Dreamers: Notes on Session 1 of TED2024

It’s time for TED! And this year’s conference marks a big year: the 40th anniversary of TED, honoring the inaugural conference in 1984.

With that in mind, TED2024 kicked off with a classically eclectic opening session, ranging from a powerful conversation on how Israel and Palestine can find peace to the future of AI to visual storytelling as you’ve never before seen it.

The event: Talks from Session 1 of TED2024: The Brave and the Brilliant, hosted by Chris Anderson, Monique Ruff-Bell and Helen Walters

When and where: Monday, April 15, 2024, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Aziz Abu Sarah, Maoz Inon, Demis Hassabis, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, RuPaul Charles, Willie Williams, Angus Hervey

Performance: Writer, musician and comedian Elle Cordova shares a poem she wrote about the Big Bang and, joined by guitarist Toni Lindgren, plays “Carl Sagan” — an original song about the endless scroll of social media and our desire to reach out to others across the void.

The talks in brief:

Peacemakers Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon discuss the immeasurable tragedies they’ve experienced growing up in Palestine and Israel, respectively — and how they choose reconciliation over revenge, again and again. With a fierce belief in a better future, they work to foster opportunities for connection and understanding across divides, collectively building hope for peace.

DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis shows how AI might solve humanity’s “big questions” by identifying patterns in impossibly huge (and humanly incomprehensible) datasets. In conversation with head of TED Chris Anderson, Hassabis explores AI from its game-playing, algorithmic roots to the current high-powered arms race.

Since the 1990s, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, the president of Tompkins Conservation and the former CEO of Patagonia, has worked with her husband to rewild more than two million acres of crucial habitat in the southernmost regions of Argentina and Chile. She explains how actively restoring natural territories and bringing back missing species can heal the planet amidst our ongoing climate and extinction crises.

In an engaging dish session, drag superstar RuPaul Charles takes the stage to debut “On the Spot,” TED’s new interactive Q&A format. Giving rapid-fire responses to a stream of unexpected questions, Ru enlightens us on everything from the power of drag to expand our definitions of self to the value of not taking anything too seriously.

Redefining the boundaries of live entertainment, multimedia show director Willie Williams showcases his work designing and directing transcendent shows for artists like U2, David Bowie and many more. He shares his thinking on how to weave cutting-edge tech with imaginative visuals to create unforgettable experiences and connections.

Whether or not you believe that world is on track for imminent doom might depend on where you get your news, says Angus Hervey, founder of Fix The News. He delivers good news for humanity that the media cycle missed last year, from advances in clean energy technologies to declining rates of extreme poverty, crime and disease.

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

Moving on up: Talks from day 3 of TEDWomen 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dare to discover: TEDinArabic hosts third regional event in Ben Guerir, Morocco

TEDinArabic brought together some of the world’s brightest minds to share ideas on the importance of outside-the-box thinking to change minds, embrace our shared humanity and shape the future.

The event: TEDinArabic, hosted by Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamed Errammach, included four talks centered on the theme “Dare to Discover,” a series of interactive workshops curated by partners at afikra, a performance by students of the Joudour Sahara music school and a series of interstitials by Arab artists. The event was attended by a number of dignitaries from Qatar, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, 50 students from across the region and more than 900 participants from Morocco. It was the third in a series of TEDinArabic regional events organized in the lead-up to the TEDinArabic Summit in March, 2023 in Doha, Qatar. The summit will feature 16 speakers from the Arabic-speaking world sharing their ideas for the first time with a global audience — all in Arabic.

When and where: Thursday, October 13, 2022 at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Ben Guerir, Morocco

Opening remarks: Moza Al-Hajri, a student at Georgetown University in Qatar and a youth advocate for the Education Above All Foundation, emphasized the importance of the Arabic language to Arab identity and upholding cultural heritage.

The talks in brief:

Charles Mouhannad Malek, molecular and cellular biologist 

Big idea: We can build bridges and increase empathy through science.

How? Dr. Charles Malek thinks the only way for the Arabic-speaking world to transition from a consumer to a producer market is through investing in scientific research and technology here at home. Many students decide to work abroad because their home countries don’t provide them with the necessary tools and infrastructure to pursue their scientific research. The key to solve this problem is to teach with the scientific method – which relies on empirical observation, information gathering, analysis, conclusion and critical thinking – as opposed to lectures and rote memorization. Malek emphasizes the need to develop and promote scientific content in the Arabic language as a vehicle to build knowledge across the region. “If we decide to prioritize science education and make that the compass of the north, change will come,” he says.

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Aziza Chaouni, civil engineer, architect, professor 

Big idea: A model for sustainable living and preserving cultural heritage lies in the desert.

How? The creation of oases, through careful land and building management, has made desert living possible for centuries. Increased tourism and climate change, however, are forcing local communities to leave, abandoning their cultural heritage as the desert creeps in. Aziza Chaouni is focused on reversing the damage by designing a new approach to sustainability and cultural heritage preservation. In her hometown of Fez, Morocco, the oasis of M’hamid Al Ghizlan was on its way to extinction until Chaouni established Joudour Sahara, a music school built with sustainable, local materials – such as rammed earth, stone, wood and bamboo – and powered by an autonomous, photovoltaic energy system. Thanks to the project, the desert has stopped trying to eat M’hamid, residents are staying in their homes and their cultural heritage is now thriving. She concludes her talk with a live performance by the students of Joudour Sahara.

