott continued to develop his craft outside the classroom by paying attention to words and the world around him. He listened to speech patterns in different parts of the city and heard the stories of his neighbors; he explored the work of other artists, poets and jazz artists whose creativity inspired his own. On the TED stage, Scott performs three stunning spoken word pieces that testify to the superheroic talent he cultivated despite the obstacles (read: kryptonite).

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Veronica Chau, sustainable investment professional

Big idea: To improve financing for sustainable and equitable housing, we need policies that stimulate demand and create a favorable investing environment.

Why? Faced with the climate crisis, financial institutions have pledged trillions to transform the economy — but right now, says sustainable investing expert Veronica Chau, that money is not flowing at the speed it needs to. Taking the housing sector as a case study, Chau explains that the US is facing two challenges at once: housing is scarce and the buildings we live in are a major contributor to climate change. To reconcile and overcome these two challenges, we need to radically increase financing for sustainable housing. Banks want to reach net-zero, she says; the problem is that government housing policy is not doing enough to create a low-risk environment for investment. By creating robust investment incentives; strengthening requirements for energy efficiency; investing in programs that help low-income communities retrofit their homes; and offering permits for affordable, energy-efficient housing, local governments can create a favorable financing environment and ensure financing flows to areas where it’s needed most.

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Nithya Vaduganathan, talent strategy expert

Big idea: To find hidden talent, take a fresh look around.

How? Something interesting is happening in the labor market: there are lots of job openings, yet many employers are struggling to find the right people to fill them. Why is that? Nithya Vaduganathan thinks it’s in large part because employers are using outdated practices to retract and retain talent – for instance, by focusing on features like college degree or time in role, which are not necessarily predictive of success. Vaduganathan offers five tips that will actually help employers fill open positions — while also helping job seekers advance their careers. First: leaders and managers must figure out what actually needs to get done, as opposed to listing Frankenstein job posts searching for impossibly qualified candidates. Second: “screen in” candidates, as opposed to screening out based on certain criteria like college degrees. (Great candidates don’t need to check every box, she says.) Third: start with coffee – or, in other words, start small. Try out micro-internships: small-scale, paid projects that create a low-risk path to hiring, particularly of college and grad students from overlooked schools. Fourth: look beyond your floor – there may be talent hiding inside your organization, just a floor above you. And, lastly: let your people go so they can grow. Companies that allow their people to move around internally report more diverse, innovative and effective teams. 

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Paul Catchlove, reflective leader

Big idea: Self-reflection can add value to your work life, increasing performance and helping you make better decisions and build better relationships.

How? Reflection is about learning, says Paul Catchlove: looking at our lives without judgment, but with a critical lens. So how do we do it? Catchlove recommends making reflection a habit, whether it takes the form of purposeful thinking, journal entries, audio notes or discussions with a mentor or friend. In the workplace, this would look like consistently setting aside time to distill learnings on what worked, what didn’t and why – and then making a personal commitment to do things differently next time. So next time a meeting leaves you feeling agitated, take some time to sit down, take a breath and reflect (whether it’s after work or the next morning). Over time, cultivating a habit of reflection will glean deeper insights as you begin to recognize patterns of behavior – whether it’s a problematic relationship with a boss or client or an aspect of your job that you begin to realize leaves you feeling happy and fulfilled.

How a letter by Pope Francis became a movement, a TED Talk and now a film

In October 2020, for the launch of TED’s climate initiative, Countdown, HH Pope Francis gave a TED Talk (his second) on the moral imperative to act on climate change. It was inspired by his encyclical letter (book) Laudato si’, “On caring for our common home.”

An excerpt from that TED Talk is now featured in a new documentary film centered on the Pope’s message.

First published in 2015, Laudato si’ became a rare papal encyclical that permeated mainstream discourse. It hit a nerve and became a global sensation, widely commented on (and criticized).

It also gave rise to the Laudato si’ Movement, which has now brought together a stellar production team (whose previous works include the global hit My Octopus Teacher) to make the new film called The Letter – A message for our Earth. (See the trailer). It is supported by YouTube Originals, where it will premiere on October 4 at 9am US Pacific time and 6pm Central European time.

We have asked Tomás Insua, the executive director of the Laudato si’ Movement and executive producer of the film, to tell us about it.

Why turn Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato si’ into a movie?

Pope Francis wrote Laudato si’ not only for Catholics but, as he says, “to all men and women of good will.” Indeed, this letter’s message comes from a deep reflection, listening to his predecessors, leaders from other denominations, and numerous scientists, philosophers, theologians and civic groups. Since not everyone is able to read a full, dense book, we decided to tell the Laudato si’ story in a different way, to spread the immensity and urgency of the challenge we face.

The film doesn’t follow the structure of the book: it rather tries to bring its essence into a dialogue between Pope Francis and voices from the world.

This idea of dialogue is central to Pope Francis’s letter, in which he says he wants to “enter a dialogue with all people about the future of our common home.” He’s so humble and willing to listen – which is in marked contrast with many of the world’s most powerful people, who continue to lead us closer to planetary collapse and are not interested in listening.

Sadly, even many who are committed to environmental solutions often don’t listen, and true dialogue with people of different perspectives is astonishingly rare. Supporting dialogue between Pope Francis and the communities that often go unheard seemed like a good way to reflect the world the Pope is calling for.

Who are those voices and how did you pick them?

The voices that are present in the dialogue documented in the film come from communities of the Indigenous, poverty, youth and science.

Cacique Odair “Dadá” Borari comes from the Borari people in Brazil’s Amazon region, where he has led groundbreaking work on environmental defense in a very dangerous place.

Arouna Kandé comes from Saint Louis in Senegal, a city he was forced to move to as a climate refugee. He now studies sustainability in order to bring new solutions to his village.

Ridhima Pandey comes from Haridwar in India, where she has led youth movements for the climate since the age of nine. Now 14 years old, she is in school and continues her leadership.

Scientists Greg Asner and Robin Martin come from Hawai’i in the United States, where they have developed an innovative technique to map underwater heat waves that kill coral reefs.

No one person is completely representative of millions of other people. But by listening to these frontline champions describe their experiences, we hope that viewers will have some sense of the world beyond them.

That gives an interactive angle to the project.

Yes, through the film’s website we also ask viewers to respond, access more information, and support the people in the film.

The five participants traveled to Rome, and then to Assisi. What happened there?

None of the people described above is traditional Catholic. And they hadn’t met before the trip. Before speaking with Pope Francis, they sat down for several days of conversation and broke bread together. During the meeting with the Pope, there was lots of laughter and even a few tears. The group then traveled to Assisi to reflect on their experiences. Tragically, while they were there one of them received devastating news about an event related to the planetary crisis that had taken place in his home territory at that very moment. In the film, we see him receive the news and how the others rallied to support him. They truly became friends. They are aware of each other’s stories, and they trust each other. They continue talking and supporting each other to this day. That kind of empathy and closeness is so important for everyone who is working on climate.

What learnings do you think they brought home from the experience chronicled in the film?

Probably one of the biggest learnings is that they have more power than they knew. All of these leaders developed incredible initiatives in their home regions long before traveling to the Vatican. But they left that meeting with Pope Francis with an even greater sense of how much they matter. They are people who are protecting this planet on behalf of all humanity. Pope Francis spent more time with them than he usually spends with heads of state and visiting dignitaries. After the meeting, which was reported by the media in his region, Cacique Dadá, the Borari leader who has been a powerfully effective land defender in a very dangerous place, said: “They will think twice before trying to kill me now.”

Tell us about the title, The Letter.

Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato si’ is addressed to “every person living on this planet.” It is meant for all of us. In the film, the Vatican invites these grassroots champions through letters sent to them. We see the letters traveling along rural roads across the world. We see the letters arriving in the hands of these people whom we will come to know so well through the film. The letters connect them, and they connect us as viewers in a wider dialogue. We are called to respond to this letter.

What do you expect viewers to take away from the film?

Let me answer by quoting two very important things Pope Francis says in Laudato si’. The first is that everything is connected. What I do is based on how I value the people who will be affected by my actions. Nothing is in isolation. The second is that “we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” This realization that the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor are one and the same is transformative.

Who filmed and produced the movie?

The film was produced by the Laudato si’ Movement, along with an Oscar- and BAFTA-winning team at Off the Fence (which has produced many great documentaries, including the global hit My Octopus Teacher). It is presented by YouTube Originals.

Tell us about the Laudato si’ Movement.

The mission of the Laudato si’ Movement is to inspire and mobilize the Catholic community to care for our common home and achieve climate and ecological justice. Like Pope Francis, we are truly worried about the state of the climate. We do believe in the power of the Laudato si’ message and believe that showing it through a movie is a great way to inspire people.

You started this project before the pandemic and had to suspend it during it. What impact did that have on the final story?

The pandemic was definitely a big challenge. Every place we worked in was very vulnerable to the virus, as we worked in places that were either isolated or had very limited healthcare services. Our production partners at Off the Fence could not in good conscience send camerapeople and staff to those locations. Instead, we sent cameras in. Over messages and video calls, we trained the local people in the use of cameras, and we gave them salaries. These constraints forced us to be creative, to go beyond what frankly had been our own limited ways of thinking. We developed much deeper and more real relationships that ultimately flowered in the film and beyond.

Has Pope Francis seen the film?

Pope Francis is a humble person. He makes it a practice to never watch films about himself.

What’s next for climate action? The talks from the TED Countdown New York Session 2022

Countdown, TED’s climate action initiative founded in partnership with Future Stewards, launched three years ago with a focus on accelerating solutions to climate change. The goal: to highlight possible pathways forward and weave a story of how we can help build a safer, cleaner, fairer and net-zero future for all.

After creating more than 100 climate-focused TED Talks, supporting over 1,000 TEDxCountdown events and attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in climate investments, Countdown returned to New York City to explore some of the innovative solutions bringing us closer to achieving a zero-carbon world. Eight speakers (and two performers) shared exciting developments, the challenges that lay ahead and how everything from decarbonization and biochemicals to TikTok and hip-hop can be vehicles for climate action.

The event: Talks from TED Countdown New York Session 2022, hosted by TED’s Bruno Giussani and Logan McClure Davda

When and where: Tuesday, June 14, 2022, at the TED World Theater in New York City

Speakers: Zahra Biabani, James Irungu Mwangi, Olivia Lazard, Samir Ibrahim, MyVerse, Kristen Warren, Patricia Villarrubia-Gomez, Miguel A. Modestino, Yuval Noah Harari, Peggy Shepard

The talks in brief:

Zahra Biabani, climate activist

Big idea: Using the power of social media, we can promote climate optimism and avoid the hopelessness that leads to climate inaction.

How? When Zahra Biabani learned that 56 percent of Gen Zers believe humanity is doomed, she began posting “Weekly Earth Wins” videos that combine feel-good TikTok dances with positive climate news. Her goal? To combat “climate doom-ism,” an obstacle she says now rivals climate denialism in the fight to save Earth’s climate. Her comments section quickly filled up with grateful messages from young people who were losing hope. Today, Biabani is part of EcoTok, an online activist collective that uses social media to break the cycle of doom and gloom. Climate optimism, Biabani says, isn’t about ignoring the existential threat the climate crisis poses to life on Earth. It’s a way to cultivate hope so people continue fighting for change and don’t give in to “the very entities that have gotten us into this mess.”

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James Irungu Mwangi, strategist, social entrepreneur 

Big question: By themselves, cuts in emissions will not mitigate the looming disaster of climate change — and while we might be able to accelerate Mother Nature’s innate abilities to scrub greenhouse gasses, that alone won’t save us either. As the climate clock ticks, James Irungu Mwangi sees increased investments in carbon sequestering technologies like DAC (direct air capture), BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) and BiCRS (biomass carbon removal and storage). But will these investments be enough to save us?

