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À partir d’avant-hierTED Blog

Moving on up: Talks from day 3 of TEDWomen 2023

Activist, filmmaker and entrepreneur Maya Penn, TEDWomen editorial director Pat Mitchell and TED’s head of curation Helen Walters host Session 5 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

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

Darkwave artist Abra performs at Session 5 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

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

Writer Charles M. Blow speaks at Session 4 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Erin Lubin / TED)

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.

AI ethics researcher Sasha Luccioni speaks at Session 4 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

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.

Innovation and equity researcher Ruha Benjamin speaks at Session 4 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Erin Lubin / TED)

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.

Google’s chief diversity officer Melonie D. Parker and TED Tech podcast Sherrell Dorsey speak at Session 4 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

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.

Author, journalist and broadcaster Mary Ann Sieghart speaks at Session 4 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

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.

Maritime crime fighter Dyhia Belhabib speaks at Session 4 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Erin Lubin / TED)

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.

Ecologically obsessed horticulturist Rebecca McMackin speaks at Session 4 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

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.

US Congresswoman Lucy McBath speaks at Session 5 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

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.

President and CEO of Morehouse School of Medicine Valerie Montgomery Rice speaks at Session 5 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

“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 speaks at Session 5 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Erin Lubin / TED)

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 speaks at Session 5 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

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.

Energy equity expert Sheila Ngozi Oparaocha speaks at Session 5 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Erin Lubin / TED)

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.

Refugee advocate Chantale Zuzi Leader speaks at Session 5 of TEDWomen 2023: Two Steps Forward on October 13, 2023, in Atlanta, GA. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

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.”

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

Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 technical lead of the World Health Organization (WHO), speaks with TEDWomen curator Whitney Pennington-Rodgers at Session 6 of TEDWomen 2021: What Now? on December 3, 2021 in Palm Springs, California. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

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

Melanie Charles performs at Session 6 of TEDWomen 2021: What Now? on December 3, 2021 in Palm Springs, California. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

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.

Tiana Epps-Johnson speaks at Session 6 of TEDWomen 2021: What Now? on December 3, 2021 in Palm Springs, California. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)

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 MitchellTiana 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.


Kathryn Kolbert speaks at Session 6 of TEDWomen 2021: What Now? on December 3, 2021 in Palm Springs, California. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)

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.


Aarathi Krishnan speaks at Session 6 of TEDWomen 2021: What Now? on December 3, 2021 in Palm Springs, California. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)

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.


Michèle Lamont speaks at Session 6 of TEDWomen 2021: What Now? on December 3, 2021 in Palm Springs, California. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

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.


Candace Parker speaks at Session 6 of TEDWomen 2021: What Now? on December 3, 2021 in Palm Springs, California. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

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.

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Better. Smarter. Wiser. Notes from Session 7 of TEDMonterey

“I twerk to own my power, to reclaim my Blackness, my culture,” says Lizzo in a powerful, delightful talk at TEDMonterey: The Case for Optimism on August 3, 2021. (Photo: Bret Hartman / TED)

We’re all looking for ways to become better, smarter and wiser versions of ourselves. In a spectacularly eclectic Session 7, six speakers share their hard-won wisdom on educating, listening — and even twerking — their way towards a more inclusive world, where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

The event: TEDMonterey: Session 7, hosted by TED’s Helen Walters on Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Speakers: Adrian K. Haugabrook, Katherine Maher, Hrishikesh Hirway, Steven Johnson, Pardis Parker, Lizzo

Adrian K. Haugabrook, higher education executive

Big idea: It’s possible to bring down the barriers higher education upholds and create an environment where anyone can earn a degree with intention and accessibility in mind.

How? The majority of higher education functions like a fortress with high walls — like costs, proximity and excess of time — that students are expected to surmount in order to graduate. This often makes the opportunity accessible to the privileged few. Haugabrook has devoted his entire career to breaking down those obstacles and has identified three approaches to reimagine and redesign the process: in time, place and teaching. He suggests institutions offer academic credit for skills and life experience, attained in work or otherwise, assessed by a university evaluator; that we tap into the potential of local communities as a thriving part of the learning ecosystem; and that universities not mess with the magic of teaching, but make it more accessible by embracing and scaling for online learning. By redefining success and dedication in higher learning, Haugabrook calls for universities, companies and governments to invest deeply in a superhighway of education that allows for fluidity and transferability beyond borders and boundaries — where all roads lead to a degree.


