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.

Cities: Notes from Session 9 of TED2022

The future of cities is inextricably tied to the future of humanity. They’re sites of innovation, culture, community building — and, at the same time, home to some of the world’s most intractable problems, like homelessness and pollution. In Session 9 of TED2022, six speakers explored an intentionally provocative whiplash of ideas tied to city life, from ancient, leaderless metropolises to future cities on Earth and Mars.

The event: Talks from TED2022, Session 9: Cities, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson

When and where: Wednesday, April 13, 2022, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Marvin Rees, Thomas Heatherwick, Alyssa-Amor Gibbons, Scott Fitsimones, Melodie Yashar, David Wengrow

The talk in brief:

Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol, UK

Big idea: Cities are a major contributor to the climate crisis, but global collaboration among climate-concious mayors can make cities key to the solution.

How? To avoid the worst of the climate crisis, we need to reimagine our world’s cities, says Marvin Rees, mayor of Bristol, UK. Today, cities occupy three percent of the world’s land and are responsible for around 75 percent of CO2 emissions. But the same quality that makes them such large emitters — their dense populations — also creates unique opportunities for combatting climate change. From London to Kampala, cities around the world are working together to meet the moment: waste management systems are turning food waste into fertilizer, net-zero housing is combatting urban sprawl and ambitious infrastructure projects are designing out car dependency. But to unlock the full potential of cities, Rees says, we need to collaborate across borders to fund green infrastructure, viewing cities as global assets rather than national possessions.

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Thomas Heatherwick, designer

Big idea: We’re living through an epidemic of “meh” architecture.

How? New buildings built today are, frankly, boring, monotonous, uninspired, dull, characterless, inhuman … the list goes on. Sure, “form follows function,” but that saying is a century old. What about the function of emotion in design, asks Thomas Heatherwick; for the ability of a building to have meaning and evoke connection? This isn’t just a pet peeve or personal vendetta, but a researched fact: bland architecture is bad for our mental, physical and societal health. But not all is lost. There are designers around the world attempting to address this dearth of emotion in our built surroundings: Sou Fujimoto’s apartment building in France, Francis Kéré’s health center in Burkina Faso, Lina Gotmeh’s housing complex in Lebanon, Acme Studio’s city center buildings in the UK, to name but a few. Heatherwick also shares some examples of how his own studio is reinvigorating historical structures in South Africa, bringing life to higher education in Singapore, humanizing hospital areas in the UK and collaborating locally on an artistic park in China. Heatherwick underscores that there is no single language or approach to deal with this epidemic (or “meh”-pidemic, if you will) of boring, but his goal is simple: to trigger a global humanizing movement that no longer tolerates soulless, short-lasting places. What if, instead, we built structures that we wanted to last for centuries?

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Alyssa-Amor Gibbons, resilience designer

Big idea: Architecture cannot be passive to the realities of climate change. For useful climate solutions, look to Indigenous building designs.

How? As an architectural designer, Alyssa-Amor Gibbons creates structures that hold a deep reverence for nature, while also protecting people from the most extreme aspects of it. Looking to traditional building methods used in her native Barbados, which is afflicted by heavy hurricane seasons, Gibbons points to the brilliance and resilience of low-tech, endemic designs. For example, “jalousie” windows funnel powerful winds through houses (as opposed to trying withstand the force) while stilted designs elevate structures during torrential downpours. By embracing Indigenous knowledge and merging it with well-performing, modern techniques, architecture can be resilient by design.

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Scott Fitsimones, experimental urbanist

Big idea: DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organizations, have the potential to increase economic opportunity, but are they also the key to building new cities?

How? Fitsimones describes DAOs as “internet-native, blockchain-governed, collectively-owned” organizations where members contribute capital, skills and proposals in order to debate and make decisions as a group. DAOs have achieved some democratization of ownership and financial opportunity, including the purchasing of fine art, the donation of millions to defense in Ukraine and, for Fitsimones, the chance to purchase land in the hopes to develop a new city. Frustrated by the constrictive bureaucracy in San Francisco, Fitsimones began CityDAO with a simple Tweet that led to intitial funding raised through governance tokens bought on the open market or with cryptocurrency. At CityDAO, a purchased citizenship token comes with the right to vote, and contributors collectively decided to purchase land in Wyoming, where there’s currently DAO legislation. Now its citizens will vote on what gets built on the land, who gets to use it and when, working towards a city where things like permitting, budgets, laws and records are all transparent on a blockchain and smart contracts speed up transactions. While DAOs pose some challenges — consensus-building and uncharted regulatory waters among them — they’re hoping to expand ownership and opportunity traditionally held by wealthy individuals and corporations. “Today, DAOs let us work together, trust each other and coordinate in a fairer way on larger-scale problems than ever before,” Fitsimones says. “And maybe one day, a DAO can even build the next great city.”

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Melodie Yashar, space architect

Big idea: By designing habitats for extreme, off-world environments, architects are learning to reimagine construction technologies and building practices here on Earth.