An answer: To date, carbon-sequestering tech has removed only 100,000 tons of CO2 from our atmosphere, a far cry from the billions of tons we must remove to reduce global warming. And scaling these technologies in places that already have a huge fossil fuel footprint will have no impact without a difficult transition to fully renewable energy. But there are places where we can sequester carbon and build a renewable power grid at the same time — places like Kenya, with plenty of forest and basalt rock, plenty of renewable energy potential and no current emissions that would need to be displaced. As humanity embarks on its biggest energy transition ever, Mwangi calls on the world to recognize and prioritize Africa’s climate action potential.

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Olivia Lazard, environmental peacemaking expert

Big idea: A fossil-fuel-free future is crucial to world peace and the resolution of future conflict, and renewables are the path to this future. But they require materials — minerals such as lithium, which must be mined. The countries controlling these resources and their processing (such as China) will find themselves at the center of the global stage.

How? The nations sitting on the natural resources crucial to renewable development are at the epicenter of a new geopolitical reality, as the recent invasion of mineral-rich Ukraine highlights. And while countries in Central Asia, Latin America and Africa could reap great economic benefits from their resources, these resources also put them at risk for exploitation. To avoid this, we must extract resources safely, fight corruption and invest in sustainable economic models. Our ticket to green growth is hidden deep within the environment, Lazard says — this time, let’s make sure we don’t make the same mistakes that got us here.

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Samir Ibrahim, climate entrepreneur, with artists MyVerse and Kristen Warren

Big idea: Hip-hop can make climate action mainstream.

How? The climate crisis is urgent, says Samir Ibrahim, but talking about climate change is generally boring — not to mention depressing. As a climate-positive CEO and a lifelong hip-hop lover, Ibrahim’s got an off-beat idea for inspiring climate action through hip-hop. In 1993, Snoop Dogg’s hit “Gin and Juice” led to a 20 percent increase in sales of Seagram’s Gin (the brand named in the song). Ibrahim believes that future hip-hop artists can do for the climate crisis what Snoop Dogg did for his song’s eponymous mixed drink. He points to the long history of hip-hop artists leveraging their cultural capital to influence society’s views and engagement with topics like mental health and suicide. He says hip-hop can also bring climate vernacular to the masses. As a proof of concept, he invites MyVerse and Kristen Warren onstage to perform their original climate-focused rap.

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Patricia Villarrubia-Gomez, plastic pollution researcher

Big idea: Swapping plastic grocery bags for canvas totes won’t solve our plastic problem. If we want to address the climate consequences of producing and consuming plastic, we need to consider plastic as more than a waste management issue.

How? Plastic now touches even the most remote areas of the planet — from the snowy caps of Mount Everest to the deepest sea trenches to unborn babies in the womb. According to Patricia Villarrubia Gomez, the total mass of plastics is now double the total mass of all living animals on the planet. And all of this plastic spells trouble for our planet’s future. Villarrubia Gomez breaks down the consequences of plastic production at every stage, from fossil fuel extraction to the disposal of single-use plastics in landfills, incinerators and our planet’s precious waterways. Even after it’s thrown away, plastic continues to wreak havoc, releasing greenhouse gasses and other toxins. To deal with this staggeringly complex problem, Villarrubia Gomez says, we need to address plastic’s entire lifecycle, including its production, design and disposal.

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Miguel A. Modestino, sustainable engineering researcher 

Big question: Modern industry is the foundation of not only the world’s economies but also of the human way of life. Yet without crucial reforms to chemical manufacturing, global industry could be central to society’s downfall. Its massive carbon footprint (and that of the fossil fuels that lie at its heart) has already contributed to the loss of natural wonders such as the tropical glaciers in Miguel A. Modestino’s native Venezuela. How might industry contribute to a sustainable future?

An answer: Modestino’s research team at New York University studies electrochemical engineering — chemical reactions that source their energy directly from electricity, as opposed to fossil fuels. They’re working to develop new reactions that aim to increase efficiency and decrease the emissions impact of chemical manufacturing, supply chains and transportation. These innovations, in tandem with retrofitting chemical plants to run on renewables and sequestering carbon before it hits the atmosphere, could transform not only the chemical industry but also the face of the planet.

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Yuval Noah Harari, historian, scholar 

Big idea: Nobody really knows how much it will cost to dodge the worst impacts of climate change. Yet Yuval Noah Harari’s research indicates that humanity might avert catastrophe by investing only two percent of global GDP into climate solutions. In other words, solving climate change will not require major disruption — we just need to change our priorities.

How? Researchers may quibble about the exact number, but the truth is simple — only a small amount of global GDP would be required to avoid the most apocalyptic climate change scenarios. And this money will not be sacrificed, but rather directed towards investments in new infrastructure and energy sources that will not only save the planet but also establish new (and sustainable) vectors of global posterity. A slight shift of political priorities spearheaded by citizens and politicians is all we need to redirect our resources. “As the climate crisis worsens, too many people are swinging from denial straight to despair,” Harari says. “But we should not lose hope. Humanity has enormous resources under its command, and by applying them wisely, we can still prevent ecological cataclysm.”

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Peggy Shepard, environmental justice leader

Big idea: To achieve environmental justice, we must address the disproportionate impact of pollution and environmental hazards on Black and brown communities.

Why? Everyone has the right to live in a clean environment, says Peggy Shepard. But in the United States, the complex legacy of racism, housing segregation and zoning laws have long determined where people of color can live. As a result, many Black and brown families often reside in what Shepard calls “sacrifice zones”: communities on the frontlines of pollution and environmental hazards like landfills, incinerators or petrochemical plants. By raising awareness about the health consequences of contamination and mobilizing those most affected, Shepard explains, the environmental justice movement aims to turn high-risk areas into some of the world’s first “green zones.”

Watch Bryce Dallas Howard’s new TED Talk: How to preserve your private life in the age of social media

Growing up in the public eye, multi-hyphenate creator Bryce Dallas Howard experienced the familiar pressure to share her life with the world on social media. But with her mother’s steadfast guidance, Howard learned to set personal boundaries and savor the beauty of private moments. In this personal talk, she draws on three generations of family wisdom to remind us that “a private life makes a public life worth living.”

Watch the full talk from TED2022:

Watch new TED Talks from the Audacious Project

The Audacious Project is TED’s collaborative funding initiative to put ideas for social change into action. Today, we launched eight new talks from this year’s cohort, featuring some of the world’s boldest changemakers and their ideas to solve humanity’s most pressing challenges. Collectively this group has secured more than $900 million in funding from the Audacious Project, matching their transformative ideas with catalytic resources. Learn more at AudaciousProject.org, and watch the talks at TED.com/AudaciousProject.

Watch the talks from the Audacious Project’s 2021-22 cohort:

A safe pathway to resettlement for migrants and refugees
Becca Heller, International Refugee Assistance Project

Why Indigenous forest guardianship is crucial to climate action
Nonette Royo, Tenure Facility

How ancient Arctic carbon threatens everyone on the planet
Sue Natali, Woodwell Climate Research Center

Mental health care that disrupts cycles of violence
Celina De Sola, Glasswing International

An election redesign to restore trust in US democracy
Tiana Epps-Johnson, Center for Tech and Civic Life

A transparent, easy way for smallholder farmers to save
Anushka Ratnayake, myAgro

A bold plan for transforming access to the US social safety net
Amanda Renteria, Code for America

The most powerful untapped resource in health care
Edith Elliott and Shahed Alam, Noora Health

The billion-dollar campaign to electrify transport
Monica Araya, ClimateWorks: Drive Electric

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.

Awe: Notes from Session 11 of TED2022

What a week! Eleven mainstage sessions of TED Talks, two sessions of TED Fellows talks, an incredible array of on-site activations, countless Discovery Sessions, parties, dinners and more made TED2022 a triumphant return to Vancouver. The closing session of the conference capped off the week with world-changing ideas from the mountains of Nepal to the Amazon rainforest to Mars and beyond.

The event: Talks from Session 11 of TED2022, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson, Helen Walters and Whitney Pennington Rodgers

When and where: Wednesday, April 14, 2022, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Leo Lanna and Lvcas Fiat, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bedouine, Elon Musk, Shreya Joshi, Michael Schur, Sara Lomelin, Sarah Kay

Music: With striking vocals and guitar, singer-songwriter Bedouine performed “Nice and Quiet” and “One Of These Days,” fusing her beautiful lyrics and sumptuous melodies.

Conference wrap-up: Poet Sarah Kay and piano virtuoso Samora Pinderhugh sent the conference off with a stirring tribute to the week through the ideas of paying attention, being astonished and telling about it — inspired by Mary Oliver’s iconic poem “Sometimes.”

The talks in brief:

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, spiritual leader

Big idea: Meditation is an act of awareness, wisdom and self-compassion that, if done with patience and acceptance, can bring us the peace and joy that we seek.

How? A blissed-out state of nothingness is often the image we associate with meditation, but Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche knows there’s so much more to it. After dealing with panic attacks for many years, spending time at Tibetan retreats and consulting with his father, a meditation master, he realized that there are a few misunderstandings we have about the practice. We assume, for example, that if we try to force problems out of our minds they’ll go away; we sit lotus in a dead silent room trying to arrive at peace and calm, only to find that the more we go looking for them, the more difficult they are to find. Inviting us to adopt a more fulfilling approach to meditating, Rinpoche shares three core principles that could help us tap into our inner zen:
with awareness, the “essence” of meditation, we could engage with the world through sensory stimuli — like sound — to be present in any moment; with wisdom, we could realize that no matter how strongly negative emotions affect us, there’s always a state of calm to return to; and finally, with self-compassion, we could give ourselves the grace to let negativity come and go, and become better equipped to handle the challenges of day-to-day life. Conjuring up an image of mother nature, he calls on us to remember our inner strength.

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Leo Lanna, artistic entomologist, and Lvcas Fiat, designer and explorer

Big idea: We lack efficient tools to survey parts of Amazonia, where the core of the world’s biodiversity (like more than 2,500 species of mantises) can be found or is yet to be discovered. By employing creative uses of technology as part of contemporary science practices, scientists like the environmental conservation group Projeto Mantis, can explore the Amazon’s biodiversity and help preserve it for future generations.

How? Two winners of the TED Idea Search: Latin America 2021, Leo Lanna and Lvcas Fiat work at the intersection of science, conservation and design to learn about the Amazon. Through Projeto Mantis, an independent agency devoted to research, conservation and wildlife photography, Lanna and Fiat are devoted to studying praying mantises and their environment. Their approach may be unconventional in philosophy — Lanna and Fiat live closely with the insects and look after every mantis collected for research until its natural death — but it’s also innovative in technique, as Projeto Mantis attempts to explore the Amazon using modern technology, like drones, UV light and nighttime explorations to learn about the world that emerges when the sun goes down. Thankfully, Lanna and Fiat do not fear the dark. Instead, they are alarmed by the rapid destruction of the rainforest. By marrying technology, art and science, the two believe “the age of exploration on planet Earth is far from over. And in the nights of the rainforests, it is just beginning.”

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Bryce Dallas Howard, multi-hyphenate creator

Big idea: As anyone who has experienced fame knows, private life is precious. In the social media age, we should all protect and cultivate our private lives with the same enthusiasm that we post and promote in public.

How? All of us live in public now, says actor and filmmaker Bryce Dallas Howard — but some more willingly than others. Howard’s father was a star in The Andy Griffith Show, so she grew up with the same feeling of exposure that so many of us now experience because of social media. From assigning rustic chores like sheep-shearing to covering the mirrors in the house, Howard’s mother took extreme measures to protect her children from the perils of their father’s fame. Along the way, she taught Howard the secret to living a fulfilling life in the public eye. From her, Howard learned it is our private lives that make our public lives worth living. Inspired by this philosophy, Howard now protects her private life with two simple rules: 1) whatever you are experiencing, soak it in for 48 hours before posting or sharing, and 2) keep yourself honest by asking “why” before you decide to share.