“The seeds of our agreement can become the roots of our common purpose,” says Katherine Maher at TEDMonterey: The Case for Optimism on August 3, 2021. (Ryan Lash / TED)

Katherine Maher, strategist, technologist and policy expert

Big Idea: How can we have productive conversation around disagreement and decision-making without making one shared truth our baseline? Use the Wikipedia model.

How? Wikipedia was (and still is) a radical experiment in self-governance, volunteerism and engrained transparency — and that is what uniquely prepares it for the changing world, says Maher. As the internet’s de-facto encyclopedia, it harbors information on everything from light, niche topics (animals with fraudulent degrees) to weightier, more divisive matters (like religion and politics). The secret is that those who write the articles aren’t focused on the truth or even seeing eye-to-eye, but on collective understanding rather than value, identity and what we believe versus what can be known. What gets messy in everyday conversations is that people often merge facts about the world with their own beliefs. Our reverence for the truth — not to be misconstrued, Maher clarifies that truth does exist and is important — might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and taking action on issues like climate change. So, how do we unite minds and disparate views? Instead of seeking one key truth, we must shift to a minimum viable truth. This means getting it right enough, enough of the time to be useful enough to enough people — while setting aside our own belief systems and dropping perfectionism. Only through collaboration, productive friction, consulting widely and inclusively and weighing difficult decisions with candor (and a large helping of humility) can we create systems that endure and build trust to weather uncertainty.


“Every conversation you have with someone has the potential to open up and reveal layers and layers inside, all those rooms within rooms,” says Hrishikesh Hirway at TEDMonterey: The Case for Optimism on August 3, 2021. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Hrishikesh Hirway, musician, podcast creator

Big idea: If you want to go deeper in your conversations, listen to others like you’d listen to a song.

How? ​​Hrishikesh Hirway is interested in what you miss when you listen to a song for the first time. You might notice the bass part or the lyrics or the cello solo, but what you don’t hear, he says, are all the things the musician lived through to get that music to exist. He compares the experience to staring at a house from the outside. Hirway hosts the podcast (and Netflix series) Song Exploder. On his show, he gets musicians like Fleetwood Mac, The Roots, Billie Eilish, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Yo-Yo Ma to talk about their work and guide listeners through the hidden layers and depths in their songs. While having these conversations, Hirway realized that if he listened to people like he listened to songs, he could get “inside the house.” He could explore hidden rooms of thought and experience the richness of another person’s ideas. If you want to try his technique, here’s what he suggests: Be open to learning something new; Quit multitasking; and use non-verbal communication to let the other person know you’re engaged without shifting the focus away from them and onto yourself.


Steven Johnson, author

Big idea: Life expectancy at birth has doubled in the last century, from a global average of 35 years old in 1921 to 70 years today, thanks to scientific advances and policies set in place to protect human health — but these benefits need to be distributed equally.

How? Throughout most of human history, life was short and Steven Johnson explores the policies and advances that have changed that. One of the simplest but most effective advancements being the pasteurization of milk which helped slash childhood mortality (due to contamination) rates in the mid 19th century. But science cannot drive change by itself. It took 50 years for pasteurization to become the standard in the American food supply. Johnson explains that when looking at our track record of life-lengthening advancements, it usually takes them a while to become mainstream. He reminds us that, somewhat counter-intuitively, change is often driven by large bureaucratic regulatory institutions like the FDA requiring proof of safety and efficacy in our new technology. As scientists push the boundaries of longevity, at a rate where the hype sometimes outstrips reality, Johnson wonders how we can ensure the benefits of technology are equally distributed. He calls for regulations of the future to close the gaps that keep the entirety of humanity from enjoying the revolutionary advances in human health.


Pardis Parker dispels the myth of “grinding” to be successful in his comedic set at TEDMontereyv on August 3, 2021. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Comedian Pardis Parker delivers an uproarious standup set centered on a problem he has with a central tenet of modern culture: the “grind”. While our mythologies focus on the shining chimera of endless wealth, little love goes to those for whom life is nasty, brutish and short, who never get to taste the rewards of leisure. In this sardonic but funny talk, Pardis dissects the ugly truths lying beneath the facade of conspicuous consumption (and the assumptions that lie beneath them) — and exposes the absurdity of some of our foundational beliefs.