How? Mars is an extreme and unforgiving environment. If humans want to survive there, says Melodie Yashar, they’ll need shelters that protect against solar radiation, galactic cosmic rays and extreme temperature swings. As a space architect, Yashar’s job is to design these shelters and figure out how to build them using autonomous robots, 3D printers and local resources like water and dirt. A Mars expedition may be years away, but NASA is already putting Yashar and her team’s ideas to the test with a 3D-printed shelter called Mars Dune Alpha. For one year, four crew members will live and work inside this 1700-square-foot structure at the Johnson Space Center. This work might seem far removed from our daily life, but Yashar believes projects like hers will help uncover radical solutions to problems on Earth that seem beyond our grasp today — like CO2-related construction emissions or urban housing shortages.

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David Wengrow, archaeological historian

Big idea: We’re taught to believe that inequality is the necessary price of civilization. Modern archaeology tells us otherwise.

How? The generally accepted story is that with the invention of agriculture came attachment to and defense of land, labor demand, classes to perform that labor (while others were free to think and create) and the assumption that inequality was the inevitable consequence of technological innovation and population growth. However, archaeologists like David Wengrow know there was a period of 4,000 years after the invention of agriculture, in regions all over the world, in which knowledge was expanded and technology innovated without rigid social classes or evidence of kings, bureaucrats or standing armies. While none of these societies were perfectly egalitarian, in comparison to fifth-century Athens, which was founded on chattel slavery, they were drastically more equal: concentric neighborhoods in modern-day Ukraine are evidence of well-organized cities thousands of years before democracy, and uncovered palaces in the Valley of Mexico were standard housing for 100,000 people. Modern archaeological science tells us our assumptions — about agriculture as the end of egalitarian Eden, about large-scale groups requiring top-down management, about inequality as a consequence of civilization — are false. “Perhaps it’s not too late to learn from all this new evidence of the human past — even to begin imagining what other civilizations people might yet create if we can just stop telling ourselves that this particular world is the only one possible,” Wengrow says.

The path forward: Notes from Session 1 of TEDMonterey

It’s time for TED!

After the world was rocked by the worst health crisis in a century, we gather for TEDMonterey with a bold theme in mind: the case for optimism. It’s grounded in the stubborn belief that green shoots of hope and progress are sprouting throughout the world, if you just know where to look. In this opening session, five speakers and one performer dream up ways to build a better, wiser world and collectively find the path forward.

The event: TEDMonterey: Session 1, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson and Helen Walters on Sunday, August 1, 2021

Speakers: Jamil Zaki, Loretta J. Ross, Liam Young, Wendy MacNaughton, Adam Grant

Music: A gorgeous rendition of “I Can See Clearly Now” from singer and Broadway star Tyrone Davis, Jr.

The talks in brief:

Jamil Zaki, research psychologist

Big idea: Cynicism is a trap that poisons our lives. Empathy and optimism can help us move on the path forward.

How? Nowadays, it’s hard to be optimistic. But focusing on the negative side of things can find you stuck in a cynicism trap, says Jamil Zaki. Drawing on years of research at the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, he shares some revealing insights into cynicism. By believing life is a zero-sum game — where some people need to lose for others to succeed — cynics become distrustful of people and more competitive over time. They tend to pass on their suspicions and distrust to those around them, including their children, and end up perpetuating a culture of negativity that actually becomes the reality they’ve always feared. Some people might argue that cynics see the world as it is and are smarter than optimists — but that’s not true, says Zaki. Research has shown that optimists are actually more intelligent, more savvy and make more money than cynics. So how do you break out of the cynicism trap? It’s hard, Zaki admits, but swapping negativity for empathy and hope can allow you to tell a different story. Pointing to his research, he explains that reframing problems through an empathic lens can actually win people to your side, allowing you to be more persuasive — and better able to create the kind of world you’d actually want to live in.

Loretta J. Ross, public intellectual, activist

Big idea: Instead of calling people out, we need to call them in.

How? We live in a call out culture, says Loretta J. Ross. You’re probably familiar with it: the public shaming and blaming, on social media and in real life, of people who may have done wrong and are being held to account. The problem with calling people out, though, is that it comes from a place of anger and shame — leaving the receiving party feeling attacked, defensive and unlikely to change. The alternative, Ross says, is to call people in (a phrase originated by community organizer Loan Tran). In this case, you still aim to hold someone accountable for a wrongdoing, but you choose to come from a place of love and respect. For instance, you might respond by saying, “That’s an interesting viewpoint. Tell me more.” This is an invitation to a conversation, Ross says, instead of a fight. Ultimately, calling in achieves three things: 1) it makes space for the other person to grow; 2) it enlarges your capacity for forgiveness; and 3) it may unexpectedly bring friends, family and even strangers into your world, despite your disagreement on many issues.“Fighting hate should be fun,” Ross says. “It’s being a hater that sucks.”

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Liam Young, director, architect

Big idea: By building fictional worlds through virtual simulations that remain grounded in real-life science, humanity can learn valuable lessons to help us navigate through the potentially disastrous scenarios lurking among our possible futures.

How? Welcome to Planet City, an urban simulation like no other — a speculative cybercity with 10 billion inhabitants, which is (not coincidentally) the projected population of the earth in 2050. What would such a city look like, and how would its citizens survive and thrive? Inspired by a simulation proposed by Edward Wilson, which imagined a world where human development is constrained to half the globe, Planet City goes one step further and imagines all of humanity within a single city, leaving the rest of the globe to nature. Within Young’s thought experiment, we can imagine solutions to imposing problems like climate change, model green energy infrastructure and reinvent our food sources — and give ourselves a sense of hope before it’s too late.