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Shreya Joshi, future leader

Big idea: The solution to political polarization? Listen to opposing perspectives and talk to people with whom you disagree.

How? Most of us have a tendency to gravitate toward people who look, think and act like us. This affinity can offer comfort — but it can also be harmful, says 17-year-old youth leader Shreya Joshi. The negative impact is clear across society: hate groups, screaming cable news pundits and politicians who strike down bills just because they come from across the aisle. But the root of this polarization isn’t just a difference of opinion, Joshi says: it’s the product of seeing the “other side” as malevolent, hateful and holding a hidden agenda. That’s why Joshi launched Project TEAL, a teen-led initiative dedicated to helping young people engage with the political process and bring people with opposing perspectives into the same room. While the conversations can get uncomfortable, she admits, the benefits are enormous: we better understand other people’s beliefs and learn to better advocate for our own. So look for a group — whether it’s with coworkers, a book club at your library or a PTA group at your school — and have a tough conversation. You might be surprised by what happens when you enter a conversation with the intent to listen and learn, not to win or agree.

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Michael Schur, television writer, producer

Big idea: Understanding ethical theories helps us make better, kinder decisions.

How? In 2005, TV writer and producer Michael Schur and his wife got into a fender bender. No one was hurt, and both cars looked fine, but a few days after the accident, the man whose car they bumped sent them a bill for 836 dollars to replace his entire fender. The incident incensed Schur, who didn’t want to pay for a mark he could barely see, but it also sent him down a rabbit hole into the realm of ethical decision-making. He consulted heavy-hitting philosophers like Kant, T.M. Scanlon and John Stuart Mill and explored their schools of thought. After much research, Schur realized he was in the wrong; he apologized and paid the man. But his story illustrates what we can all learn from ethical theories about right and wrong — and what we owe one another as people who share the planet.

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Elon Musk, serial entrepreneur

In conversation with head of TED Chris Anderson, Elon Musk digs into the recent news around his bid to purchase Twitter and gets honest about the biggest regret of his career, how his brain works, the future he envisions for the world and a lot more. Watch the unedited interview here »

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Sara Lomelin, philanthropy disruptor

Big idea: Often, philanthropy is imbalanced, with a select few deciding which people or what projects should (or shouldn’t) get funding. By democratizing philanthropy through “collective giving” — a people-powered, inclusive model that invites everyday donors to participate– we can make giving back an intentional, collaborative, joyful and accessible process.

How? Sara Lomelin is the founding CEO of Philanthropy Together, a global initiative that works to disrupt philanthropy through collective giving. Lomelin is a proponent of giving circles — a gathering of people with shared values (like friends, family or colleagues) who come together to make change. There are all kinds of circles — artist circles, circles focused on climate change, circles with Latinx LGBTQ+ folks, Black men’s giving circles. The philosophy is that anyone can be a donor, no matter their identity, background or wealth status. The key in hosting a circle lies in taking the time to build deep relationships by cultivating a sense of belonging, a culture of discourse and a sense of trust and abundance. Whether members are giving five dollars or 50,000, collective circles are successful, meeting year over year, because people realize that together we have a much bigger impact. “Giving by, for, and with the communities we represent is the future of philanthropy — and each and every one of us belong in this movement,” Lomelin says.

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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.

Play: Notes from Session 7 of TED2022

Session 7 of TED2022 focused on play, with talks on the science behind what it really means to “have fun”, finding your personal groove through dance, the next era of video games, foraging for food in your backyard and more.

The event: Talks from Session 7 of TED Fellows Talks at TED2022, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson and vintage TEDster and actress Meg Ryan

When and where: Tuesday, April 12, 2022, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Catherine Price, Agnes Larsson, James Hodge, Noah Raford, Ryan Heffington, Alexis Nikole Nelson

Music: Joined by vocalist KAZU, drumming virtuoso Ian Chang thumped through a set of songs he dreamed up in his living room, creating fully realized music using the physicality of drums.

The talk in brief:

Catherine Price, recovering science journalist

Big idea: We use the word “fun” to describe all kinds of activities that are frivolous and optional — but only a few of these activities truly trigger joy and create memories. Far from being frivolous, fun is the secret to feeling alive.

How can we have more fun? We tend to describe fun in terms of activities rather than the actual enjoyment we derive from them — but according to Catherine Price, these activities have little to do with what really matters when we have fun. Leisure activities, despite our best efforts to cram more of them in, aren’t a sure prescription for fun. Rather, fun consists of playfulness (i.e., not taking ourselves too seriously), connection (a shared experience with loved ones) and flow (a sense of engagement that leads to a loss of a sense of time). If we can cultivate these spontaneous mental states, Price believes we can drop our guard and learn how to truly thrive within each moment.

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Agnes Larsson, game director

Big idea: We’re entering the era of the metaverse. As people spend more of their time online in 3D digital landscapes, we should ensure that we design and build metaverses for fun, creativity and inclusivity.

How? For the gaming world, the metaverse is nothing new. Every day, millions of people log into games like Minecraft and use virtual building blocks to create remarkable metaverses, like big cities or castles or underwater playgrounds for fish. As game director at Minecraft, Agnes Larsson has seen how these digital spaces allow people to spend time together online in a fun and meaningful way. She describes a dad who created a Minecraft server specifically for children on the autism spectrum and an organization that uses metaverses as a neutral playground to foster dialogue, friendship and trust between young people in conflict zones. In a future where we’ll spend more time in the metaverse, Larsson advises developers to design for delight and longevity, not for quick profits. She also encourages us to build online spaces that are equitable and accessible to everyone. Because what we create online can have a profound impact on the real world.

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James Hodge, data-driven technologist

Big idea: Technology is closing the gap between esports and in-person sports, making elite competition more accessible than ever before

How? At age 16, Rudy van Buren won a high-profile Dutch racing championship, but his dreams of going pro slipped away because the sport was too expensive. Fast forward 15 years: Rudy won a worldwide gaming competition and scored a contract as a simulation driver — and then he did something even more amazing. He made the jump from “world’s fastest gamer” to pro racing in the physical world. According to data strategist James Hodge, Rudy’s story is emblematic of how new gaming technology is revolutionizing our understanding of sports, closing the gap between virtual and real-world competition — and making elite competition more accessible than ever. These days, you don’t need a racecar to be a Formula 1 driver, Hodge says. All you need is a video game console and a gaming steering wheel.

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Noah Raford, futurist

Big idea: People on the internet believe weird things — and, if the rise of QAnon and the uprisings of January 6, 2020 are any indication, bizarre beliefs will begin to bleed into everyday reality more and more as we move further into the metaverse. Futurist Noah Raford sees this not as a cause for despair nor a sign of impending apocalypse, but rather as a reason to hold out hope for humanity.

How? Virtual worlds lend “a sense of meaning and purpose” when the real world becomes unstable, confusing and seemingly hostile — and this is the reason internet forums descend into fantasy and fanaticism. Video games, with their immersive realities (and the immediate satisfaction they provide for our deepest psychological needs), are potential powder kegs for generating escapist realities. Many kids already live primarily in virtual worlds — and it’s only a matter of time before they’re mobilized by virtual leaders promising a simpler, better reality. And while social change driven from within these virtual worlds may seem ominous, Raford thinks that they also could lead to greater justice in the real world.

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Ryan Heffington, dancer, choreographer

Big idea: By turning off our critical minds and tuning into our most basic daily movements, we can all become our own choreographers and find joy in dance.

How? Each of us has our own unique way of moving, according to choreographer Ryan Heffington, but in order to unlock our “dance magic,” we have to set aside our preconceived notions about what “good” dance is. The most unlikely experiences can offer inspiration — tying a shoe, rocking a baby, cleaning your mustache or whisking up some mac-n-cheese. “Once you have the perspective that life is dance,” Heffington says, “you’ll begin to see dance everywhere around you.” Guided by this philosophy, Heffington started an online dance party during the first COVID lockdown, helping people find joy and release in anxious times. After Heffington’s talk, in a dazzling proof of concept, dancers Nico Lonetree and Ryan Spencer perform a routine infused with the humor and beauty of our daily movements.

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Alexis Nikole Nelson, foraging enthusiast

Big idea: You can find your next healthy — and planet-friendly — snack growing on your neighbor’s lawn or in between cracks in the sidewalk.

Why? As a self-proclaimed “dirty vegan” and a forager, Alexis Nikole Nelson takes pride in identifying, collecting, preparing and eating wild foods. On her popular TikTok, she shows her followers how she can turn foraged puffballs into pizza bagels or make a sweet syrup with wisteria petals. But the veggies, fruits and fungi Nikole Nelson forages aren’t just tasty; they’re often healthier than produce in the grocery store and better for our planet because they require no watering, fertilizer, labor or long-distance transportation. Now Nelson wants to get more people in on the wild food game — even if convincing others isn’t always easy. “Tell an omni to try something vegan, and you might get some hesitation already. But tell them it’s vegan and you pulled half of it out of the ground?” While preparing sweet and salty kelp chips (Dasima Twigak) live on the TED stage with local Vancouver bull kelp, she shares her often-hilarious tips for introducing foraged food to skeptical mouths.

Courage: Notes from Session 1 of TED2022

It’s been three years since TED’s last flagship conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada; to say a lot has changed in the intervening years would be an understatement. We return for this year’s conference not for more of the same but to celebrate a new era — in AI, clean energy, the ways we work and learn, and in the fundamental economic and social systems that underpin everything else.

The conference’s opening session explored the theme of courage, from the fight for freedom in Ukraine to the rapid creation and deployment of the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 to Pulitzer-prize winning journalism in China.

The event: Talks and performances from TED2022, Session 1: Courage, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson, Helen Walters and Whitney Pennington Rodgers

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

Speakers: Garry Kasparov, Zoya Lytvyn, Allyson Felix, Melissa J. Moore, Alison Killing, Platon

Opening performance: Particle Ink kicked off the conference with an interdimensional performance that combined music, dance and VR, playfully incorporating the TED letters and giant screens of the custom-built theater.

Music: Evoking timely messages of resilience and triumph in the face of adversity, R&B musician Mereba rendered a divinely captivating performance of “Go(l)d” and “Black Truck.”

The talks in brief:

Garry Kasparov, chess grandmaster, human rights advocate

Big idea: Ukraine is on the front line of a war between freedom and tyranny. The rest of the world must wake up and act now.

How? “The price of stopping a dictator always goes up with every delay and every hesitation,” says democracy advocate Garry Kasparov. “Meeting evil halfway is still a victory for evil.” In a blistering call to action, Kasparov traces Vladimir Putin’s decades-long threat to democracy — from Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia to their 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the current invasion of Ukraine — and details his own path to starting a pro-democracy, anti-Putin movement in Russia. Now, in the wake of a series of atrocities in Ukraine — Mariupol, Bucha, the Kramatorsk train station — Kasparov calls for the world to choose action over apathy and rise to the occasion in support of Ukraine. The people of Ukraine are fighting right now to remind us not to take liberty for granted, he says — they deserve every resource they need to win.

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Zoya Lytvyn, Ukrainian education pioneer

Big idea: Even in wartime, Ukraine continues to educate its children — whether they remain in the country or have fled to refugee camps abroad.