Lizzo, singer, rapper, songwriter, flutist

Big idea: Twerking is more than just a dance — it’s unique to the Black experience. Understanding its roots helps safeguard Black culture against erasure.

How? “Twerking is good for humanity,” says superstar Lizzo. Tracing its roots to a traditional West African dance called mapouka, she introduces the TED audience to twerking’s long and lesser known history. Women would circle their hips and pop their behinds in a dance of religious worship, joyful celebration — or even to show interest in marriage. Through time and across the transatlantic slave trade, Black women passed twerking down to the next generation, where the moves permeated Black culture from blues and jazz to modern rap and hip-hop. Twerking found its way to the likes of famed blues singers Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and became a cultural moment when Beyoncé debuted “The Uh Oh” dance for her 2003 single “Crazy in Love.” Nowadays, twerking is everywhere, and it’s at risk of being co-opted, appropriated and misunderstood, Lizzo says. So, if you’re going to partake, it’s important you understand its origins, development and contribution to Black culture before you shake that ass.

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5 ways to live (and thrive) while social distancing

The novel coronavirus has dramatically changed how we spend time and share physical and virtual space with each other. On Friday, March 27, conflict mediator and author Priya Parker joined head of TED Chris Anderson and current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers on TED Connects to discuss what we all can do to stay connected and sustain relationships while apart during the pandemic. Here’s some advice to help you get through this uncertain time:

Bring intention to planning a virtual gathering

As platforms like Zoom, Slack and email become more integrated into our lives, it’s clear that technology will play an important role in helping us keep in touch. Whether you’re organizing a Zoom dinner party or Facetiming a friend, Parker invites us to consider how we can elevate the conversation beyond just check-ins. In planning a virtual gathering, ask:

  • Who’s joining and why?
  • What are your community’s needs?
  • What’s the reason you’re coming together?

As the pandemic evolves, these needs will likely shift. Stay attuned to the kinds of connections your communities are seeking.

Include fun themes to elevate your digital get-togethers

Parker suggests centering your gatherings around themes or activities to encourage more meaningful and purposeful conversations. Incorporate elements of the physical world to create a shared experience, like asking everyone to wear a funny costume or making the same recipe together. Though screens don’t quite replace the energy of in-person gatherings, we can still strengthen community bonds by reminding ourselves that there are real people on the other end of our devices.

Set healthy boundaries to maintain wellbeing

As we’re figuring out the best way to exist in the digital world, it’s also crucial we put in the effort to meaningfully connect with those we’re quarantining with. The distinctions between time to work, socialize and rest can grow blurrier by the day, so be sure to set boundaries and ground rules with those you live with. In having this conversation with your roommates, family or partner, reflect on these prompts:

  • How do you want to distinguish time spent together versus apart?
  • How do you want to share time together?
  • Since we look at screens most of the day, could it be helpful to set no-screen times or brainstorm new, non-digital ways to hang out?

Allow yourself to reflect on the unknown

It’s important to acknowledge that this is not a normal time, Parker says. The coronavirus pandemic has transformed the world, and as a global society we’ll experience the reverberations of this period as they ripple across every sector of human life. Make sure to create space for those conversations, too.

Take time to wander through the unknown, to talk about how we are being changed — individually and collectively — by this shared experience. It’s perfectly normal to feel worried, vulnerable, even existential, and this may be a great time to lean into those feelings and think about what really matters to you.

Recognize the power and feeling community brings — no matter the size

While the coronavirus pandemic has physically isolated many of us from each other, our ingenuity and resilience ensures that we can still build and forge community together. Across the world, people are gathering in new and amazing ways to set up “care-mongering” support groups, sing with their neighbors, take ceramics classes, knit together and break bread.

Now is the time to discover (or rediscover) the value and power of community. We are all members of many different communities: our neighborhoods, families, countries, faith circles and so on. Though we’re living in unprecedented times of social isolation, we can forge stronger bonds by gathering in ways that reflect our best values and principles. In the United Kingdom, a recent campaign asked people across the country to go outside at a synchronized time and collectively applaud health workers on the frontlines of the crisis; a similar effort was made across India to ring bells in honor of the ill and those caring for them. During this crisis and beyond, we can use thoughtful ritual-making to transform our unease and isolation into community bonding.