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Suzanne Talhouk, author, poet

Big idea: Embrace the vibration of the Arabic language to shape your life and the life of those around you.

How? Words carry a vibration that can affect your other senses, says Suzanne Talhouk. She makes an impassioned case to get in touch with your inner voice and to embrace a world that stays away from using inflammatory, charged words. “If you want to improve your life and the life of those around you, start by using words that express love, harmony and forgiveness,” she says. She concludes by exploring the power of the Arabic language, saying that words shape the way we think and act. Arabic is one of the many languages that has a myriad of words that carry vibrations and high energy – so why are we abandoning our mother tongue so easily?

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Hayat Sindi, biotechnologist 

Big idea: A new model to foster innovation, address social challenges and build a bridge between possibility and hope.

How? Dr. Hayat Sindi has established a social entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem for scientists and innovators to address pressing issues in their communities in the Middle East and beyond. The i2 Institute – launched in partnership with Harvard Innovation Lab, MIT, National Geographic, Pop Tech, PWC and McKinsey – was the beginning of Sindi’s journey to bring tangible solutions to the most vulnerable. Through its flagship program “Transform,” Sindi and her team worked with a group of innovators around the globe to launch a number of projects: battery-powered refrigerators that use solar energy in the borders of Uganda and Mozambique to store and preserve produce (and, later, COVID-19 vaccines); solar-powered houses in refugee camps in Bangladesh; and an electronic medical platform that employs 60,000 female doctors in Pakistan, providing dignified medical assistance to 100 million women and children in the outskirts of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Iraq. “We can come up with amazing and visionary ideas,” she says. “However, they will become real and stronger only when they are connected to society.”

This piece was written by Lobna Hassairi and Doha Summaqah.

TEDWomen Presents: Women leading the future, with Heidi Hammel and Nadia Drake

Nothing says “future” quite like humanity’s quest to understand our cosmic surroundings.

The fourth day of TEDWomen Presents — an online festival featuring interviews with leading women, interactive workshops, specially curated film screenings and more — focused on science and the future, with a conversation between astronomer Heidi Hammel and science journalist Nadia Drake.

Big idea: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the most powerful ever built by humanity, has transformed the field of astronomy — and our search for life beyond Earth.

How? JWST has been orbiting Earth since late 2021; its highly sensitive, innovative instruments allow us to see new wavelengths of infrared light with incredible clarity. Beyond the beautiful photography it creates, this breakthrough telescope means we can learn more about the very origins of the universe. “Different wavelengths of light tell you different parts of the story,” says Heidi Hammel, an interdisciplinary scientist working on JWST. In conversation with science journalist Nadia Drake, she discussed the telescope’s construction and how scientists use tools called spectrographs to analyze the colors in the light it captures. Since certain molecules light up differently, they can use these colors to see which molecules are present in a far-off object — molecules like H2O, which could be a sign of circumstances suitable for life. More than this, “We don’t just have a static picture,” says Hammel. Studying the imagery can reveal the molecules’ temperature, pressure and movement, too. “That’s where the real deep science takes place,” she says. All this information will help us fill in gaps in the knowledge of the universe’s history, how our solar system formed and where else life may have evolved. For example, we’ve learned that one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa, has more water inside it than Earth does on the surface, and that the dust, gas and existing stars of nearby galaxies interact to create new stars. “It touches us as humans. How did we come to be?” asks Hammel.

Q&A: Following the interview, the TEDWomen Presents audience had the opportunity to ask Hammel questions during a live Q&A, hosted by TED Current Affairs Curator Whitney Pennington-Rodgers. In her day-to-day work, Hammel says she experiences both the mundane and the awesome. While sometimes she can be so deep in analysis that she loses sight of the awe she’s experiencing, other times she’ll get to observe an image that shocks or amazes her. While working on the Hubble Space Telescope, she watched a comet crash into Jupiter, exploding into massive black clouds. And when JWST first launched, she saw Neptune (and its rings) glowing in the infrared. Looking towards the future, Hammel says scientists are already thinking about the next generation telescope — one even larger than JWST — to find another planet able to sustain life. Wherever it may be, Hammel says we might be able to answer the question of whether life exists beyond our planet within this lifetime.

Hammel also spoke on the evolution of gender equity in her field since she first began her career in the 1980s. At that time, there were less than ten women in her field. Now she attends conferences filled with women. “It makes me joyful,” she says, because the attention they’ve put towards including women has created a younger, more diverse generation of astronomers. Today, Hammel does outreach with a broad range of communities, working to change everyone’s understanding of what an astronomer looks like. Yes, a scientist can look “like an ordinary mom!”