How? During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukrainian government tapped education pioneer Zoya Lytvyn and her non-profit team to develop the country’s first national online education platform. When social-distancing measures closed classrooms, the Ukrainian Online School enabled secondary school students to continue learning remotely. Lytvyn says she never imagined a scenario worse than COVID creating a need for her non-profit, until Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Since the war began, more than 900 Ukrainian schools have been critically damaged and at least 84 have been destroyed. The Ukrainian Online School now serves more than 400,000 remote students whose lives have been disrupted by violence and destruction. Why prioritize online education when your country is under attack? According to Lytvyn, these few hours of instruction each day allow Ukraine to invest in its children and its future as a prosperous, free country. “As long as our children keep learning and our teachers keep teaching — even while they are starving in shelters under bombardment, even in refugee camps — we are undefeated,” she says.

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Allyson Felix, Olympian, entrepreneur

Big idea: The feeling of being terrified is an invitation. When we bet on the power of individual voices and values, we create systemic change.

How?: The agonizing secret Allyson Felix kept in order to maintain her Nike sponsorship forced her to train at 4am, in the dark, and be terrified of being found out. Being told as a female athlete that she could “do anything” — while at the same time being aware of her sponsor’s punitive maternity policy — was a hypocrisy she couldn’t withstand. Felix left Nike, and the sacrifice manifested meaningful change for others: Nike and other prominent athletic sponsors added contractual protections for professional athlete-mothers. With a new sponsor, Athleta, Felix went on to win gold and bronze medals at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in sneakers designed by her own company, SAYSH. Most important, her daughter was there to witness and cheer her on. No matter the field, it’s time to stop forcing a choice between career and family, she says, encouraging us to acknowledge our fears and use our voices to create change for ourselves and each other. “You don’t have to be an Olympian to create change for yourself and others,” she says. “Each of us can bet on ourselves.”

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Melissa J. Moore, RNA researcher

Big idea: Our bodies are built of many proteins, from those that keep our skin pliable to those that form the mechanisms that transport oxygen through our veins. Medicines using messenger RNA — such as COVID vaccines — can teach our body to build proteins that not only fight infections when they strike but also help treat previously intractable diseases.

How? Proteins build the structure of our bodies and direct our inner workings through mind bogglingly complex biological algorithms — so it’s not surprising to discover that sometimes our internal programs make mistakes. With mRNA medicine, doctors and scientists can correct metabolic errors by replacing proteins that our bodies lack. Soon, these medicines will be able to retrain our immune systems to attack pathogens (or even cancer cells). But for now, we can enjoy the benefits of mRNA’s most visible benefit — the COVID vaccines that enable us to gather again face-to-face, safely.

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Alison Killing, journalist, architect

Big idea: In a world where governments routinely obscure human rights abuses by limiting journalist access on the ground, remote studies of intentional erasures, missing data and third-party satellite imagery can provide clues to horrific realities hiding behind official authoritarian narratives.

How? In 2021, while investigating Chinese oppression in Xinjiang — and attempting to locate detention camps in a region four times the size of California — Allison Killing noticed something strange on her maps: large, blanked out squares that she could not attribute to software error. When comparing these gaps to satellite imagery, she was able to pinpoint the location of 348 “re-education” camps where China was imprisoning minority Uyghur populations. By calling for more reliable archives for ephemeral data from social media, mapping software and other sources, Killing seeks to expand this innovative approach to remote journalism, which could help shed light on events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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Platon, portrait photographer

Big Idea: Empathy can help us unlock the political, economic, social and cultural strife of our times — and it is the greatest possible gift we can give ourselves and each other.

How? Through his many experiences photographing world leaders across industries and geographies, Platon has tried to capture the truth. Through this process, he’s discovered that despite all that separates us, empathy provides a path for us to find common ground with every person on Earth, even those with fundamentally opposing views. In times of tremendous division, it’s important not to lose our capacity to be kind to one another. Walking us through some of his most memorable photography shoots, Platon highlights the humanity behind some of the most influential — and divisive — people on the planet, including Michelle Obama, Muhammad Ali, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Stephen Hawking. For Platon, the eye of the camera enables him to find moments of true humanity. He believes that if we open our own eyes, ears and hearts, we too can deeply connect with those around us and discover the astounding potential within every person we meet.

Introducing The Audacious Project’s new cohort

Communities around the globe are grappling with division and uncertainty. Lasting and transformative change on the world’s most pressing challenges will require us to work together and find common ground. At The Audacious Project, we aspire to be a lever for courageous collaboration, supporting those who are reimagining and rebuilding our systems to better meet the demands of this moment. 

This past year, the Audacious community has come together to catalyze more than $900 million for nine bold projects. Sourced from our global network, and supported by our team over the past 12 months, these projects hope to create clear pathways to a better future.

The 2021-22 Audacious Project grantees are: 

• Code for America: Harnessing technology to transform the US social safety net
• Center for Tech and Civic Life: Strengthening local election administration in the US
• ClimateWorks: Drive Electric: Accelerating the end of the polluting tailpipe and transition to clean transportation
• Glasswing International: Building critical mental health support in Central America’s Northern Triangle
• The International Refugee Assistance Project: Unlocking legal rights so that refugees can resettle safely
• myAgro: Equipping smallholder farmers with the power to invest in themselves 
• Noora Health: Training family caregivers to help their loved ones heal
• The Tenure Facility: Securing land for Indigenous peoples — for justice and our climate
• Woodwell Climate Research Center: Integrating permafrost into our global solution for climate change

These projects reflect continued collaboration between a group of global partners, philanthropic organizations and determined individuals who believe in the power of pooling significant, long-term resources in service of impact. Our hope is that this inspires others to engage in the work too.

This new cohort joins an existing Audacious portfolio of 29 projects, with over $3.1 billion of philanthropic dollars catalyzed since 2015. Four cycles into this program, the Audacious projects together reveal a powerful truth: the problems we face are not intractable, and the status quo is not inevitable.

We look forward to sharing these new projects with you next week at TED2022 during the Audacious session co-hosted by Academy Award nominee and Emmy, BAFTA and Peabody Award winner Ava DuVernay, and we very much hope you’ll join us in supporting and amplifying their work far and wide. 

With gratitude and determined hope,
Anna Verghese, executive director of The Audacious Project
Chris Anderson, head of TED

The talks of TED@BCG 2022

The world is facing an unprecedented pace of change. In a day of talks and performances, a diverse group of experts explore how to stay ahead of the curve — covering everything from the value of purpose in business to the democratization of storytelling and the exciting potential of human-AI collaboration.

The event: TED@BCG 2022 is the twelfth event TED and Boston Consulting Group have co-hosted to spotlight leading thinkers from around the globe. Hosted by TED’s Head of Partnerships Lisa Choi Owens, with opening remarks from Christoph Schweizer, CEO of BCG.

Special feature: For this event, TED reached out to five past speakers (all brilliant business leaders) and asked them one question: What idea in business is not being embraced fast enough? The five speakers — Margaret Heffernan, Angela Duckworth, Danielle Moss, Jacqueline Novogratz and Tim Leberecht — gave diverse, enlightening answers.

Music: Singer-songwriter Lex Land treats the audience to a performance of her Texas mid-century swing.

The talks in brief:

Ashley M. Grice, purpose expert

Big idea: Purpose can embed meaning and authenticity into every aspect of a company, from the top floor to the shop floor. 

How? Ashley M. Grice thinks a lot about how companies can live and breathe their “why.” Different from mission statements or visions, which naturally change over time, a company’s “why” (or purpose) is timeless and impacts its entire ethos. She shares the example of a flight attendant who went above and beyond by thoughtfully giving Grice extra snacks on a busy day, a kind gesture that reflected the airline’s culture of purpose. Sharing useful advice for businesses, Grice details three important things to know about making purpose part of your company’s muscle memory: 1) Be authentic and uphold values; 2) Purpose exists in the crossroads of idealism and realism — and it’s supposed to be uncomfortable; 3) Purpose must impact every layer of a company, from a CEO’s strategy to middle management’s decision-making to frontline workers’ visibility. By continuously reflecting on the journey to purpose, it becomes the norm — and everyone’s role is important. 

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Shervin Khodabandeh, human and AI visionary

Big idea: We often think of artificial intelligence as technology that will one day replace human skill sets — but AI alone can’t solve all our problems. What if, instead of overinvesting in advanced algorithms, we combined the data-driven strengths of AI with the unique capabilities of human thinking? Shervin Khodabandeh shows how fostering a symbiotic relationship between people and AI creates more financial value for companies, a happier workforce and an ideal middle ground upon which challenging problems can be solved.

How? Even though companies across the world spend billions of dollars building AI capabilities, Khodabandeh says that only about ten percent of them see meaningful returns on their investments. He believes that one way to solve this problem is to use AI in conjunction with the creativity, judgment, empathy and ethics that humans offer. But how exactly can companies achieve mutually beneficial human-AI relationships? First, Kodabandeh says companies should identify the unique role AI systems could play in their organization — not simply as replacements for humans but as illuminators of innovative solutions or recommenders to improve decision-making. Next, companies should take advantage of feedback loops, through which humans and AI can learn from each other. Finally, they should use this knowledge to determine which combination of human-AI roles and skills best suits specific business needs. When that happens, an organization’s overall rate of learning increases, making it more agile, resilient and adaptable. “It is the human touch that will bring out the best in AI,” Kodabandeh says.

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Ken Chenault, business leader, in conversation with Whitney Pennington Rodgers, TED current affairs curator

Big idea: During times of crisis, leaders have a responsibility to inspire hope, remain grounded in core values and, ultimately, serve and empower the people they lead. 

How? “The best leaders recognize that leadership is both a responsibility and a privilege,” says Ken Chenault, who believes that if you want to lead, you have to be willing to serve. This mindset is especially crucial during times of crisis, when people depend on leaders to perform two key responsibilities: contextualizing challenges and emphasizing the potential to overcome them. Chenault says that one of the most important leadership strategies a company can have is understanding how to empower the people it serves — from employees and customers to investors and stakeholders. Working with organizations like General Catalyst, which centers technology in building companies, and OneTen, which helps Black Americans secure family-sustaining careers, he advocates for responsible innovation: a principle that says companies can and should meet the needs of their followers in an inclusive way, while making investments in new technologies. By upholding their integrity, fostering creative change and challenging the status quo, leaders have the opportunity to transform the workforce and give people opportunities to embark on their own leadership journeys.

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Hyeonmi Kim, strategy consultant 

Big idea: The next great stories are coming from the bizarre and fantastical world of webtoons.

How? Pop culture is changing with a different kind of storytelling, says Hyeonmi Kim. They’re called webtoons: stories told using comic-like illustrations that are published in short segments (usually on a weekly basis) and meant to be read on a smartphone in five to ten minutes. Originating in Korea, webtoons have leapt out of niche platforms and onto the big screen, as with Netflix’s Hellbound, which hit the platform’s top ten list in 2022 after being released as webtoon in South Korea in 2019. Kim sees webtoons as a democratization of storytelling — anyone can share a story and find an audience — and an opportunity for up-and-coming creators to potentially hit on big-time success. What’s more, webtoons are breaking through mainstream media’s closed ecosystem of scriptwriters, where the same writers script (suspiciously similar) blockbusters, laying down a fresh pipeline of rich, varied storytelling. “The writers are diverse and creative, and so are their stories,” Kim says.

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Bernhard Kowatsch, social entrepreneur

Big idea: Big global challenges are no different than global business challenges.

How? Why do we think so traditionally about some of the world’s biggest challenges? Bernhard Kowatsch points to issues like global hunger, for example. After he and his business partner developed a successful app for easily donating meals to hungry children around the world, Kowatsch was inspired to do more. The opportunity arrived in leading the World Food Programme’s Innovation Accelerator, replicating what Silicon Valley does well but for global social good — in this case, supporting start-up and non-profit innovations worldwide and helping them scale successfully to disrupt hunger. Since 2015, the program has positively impacted the lives of more than eight million people, doubling year over year with initiatives such as Building Blocks (a blockchain-supported way for aid organizations to provide food to refugees) and the invention of a machine that fortifies flour with nutrients. Kowatsch asks: Can accelerated innovation and technology help tackle some of the world’s issues? He absolutely believes so — and has the evidence to prove it. The only barrier now is our own thinking.