“Gathering is contagious,” Parker says. “These small, simple ideas allow people to feel like we can shape some amount — even a small amount — of our collective reality together.”

Looking for more tips, advice and wisdom? Watch the full conversation with Priya below:

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In Case You Missed It: Highlights from TED2019

Twelve mainstage sessions, two rocking sessions of talks from TED Fellows, a special session of TED Unplugged, a live podcast recording and much more amounted to an unforgettable week at TED2019. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)

If we learned anything at TED2019, it’s that life doesn’t fit into simple narratives, and that there are no simple answers to the big problems we’re facing. But we can use those problems, our discomfort and even our anger to find the energy to make change.

Twelve mainstage sessions, two rocking sessions of talks from TED Fellows, a special session of TED Unplugged, a live podcast recording and much more amounted to an unforgettable week. Any attempt to summarize it all will be woefully incomplete, but here’s a try.

What happened to the internet? Once a place of so much promise, now a source of so much division. Journalist Carole Cadwalldr opened the conference with an electrifying talk on Facebook’s role in Brexit — and how the same players were involved in 2016 US presidential election. She traced the contours of the growing threat social media poses to democracy and calls out the “gods of Silicon Valley,” naming names — one of whom, Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, sat down to talk with TED’s Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers the following day. Dorsey acknowledged problems with harassment on the platform and explained some of the work his team is doing to make it better.

Hannah Gadsby broke comedy. Her words, and she makes a compelling case in one of the most talked-about moments of the conference. Look for her talk release on April 29.

Humanity strikes back! Eight huge Audacious Project–supported ideas launched at TED this year. From a groundbreaking project at the Center for Policing Equity to work with police and communities and to collect data on police behavior and set goals to make it more fair … to a new effort to sequester carbon in soil … and more, you can help support these projects and change the world for good.

10 years of TED Fellows. Celebrating a decade of the program in two sessions of exuberant talks, the TED Fellows showed some wow moments, including Brandon Clifford‘s discovery of how to make multi-ton stones “dance,” Arnav Kapur‘s wearable device that allows for silent speech and Skylar Tibbits‘s giant canvas bladders that might save sinking islands. At the same time, they reminded us some of the pain that can exist behind breakthroughs, with Brandon Anderson speaking poignantly about the loss of his life partner during a routine traffic stop — which inspired him to develop a first-of-its-kind platform to report police conduct — and Erika Hamden opening up about her team’s failures in building FIREBall, a UV telescope that can observe extremely faint light from huge clouds of hydrogen gas in and around galaxies.

Connection is a superpower. If you haven’t heard of the blockbuster megahit Crazy Rich Asians, then, well, it’s possible you’re living under a large rock. Whether or not you saw it, the film’s director, Jon M. Chu, has a TED Talk about connection — to his family, his culture, to film and technology — that goes far beyond the movie. The theme of connection rang throughout the conference: from Priya Parker’s three easy steps to turn our everyday get-togethers into meaningful and transformative gatherings to Barbara J. King’s heartbreaking examples of grief in the animal kingdom to Sarah Kay’s epic opening poem about the universe — and our place in it.

Meet DigiDoug. TED takes tech seriously, and Doug Roble took us up on it, debuting his team’s breakthrough motion capture tech, which renders a 3D likeness (known as Digital Doug) in real time — down to Roble’s facial expressions, pores and wrinkles. The demo felt like one of those shifts, where you see what the future’s going to look like. Outside the theater, attendees got a chance to interact with DigiDoug in VR, talking on a virtual TED stage with Roble (who is actually in another room close by, responding to the “digital you” in real time).

New hope for political leadership. There was no shortage of calls to fix the broken, leaderless systems at the top of world governments throughout the conference. The optimists in the room won out during Michael Tubbs’s epic talk about building new civic structures. The mayor of Stockton, California (and the youngest ever of a city with more than 100,000 people), Tubbs shared his vision for governing strategies that recognize systems that place people in compromised situations — and that view impoverished and violent communities with compassion. “When we see someone different from us, they should not reflect our fears, our anxieties, our insecurities, the prejudices we have been taught, our biases. We should see ourselves. We should see our common humanity.”