Join the TEDWomen Community newsletter list to be the first to hear updates from the community and announcements about TEDWomen 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia — October 11-13, 2023.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The talks in brief:

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

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

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

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Kathryn Kolbert, reproductive rights attorney

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

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

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Aarathi Krishnan, tech and human rights ethicist

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

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

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Michèle Lamont, sociologist

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

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

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Candace Parker, WNBA superstar, activist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The talks in brief:

Charles C. Daniels, Jr., scholar, therapist

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

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

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Smita Sharma, TED Fellow, photojournalist, visual storyteller

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

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

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Zarlasht Halaimzai, writer, advocate for refugee rights

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

Shaping the future: Notes from the TED Fellows Session of TEDMonterey

The TED Fellows are known to be a range of multifaceted souls, making possible the impossible. The eight speakers and one performance on stage at TEDMonterey exemplified this year’s (and every year’s) cohort of amazing people shaping the future and rising to the challenge of making the world better than it’s been left.

The event: TEDMonterey: Fellows Session, hosted by TED’s Shoham Arad and Lily James Olds on Monday, August 2, 2021

Speakers: Daniel Alexander Jones, Tom Osborn, Jenna C. Lester, Alicia Chong Rodriguez, Jim Chuchu, Germán Santillán, Lei Li, Nithya Ramanathan

Opening the session, performance artist and writer Daniel Alexander Jones evoked the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement with an abridged, rousing performance of the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and closed with a holistic, poetic summary of the talks and the spirit they contained.

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Tom Osborn, mental health innovator

Big idea: In areas with limited access to psychologists and psychiatrists, youth trained in evidence-based mental health care can provide support for their peers.

How? Growing up in rural Kenya, Osborn faced enormous pressure to succeed in school and chart a path out of poverty for his family. He suffered from symptoms he now recognizes as anxiety and depression but went without any resources to help him navigate these difficult emotions. As an adult, Osborn works to ensure that the youth in Kenya today have access to mental health support through his organization, the Shamiri Institute. With too few clinicians to serve the population (only two for every one million citizens), the organization trains 18 to 22-year-old Kenyans to deliver evidence-based mental healthcare to their peers. Youth treated through the institute pay under two dollars a session and have already reported reductions in symptoms of anxiety and depression. As Osborn looks to the future, he hopes to use this community-first, youth-oriented model as a template to help kids across the globe lead successful, independent lives.

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Jenna C. Lester, dermatologist

Big idea: Dermatologists need to get comfortable with all types of skin colors — and that starts with changing what they learn.

How? Just under half of new dermatologists admit they don’t feel comfortable identifying health issues that make themselves known via skin indicators — such as Lyme disease’s “bullseye” — that may show up differently on darker skin. Lester believes this discomfort leads to poorer health outcomes for people with dark skin and proves ultimately detrimental to the patient-physician relationship. So, she founded the Skin of Color Clinic, a program on a mission to help doctors unlearn the harmful patterns and limited scope of diagnosis taught in textbooks and perpetuated in classes around dark skin. She hopes that with her efforts, combined with other similar initiatives around the US, to right the equilibrium of over- and underrepresentation in the dermatological field so that everyone — no matter their skin tone — can have access to quality health and wellness.

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Alicia Chong Rodriguez, health care technology entrepreneur

Big idea: A smart bra that can track and support women’s heart health.

How? About 44 million women in the US live with heart disease, but helpful data is severely lacking. Why? Because most cardiovascular research is performed on men, resulting in therapies largely designed for male bodies. Rodriguez wants to close that data gap — with a bra. By wearing an everyday bra fit with special biomarker sensors, life-saving data could be gathered continuously in real time. The sensors track heart rhythm, breathing, temperature, posture and movement and update this information to the wearer’s records — so that doctors can understand their health better with troves of information to back it up. By simply wearing a bra, she says, we could close the data divide and finally usher women’s health care into the 21st century.

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Jim Chuchu, filmmaker

Big idea: Stolen African art and artifacts showcased around the world should be returned to museums and cultural institutions on the African continent.

Why? Why are stolen African artifacts still in the possession of Western museums? Chuchu reminds us, many of these cultural artifacts wound up in cities like London and New York because they were looted by colonial forces. Working to return Kenya’s material heritage to the country, he and the International Inventories Programme, an organization he co-founded, are rectifying these injustices. They have created a database of cultural objects held outside of Kenya — locating over 32,000 items so far. Beyond tracking these precious artifacts, Chuchu also hopes to start a public conversation about the morality of holding stolen African art in foreign institutions. “We’re asking for the return of our objects,” he says, “to help us remember who we are.”

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Germán Santillán, cultural chocolatier

Big idea: By training a new generation in Indigenous cacao cultivation and culinary methods, Germán Santillán is helping revive the culinary tradition of Oaxacan chocolate.

How? The Mixtec people in Oaxaca, Mexico have been cultivating and consuming chocolate — in ceremonies like marriage or politics — for over 800 years. However, in Mexico today, four out of five chocolate bars are produced using foreign cocoa. Santillán grew up in a Mixtec village in Oaxaca and watched as ancient Mixtec methods long-used to grow cocoa beans and prepare chocolate fell out of use. To revive the rich culinary tradition of chocolate in his region, Santillán and a small group of locals started Oaxacanita Chocolate. Unlike commercial chocolate bars, their Oaxacan chocolate uses native cocoa beans and traditional farming and roasting methods. Not only does their company produce a delicious product, but it has also helped boost his region economically and train a new generation of farmers and cooks in once-disappearing Indigenous techniques. It’s a powerful reminder of how Indigenous knowledge and practices can thrive in a modern context.