A reintroduction to representation

This is part of an ongoing spotlight created by Black@TED, TED’s employee resource group for staff who identify as Black.

This is a reintroduction for anyone, anywhere.

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There’s a bad habit in desperate need of breaking.

A narrow understanding of representation, watered down to mean simply a face or a voice (without weight, like a ghost) only relevant when a specific topic is brought up, then dismissed when people grow tired, bored or disenchanted — no more humored than an actual ghost would be.

The conversation suddenly sounds like complaining to the ears of people who wake up to the fact that swooping in as a savior and doing the actual hard work of true allyship doesn’t stroke the ego in the same way.

The once-heralded, deemed-necessary faces and voices are regarded with looks and tones that say: Why are you still haunting that old topic? As if they’re unable to move on and speak about brighter, less traumatic subjects, when the reality is people only want to hear from them when their trauma and grief is forced to be center focus. Until it’s inconvenient.

Unless it’s repackaged as entertainment and sold as education at the expense of the lives and narratives of those depicted. Books, films and television shows — not for us, and rarely truly produced by us — telling the same stories with the same endings because people are still profiting from the past and a pain that’s never known peace.

How can one embrace brighter, better tomorrows if they’re surrounded with experiences — both real and imagined — that reinforce the cruelties of today and yesterday?

There is space for multiple conversations, many of which may have little to nothing to do with identity, and that is the secret to representation. Zoom out. See the forest and the trees. Representation shouldn’t be a palette cleanser or a one-note offering, but a spectrum of flavors. Retire the monolith and elevate narratives by creating a more holistic view of what it means to be.

Representation isn’t just familiar narratives, but familiar faces in unfamiliar narratives removed from exoticism or exceptionalism when it strikes a balance between novelty and nuance. Not a check box, but a celebration of the endless ways a human being can exist in the world.

You need to know where you’ve been to understand if you’re going in the right direction — or you could easily end up going in circles. To successfully break a cycle or bad habit, is to first acknowledge its worn paths and lazy trappings.

“The Main Ingredient”

This is part of an ongoing spotlight created by Black@TED, TED’s employee resource group for staff who identify as Black.

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An ineffable chemistry chose us.
Our shades, hues, textures—

Breathtaking.

Complex polymers form to produce our Melanin Coat of Arms.
The beauty of formidable, dominant genes that code our entire experience.
Us, the sums of our valiant ancestors.

Rebirth as intergenerational.
Not trauma, but
Magic
Recipes
Joy
and Jazz.

A jazz for life, despite it all.

You’d think with all the violence practiced and refined on Black bodies—

the brutality, the imprisonment, the maternal mortality rate, the environmental racism, the redlining, the literal theft of Black female features, the warfare on our culture, language, land, and physical recording of lineage—

that an extinction would have occurred.

Yet,
here we are.

Steady;

ain’t goin nowhere!

Our bones are made of mercy and favor.
Created from an impenetrable alchemy,
We are sacred matter.
An elixir that can’t be

Stolen
Remixed
Duplicated, or
Denied.

Forever the main ingredient.

What an honor to be destined for never-ending renaissance.
The only opportunity in which we are afforded a new beginning—to

Reclaim
Repurpose, and
Revive
The Black Existence.

Always, and only—

On our terms.

 

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Malanna Wheat is a Black woman, writer and researcher, most passionate about the intersections between race, space, gender and social control by way of infrastructural design. In probing identity formations, her research examines what the prison space teaches Black and Brown womxn to internalize through its racial gendering, and what representation looks like against a backdrop of spatialized normalcy — how infrastructural spaces, like the slave ship, the prison, the sidewalk, the ‘urban’ inner city and/or ‘ghetto,’ are designed to herd ‘othered’ identities in such a way that nearly everyone who takes up space looks the same and therefore skews the perception of ‘standard,’ as well as the perception of what we, as Black and Brown people, envision for our lives — what we deserve, where we can go, and lastly what is owed to us on the grounds of human decency, justice and dignity. Her writing concerns the surveillance of Black and Brown bodies and minds as a living manifesto that racial matters are spatial matters.

“Conversations with People Who Hate Me” joins the TED Audio Collective

The podcast Conversations with People Who Hate Me has joined the TED Audio Collective ahead of its new season, which launches on February 16. Listen to new episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted by writer and performer Dylan Marron, the podcast invites people who have clashed online — from strangers to coworkers to friends — to step away from the keyboard and get to know one another as human beings. Conversations with People Who Hate Me fosters meaningful connections, often with surprising and heartwarming results, in a time of increasing isolation.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled to have Conversations with People Who Hate Me join the TED Audio Collective,” Marron says. “Not only will the podcast be able to reach an entirely new crop of listeners filled with TED’s curious and brilliant audience members, but I’m honored to be part of a cohort that includes other daring creators who regularly make work that feeds both my brain and my soul.”

As a digital creator, Dylan has witnessed firsthand that with online success often comes online hate. However, he’s found that the best and most subversive way to handle the vitriol is to foster conversation. These conversations on the podcast have also inspired Dylan’s new book by the same title.

On the show’s addition, TED’s director of audio Michelle Quint says, “We’re Dylan’s biggest fans and massively excited that he’s chosen the TED Audio Collective as the new home for Conversations with People Who Hate Me. We absolutely can’t wait to see where he takes the show from here.”

Conversations with People Who Hate Me’s new season launches February 16 and explores issues and conflicts like conversion therapy, the January 6 insurrection, a mother who disavowed her transgender son and a woman who was subjected to viral sexist memes. The surprising thing to everyone who listens to the show is that Dylan takes what could be hate-filled conversations and makes them about human connections and all the ways we can understand each other. Listen to new episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

The TED Audio Collective and Conversations with People Who Hate Me are supported by TED’s global partners. Learn more about TED Partnerships here.

“Am I Normal? with Mona Chalabi”: A TED series for the endlessly curious

Am I Normal? with Mona Chalabi is a TED series and podcast made for endlessly curious people who question why things are the way they are. Join data journalist Mona Chalabi as she investigates the research behind tricky questions about life, society and ourselves — with the help of creative data visualizations.

Over eight episodes, Mona explores how to have lasting friendships, taboos that have changed throughout history, the societal pressures of fertility, the relationship between language and identity – and even if you should trust your local weather forecast.

How long does it take for the heart to mend itself after a breakup?

How can we make our friendships last without feeling overwhelmed?

How can we tell the difference between a marketing ploy and an actual statistic?

Here’s why it doesn’t always pay off to focus on the average.

Why are the pressures of fertility so one-sided?

Language matters when it comes to collecting data — here’s why.

Should you trust the weather forecast?

What does history have to say about some of today’s taboos?

Reimagine: TED Talks from five inspiring youth leaders, in partnership with UNICEF

Young people across the world are reimagining the future and catalyzing the changes we need today. One thing is clear: we need to listen to youth voices now more than ever. In two days of virtual talks, we heard from five inspiring youth leaders about their most pressing concerns and the opportunities they see to deliver a fairer, greener world for everybody.

The event: TED Salon: Reimagine, hosted by Sally Kohn and presented in partnership with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

Cause for celebration: For 75 years, UNICEF has been working tirelessly for child rights and for the well-being of every child. Whoever they are. Wherever they live. Learn more about their 75-year journey.

The talks in brief:

Makhtoum Abdalla, education rights champion

Big idea: For children in refugee camps, schools and education are powerful tools of liberation. Makhtoum Abdalla, displaced as a child in Sudan and now living in a refugee camp, is using education as a springboard for his deepest dream: to ensure all children are educated and taught the skills needed to build a brighter future and become “captains of their destiny.”

How? Scoring one of the highest scores on South Sudan’s Grade 8 exam while living in the Otash refugee camp in Darfur, Abdalla caught the attention of UNICEF Sudan, who made him a Youth Advocate in 2020. He shares his goals of going to Columbia University to become a doctor and save children from malnutrition and hunger. As a youth advocate, he’s a voice for the ambitions of refugee kids like himself, championing easily accessible education so that everybody can tap into the world’s most powerful resource: knowledge.

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Nkosilathi Nyathi, climate justice advocate

Big idea: Although the climate crisis is largely caused by irresponsible adults in developed countries, it’s the children of developing nations — like Nkosilathi Nyathi’s Zimbabwe — that suffer from climate disaster the most. In a world where the clock is ticking off the minutes until climate disasters become unstoppable, we must involve everyone in finding solutions — including the children who suffer most acutely.

How? Since the age of 10, Nkosilathi Nyathi has engaged youth in the struggle to reduce emissions in Zimbabwe and to teach them that even small gestures can make a difference. Nyathi believes that a deeper commitment to climate education will give young people the tools they need to come up with their own solutions, and to help implement them once they’re discovered. But before that can happen, adults must listen — which is why Nyathi mobilizes youth to protest Zimbabwe’s climate policies, and why UNICEF has appointed him as a Youth Advocate to help spread his message to leaders all over the world.

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Elizabeth Zion, family reunification visionary

Big idea: Fleeing religious persecution, Elizabeth Zion’s mother and siblings left Nigeria for Ireland — without her father, who to this day has been prevented from joining his family in the country where his daughter was born. Without him, Zion’s mother faced not only the struggles of raising five children as a single parent but also seven months of homelessness. Zion’s story is not unique — and each time that story is relived, its tragedy is underscored by the fact that it’s entirely avoidable.

How? Being raised by a family is a basic human right — one which is typically passed over by immigration regulations in countries the world over. Zion’s father has been trying to join her for 18 years — her entire life — and his absence, due entirely to red tape, has been devastating for her family. In order to keep families like hers together, Zion says, governments must not only commit to this right but also open up legal pathways — and reduce bureaucratic barriers — for families to enter their countries together, not one by one, whether they’re fleeing war, famine or religious persecution.

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Jane Velkovski, accessibility champion

Big idea: Freedom of movement is a human right. We should make assistive technology available to anyone who needs it.

How? “This chair is my legs — this chair is my life,” says 13-year-old disability advocate Jane Velkovski. Born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) — a condition that causes his muscles to grow weak even as his mind grows stronger — he relies on a motorized wheelchair to provide the freedom and independence every teenager craves.  Most kids can walk by the age of two, says Velkovski, but he wasn’t eligible for a government-provided power chair until the age of six. At age five, Velkovski says he got lucky when a family overseas sent him a power chair after their child with SMA outgrew it. But he worries about other kids who aren’t as fortunate. He argues that kids need to move independently from the earliest age possible, and policymakers must provide assistive technology to children with disabilities. “I see this world as a playground where people and governments are like a team,” he says. “We need to make sure everyone is able to play.”

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Peachy Liv, mental well-being motivator

Big idea: Social media is a powerful tool. It can amplify your voice and broadcast your ideas to a global audience, but it can also make it easier for others to criticize or attack you. We can — and must — make social media more user-friendly.

How? When Peachy Liv was 12 years old, she started creating videos for YouTube to share her ideas about education with other students her age. The platform helped her connect with millions of viewers but also made her vulnerable to harmful online criticism. If you have a strong voice online, she says, especially as a young person or as someone trying to make change in the world, people think you’re putting yourself on a pedestal — and they try to knock you down. According to Liv, more than one-third of teenagers have experienced a form of cyber-bullying. As individuals, she says, we can build our resilience to online negativity by practicing self-acceptance and seeking out support from friends and family or trusted mental-health professionals. We can also create better online spaces by committing to treat each other with kindness and respect. And if you ever need a break from social media, that’s OK, too. “Technology is my generation’s tool to fight for our future,” Liv says. “It should help us, not hurt us.”