Exploring the final frontier. A surprise appearance from Sheperd Doeleman, head of the Event Horizon Telescope — whose work produced the historic, first-ever image of a black hole that made waves last week — sent the conference deep into space, and it never really came back. Astrophysicist Juna Kollmeier, head of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, shared her work mapping the observable universe — a feat, she says, that we’ll complete in just 40 years.  “Think about it. We’ve gone from arranging clamshells to general relativity in a few thousand years,” she says. “If we hang on 40 more, we can map all the galaxies.” And in the Fellows talks, Moriba Jah, a space environmentalist and inventor of the orbital garbage monitoring software AstriaGraph, showed how space has a garbage problem. Around half a million objects, some as small as a speck of paint, orbit the Earth — and there’s no consensus on what’s in orbit or where.

Go to sleep. A lack of sleep can lead to more than drowsiness and irritability. Matt Walker shared how it can be deadly as well, leading to an increased risk of Parkinson’s, cancer, heart attacks and more. “Sleep is the Swiss army knife of health,” he says, “It’s not an optional lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity. It is your life support system, and it is mother nature’s best effort yet at immortality.”

The amazing group of speakers who shared their world-changing ideas on the mainstage at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, April 15 – 19, 2019 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Bret Hartman / TED)

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Meaning: Notes from Session 12 of TED2019

Par : Daryl Chen
Eric Liu speaks at TED2019

Eric Liu asks us to commit to being active citizens — wherever we are. He speaks at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 19, 2019, in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Ryan Lash / TED

The final session of TED2019 was a spectacle. From powerful calls to civic engagement and ancestorship to stories of self and perseverance, the session wrapped an incredible week and soared through the end with an unforgettable, totally improvised wrap-up.

The event: Talks and performances from TED2019, Session 12: Meaning, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson, Helen Walters and Kelly Stoetzel

When and where: Friday, April 19, 2019, 9am, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC

Speakers: Eric Liu, Yeonmi Park, Suleika Jaouad, David Brooks, America Ferrera, Bina Venkataraman

Music: Richard Bona on guitar

Mindblowing, completely improvised wrap-up covering the whole week: Freestyle Love Supreme: Anthony Veneziale, Chris Jackson, Chris “Shockwave” Sullivan, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Arthur Lewis

The talks in brief:

Eric Liu, author and CEO of Citizen University

  • Big idea: Instead of feeling despair at the state of the world, we need to commit to living as active, responsible citizens of our societies.
  • How? At a time when the free world seems leaderless, Liu says that we should seek hope not in leadership but in each other. His proposal: that we learn to practice “civic religion” and commit to being active in our citizenship. In pursuit of this, Liu started Civic Saturdays in 2016. These take a similar format to faith-based gatherings, with songs and sermons, but they all stem from shared ideals and a desire for fellowship. Participants then work together to organize rallies, register voters and improve their communities. Liu hopes this can counter the emerging culture of hyperindividualism, where “we are realizing now that a free-for-all is not the same as freedom for all,” and instead build community where we feel empowered to bring about, and not wait for, meaningful change.
  • Quote of the talk:Power without character is a cure worse than the disease.”

Yeonmi Park, human rights activist

  • Big idea: Everything must be taught, even the fundamentals we sometimes take for granted: freedom, compassion, love.
  • How? Right vs. wrong, justice vs. injustice — these aren’t concepts we inherently understand, says human rights activist Yoenmi Park. Telling her story of escape from North Korea, Park says that life there is “a totally different planet.” She gives an unsettling example: there’s only one definition of love in North Korea — “love for the Dear Leader.” Romantic love doesn’t exist as a concept or possibility. And for most North Koreans, neither does freedom. Now a US citizen, Park calls for us to fight for North Koreans — for all oppressed people around the world — who cannot speak for themselves. Freedom is fragile, she says. Who will fight for us when we’re not free?
  • Quote of the talk: “Nothing is forever in this world, and that’s why we have every reason to be hopeful.”