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Lei Li, medical imaging innovator

Big idea: Advanced imaging using light and sound will transform how we see inside our bodies, elevating our ability to detect, track and diagnose disease.

How? The foundation of advanced photoacoustic imaging converts light energy into sound energy, also known as the photoacoustic effect. The process goes like this: Li and his team pulse painless, gentle lasers into living tissue (in this example, he used a mouse), which absorbs the light and rises in temperature, leading to the generation of acoustic waves — or sound — that medical sensors interpret into a high-resolution image. Li shows how the clarity and detail of these images far exceeds those produced by a traditional MRI, CT scan or ultrasound. The applicability of this technology is wide-reaching, from breast cancer diagnosis and human brain imaging to potentially steering medicine-delivering microrobots inside our bodies. Photoacoustic imaging is a fast-growing research field, he says, and the promise for global health is reason enough to sound-off.

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Nithya Ramanathan, technologist

Big Idea: Smart sensors are a game changer when it comes to preserving life-saving vaccines.

How? After life-saving technology is deployed to countries with limited infrastructure, Ramanathan realized it is often left unsupported from thereon. Take vaccines for example, if they get too hot or cold on their journey or in storage, they could be ruined before use. Ramanathan talks through real-world examples — one case in particular took place in Stanford Children’s Hospital, where a refrigerator malfunctioning for 8 months meant that over 1,500 kids needed to be re-vaccinated — and the stakes are even higher now with COVID-19. Her solution? Smart sensors in refrigerators where vaccines are stored that monitor temperatures and send out alerts when they are unsafe — as well as data on the best routes to use in an emergency. Ramanathan and her team at Nexleaf, a non-profit she co-founded, have implemented this scalable, cost-effective and vital technology in thousands of locations in Asia and Africa. These simple yet extremely effective tools show what is possible when we invest in collecting and utilizing data.

Editor’s Picks: A (non-exhaustive) list of our favorite TED Talks of 2020

As we usher out 2020 — the (enter superlative of your choice) year — let’s take a moment to look back before we close the door for good. What captured our imaginations, reflected our emotions and sparked our hope for a better tomorrow? From the wisdom of Dolly Parton to the life-saving potential of snail venom to the transformative work of antiracism, here are some of the TED Talks that stayed with us as the world shifted beneath our feet.

Why do people distrust vaccines? Anthropologist Heidi Larson describes how medical rumors originate, spread and fuel resistance to vaccines worldwide.

Host of Radiolab Jad Abumrad gives a captivating talk on truth, difference, storytelling — and Dolly Parton.

A more equal world starts with you. Yes, it’s that simple, says equity advocate Nita Mosby Tyler.

Housewife-turned-politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya shares a beautiful meditation on the link between fearlessness and freedom.

Backed by the real, often-untold story of Rosa Parks, professor David Ikard makes a compelling case for the power and importance of historical accuracy.

Racism makes our economy worse — and not just for people of color. Public policy expert Heather C. McGhee offers a crucial rethink on how we can create a more prosperous world for all.

In a talk that’s part cultural love letter, part history lesson, France Villarta details the legacy of gender fluidity in his native Philippines — and emphasizes the universal beauty of all people, regardless of society’s labels.

For the poor and vulnerable, the health impacts of climate change are already here. Physician Cheryl Holder calls on doctors, politicians and others to build a health care system that incorporates economic and social justice.

Venom can kill … or it can cure. A fascinating talk from marine chemical biologist Mandë Holford on the potential of animal venom to treat human diseases.

Why has there been so little mention of saving Black lives from the climate emergency? David Lammy, a Member of Parliament for Tottenham, England, talks about the link between climate justice and racial justice.

“It shouldn’t be an act of feminism to know how your body works,” says gynecologist and author Jen Gunter. The era of menstrual taboos is over.

Scientists predict climate change will displace more than 180 million people by 2100. Disaster recovery lawyer Colette Pichon Battle lays out how to prepare for this looming crisis of “climate migration.”

In a talk brimming with original illustrations and animations, visual artist Oliver Jeffers offers observations on the “beautiful, fragile drama of human civilization.”

Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge, calls on us all to rise to our greatest challenge ever: the “Earthshots,” a set of ambitious objectives to repair the planet.

If you: do laundry, are (or have been) pregnant, shop for your household or do similar labor, then by GDP standards, you’re unproductive. Economist Marilyn Waring explains her vision for a better way to measure growth.

The fossil fuel industry is waiting for someone else to pay for climate change. Climate science scholar Myles Allen shares a bold plan for the oil and gas companies responsible for the climate crisis to clean up the mess they made — and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Just like the rest of 2020, the aftermath of the US presidential election was unprecedented. Learn why the concession speech is one of the most important safeguards for democracy in this prescient talk from lawyer and political commentator Van Jones.