What Now … for the future? Notes from Session 6 of TEDWomen 2021

Over three days and six sessions at TEDWomen 2021, more than 40 speakers and performers shared ideas that spanned the globe and drew from across cultures and disciplines to answer the question: What now? For the final session, speakers explored the biggest question of all — What now for the future? — and encouraged us to imagine another world and fight for it.

The event: TEDWomen 2021: Session 6, hosted by TEDWomen curators Pat Mitchell, Helen Walters and Whitney Pennington Rodgers, in Palm Springs, California on December 3, 2021

Speakers: Maria Van Kerkhove, Kathryn Kolbert, Aarathi Krishnan, Michèle Lamont, Candace Parker

Music: Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter and musician Melanie Charles is on a journey to “make jazz trill again.” With a sound that spans jazz, soul, experimental and roots music, she performs an eclectic flute-infused set. “Don’t let anyone try and make you dim your light,” she says.

Special guest: Are we sleepwalking into losing democracy in the United States? What’s our role in building social justice movements to protect peoples’ basic rights? In conversation with TEDWomen curator Pat Mitchell, Tiana Epps-Johnson, founder of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, shares two hard truths about American democracy: nearly 100 million Americans don’t vote regularly, and elected officials — from federal to state to county levels — are still nowhere near representative of their populations. She has a vision for a system where every voter is invited into a delightful, smooth voting process, and thinks the way to get there is for more people to start voting as often as possible — not just for president. Civic engagement, she says, means a commitment to showing up every time.

The talks in brief:

Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 technical lead of the World Health Organization (WHO), in conversation with Whitney Pennington Rodgers, TED current affairs curator

Big idea: We must remain vigilant — in ways both big and small — in order to beat this pandemic and be better prepared for the next.

How? First, and most importantly, Maria Van Kerkhove emphasizes that we will get out of this current pandemic. But there is always another crisis around the corner (the recent debut of Omicron not withstanding), and there are many things the world can learn from in terms of how COVID-19 has been handled (or not) thus far. It was, in ways, a tale of two perspectives: the experienced and inexperienced. Countries that had experienced SARS, MERS, avian influenza, Ebola and similar health crises knew the threat firsthand and didn’t need all the data in front of them to understand the risk, acting aggressively early on. Meanwhile, other national leadership took the stance of “not our problem” — with detrimental results. We must look to and replicate what the experienced countries have done, investing in virus surveillance, a robust health care system, contact testing and changing public health laws to be able to act when necessary, Van Kerkhove says. WHO has taken a big first step in ensuring that is the case by bringing together governments and ministries of its member states for a special session of the World Health Assembly to develop a pandemic preparedness protocol and create a binding agreement that all countries must follow. Considerable communication, collaboration and accountability — on a macro and micro scale — will get us out of this pandemic and ready us for the next. But demanding things such as vaccine equity now can help make us safer, faster. In the meantime, Van Kerkhove has one request for anyone and everyone out there: remain vigilant.

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Kathryn Kolbert, reproductive rights attorney

Big idea: Roe v. Wade will be overturned within a year. It’s time to change tactics to ensure reproductive freedom in the United States.

How? In 1992, reproductive freedom pioneer Kathryn Kolbert argued Planned Parenthood v. Casey before the United States Supreme Court. In only her second appearance in front of the country’s highest court, Kolbert is credited with saving Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision protecting a pregnant person’s right to have an abortion. That right is now under unprecedented attack, with two cases from Texas and one from Mississippi being taken up by the Supreme Court; Kolbert believes that before 2022 is over, the US Constitution will no longer protect reproductive freedom. But there is still hope for people to be able to choose whether or not to become parents. Kolbert says it’s time to focus on two strategies: building a “badass social justice movement” that brings allies together for a shared purpose and electing legislators who will protect abortion rights. She imagines a world where birth control is available over the counter and quality sex education is taught in public schools, and she wants to pass a gender equity amendment to the Constitution that would protect everyone’s ability to make decisions about their bodies. It’s time to get politically active, vote and work for champions of choice — and run for office. “The end of Roe is not the end of the story,” she says.

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Aarathi Krishnan, tech and human rights ethicist

Big idea: Humanitarians need to consider the cost of a digital future — and what it means for the people they’re protecting.

Why? Having spent nearly two decades working in humanitarian aid, from Rwanda to Afghanistan, Aarathi Krishnan defines this field as “emergency help for people who are in desperate need.” Over the last decade, Krishnan explains, the humanitarian aid system has embraced digitalization, from registering refugees using biometric ID systems to commercial drones. This may sound enticing to technologists, but in reality Western interests are using untested approaches on African and Asian populations with limited consent — which is colonialist in nature, she says. Targeted identification of persecuted peoples has been a tactic of genocidal regimes, and digitalization can give quicker, more scalable access to information. Krishnan points to how the Myanmar government collected much more than biometric information on Rohingya refugees in 2017 when they digitally registered to get access to services. This happened without consent, and they were given no other option. “In our quest to do good in the world, how can we ensure that we do not lock people into future harm, future indebtedness and future inequity as a result of these actions?” she asks. Taking a clear-eyed look at how these technologies can be tools of disempowerment, Krishnan lays out ethical principles that question the intent of techno-solutions — and hold humanitarians accountable for the futures they help create.

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Michèle Lamont, sociologist

Big idea: To fight the harm of social stigmatization, we must recognize the value and dignity of all people.

How? According to sociologist Michèle Lamont, how we define who matters in society — or who doesn’t — depends on recognition and stigmatization. We recognize those we value and stigmatize those we don’t. On both ends of the political spectrum, from the #MeToo movement to MAGA, Lamont sees people staking recognition claims, asking society to identify (or recognize) them as valuable. She also sees agents of change like Joey Solloway, creator of the hit TV show Transparent, transforming the portrayal of certain stigmatized groups. Whether or not we find ourselves with an audience, we all have the power to make the societies we live in more inclusive and equal, Lamont says. We can start by expanding our ideas of who matters.

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Candace Parker, WNBA superstar, activist

Big idea: Breaking down barriers is about not accepting limitations.

Why? When Kamala Harris was elected vice-president, Candace Parker turned to her daughter and said, “Now you can be vice-president too.” Her daughter looked at her. “Why couldn’t I before?” she asked. As someone who has spent her life breaking barriers and achieving success — she’s a two-time NCAA champion, an Olympic gold medalist and a two-time WNBA Champion — Parker says she didn’t realize that her own limitations created barriers for her daughter where they didn’t exist. That’s why Parker thinks we can learn from kids her daughter’s age. She says that younger generations are changing the world through conversation and collective action — and they’re cheering each other on. “It’s men showing up for women’s pay disparity. It’s Black people showing up for white people, white people showing up for Black people. It’s LGBTQ allies.” While success might look different for Parker than it does for her daughter, she says that older generations can show up for young people by empowering their choices. After all, “There’s more ways to break through barriers than just with records,” she says.

What Now … for ingenuity and invention? Notes from Session 5 of TEDWomen 2021

In Session 5, we turn to collective moments of joy. Seven speakers and a performer dove headfirst into creativity, helping us see the silver lining, embrace artistry and boldly chart out the world we want to live in.

The event: TEDWomen 2021: Session 5, hosted by TEDWomen curators Helen Walters and Whitney Pennington Rodgers, in Palm Springs, California on December 2, 2021

Speakers: Emily Pilloton-Lam, Cecilia Aragon, Temie Giwa-Tubosun, Fariel Salahuddin, Emma Hart, Gala Marija Vrbanic, Christina Tosi

Music: Singer, multi-instrumentalist, producer and healer Geminelle performs a hypnotic set, featuring “Everything I Need,” “Find Your Tribe” and “I Am Free”

The talks in brief:

Emily Pilloton-Lam, builder, youth educator

Big idea: Our image of construction workers is overwhelmingly male — and for good reason, as only four percent of workers on construction sites are women. Through her nonprofit Girls Garage, Emily Pilloton-Lam is teaching girls and non-binary kids (with a focus on people of color) the skills needed to take up this well-paid and satisfying vocation. What will it take to actualize a future built (literally) by women as well as men?

How? According to Pilloton-Lam, there are more than 300,000 unfilled jobs in construction, and the industry is struggling to fill them. But unlike other fields, the gender wage gap in construction is a mere 99 cents to the dollar. Considering these statistics, it’s a no-brainer that women represent a huge, untapped pool of labor resources. On top of the stereotype that women aren’t strong enough for the job (which, considering most of the work is done by power tools, is absurd), women and non-binary people face numerous other artificial barriers, including a work culture that is unwelcoming at best and hostile at worst. To fight this, Girls Garage provides mentorship and education to train and inspire girls and gender-expansive youth to take their places in this industry. And, in a first-of-its-kind TED demo, Pilloton-Lam uses power tools to build a wood toolbox onstage … while giving her talk.

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Cecilia Aragon, professor, pilot, author

Big idea: Fanfiction deserves a closer look for its creativity, criticism and community. 

Why? When she was 10 years old, Cecilia Aragon fell in with the Lord of the Rings trilogy but was disappointed with the lack of female characters. So she rewrote the story to her liking with reimagined protagonists and new scenes that reflected what she wanted to see. Today, what Aragon wrote is known as fanfiction (or transformative fiction): a story based on characters or settings from another’s work. As an adult, she decided to do a deep data dive into the vast world of online fanfiction to study the impact creating these stories has on the writer and their craft. And what she and her research partner found surpassed her wildest imagination — over 60 billion words in more than 44 languages, written primarily by millions of young people over the past 20 years. An outpouring of creativity culminating in a kind, supportive community that’s generous with its feedback and constructive criticism in a way that encourages and emboldens. Aragon sees this organic network of writerly love as a blueprint for more formal learning tools to help develop students in schools and as an opportunity to foster connections across the country.

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Temie Giwa-Tubosun, entrepreneur

Big idea: Black women entrepreneurs are founding game-changing start-ups in Africa and across the globe. It’s time for investors to give them the funding and support they need to grow and scale.

How? Temie Giwa-Tubosun is the founder of LifeBank, a start-up that connects remote cities, towns and villages with life-saving medical supplies. Since 2016, they’ve saved more than 40,000 lives — yet it proved nearly impossible for Giwa-Tubosun to raise funds when she first set out to start her company. And she’s not alone: in 2020, less than six percent of venture capital funding for African startups went to companies with women cofounders, despite their proven track records. Giwa-Tubosun issues a challenge to investors to think harder when it comes to deciding which founders to back — and to close the funding gap for Black women-led startups and innovations.

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Fariel Salahuddin, TED Fellow, alternative currency enthusiast

Question: Who gets to decide what is and isn’t money?

Answer: Fariel Salahuddin’s favorite way to be introduced at social gatherings is as “the foremost goatherd in Pakistan,” a vocation she happened upon through a combination of fate and curiosity. She works with smallholder farmers in developing countries, enabling them to use their livestock as currency. After visiting a small town in Pakistan where people live without access to basic necessities like water, she took a chance and asked a village elder if they’d be willing to pay for a solar water pump (which are very expensive in Pakistan) with goats (which are abundant there). This idea blossomed into a now-booming trade, tokenizing goats as a form of currency and helping get desperately needed water to remote areas — and leading Salahuddin to question how money really works. Tracing the history of money from Sumerians trading in barley to paper money backed by central banks to the blockchain, she shows how value and the way it’s exchanged has changed over time — and that there’s great opportunity in leveraging the economic assets of varied communities.

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Emma Hart, computer scientist

Big idea: What if we could create robots that evolve like biological organisms, autonomously optimizing themselves over time?