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Wendy MacNaughton, illustrator, graphic journalist

Big idea: Drawing is the gateway to slowing down, paying attention and falling back in love with the world and everyone in it.

How? Much of what we see is our expectations — our brains are so busy trying to process endless information, they rely on patterns as a kind of shorthand and, as a result, we miss out on a lot of the depth and detail of the world around us. As a graphic journalist and trained social worker, MacNaughton shares the beautiful, deeply human and authentic connections drawing creates between the artist and subject — and invites the audience to see the world anew with an interactive experiment anyone, anywhere can do. Ready? First, grab a pencil, a piece of paper and someone (new or familiar). Let go of being perfect, embrace the art of being and begin with only two rules as your guide: never lift the pencil from the paper and don’t look down at what you’re drawing. And when you’re done, find joy and delight from your creations! When MacNaughton taught drawing lessons to children during the pandemic, she saw firsthand how drawing unlocks the brain and transforms it into a safe space to process not just what we see, but what we feel. And what she instilled in the children then is simple, yet rich: “Drawing is looking, and looking is loving.”

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Adam Grant, organizational psychologist

Big idea: Have you found yourself staying up late, joylessly scrolling through your video queue, doomscrolling through apocalyptic news scenarios or simply navigating your day uninspired and aimless? Chances are you’re “languishing,” a psychic malaise that has become all too common after many months of quarantine.

How? Languishing is in many ways the opposite of “flow,” the feeling of being fully present, creative and productive in your chosen vocation. (It’s the feeling of immersion that binging full seasons of less-than-amazing TV shows may approximate, but provides no substitute for the real experience of flow.) Adam Grant suggests three paths out of this trap — mastery, mindfulness, and mattering — which revealed themselves to him during marathon sessions of Mario Kart with his children and brother-in-law. Mastery, the feeling of derailing his opponents with superior skills; mindfulness, complete concentration on his task at hand; mattering, the pleasure derived from creating fun for his family. And while seemingly trivial, this example is in fact profoundly important: it reveals the power of simple events to make everyday differences in our own psyches.

Impact: A day of talks in partnership with DWEN

Everything you do boils down to impact. Whether personal or professional, you build, design and imagine in pursuit of creating lasting change for the wider world. So, how do you make it happen? At TED Salon: Impact, a virtual event presented by TED and Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN), four speakers and one performer explored the driving force behind the decisions and actions that move women’s entrepreneurship forward.

The event: TED Salon: Impact, presented in partnership with DWEN, hosted by TED technology curator Simone Ross and director of speaker coaching Briar Goldberg, with opening remarks from Vice President of Dell Global Field Marketing Kristen Nolte.

Music: From her stoop in Brooklyn, singer-songwriter Madison McFerrin performs “TRY” — a synth-infused invitation to chase your dreams, despite what others say.

The talks in brief:

Julia Dhar, business strategist, champion debater

Big idea: Every conversation (or disagreement) you have can be a productive one, if you approach it with curiosity. 

How? As a world debate champion, Julia Dhar is no stranger to having conversations with people she disagrees with. Rather than viewing these encounters as a chance to change someone else’s mind, she instead approaches them as opportunities to find common ground and strengthen the resilience of her own point by learning from other perspectives. “We need to figure out how we go into conversations not looking for the victory, but the progress,” Dhar says. She shares three essential features of having productive disagreements: go in with curiosity; be adaptable with your idea; and focus on the common ground. The end result? Constructive conversations that sharpen your argument — not the relationship.

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Patty McCord, consultant

Big idea: The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that, despite previous resistance, it’s possible to improve the way we work.

How? Patty McCord believes we can finally change our professional lives for the better. The COVID-19 pandemic shuttered offices and strong-armed a reliance on remote work, teaching companies important lessons about their employees and their businesses. On the one-year anniversary of the start of the coronavirus lockdown, McCord reflects on four essential learnings that have the potential to improve work-life for everyone — even after the pandemic is over. After taking Zoom calls alongside our kids at the kitchen table, we’ve learned that separating work from family life is crucial to our productivity. Additionally, bosses have gained trust in their employees working from home, allowing them to make more autonomous decisions and focus on the results that matter. Companies have thrown “best practices” out the window and begun developing better business structures. And everyone has learned the true value of clear communication, which ensures efficiency. By understanding these key learnings, we can begin to rethink all the ways we work — and create new practices that work for everyone.

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Natsai Audrey Chieza, biodesigner

Big idea: Through design, we have the power to imagine a future where people and nature can thrive together —  powered by multidisciplinary, nuanced and systemic solutions.

How? When Natsai Audrey Chieza was in school, she participated in a time-capsule project where she and her friends visualized a green, equitable world. Now 20 years later, in the face of decades of global inaction, many obstacles still block our path to those imagined futures — but Chieza is still exploring how we can get there. She founded Faber Futures, an innovation lab and creative agency that brings together experts from different disciplines to explore the intersection of biology, design and technology. She shares creations that came from unexpected collaborations — between Afro-futurists and astrobiologists, food researchers and Indigenous campaigners. And she invites us to ask ourselves what kind of world we wish for — and what systemic changes and collaborations need to happen for them to exist.

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Esther Perel, therapist, speaker, consultant

Big question: How do we effectively deal with stress in our daily lives and work a year into the COVID-19 pandemic?