The way we’ve been doing business is hurting us and the environment. What’s the fix? Economist Rebecca Henderson calls for a reimagined capitalism where companies pay for the climate damage they cause.

Author and historian Ibram X. Kendi explains how the concept of antiracism can help you actively uproot injustice and inequality in the world — and replace it with love.

A stunning talk and performance from theater artist Daniel Alexander Jones on how coming undone can be the first step toward transformation.

How do we eradicate racial bias? Psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt explores how interrupting and adding friction to our thought processes could address the unfair targeting Black people face at all levels of society.

“Complete silence is very addictive,” says Rebecca Knill, a writer who has cochlear implants that enable her to hear. With humor and charm, she explores the evolution of assistive listening technology — and how we could build a more inclusive world.

Starbucks COO Rosalind G. Brewer invites business leaders to rethink what it takes to create a truly inclusive workplace — and lays out how to bring real, grassroots change to boardrooms and communities alike.

It takes more than rhetoric or elegance to win a dispute. US Supreme Court litigator Neal Katyal shares stories of some of his most impactful cases — and the key to crafting a persuasive and successful argument in (and out of) court.

Get the inside story behind Thomas Crowther’s headline-making research on reforestation — and the platform he created to help restore the biodiversity of Earth, everywhere.

Symbiotic: The talks of TED@BCG 2020

How can we make advances in technology that don’t require massive job losses? Work with nature to protect both the planet and humanity? Ensure all people are treated equitably? In a day of talks, interviews and performances, 17 speakers and performers shared ideas about a future in which people, technology and nature thrive interdependently.

The event: TED@BCG: Symbiotic is the ninth event TED and Boston Consulting Group have partnered around to bring leaders, innovators and changemakers to the stage to share ideas for solving society’s biggest challenges. Hosted by TED’s Corey Hajim along with BCG’s Seema Bansal, Rocío Lorenzo and Vinay Shandal, with opening remarks from Rich Lesser, CEO of BCG.

Music: The group Kolinga, fronted by lead singer Rébecca M’Boungou, perform the original song “Nguya na ngai” — a stunning rendition that’s equal parts music, poetry and dance.

The talks in brief:

Qiuqing Tai, video visionary

Big idea: Short-form videos — 60 seconds or less, made and shared on apps like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram — are changing the way we work, communicate and learn.

How? More than 1.5 billion people around the world regularly watch short videos, and more than half of them are under the age of 24, says Qiuqing Tai. This bite-sized content is quickly becoming the new normal, with people turning to it not only for entertainment but also to discover new interests and skills. Meanwhile, businesses use short-form videos to find new customers and diversify their audiences. In 2019, Tai led a research study with TikTok, finding that the platform’s short-form content generated an estimated $95 billion in goods and services sold, and helped create 1.2 million jobs globally. There has also been an explosion in short-form educational content, as social enterprises and education startups experiment with 15-second videos for people who want to learn on the fly. There are valid concerns about this young medium, Tai admits — data privacy, the addictive nature of the format, the lack of contextual nuance — but, with the right investment and policymaking, she believes the benefits will ultimately outweigh the drawbacks.

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Matt Langione, quantum advocate

Big idea: If not traditional supercomputers, what technology will emerge to arm us against the challenges of the 21st century?

What will it be? For nearly a century, we’ve relied on high-performance computers to meet critical, complex demands — from cracking Nazi codes to sequencing the human genome — and they’ve been getting smaller, faster and better, as if by magic. But that magic seems to be running out due to the physical limitations of the traditional supercomputer, says Matt Langione — and it’s time to look to newer, subatomic horizons. Enter quantum computing: an emerging hyper-speed solution for the urgent challenges of our time, like vaccine development, finance and logistics. Langione addresses fundamental questions about this burgeoning technology — How does it work? Do we really need it? How long until it’s available? — with a goal in mind: to disperse any doubts about investing in quantum computing now rather than later, for the sake of lasting progress for business and society at large. “The race to a new age of magic and supercomputing is already underway,” he says. “It’s one we can’t afford to lose.”

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Ajay Banga, CEO of Mastercard

Big idea: Let’s introduce those who are un-banked or under-banked into the banking system via a mobile, digital economy.

How? Roughly two billion people don’t have access to banks or services like credit, insurance and investment — or even a way to establish a financial identity. These people must rely solely on cash, which can be dangerous and prone to fraud by middlemen (and costs about 1.2 percent of a nation’s GDP to produce). As an advocate of “financial inclusion,” Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga believes that banks, fintech and telecom companies, governments and merchants can build a new, more equitable economy that relies on digital transactions rather than cash. How would its users benefit? As an example, a grocer may not be able to afford supplies for the week if she’s paying cash, but with a mobile payment system, she could build enough of a transaction history to establish credit, and with enough credit, she could build a “financial identity.” Such identities could revolutionize everything from small business to distributing aid — all using tech that’s already in place, and that doesn’t require a smartphone.