How? Think of it as a robot building itself, says Emma Hart. She and her collaborators are working on a radical new technology that would enable robots to be created, “reproduce” and evolve in real-time, successively “breeding” more and more optimized versions of themselves. This would allow robots to design themselves on the fly when sent to far-off, unknown or dangerous places (think: an asteroid, the bottom of the ocean or a nuclear reactor meltdown), potentially saving years of wasted effort and creating machines uniquely adapted to the environment and task at hand. So how exactly does a robot self-evolve? Hart and her team are turning to nature for help, replicating the three essential ingredients of biological evolution: a population in which individuals exhibit physical variations; a method of reproduction in which offspring inherit traits from their parents (and sometimes acquire new ones via mutation); and natural selection. Using a mixture of software and hardware, they’re able to guide the evolution of robots. For instance, they develop digital versions of DNA that combine and mutate; use 3-D printers to create skeletons; and oversee a virtual version of the “survival of the fittest” whereby robot designs are scored and prioritized based on their ability to conduct tasks. By repeating this cycle over and over, scientists could produce successive generations of new robots that — just like in nature — get better than the last. Call it “digital evolution” — a groundbreaking new process that could unlock new designs freed from the constraints of our current understanding of engineering, science and design.

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Gala Marija Vrbanic, digital fashion maven

Big idea: With the advent of virtual and augmented reality, avatars are becoming more complex, demanding out-of-this-world couture that’s unchained from physical reality. Gala Marija Vrbanic is at the forefront of this brave new world.

How? Gamers have been dressing up their video game characters for years. The next logical step, Marija Vrbanic tells us, is the advent of virtual clothing for social media and VR spaces — and in fact, this latest step has already become a reality, with virtual Gucci bags now selling for more than their physical counterparts. As founder and CEO of the virtual fashion house Tribute Brand and YCY, Marija Vrbanic has put Croatia on the fashion map with her weird and wonderful AR and VR garments.

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Christina Tosi, baker

Big idea: Break the rules to create some delicious magic. 

How? Most people think of magic as a trick, says Christina Tosi — a seemingly impossible act put on for the sake of entertainment. But Tosi wants to challenge that belief: real magic, she says, is not an illusion but the feeling of experiencing life shift from ordinary to extraordinary. It can be found in the spark of a moment, the simple act of believing, belonging, understanding or being understood. And she has found that magic is often created by breaking some sort of rule: pushing boundaries, challenging norms, asking why or why not. Seeing people experience magic by eating baked goods, Tosi was inspired to recreate that feeling with her quirky, unexpected confectionery combinations. Simple, approachable, accessible and nostalgia-tinged flavors — rooted in known, safe and loved delights — form the basis of her desserts, almost as if “fancy was the enemy of delicious.” With rebelling against convention baked into both her business and creative ethos, Tosi has developed a brand recognized for its ingenuity, invention and generosity of spirit. “That’s what you do when you benefit from what came before you and plan on passing it along long after you — when you know you’re here to give and not take, and leave this place better than you found it,” she says. And it all starts with a decision to act: to see the magic, capture it before it can disappear and share it … perhaps one bite at a time.

What Now … for planet Earth? Notes from Session 4 of TEDWomen 2021

If we’re going to continue to live, breathe and thrive together on this planet, we’re going to have to answer a couple of very important questions: What now for the Earth? And how do we balance the urgency of the climate crisis while still dreaming of a bright future? With actions and answers, six incredible speakers joined Session 4 of TEDWomen 2021, sparking hope, innovating solutions and uplifting humanity.

The event: TEDWomen 2021: Session 4, hosted by TEDWomen curator Pat Mitchell, in Palm Springs, California on December 2, 2021

Speakers: Halla Tómasdóttir, Resson Kantai Duff, Sonali Prasad, Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli, Ozawa Bineshi Albert and Katie Paterson

Music: Music curator of TEDWomen and multidisciplinary artist Niama Safia Sandy kicks off the session with a chilling rendition of “Someday We’ll All Be Free” by Donny Hathaway. Powerful vocals and breathtaking lyrics fill the room as Sandy invites the TEDWomen audience to join her in singing.

Special guest: Writer and environmentalist Katharine Wilkinson gives an update on her 2018 TED Talk, where she spoke about empowering women and girls to help stop global warming. In conversation with Pat Mitchell, Wilkinson shares a crucial truth: that the predatory forces keeping transformation at bay still exist yet collective courage is growing, reflected in the surge of youth climate action, Indigenous land defense and actions of frontline communities. Wilkinson also talks about her 2020 book, All We Can Save, that she edited with marine biologist and policy expert Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, which is an anthology of poetry, essays and art from those leading in climate action.

The talks in brief: 

Halla Tómasdóttir, change catalyst in conversation with TEDWomen curator Pat Mitchell

Big idea: Use your vote, your wallet and your voice to act on climate.

How? Halla Tómasdóttir — CEO of the B Team, former presidential candidate of Iceland and longtime friend of TEDWomen — is recently back from the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. She explains that while the generational trust gap on climate is widening, there are some things to be hopeful about coming out of the gathering. First, the climate agenda is becoming more holistic — we’re talking about nature, justice and inclusion now — not just greenhouse gasses. Next, this was the COP where business and finance really showed up, knowing that governments can’t solve the crisis on their own. She also saw some unlikely alliances form, notably between business leaders and the Global South, resulting in massive monetary commitments. And finally, she saw accountants become unlikely change catalysts with the creation of the International Sustainability Standards Board, which aims to change everything about the norms of business. “The most difficult work of our lifetimes has to happen in the next few years,” says Tómasdóttir. She asks us all to not underestimate our power, especially as collectives of employees — and to mobilize and put pressure on CEOs and politicians to act.

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Resson Kantai Duff, conservationist

Big idea: Typically, conservation efforts in Africa have been led by “parachute” conservationists — outsider superheroes who drop in with all the answers, hire locals to implement them and then disappear. Instead, Africans should lead the way in saving wildlife, using their own knowledge and strategies.

Why? The world has lost 68 percent of its wildlife in the last 50 years, says Resson Kantai Duff. This shocking statistic demands new solutions — and they need to be implemented by the people on the frontlines. Too often, Africans have been seen as barriers to conservation, painted as poachers, squatters and encroachers rather than as the stewards of wildlife that they have been for generations, he says. But tribes like the Samburu of Kenya, who have tracked and hunted lions for generations, are their logical stewards. They are the instigators of programs like Warrior Watch, where hunters shadow lion prides not to kill them but to warn other herders away. Most importantly, Resson believes that women must be more than merely involved — as traditional guardians of wildlife, they must spearhead conservation efforts.

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Sonali Prasad, TED Fellow, writer, artist

Big idea: Disaster can strike at any moment, but stories can teach us how to cope with life-changing events we can’t predict and navigate unexpected ruptures in our lives.

How? Sonali Prasad unearths the stories buried in disasters. She says that after a rupture like a weather catastrophe or the recent pandemic, the stories we tell take one of two shapes: they are either hideous or hopeful. In a talk that blurs poetry with narrative storytelling, Prasad returns to the Aceh province in India, an area ravaged by the 2004 tsunami, and speaks to the strangeness that follows a disaster. She recounts the grief and struggle she witnessed among the tsunami’s survivors alongside accounts of fortitude, imagination and hope. Why must we revisit sites of such devastation? she asks. “Because in their dust lies the possibilities for navigation of the fog of ecological disruption.”

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Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli, social entrepreneur and innovator

Big idea: We can create a more affordable, sustainable and just food system by changing how we grow, produce and distribute food.

How? As a social entrepreneur focused on global agriculture, Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli examines the true cost of food. She reports that our current food system is value-destroying — meaning it harms human health, our planet’s climate and the economic viability of small to medium-scale food enterprises. But we can take steps to fix it. First, we must make sure that healthy food is accessible to everyone, especially people from lower-income communities. A healthy diet, one low in processed food and high in fresh produce, supports positive health outcomes which can lower hospitalization rates and medical costs. Next, we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food waste and shorten our supply chains, so that food doesn’t travel so far from farm to mouth. And last, we need to support entrepreneurs with sustainable food practices, from farmers to seed entrepreneurs, logistics providers and even cooks. Small- and medium-scale enterprises like these create jobs in their communities and make nutritious food more widely available. So the next time you sit down to eat, Nwuneli encourages all of us to think about our food choices and consider the power we wield with our plates.

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Ozawa Bineshi Albert, climate justice organizer

Big idea: When it comes to climate change, we need a drastic shift in leadership.

Why? To date, the majority of viable climate solutions have been crafted and defined by corporations, governments and some scientists, says Ozawa Bineshi Albert. Much of this effort has been seen through the lens of the economy, ensuring the survival of capitalism within climate change rather than the survival of humanity and the planet. That’s why Albert is calling for a full-throated change in leadership, one that centers the wisdom and solutions of those communities most impacted by the climate crisis. People on the frontlines are the actual experts, Albert says: they’ve directly experienced climate disasters for decades and have a deep sense of the urgency of the crisis. With these people at the helm, we could shift focus away from net-zero emissions (a type of “masquerade” for corporate inaction or participation in a few offset programs, Albert says, while they still dump waste into local communities) and instead begin to cut off toxic pollution at the source. “We can’t rely on those who created the problem to fix it,” Albert says. But if we change two things — our sense of urgency and the people leading the solutions — the planet, and everybody on it, will benefit.

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Katie Paterson, conceptual artist

Big idea: Conceptual artwork can help situate human beings in our cosmic timeline and bring distant, primordial landscapes closer to our lives.

How? Short-sightedness may be the greatest threat to humanity, says Katie Paterson. As a conceptual artist, her work engages the concept of deep time: the Earth’s history over millions of years. Her projects include a telephone line connected to a melting glacier, a map of every dead star in our universe and a necklace whose beads are carved from ancient fossils and strung in geological order, epoch by epoch. Whatever the medium, Paterson uses artwork to expand our human sense of scale. She calls her Future Library project a century-long prayer. Every year for the next 100 years, a different author will submit an unread manuscript to the Future Library. In 2114, the library will publish these manuscripts on paper made from a forest of 1,000 spruce trees that Paterson and her team planted on the outskirts of Oslo in 2014. Although 100 years isn’t vast on a cosmic scale, the project reminds us of our invisible ties to future generations. “To be human,” Paterson says, “is to understand that we are part of a long continuum.”

What Now … for work (and play)? Notes from Session 3 of TEDWomen 2021

The way we think about work is shifting. Now is the time to rethink, rebuild and even completely reimagine the future of how business gets done — inside and outside the office. The six speakers of Session 3 share the highs and lows of this burgeoning renaissance around work-life and livelihood, and weigh in on what’s missing in the conversation.

The event: TEDWomen 2021: Session 3, hosted by TED’s current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, in Palm Springs, California on December 2, 2021

Speakers: Rha Goddess, Deepa Purushothaman, Maja Bosnic, Srishti Bakshi, Anna Malaika Tubbs and Lilly Singh

Music: Genre-bending Latinx musician Gina Chavez kicked off the session with an atmospheric and transportive set featuring “La Que Manda,” a commanding and lively rallying cry reminding anyone listening who’s really in charge.

The talks in brief:

Rha Goddess, soul coach, and Deepa Purushothaman, corporate inclusion visionary

Big idea: Current work structures aren’t working for most of us — especially for women of color. It’s time to reshape those systems and empower women of color to lead.