Some answers: The first step is to recognize that stress is multidimensional, says Esther Perel. We wrap up a lot of different feelings into the word “stress”: isolation, grief, anger, economic insecurity, existential anguish, prolonged uncertainty. So we must start by breaking it down into parts, naming and framing the different aspects. A major one, Perel says, is the loss of “eros”: the serendipity, surprise and mystery that lit up our pre-pandemic lives. (People are working hard to recapture eros at home, Perel says, with activities like baking bread and adopting puppies.) Likewise, the boundaries that once demarcated our lives — between work and home, coworker and spouse — have evaporated, leaving us without a sense of groundedness. So what are we to do? Be intentional about creating routines, rituals and boundaries, Perel says, and work to integrate these multiple realities, rather than hiding them. (For instance: don’t stress if your kid walks on camera during a work meeting and says hello. It’s natural!) What’s more, Perel says she’s noticed a shift towards “anti-small talk” at work: things people normally didn’t talk about at the office, like family and mental health, are now regularly entering into conversation. That’s good, she says: we’ll only get through this pandemic with mass mutual reliance, a deep sense of interdependence and social connection — our greatest source of resilience.

TED announces an exciting new slate of podcasts

TED Travel returns 

Escape with host Saleem Reshamwala and journey across the globe in search of the world’s most surprising and imaginative ideas. TED Travel isn’t a travel show, exactly. It’s a deep dive into the ideas that shape a particular spot on the map, brought to you by the people who live there.

New episodes will take listeners to Lima, Peru, where hip-hop artists are trying to save an endangered language (and restore the nation’s pride along the way); then over to Rapa Nui (aka Easter Island), one of the most remote places on earth, where the pandemic has inspired a complete reimagining of island life; and on a road trip to find a real-life Black utopia in North Carolina — and the possibilities it inspires for future generations.

TED Travel is made possible with support from Marriott Hotels and Women Will, a Grow with Google program.

TED Travel returns with four new episodes beginning October 14.

Design Matters joins the family 

A show about how incredibly creative people design the arc of their lives, the iconic Design Matters with Debbie Millman will join the TED family in October. It’s the world’s first podcast about design: an inquiry into the broader world of creative culture through wide-ranging conversations with designers, writers, artists, curators, musicians and other luminaries of contemporary thought. Design Matters will continue to be produced independently, with TED amplifying the podcast to its global audience. 

Design Matters episodes are available on TED platforms in October.

Sincerely, X is free and available to the public 

Some ideas are too risky to share in the open. Sincerely, X is a space to share those controversial ideas anonymously. Hosted by poet, performer and educator Sarah Kay, this powerful show is a window into stories that usually stay hidden, an honest look at experiences typically too painful or difficult to share.

Previously only on the Luminary app, season two is being made available on all podcast platforms. In the first episode, we hear from a small-town preacher in the Deep South with a radical secret: he doesn’t believe in hell. We’ll also meet a sociopath who reveals what society can learn from her condition; a former cult member who teaches us how to let go of the past; and much more. 

Sincerely, X episodes drop on TED’s platforms October 22, with a new episode every week for 10 weeks.

Also from TED…

TED Business, hosted by Modupe Akinola, associate professor of management at Columbia Business School, will take listeners through some of the most creative and surprising TED Talks that illuminate the business world. Strictly business topics are just the beginning: TED Business will also dig into relevant talks on psychology, science, design, democracy — stretching listeners’ sense of what really matters in business.

Episodes available weekly, starting October 12

TED Health provides a curated selection of the best health-related TED Talks. From smart daily habits to new medical breakthroughs, doctors and researchers share discoveries and ideas about medicine and well-being.

Episodes available weekly, starting October 13

Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by Dallas Taylor, creative director of Defacto Sound. The lovingly crafted podcast reveals the stories behind the world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds. In upcoming episodes, modern paleontology shares what dinosaurs really sound like (October 7) and how we might create a sonic utopia in the future (November 11).

New episodes available every other Wednesday

TED Talks Daily, TED’s flagship podcast, will begin publishing talks from Countdown — a global initiative to combat climate change — beginning in mid-October. The first TED Talk to publish will be from Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge, followed by talks from climate impact scholar Johan Rockström, electrification advocate Monica Araya and UK parliament member David Lammy. These talks will also be published in a special Countdown podcast to showcase the most exciting ideas about fighting climate change.

Talks from Countdown will begin publishing October 10

TED Radio Hour investigates the biggest questions of our time with the help of the world’s greatest thinkers. Can we preserve our humanity in the digital age? Where does creativity come from? And what’s the secret to living longer? In each episode, host Manoush Zomorodi explores a big idea through a series of TED Talks and original interviews, inspiring us to learn more about the world, our communities and, most importantly, ourselves.

In October, TED Radio Hour will release an exciting episode featuring the cohost of NPR’s All Things Considered Mary Louise Kelly, biophysicist and neuroscientist Jim Hudspeth, writer and “part-time cyborg” Rebecca Knill, musician and acoustic engineer Renzo Vitale and TED’s own Dallas Taylor, the host of Twenty Thousand Hertz.

New episodes available every Friday

Our partners: TED strives to tell partner stories in the form of authentic, story-driven content developed in real time and aligned with the editorial process — finding and exploring brilliant ideas from all over the world. This season’s podcasts are made possible with support from Change Healthcare, Lexus, Marriott Hotels, Women Will, a Grow with Google program, and more.