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Nimisha Jain, commerce aficionado

Big idea: For Nimisha Jain, shopping was once an activity full of excitement, friends, family and trusted sellers. But for many like her in emerging markets worldwide, online shopping is intimidating and, frankly, inhuman, full of mistrust for unscrupulous sellers and mysterious technology. Is there a way for online sellers to build genuine human interactivity into virtual shopping, at scale?

How? Fortunately, it’s possible to combine the convenience of online shopping with a personalized experience in what Jain calls “conversational commerce,” and some companies are doing exactly this — like Meesho in India, which allows shoppers to interact with the same person every time they shop. Over time, the agent learns what you like, when you would like it and, once trusted, will fill your shopping cart with unexpected items. But this model is not only for the developing world; Jain’s research shows that customers in the West also like this concept, and it might someday transform the way the world shops. 

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Emily Leproust, DNA synthesizer

Big idea: We need to rethink what modern global sustainability looks like — and pursue a new kind of environmentalism.

How? By working with the environment, rather than against it. As it stands, nature has been adapting and reacting to the presence of human developments, just like we’ve been adapting and reacting to nature’s changing climate, says Leproust — and we must course-correct before we destroy each other. She advocates for a path paved by synthetic biology and powered by DNA. Embracing the potential of biological innovation could help across the board, but Leproust singles out three critical areas: health, food and materials. If we focus our energy on pursuing sustainable outcomes — like lab-developed insulin, engineering foods to be immune to disease and harnessing the potential of spider silk — human civilization and the natural world could thrive in tandem without worry.

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William Collis, esports expert

Big idea: We revere traditional athletic prowess, but what about the skills and talent of a different sort of athlete?

What do you mean? Video games should no longer be considered children’s play, says esports expert William Collis. They’ve grown into a multibillion-dollar sporting phenomenon — to the point where traditional sport stars, from David Beckham to Shaquille O’Neal, are investing in competitive games like Fortnite, League of Legends and Rocket League. It takes real skill to be good at these video games, reminds Collis, which he breaks down into three main categories: mechanical (much like playing an instrument), strategic (equivalent to tactical choices of chess) and leadership. Beyond that, being a pro-gamer requires adaptability, creativity and unconventional thinking. Collis’s message is simple: respect the game and the valuable traits developed there, just as you would any other sport.

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Bas Sudmeijer, carbon capture advisor

Big idea: Carbon capture and storage — diverting emissions before they hit the atmosphere and burying them back in the earth — is not new, but analysts like Bas Sudmeijer think it could both contribute to the fight against climate change and allow big polluters (who are also big employers) to stay in business. But for carbon capture to make a significant contribution to emission reductions, we must spend 110 billion dollars a year for the next 20 years.

How can we offset this enormous cost? Sudmeijer believes that “carbon networks” — clusters of polluters centered around potential underground carbon sinks — could solve the economic barriers to this promising technology, if they’re created in conjunction with aggressive regulation to make polluting more expensive. And the clock is ticking: current carbon capture operations trap only .1 percent of greenhouse gases, and we need to increase that number 100- to 200-fold in order to slow global warming. Fortunately, we have a historical model for this — the push to supply gas to Europe after World War II, carried out in a similar time frame during a period of similar economic stress.

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Mehret Mandefro, physician, filmmaker

Big idea: A robust and well-funded creative industry drives economic and democratic growth. A thriving creative industry isn’t just “a nice thing to have” — it’s a democratic necessity. 

How? With a median age of about 19, Ethiopia’s youth are rapidly graduating into a labor market with an astronomical 19-percent unemployment rate and few opportunities. To create enough good-paying jobs for its expanding workforce, Mehret Mandefro says the government should expand the creative sector. She says that putting culture on the agenda could boost industries like tourism and drive the country’s overall economic growth. The creative industry also plays an important social and democratic role. In a period of strained relations and rising ethnic divisions, society must make a choice, she says: “From my perspective, the country can go one of two ways: either down a path of inclusive, democratic participation, or down a more divisive path of ethnic divisions.” For Mandefro, the answer is clear. She sees the arts as the best way for people to share in one another’s culture, where music, fashion, film, theater and design create connection and understanding between groups and strengthen democratic bonds. “One of the best ways to safeguard democracy is to expose everyone to each other’s stories, music, cultures and histories,” she says.

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Antoine Gourévitch, deep tech diver

Big idea: The next chapter in the innovation story, driving us into the future, is the potential and promise of deep tech.

How? Antoine Gourévitch believes deep tech — tangible, intentional collaboration at the crossroads of emerging technologies (think synthetic biology, quantum programming and AI) — will change the ways we produce material, eat, heal and beyond. Deep tech ventures — one of the most notable examples being SpaceX — focus on fundamental issues by first identifying physical constraints that industries often encounter, and then solve them with a potent combination of science, engineering and design thinking. Thousands of companies and start-ups like this currently exist worldwide, sharing an ethos of radical possibility. They’re governed by four rules: be problem-oriented, not technology-focused; combine, intersect and converge; adopt a design thinking approach, powered by deep tech; and adopt an economical design-to-cost approach. In understanding these guidelines, Gourévitch wants us to embrace the idea that innovation requires rethinking, and that this cross-disciplinary approach could offer a revolution in making what seemed impossible, possible. 