How? Since 2018, Rha Goddess and Deepa Purushothaman have interviewed thousands of women from all backgrounds about their work experiences. The results have been startling, highlighting the prevalence of microaggressions, negative stereotypes and the need to demonstrate abilities over and over (and over) again. What’s more, women of color get hired and promoted less often and are paid less for the same effort. As a result, one in three women report considering leaving the workforce in the next year — which would amount to a staggeringly large loss of talent. So, what to do? Goddess and Purushothaman share four pathways to reimagine work and center women of color as leaders: get rid of toxic high-performers, (as leaving them in positions of power creates toxic workplaces); treat women of color as your greatest assets (their lived experiences make them natural-born leaders); help each other thrive with intention; and banish the “broke-ass chair” (women of color need more than a “seat at the table’ — it’s time to remake the whole table, together).

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Maja Bosnic, public finance expert

Big idea: Budgeting public money equitably takes more than just doling out funds — we need better oversight and intention behind who receives it.

How? We need a more informed understanding of who receives public money, because there’s currently a massive global gender gap around who gets what, says Maja Bosnic. Some countries are already getting it right, like Austria, Canada, Morocco, Indonesia and Bosnia. But generally, most countries function under the presumption that they serve one universal, homogeneous person, who has equal requirements and needs to access funds. That just isn’t true, Bosnic says — we must start accounting for gender. She lays out how in three steps: situation analysis, a consideration of who benefits and procedural oversight to ensure that money makes an equitable impact. Public money can be fairly allocated, and a gender-based perspective will help countries do right by citizens. Bosnic looks forward to the day that gender-responsive budgeting can be known simply as: “budgeting.”

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Srishti Bakshi, women’s rights advocate

Big idea: Women’s mobility is a form of empowerment, and it needs to be protected and supported.

Why? Women face rampant violence both inside and outside of their homes. Despite being 600 million women strong, Srishti Bakshi explains that women in India are rarely seen outdoors after sunset — simply because it’s unsafe due to catcalls and harassment. A shocking 45 women every hour experience varying degrees of violence in India. In light of this, Bakshi fights for safer spaces for women by increasing their mobility. She decided to walk the length of India (a total of 2,300 miles, a distance equivalent of traveling from New York to Los Angeles, or Stockholm to Cairo) and conducted hundreds of workshops to help empower women on her journey. Along the way, she met incredible women like Jai Bharathi, with whom she teamed up to create a movement and community of women who learn to drive, walk and move themselves towards safety and independence. These women are raring to go, says Bakshi, and she plans to bring a million of them into mobility as they grow and create the largest network of connected women drivers. By rethinking mobility for women and giving them safe transport outside of their homes, she hopes to transform her country’s culture in meaningful and long-lasting ways. “The more women see other women in public spaces, the more safe, independent and empowered each of us will be,” she says.

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Anna Malaika Tubbs, sociologist, author

Big idea: We need to bring mothers to the forefront for their undeniable impact and influence by celebrating and recognizing what they rarely get credit or support for today — and throughout history.

Why? Mothers in the United States are often misrepresented or completely left out of the stories we tell, says Anna Malaika Tubbs. They’re regularly seen as selfless beings without needs to consider; belittled or dismissed for having children; and are rarely recognized for how their steadfast support helped loved ones achieve great things. The retelling of history often doesn’t feature the many acts of mothering, ultimately filing it away as insignificant. Tubbs believes this dismissal of the critical role mothers play in society leads to a lack of support for them. No universal paid parental leave, no affordable childcare, no action around the astoundingly high maternal death rates — all of this and more impacts everything from local communities to the national economy. Tubbs believes the centering of mothers in our historical narratives and general storytelling can help get them get the resources they need and deserve. Citing the remarkable lives of Alberta King, Louise Little and Berdis Jones Baldwin (the mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin, respectively), Tubbs emphasizes the need to shift the perspective on motherhood at a cultural level, to better reflect and appreciate their presence, power, empathy and ability as our first leaders, caretakers and teachers. “Would the world be different today if we had been telling their stories all along?” she asks.

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Lilly Singh, actress, producer, creator

Big idea: Women are conditioned to believe success is “a seat at the table.” Lilly Singh thinks we need to build a better table.

Why? “I’d like to present a set of guidelines I very eloquently call ‘how to build a table that doesn’t suck,'” says Lilly Singh in this hilarious, incisive talk. Tracing the arc of her career from up-and-coming YouTuber to history-making late-night talk show host, she lays out the barriers that women come up against at every stage of success. Even if you get a so-called “seat at the table,” she says, what happens when the seat is wobbly, full of splinters or doesn’t quite reach the table at all? What we really need is a better table. Singh offers four tips for building it: don’t weaponize gratitude (women shouldn’t be grateful just to be seated at the table — they should be paid to be there); invest in potential (and give women the support they actually need); make room for women (for every three men at a table, there’s only one woman — that needs to change); and upgrade the table talk (include diverse perspective in the news we report and the stories we tell).

What Now … for health and happiness? Notes from Session 2 of TEDWomen 2021

For Session 2 of TEDWomen 2021, seven speakers shared ideas and insights on everything from mental health and family structures to how to uplift personal and collective dignity.

The event: TEDWomen 2021: Session 2, hosted by TED’s head of curation Helen Walters in Palm Springs, California on December 2, 2021

Speakers: Charles C. Daniels, Jr., Smita Sharma, Zarlasht Halaimzai, Kaz, Francisca Mutapi and Diana Adams

Music and comedy: For a bit of comic relief, Marcia Belsky has some fun with a song about scrolling back through a date’s Instagram feed as well as “100 Tampons,” which lampoons NASA’s notorious decision to provide astronaut Sally Ride with an egregious supply of tampons for her six-day trip to the space in 1983. “And they asked: Will that be enough?” she sings.

The talks in brief:

Charles C. Daniels, Jr., scholar, therapist

Big idea: In order to be present and connected to their children, fathers need to learn and be empowered to parent themselves. 

How? An estimated 10 million children in the US see their fathers less than once a month, and research has shown that poverty rates, emotional and behavioral issues and school dropout and crime rates all increase when kids inconsistently see their fathers. Sharing his personal journey, Charles C. Daniels, Jr. recounts the profound impact of not seeing his own father — and explores the complex reasons a parent could have for not being there. The reasons that don’t get talked about are the ones that exacerbate the problem, he explains. That’s why he created Father’s UpLift, an organization that helps dads love, forgive and heal themselves and their children. They work with fathers to navigate shame, guilt and other challenges through group therapy, mentorship, coaching and support. Daniels, Jr. helps fathers reconnect with their kid and learn how to parent themselves so they, in turn, can be better parents.

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Smita Sharma, TED Fellow, photojournalist, visual storyteller

Big idea: Throughout the world, women are cast aside as unworthy of education or self-determination, relegated to tasks of parenting, household duties — and, sometimes, trafficked or enslaved. Through her moving photographs, Smita Sharma shares their stories.

How? By blending into her subjects’ lives and communities (sometimes under the guise of a researcher on “female hygiene,” something men are typically loathe to discuss), Smita Sharma gains the trust of her subjects: women born into poverty who are denied education, become victims of abduction, sexual violence or child marriage. With their consent, Sharma creates powerful visual narratives that depict these forgotten lives with grace and compassion, and that seek to inspire action around systemic issues of gender inequality.

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Zarlasht Halaimzai, writer, advocate for refugee rights

Big idea: Understanding the emotional fallout of violence and displacement is more important than ever.

What to expect from COP26: A conversation from TED Countdown Summit

The closing session of the TED Countdown Summit in Edinburgh on Friday, October 15, 2021 started with a discussion about the upcoming United Nations climate conference, COP26, which will take place in Glasgow from October 31-November 12, 2021. The discussion — featuring Patricia Espinosa, Laurence Tubiana and Gonzalo Muñoz — touched on how the process works and what we can expect from this crucial global gathering, whose ambition was described in an earlier TED Talk by Alok Sharma, its president, as our last chance to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

The conversation, which is presented here in its entirety, featured three key protagonists of global climate negotiations present and past:

Patricia Espinosa is the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, which is the UN entity tasked with leading the global response to the threat of climate change. It’s also the organizer of the COP gathering, together with the host governments (this year, the UK in partnership with Italy). COP stands for “Conference of the Parties” to the Framework Convention.

Laurence Tubiana is the CEO of the European Climate Foundation. She was France’s climate change ambassador and one of the architects of the Paris Agreement.

Gonzalo Muñoz, who led the discussion, is the UN’s High Level Climate Action Champion for COP25, which took place last year.

Reflecting on the challenges of previous COP conferences, Espinosa describes the importance of the human aspects of these landmark meetings and how to best build trust. Tubiana shares the story of bringing the draft of the Paris Agreement to the negotiating group comprised of oil-producing countries and the world’s biggest emitters on the very last day of COP21 in 2015 in Paris — and what happened next. The three speakers see both excitement and concern emerging ahead of COP26. As Tubiana says, “We have to bet that we can win.”

Join us Saturday, October 30 @ 12pm ET for the Countdown Global Livestream

Take action on climate change. Tune in on Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 12pm ET for the TED Countdown Global Livestream: an empowering virtual event laying out a credible and realistic pathway to a net-zero future. Presented in collaboration with YouTube Originals and COP26.

Watch on TED’s YouTube channel on October 30 @ 12pm ET »

Hosted live from the TED World Theater in New York City by two-time TED speaker and Radiolab host Latif Nasser, this free virtual event combines new TED Talks, live performances, short films, expert conversations and more, vividly explaining the climate crisis, focusing on solutions and calling for leaders and citizens everywhere to step up.

Here’s the full lineup:

A Pathway Opens – presented by Mark Ruffalo, featuring:
Amina J. Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General
Gabriel Kra, Climate tech investor
Clover Hogan, Climate activist and researcher on eco-anxiety
Johan Rockström, Climate impact scholar
John Doerr, Engineer, investor & Ryan Panchadsaram, Systems innovator 

Reducing – presented by Forest Whitaker, featuring:
Tzeporah Berman, Environmental campaigner
Ilissa Ocko, Atmospheric scientist
Ermias Kebreab, Animal scientist
Chibeze Ezekiel, Climate inclusion activist

Protecting – presented by Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, featuring:
Enric Sala, Marine ecologist
Susan Ruffo, Ocean expert
Shweta Narayan, Climate and health campaigner
Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, Clean air advocate
Ma Jun, Environmentalist, writer, scholar

Transforming – presented by Joaquin Phoenix & Rooney Mara, featuring:
Solomon Goldstein-Rose, Climate author
Solitaire Townsend, Sustainability solution seeker
Jim Hagemann-Snabe, Chairman, Maersk and Siemens
Nili Gilbert, Investment decarbonization expert
Vishaan Chakrabarti, Architect and author
Derek Sarno, Chef

One Planet – presented by Regina Hall, featuring:
Melati Wijsen, Activist, social entrepreneur
Sophia Kianni, Climate knowledge translator
Farwiza Farhan, Forest conservationist
Nemonte Nenquimo, Indigenous leader
Sister True Dedication, Zen Buddhist nun

Other features include:

• Musical performances by Valerie June, Dave Matthews, Charlie Puth
• Al Roker + Vice President Al Gore on extreme weather
• What is COP26? And why does it matter? With Christiana Figueres, Gonzalo Munoz and other climate leaders from around the world
• Climate justice with Reverend Lennox Yearwood
• A declaration to leaders around the world about the changes young people want to see in the real economy now, shared by Shiv Soin + Xiye Bastida
• TED’s Science Curator David Biello answering your questions
• An exciting update on the Drive Electric campaign with TED Countdown speaker Monica Araya
• Animated explainers and more!

Countdown is a global initiative to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. The goal is to build a better future by cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 in the race to a zero-carbon world — a world that is safer, cleaner and fairer for everyone. Every person, organization, company, city and nation is invited to collaborate with Countdown and take action on climate. It is a movement open to everyone — and everyone has a vital role to play.

Learn more about #TEDCountdown:
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