We the Future 2019: Talks from TED, the Skoll Foundation and the United Nations Foundation

At “We the Future,” a day of talks from TED, the Skoll Foundation and the United Nations Foundation at the TED World Theater in New York City, 18 speakers and performers shared daring ideas, deep analysis, cautionary tales and behavior-changing strategies aimed at meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the global goals created in partnership with individuals around the world and adopted at the United Nations in 2015.

The event: We the Future, presented by TED, the Skoll Foundation and the United Nations Foundation to share ingenious efforts of people from every corner of the globe

When and where: Tuesday, September 24, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York, NY

Music: Queen Esther with Hilliard Greene and Jeff McGlaughlin, performing the jazzy “Blow Blossoms” and the protest song “All That We Are”

The talks in brief:

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David Wallace-Wells, journalist

Big idea: The climate crisis is too vast and complicated to solve with a silver bullet. We need a shift in how we live: a whole new politics, economics and relationship to technology and nature.

Why? The climate crisis isn’t the legacy of our ancestors, but the work of a single generation — ours, says Wallace-Wells. Half of all the emissions from the burning of fossil fuels in the history of humanity were produced in the last 30 years. We clearly have immense power over the climate, and it’s put us on the brink of catastrophe — but it also means we’re the ones writing the story of our planet’s future. If we are to survive, we’ll need to reshape society as we know it — from building entirely new electric grids, planes and infrastructures to rethinking the way the global community comes together to support those hit hardest by climate change. In we do that, we just might build a new world that’s livable, prosperous and green.

Quote of the talk: “We won’t be able to beat climate change — only live with it and limit it.”

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Kristen Wenz, legal identity expert

Big idea: More than one billion people — mostly children — don’t have legal identities or birth certificates, which means they can’t get vital government services like health care and schooling. It’s a massive human rights violation we need to fix.

How? There are five key approaches to ensuring children are registered and protected — reduce distance, reduce cost, simplify the process, remove discrimination and increase demand. In Tanzania, the government helped make it easier for new parents to register their child by creating an online registration system and opening up registration hubs in communities. The results were dramatic: the number of children with birth certificates went from 16 to 83 percent in just a few years. By designing solutions with these approaches in mind, we can provide better protection and brighter opportunities for children across the world.

Quote of the talk: “When the cost of inaction is that innocent children are left unprotected, unvaccinated, unable to go to school … trapped in a cycle of poverty, exclusion and invisibility, it’s on us to take this issue out of darkness and into the light.”

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Don Gips, CEO of the Skoll Foundation, in conversation with TEDWomen curator and author Pat Michell

Big idea: Don Gips turned away from careers in both government and business and became CEO of the Skoll Foundation for one reason: the opportunity to take charge of investing in solutions to the most urgent issues humanity faces. Now, it’s the foundation’s mission to identify the investments that will spark the greatest changes.

How?

By reaching deeper into communities and discovering and investing in social entrepreneurs and other changemakers, the Skoll Foundation supports promising solutions to urgent global problems. As their investments yield positive results, Gips hopes to inspire the rest of the philanthropic community to find better ways to direct their resources.

Quote of the interview: “We don’t tell the changemaker what the solution is. We invest in their solution, and go along on the journey with them.”

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Alejandro Durán, artist

Big Idea: Art can spotlight the environmental atrocities happening to our oceans — leaving viewers both mesmerized and shocked.

Why? From prosthetic legs to bottle caps, artist Alejandro Durán makes ephemeral environmental artworks out of objects he finds polluting the waters of his native region of Sian Ka’an, Mexico. He meticulously organizes materials by color and curates them into site-specific work. Durán put on his first “Museo de La Basura or Museum of Garbage“ exhibition in 2015, which spoke to the horrors of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and he’s still making art that speaks to the problem of ocean trash. By endlessly reusing objects in his art, Durán creates new works that engage communities in environmental art-making, attempting to depict the reality of our current environmental predicament and make the invisible visible.

Quote of the talk: “By making aesthetic, some might say beautiful, arrangements out of the world’s waste, I hope to hook the viewer, to draw in those that are numb to the horrors of the world, and give them a different way to understand what is happening.”

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Andrew Forrest, entrepreneur, in conversation with head of TED Chris Anderson

Big idea: The true — and achievable! — business case for investing in plastic recycling.

How? Since earning his PhD in marine ecology, Forrest has dedicated his time and money to solving the global plastic problem, which is choking our waterways and oceans with toxic material that never biodegrades. “I learned a lot about marine life,” he says of his academic experience. “But it taught me more about marine death.” To save ourselves and our underwater neighbors from death by nanoplastics, Forrest says we need the big corporations of the world to fund a massive environmental transition that includes increasing the price of plastic and turning the tide on the recycling industry.

Quote of the talk: “[Plastic] is an incredible substance designed for the economy. It’s the worst substance possible for the environment.”

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Raj Panjabi, cofounder of medical NGO Last Mile Health

Big idea: Community health workers armed with training and technology are our first line of defense against deadly viral surges. If we are to fully protect the world from killer diseases, we must ensure that people living in the most remote areas of the planet are never far from a community health worker trained to throttle epidemics at their outset.