David Brooks, political and cultural commentator, New York Times Op-Ed columnist

  • Big idea: Our society is not only sinking into economic, environmental and political crises — we’re also mired in a deepening social crisis, trapped in a valley of isolation and fragmentation. How do we find our way out of this valley?
  • How? Society tells us that success is everything, that those with less success are less important, and that we can bootstrap ourselves to happiness without the help of other people. All of these maxims, says David Brooks, are lies. Brooks believes that those he calls “weavers” — community workers who re-knit social bonds on a local level — will create a “cultural and relational revolution” that leads each of us out of loneliness and into a new world of joy and social connection.
  • Quote of the talk: “We need a cultural and relational revolution … My theory of social change is that society changes when a small group of people find a better way to live, and the rest of us copy them.”

Suleika Jaouad speaks at TED2019: Bigger Than Us. April 15 – 19, 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED

Suleika Jaouad, cancer survivor and author of the soon-to-be-published memoir Between Two Kingdoms

  • Big idea: As we start to live longer, we will spend more of our lives navigating between being sick and well. We need to break down the idea that the two are wholly separate.
  • How? Jaouad’s recovery from leukemia in her mid-20s is best described in her own words: “The hardest part of my cancer experience began once the cancer was gone. That heroic journey of the survivor we see in movies and watch play out on Instagram? It’s a myth. It isn’t just untrue; it’s dangerous, because it erases the very real challenges of recovery.” Nothing about being ill had prepared her for re-entering the world of the well. So Jaouad calls on us to break down the boundary between the two. “If we can all accept that we are not either ‘well’ or ‘sick’ but sometimes in between, sometimes forever changed by our experiences, we can live better.”
  • Quote of the talk: “You can be held hostage by the worst thing that’s ever happened to you and allow it you hijack your remaining days, or you can find a way forward.”

America Ferrera, actor, director and activist

  • Big idea: By putting representation into practice in our media, we can honor the extraordinary richness of humanity.
  • How? In her breakthrough hits Real Women Have Curves and Ugly Betty, Ferrera brought her authentic self to her work, leading to critical, cultural and financial success. She gave voice to multi-dimensional characters typically uncentered in media, allowing them to “exist in the center of their own lives.” But that wasn’t enough: though directors and producers would privately praise diversity efforts, the entertainment industry was slow to change. This was frustrating because shows like Ugly Betty gave people around the world — including Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai — their first chance to see themselves onscreen. But if we stay courageous and ensure our actions follow our intentions, Ferrera says, we can create media that reflects the world we live in and honors the genuine humanity of all.
  • Quote of the talk: “Change will come when each of us has the courage to question our own fundamental values and beliefs and see to it that our actions lead to our best intentions.”

Bina Venkataraman, writer and futurist

  • Big idea: As both descendants and ancestors of civilization, we must step out of our culture of immediacy and fight the allure of everyday minutiae, and think of generations to come.
  • How? Own up to the mistakes we’ve made and redesign the communities, businesses and institutions that fail at helping us prepare for things to come. What we measure, reward and fail to imagine keeps us from making strides toward shared, significant success as a species. Our foresight is impaired — in order to fix it, we need to shift and see the world and the people in it as a part of a shared resource, where the progress we make now can make be passed down to our collective children and grandchildren.
  • Quote of the talk: When we think about the future, we tend focus on predicting exactly what’s next; whether we’re using horoscopes or algorithms to do that, we spend a lot less time imagining all the possibilities the future holds.”

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Connection: Notes from Session 10 of TED2019

“For those who can and choose to, may you pass on this beautiful thing called life with kindness, generosity, decency and love,” says Wajahat Ali at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 18, 2019, at Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Sometimes it feels like the world is fraying. Like our long-hold truths turn out, in an instant, to be figments of the imagination. Amid this turmoil, how can we strengthen connection, create more fulfilling lives? Speakers from Session 10 offer a range of provocative answers.

The event: Talks from TED2019, Session 10: Connection, hosted by TED’s head of curation, Helen Walters, and assistant curator Zachary Wood

When and where: Thursday, April 18, 2019, 2:30pm, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC

Speakers: Kishore Mahbubani, Wajahat Ali, Priya Parker, Barbara J. King and Jon M. Chu

The talks in brief:

Kishore Mahbubani, author and public policy expert

  • Big idea: The West needs to adapt its strategy for working with the growing Asian economy.
  • How? Asia has, Mahbubani says, experienced three silent revolutions in recent decades that powered its growth as a global power: one in economics, one in outlook and a third in improved governance. While he believes these have been, at least in part, due to the spread of “Western wisdom,” he feels the West became distracted while Asia rose. Mahbubani recommends that the West adopt a strategy of minimalist intervention in other societies and embrace multilateral collaboration — especially as it makes up only 12 percent of the global population.
  • Quote of the talk: “Clearly minimalism can work. The West should try it out.”