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Tilak Mandadi, empathy advocate

Big Idea: Empathy training should be part of workplace culture. Here are three ways to implement it. 

How? After the trauma of losing his daughter, Tilak Mandadi’s decision to return to work wasn’t easy — but his journey back ended up providing unexpected support in processing his grief. At first, he was full of self-doubt and sadness, feeling as if he was living in two completely different worlds: the personal and the professional. But over time, his coworkers’ friendship and purpose-driven work helped transform his exhaustion and isolation, shedding light on the role empathy plays in a healthy work culture — both for people suffering with loss and those who aren’t. Mandadi offers three ways to foster this kind of environment: implement policies that support healing (like time away from work); provide return-to-work therapy for employees who are dealing with grief; and provide empathy training for all employees so that they know how to best support each other. Empathy can be a learned behavior, he says, and sometimes asking “What would you like me to do differently to help you?” can make all the difference. 

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Olivia Arthur, documentary photographer

Big idea: Across the world, people are merging technology with the human body in remarkable ways, sparking radical meditations on what it means to be human.

How? Through photography, Olivia Arthur intimately examines the intersection of humanity and technology, capturing the resilience and emotional depths of the human body. In her latest project, she collaborated with amputees who have integrated technology into their bodies and researchers who have invented robots with strikingly human traits. Inspired in part by photographer Eadweard Muybridge, Arthur focused on gait, balance and motion in both human and machine subjects. These included Pollyanna, a dancer who mastered the delicate skill of balance while using a blade prosthesis; Lola, a humanoid robot who confidently navigated an obstacle course yet looked most human when turned off; and Alex Lewis, a quadruple amputee who challenges perceptions of humanity’s limitations. Arthur describes her photos as studies of our evolution, documenting how technology has catalyzed a profound shift in how we understand, enhance and define the human body. 

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Kedra Newsom Reeves, wealth equity strategist

Big idea: We need to narrow the racial wealth gap in the United States. Financial institutions can help.

How? As last reported by the US federal government, the median wealth for a white family in the United States was 171,000 dollars, and the median wealth for a Black family was just 17,000 dollars — a staggering tenfold difference. During a global pandemic in which inequities across finance, health care, education and criminal justice have been laid bare, Kedra Newsom Reeves says that we must make progress towards reducing this gap. She tells the story of her great-great-grandfather, who was born into slavery, and how it took four generations for her family to accumulate enough wealth to purchase a house. Along the way, she says, a range of policies purposefully excluded her family — along with marginalized communities across the country — from building wealth. Now, financial institutions can help undo that damage. She offers four critical actions: ensure more people have bank accounts; increase awareness of checking and savings accounts specifically made for low-income communities; find alternative ways to establish creditworthiness, and then lend more credit to marginalized groups; and invest, support and promote Black-owned business, particularly by increasing the amount of venture capital that goes to Black founders.

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Ishan Bhabha, constitutional lawyer

Big idea: Debate can broaden perspectives, spark creativity and catalyze human progress, so instead of censoring controversial speech, private entities should create pathways for productive discussion.

Why? In the United States, the First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech but only protects citizens against censorship by the government — not by private entities. But just because a conference center, university or social media platform can ban speech on their own turf doesn’t mean they should, says Ishan Bhabha. When faced with the decision to allow or prohibit meritless speech, he argues that more often than not, more speech is better. Instead of restricting speech, groups should err on the side of allowing it and work to create an open dialogue. “Ideas that have little to no value should be met with arguments against it,” he says. Private groups should protect against hate speech that can cause lasting damage or even violence but should respond responsibly to other ideological speech and mediate discussion, which can promote productive disagreement and lead to a valuable exchange of ideas. Universities, for instance, can offer students mediated discussion groups where they can openly try on new ideas without the threat of sanction. Twitter now responds to unsubstantiated posts on their platform by flagging content as either misleading, deceptive or containing unverified information and provides links to verified sources where users can find more information. Bhabha argues that these practices add to a rich and vigorous discussion with the potential to improve the arena of debate by raising the standard.

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Johanna Benesty, global health strategist

Big idea: Discovering an effective COVID-19 vaccine is just the first step in ending the pandemic. After that, the challenge lies in ensuring everyone can get it.

Why? We’ve been thinking of vaccine discovery as the holy grail in the fight against COVID-19, says Johanna Benesty, but an equally difficult task will be providing equitable access to it. Namely, once a vaccine is found to be effective, who gets it first? And how can we make sure it’s safely distributed in low-income communities and countries, with less robust health care systems? Benesty suggests that vaccine developers consider the constraints of lesser health care systems from the outset, building cost management into their research and development activities. In this way, they can work to ensure vaccines are affordable, effective across all populations (like at-risk people and pregnant women) and that can be distributed in all climates (from temperature-controlled hospitals to remote rural areas) at scale. It’s the smart thing to do, Benesty says: if COVID-19 exists anywhere in the world, we’re all at risk, and the global economy will continue to sputter. “We need all countries to be able to crush the pandemic in sync,” she says.