How? In December 2013, Ebola broke out in West Africa and began a transborder spread that threatened to wipe out millions of people. Disease fighters across Africa joined the battle to stop it — including Liberian health workers trained by Last Mile Health and armed with the technology, knowledge and support necessary to serve their communities. With their help, Ebola was stopped (for now), after killing 11,000 people. Panjabi believes that if we train and pay more community health workers, their presence in underserved areas will not only stop epidemics but also save the lives of the millions of people threatened by diseases like malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea.

Quote of the talk: “We dream of a future when millions of people … can gain dignified jobs as community health workers, so they can serve their neighbors in the forest communities of West Africa to the fishing villages of the Amazon; from the hilltops of Appalachia to the mountains of Afghanistan.”

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Tashka and Laura Yawanawá, leaders of the Yawanawá in Acre, Brazil

Big idea: To save the Amazon rainforest, let’s empower indigenous people who have been coexisting with the rainforest for centuries.

Why? Tashka Yawanawá is chief of the Yawanawá people in Acre, Brazil, leading 900 people who steward 400,000 acres of Brazilian Amazon rainforest. As footage of the Amazon burning shocks the world’s consciousness, Tashka and his wife, Laura, call for us to transform this moment into an opportunity to support indigenous people who have the experience, knowledge and tools to protect the land.

Quote of the talk: “Indigenous people have the answer. If we want to save the Amazon, we have to act now.”

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Alasdair Harris, ocean conservationist

Big idea: To the impoverished fishers that rely on the sea for their food, and who comprise 90 percent of the world’s fishing fleet, outside interference by scientists and marine managers can seem like just another barrier to their survival. Could the world rejuvenate its marine life and replenish its fish stocks by inspiring coastal communities rather than simply regulating them?

How? When he first went to Madagascar, marine biologist Alasdair Harris failed to convince local leaders to agree to a years-long plan to close their threatened coral reefs to fishing. But when a contained plan to preserve a breeding ground for an important local species of octopus led to rapid growth in catches six months later, the same elders banded together with leaders across Madagascar to spearhead a conservation revolution. Today, Harris’s organization Blue Ventures works to help coastal communities worldwide take control of their own ecosystems.

Quote of the talk: “When we design it right, marine conservation reaps dividends that go far beyond protecting nature — improving catches, driving waves of social change along entire coastlines, strengthening confidence, cooperation and the resilience of communities to face the injustice of poverty and climate change.”

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Bright Simons, social entrepreneur and product security expert

Big idea: A global breakdown of the trustworthiness of markets and regulatory institutions has led to a flurry of counterfeit drugs, mislabeled food and defective parts. Africa has been dealing with counterfeit goods for years, and entrepreneurs like Bright Simons have developed myriad ways consumers can confirm that their food and drug purchases are genuine. Why are these methods ignored in the rest of the world?

How? Bright Simons demonstrates some of the innovative solutions Africans use to restore trust in their life-giving staples, such as text hotlines to confirm medications are real and seed databases to certify the authenticity of crops. Yet in the developed world, these solutions are often overlooked because they “don’t scale” — an attitude Simons calls “mental latitude imperialism.” It’s time to champion “intellectual justice” — and look at these supposedly non-scalable innovations with new respect.

Quote of the talk: “It just so happens that today, the most advanced and most progressive solutions to these problems are being innovated in the developing world.”

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LaToya Ruby Frazier, artist 

Big Idea: LaToya Ruby Frazier’s powerful portraits of women in Flint, Michigan document the reality of the Flint water crisis, bringing awareness to the ongoing issue and creating real, positive change.

How? Frazier’s portraits of the daily lives of women affected by the Flint water crisis are striking reminders that, after all the news crews were gone, the people of Flint still did not have clean water. For one photo series, she closely followed the lives of Amber Hasan and Shea Cobb — two activists, poets and best friends — who were working to educate the public about the water crisis. Frazier has continued collaborating with Hasan and Cobb to seek justice and relief for those suffering in Flint. In 2019, they helped raise funds for an atmospheric water generator that provided 120,000 gallons of water to Flint residents. 

Quote of the talk: “Water is life. It is the spirit that binds us from sickness, death and destruction. Imagine how many millions of lives we could save if [the atmospheric water generator] were in places like Newark, New Jersey, South Africa and India — with compassion instead of profit motives.”

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Cassie Flynn, global climate change advisor

Big idea: We need a new way to get citizen consensus on climate change and connect them with governments and global leaders.

How? The United Nations is taking on an entirely new model of reaching the masses: mobile phone games. Flynn shares how their game “Mission 1.5” can help people learn about their policy choices on climate change by allowing them to play as heads of state. From there, the outcomes of their gameplay will be compiled and shared with their national leaders and the public. Flynn foresees this as a fresh, feasible way to meet citizens where they are, to educate them about climate change and to better connect them to the people who are making those tough decisions.

Quote of the talk: “Right now, world leaders are faced with the biggest and most impactful decisions of their entire lives. What they decide to do on climate change will either lead to a riskier, more unstable planet or a future that is more prosperous and sustainable for us all.”

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Wanjira Mathai, entrepreneur

Big Idea: Corruption is a constant threat in Kenya. To defeat it there and anywhere, we need to steer youth towards integrity through education and help them understand the power of the individual.