Wajahat Ali, journalist and lawyer

  • Big idea: Falling birth rates around the world will have catastrophic effects. By increasing access to health and child care, we can make it easier — and cheaper — to have children.
  • How? Having children is expensive and difficult, but it’s necessary for the sake of our future. Our planet’s challenge moving forward isn’t overpopulation, Ali says, but underpopulation: Young people aren’t having enough kids — and this is a nearly universal problem. In China and Europe, for instance, shrinking populations could lead to labor shortages, catalyzing economic calamity. Aging populations have always relied on younger generations to care for them — we lose this, too, when we don’t have children. So, what’s stopping people from having kids? Mostly, it’s the cost. Governments need to provide child care, health care and paid parental leave so that more people can have kids and we can secure the future.
  • Quote of the talk: “Babies have always represented humanity’s best, boldest, most beautiful infinite possibilities. If we opt out and don’t invest in present and future generations, then what’s the point?”

Priya Parker teaches us how we can gather better at home, at work, over holiday dinners and beyond. She speaks at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 18, 2019, at Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Priya Parker, conflict mediator and author

  • Big idea: In our multicultural, intersectional society, we can change our everyday get-togethers (parties, dinners, holidays) into meaningful and transformative gatherings.
  • How? With just three straightforward, yet playful, steps: embrace a specific purpose, cause good controversy and create a thoughtful set of one-time rules for attendees to follow. It may sound odd, but when diverse groups are temporarily allowed to change and harmonize their behavior, something amazing happens: people find a way into each other without discomfort. Collective meaning is attainable in modern life, Parker says, when we’re intentional about how and why we interact.
  • Quote of the talk: “The way we gather matters, because how we gather is how we live.”

Barbara J. King, biological anthropologist and writer

  • Big idea: Animals grieve, much like humans do. Once we accept that grief — and the love from which it emerges — doesn’t belong to humans alone, we can make a better, kinder world for animals.
  • How? After losing a family or tribe member, animals may rock, pace or wail. They often withdraw socially, fail to eat and sleep — as happened with the orca Tahlequah, who made global headlines for mourning the loss of her offspring. Many scientists still dispute animal grief, claiming its the work of our own anthropomorphism. Yet by comparing animals’ pre- and post-death behavior, King sees undeniable proof that some animals do indeed grieve. Will science one day report on bereaved bees? Likely not. On toads who mourn? King doesn’t expect so, since the ability to form meaningful, one-to-one relationships is the key to animal grief, and not all species do it. But in knowing, for example, that orcas feel deeply and elephants love, we can fight the mistreatment of the creatures we share this planet with — and create a kinder, safer world for all.
  • Quote of the talk: “Animals don’t grieve like we do, yet it’s just as real: it’s searing. We can see it if we choose.”

Jon M. Chu makes up stories for a living. On the heels of the breakout success of his film Crazy Rich Asians, he reflects on the origin of his artistic inspiration at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 18, 2019, at Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Bret Hartman / TED)

Jon M. Chu, filmmaker, director of Crazy Rich Asians

  • Big idea: Film offers us the power of connection to something bigger than ourselves.
  • How? The son of immigrant parents, Chu remembers that his family never felt “normal” – mostly because they never saw themselves represented on screen. But after his father equipped him with a video recorder on their family vacation, everything changed. He showed his family the footage afterward, and they cried — finally, they felt like they belonged. In the decades since, Chu made a number of Hollywood hits, but found himself at creative loss a couple years ago. That’s when Crazy Rich Asians came along — and the rest is history. Millions of people just like his family saw themselves represented on the big screen, feeling pride in their existence and story. He credits his success to connections he’s made throughout life — the ones that were sparked by generosity, kindness and hope. Read more about Jon M. Chu’s TED Talk.
  • Quote of the talk: “Once you start listening to those silent beats in the messy noise all around you … you realize there is a beautiful symphony already written for you, and it can give you a direct line to your destiny – to your superpowers.”

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