Why? In 1989, the Karura Forest, a green public oasis in Nairobi, Kenya, was almost taken away by a corrupt government until political activist Wangari Maathai, Nobel Prize recipient and founder of the Greenbelt Movement, fought back fiercely and won. Continuing Maathai’s legacy, her daughter Wanjira explains how corruption is still very much alive in Kenya — a country that loses a third of its state budget to corruption every year. “Human beings are not born corrupt. At some point these behaviors are fostered by a culture that promotes individual gain over collective progress,” she says. She shares a three-pronged strategy for fighting corruption before it takes root by addressing why it happens, modeling integrity and teaching leadership skills.

Quote of the talk: “We cannot complain forever. We either decide that we are going to live with it, or we are going to change it. And if we are going to change it, we know that today, most of the world’s problems are caused by corruption and greed and selfishness.”

10 years of TED Fellows: Notes from the Fellows Session of TEDSummit 2019

The event: TEDSummit 2019, Fellows Session, hosted by Shoham Arad and Lily Whitsitt

When and where: Monday, July 22, 2019, 9am BST, at the Edinburgh Convention Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland

Speakers: Carl Joshua Ncube, Suzanne Lee, Sonaar Luthra, Jon Lowenstein, Alicia Eggert, Lauren Sallan, Laura Boykin

Opening: A quick, witty performance from Carl Joshua Ncube, one of Zimbabwe’s best-known comedians, who uses humor to approach culturally taboo topics from his home country.

Music: An opening from visual artist and cellist Paul Rucker of the hauntingly beautiful “Criminalization of Survival,” a piece he created to explore issues related to mass incarceration, racially motivated violence, police brutality and the impact of slavery in the US.

And a dynamic closing from hip-hop artist and filmmaker Blitz Bazawule and his band, who tells stories of the polyphonic African diaspora.

The talks in brief:

Laura Boykin, computational biologist at the University of Western Australia

Big idea: If we’re going to solve the world’s toughest challenges — like food scarcity for millions of people living in extreme poverty — science needs to be more diverse and inclusive. 

How? Collaborating with smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, Laura Boykin uses genomics and supercomputing to help control whiteflies and viruses, which cause devastation to cassava crops. Cassava is a staple food that feeds more than 500 million people in East Africa and 800 million people globally. Boykin’s work transforms farmers’ lives, taking them from being unable to feed their families to having enough crops to sell and enough income to thrive. 

Quote of the talk: “I never dreamt the best science I would ever do would be sitting on a blanket under a tree in East Africa, using the highest tech genomics gadgets. Our team imagined a world where farmers could detect crop viruses in three hours instead of six months — and then we did it.”

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Lauren Sallan, paleobiologist at the University of Pennsylvania

Big idea: Paleontology is about so much more than dinosaurs.

How? The history of life on earth is rich, varied and … entirely too focused on dinosaurs, according to Lauren Sallan. The fossil record shows that earth has a dramatic past, with four mass extinctions occurring before dinosaurs even came along. From fish with fingers to galloping crocodiles and armored squid, the variety of life that has lived on our changing planet can teach us more about how we got here, and what the future holds, if we take the time to look.

Quote of the talk: “We have learned a lot about dinosaurs, but there’s so much left to learn from the other 99.9 percent of things that have ever lived, and that’s paleontology.”

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Suzanne Lee, designer, biofabricator

Big idea: What if we could grow bricks, furniture and even ready-made fabric for clothes?

How? Suzanne Lee is a fashion designer turned biofabrication pioneer who is part of a global community of innovators who are figuring how to grow their own materials. By utilizing living microbial organisms like bacteria and fungi, we can replace plastic, cement and other waste-generating materials with alternatives that can help reduce pollution.

Quote of the talk: “If we applied the same energy we currently do suppressing forms of life towards cultivating life, we’d turn the negative image of the urban jungle into one that literally embodies a thriving, living ecosystem.”

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Sonaar Luthra, founder and CEO of Water Canary

Big idea: We need to get better at monitoring the world’s water supplies — and we need to do it fast.

How? Building a global weather service for water would help governments, businesses and communities manage 21st-century water risk. Sonaar Luthra’s company Water Canary aims to develop technologies that more efficiently monitor water quality and availability around the world, avoiding the unforecasted shortages that happen now. Businesses and governments must also invest more in water, he says, and the largest polluters and misusers of water must be held accountable.

Quote of the talk: “It is in the public interest to measure and to share everything we can discover and learn about the risks we face in water. Reality doesn’t exist until it’s measured. It doesn’t just take technology to measure it — it takes our collective will.”

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Jon Lowenstein, documentary photographer, filmmaker and visual artist

Big idea: We need to care about the humanity of migrants in order to understand the desperate journeys they’re making across borders.

How? For the past two decades, Jon Lowenstein has captured the experiences of undocumented Latin Americans living in the United States to show the real stories of the men and women who make up the largest transnational migration in world history. Lowenstein specializes in long-term, in-depth documentary explorations that confront power, poverty and violence. 

Quote of the talk: “With these photographs, I place you squarely in the middle of these moments and ask you to think about [the people in them] as if you knew them. This body of work is a historical document — a time capsule — that can teach us not only about migration, but about society and ourselves.”

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Alicia Eggert, interdisciplinary artist

Big idea: A brighter, more equitable future depends upon our ability to imagine it.  

How? Alicia Eggert creates art that explores how light travels across space and time, revealing the relationship between reality and possibility. Her work has been installed on rooftops in Philadelphia, bridges in Amsterdam and uninhabited islands in Maine. Like navigational signs, Eggert’s artwork asks us to recognize where we are now as individuals and as a society, to identify where we want to be in the future — and to imagine the routes we can take to get there.

Quote of the talk: “Signs often help to orient us in the world by telling us where we are now and what’s happening in the present moment. But they can also help us zoom out, shift our perspective and get a sense of the bigger picture.”

A new mission to mobilize 2 million women in US politics … and more TED news

TED2019 may be past, but the TED community is busy as ever. Below, a few highlights.

Amplifying 2 million women across the U.S. Activist Ai-jen Poo, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza and Planned Parenthood past president Cecile Richards have joined forces to launch Supermajority, which aims to train 2 million women in the United States to become activists and political leaders. To scale, the political hub plans to partner with local nonprofits across the country; as a first step, the co-founders will embark on a nationwide listening tour this summer. (Watch Poo’s, Garza’s and Richards’ TED Talks.)

Sneaker reseller set to break billion-dollar record. Sneakerheads, rejoice! StockX, the sneaker-reselling digital marketplace led by data expert Josh Luber, will soon become the first company of its kind with a billion-dollar valuation, thanks to a new round of venture funding.  StockX — a platform where collectible and limited-edition sneakers are bought and exchanged through real-time bidding — is an evolution of Campless, Luber’s site that collected data on rare sneakers. In an interview with The New York Times, Luber said that StockX pulls in around $2 million in gross sales every day. (Watch Luber’s TED Talk.)

A move to protect iconic African-American photo archives. Investment expert Mellody Hobson and her husband, filmmaker George Lucas, filed a motion to acquire the rich photo archives of iconic African-American lifestyle magazines Ebony and Jet. The archives are owned by the recently bankrupt Johnson Publishing Company; Hobson and Lucas intend to gain control over them through their company, Capital Holdings V. The collections include over 5 million photos of notable events and people in African American history, particularly during the Civil Rights Movement. In a statement, Capital Holdings V said: “The Johnson Publishing archives are an essential part of American history and have been critical in telling the extraordinary stories of African-American culture for decades. We want to be sure the archives are protected for generations to come.” (Watch Hobson’s TED Talk.)

10 TED speakers chosen for the TIME100. TIME’s annual round-up of the 100 most influential people in the world include climate activist Greta Thunberg, primatologist and environmentalist Jane Goodall, astrophysicist Sheperd Doeleman and educational entrepreneur Fred Swaniker — also Nancy Pelosi, the Pope, Leana Wen, Michelle Obama, Gayle King (who interviewed Serena Williams and now co-hosts CBS This Morning home to TED segment), and Jeanne Gang. Thunberg was honored for her work igniting climate change activism among teenagers across the world; Goodall for her extraordinary life work of research into the natural world and her steadfast environmentalism; Doeleman for his contribution to the Harvard team of astronomers who took the first photo of a black hole; and Swaniker for the work he’s done to educate and cultivate the next generation of African leaders. Bonus: TIME100 luminaries are introduced in short, sharp essays, and this year many of them came from TEDsters including JR, Shonda Rhimes, Bill Gates, Jennifer Doudna, Dolores Huerta, Hans Ulrich Obrest, Tarana Burke, Kai-Fu Lee, Ian Bremmer, Stacey Abrams, Madeleine Albright, Anna Deavere Smith and Margarethe Vestager. (Watch Thunberg’s, Goodall’s, Doeleman’s, Pelosi’s, Pope Francis’, Wen’s, Obama’s, King’s, Gang’s and Swaniker’s TED Talks.)

Meet Sports Illustrated’s first hijab-wearing model. Model and activist Halima Aden will be the first hijab-wearing model featured in Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue, debuting May 8. Aden will wear two custom burkinis, modestly designed swimsuits. “Being in Sports Illustrated is so much bigger than me,” Aden said in a statement, “It’s sending a message to my community and the world that women of all different backgrounds, looks, upbringings can stand together and be celebrated.” (Watch Aden’s TED Talk.)

Scotland post-surgical deaths drop by a third, and checklists are to thank. A study indicated a 37 percent decrease in post-surgical deaths in Scotland since 2008, which it attributed to the implementation of a safety checklist. The 19-item list created by the World Health Organization is supposed to encourage teamwork and communication during operations. The death rate fell to 0.46 per 100 procedures between 2000 and 2014, analysis of 6.8 million operations showed. Dr. Atul Gawande, who introduced the checklist and co-authored the study, published in the British Journal of Surgery, said to the BBC: “Scotland’s health system is to be congratulated for a multi-year effort that has produced some of the largest population-wide reductions in surgical deaths ever documented.” (Watch Gawanda’s TED Talk.) — BG

And finally … After the actor Luke Perry died unexpectedly of a stroke in February, he was buried according to his wishes: on his Tennessee family farm, wearing a suit embedded with spores that will help his body decompose naturally and return to the earth. His Infinity Burial Suit was made by Coeio, led by designer, artist and TED Fellow Jae Rhim Lee. Back in 2011, Lee demo’ed the mushroom burial suit onstage at TEDGlobal; now she’s focused on testing and creating suits for more people. On April 13, Lee spoke at Perry’s memorial service, held at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank; Perry’s daughter revealed his story in a thoughtful instagram post this past weekend. (Watch Lee’s TED Talk.) — EM