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Rosalind G. Brewer, COO of Starbucks

Big idea: When companies think of DEI — diversity, equality, inclusion — they too often think of it as a numbers game that’s about satisfying quotas instead of building relationships with those who have traditionally been excluded from the corporate conversation. Rosalind G. Brewer believes that the current moment of racial consciousness is an “all-in” opportunity for hidebound leadership to step out of their comfort zones and bring real, grassroots racial changes to boardrooms and communities alike.

How? With Black Lives Matter in the headlines, the pandemic illuminating inequalities in health care and income, and so many brands engaging in “performative justice” PR campaigns, it’s a crucial time to not only include more BIPOC in the corporate workplace, but also to listen to their voices. As brands like Starbucks diversify and absorb the stories of their new partners, Brewer believes they will do far more than satisfy quotas — they will nurture future leaders, open minds and bring ground-up change to communities.

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Kevin Roose, technology journalist

Big idea: By leaning into our creativity, empathy and other human skills, we can better collaborate with smart machines and “future-proof” our jobs.

How? Artificial intelligence has become smarter, faster and even more integrated into our lives and careers: algorithms have been trained to write financial articles, detect diseases and proofread legal documents at speeds and scales dramatically faster than any individual human could. But this doesn’t necessarily mean robots will inevitably replace us at work, says Kevin Roose. While an algorithm may be able to scan exams and detect disease faster than a human, a machine can’t replace a doctor’s comforting bedside manner. Instead of trying to compete with smart technologies at what they do best, we need to invest in developing the skills that machines aren’t capable of — creativity, compassion, adaptability and critical thinking.

Transformation: Notes from Session 3 of the Countdown Global Launch

Countdown is a global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. Watch the talks, interviews and performances from the Countdown Global Launch at ted.com/countdown.

Transforming big systems is a huge task. Energy, transportation, industry and infrastructure all pose their own challenges. And yet that transformation is already happening. The experts in Session 3 showed us how and where, and offered powerful ideas for accelerating it: developing an economy without coal, decarbonizing fossil fuels, electrifying mobility and more.

This session was cohosted by actor and activist Jane Fonda and climate activist Xiye Bastida, who kicked off the hour by discussing what it means to fight for climate justice and how to ignite large-scale change.

The talks in brief:

Varun Sivaram, clean energy executive, physicist, author

Big idea: India has a historic opportunity to power its industrialization with clean energy. 

How? In a country where fossil fuels are still a luxury for many (only six percent of Indians own cars, and only two percent have air conditioning), India has a unique opportunity to build a new, green energy infrastructure from the ground up. An incredible 70 percent of India’s infrastructure of 2030 hasn’t been built yet, says Varun Sivaram, CTO of India’s largest renewable energy company, presenting the nation with a historic opportunity to industrialize using clean energy. By making renewable energy “the beating heart of a reimagined economy,” Sivaram thinks India can add thousands of gigawatts of solar and wind production capacity, green the country’s power grid and transportation system, and radically improve energy efficiency — electrifying communities that remain beyond the reach of the power grid.

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Myles Allen, climate science scholar

Big idea: The fossil fuel industry can play a central role in solving climate change by decarbonizing their product. Oil and gas companies know how to decarbonize their fuels, and they have the money to do it. Now, they need the will.

How? The fossil fuel industry contributes 85 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. To stop global warming, oil and gas companies need to stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere — but that doesn’t mean they have to stop selling their product altogether, says climate scientist Myles Allen. In lieu of a total ban on fossil fuels, which would harm the growth of developing countries (and is frankly unrealistic), Allen proposes a bold plan for fossil fuel companies to progressively decarbonize their product and reach net zero emissions by 2050. Engineers at energy companies have known how to decarbonize fossil fuels for years: collect CO2 as it burns, purify and compress it, and inject it deep into the Earth from which it came, where it can be stored for thousands of years. This process is expensive, so fuel companies haven’t done it yet at scale. But Allen puts forth a progressive decarbonization model in which 10 percent of fuels can be decarbonized by 2030, 50 percent by 2040 and 100 percent by 2050, allowing companies time to build a robust carbon dioxide disposal industry that works for everyone. With the know-how, money and plan to get to net zero emissions, all fossil fuel companies need now is will power. 

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Rose M. Mutiso, energy researcher

Big idea: The world must reach a zero emission future. On the way there, Africa deserves its fair share of the carbon budget to make that transition possible and equitable. 

Why? 48 African countries, combined, are responsible for less than one percent of the world’s carbon footprint, says Rose M. Mutiso. Pointing to this stark divide between those with limited energy access and those who have it in abundance, she highlights why Africa’s energy needs must be prioritized when reimagining the global carbon budget. The solution may sound counterintuitive, but to achieve a zero emission future, Africa needs to produce more carbon in the short term in order to develop in the long term — all while wealthier continents drastically cut their own emissions. For climate adaptation to be possible, Mutiso says, the world must recognize the vulnerability of developing countries and grant them the resources needed to build resilient infrastructures.

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Monica Araya, electrification advocate

Big idea: The global shift to 100-percent clean transportation is under way.

How? People around the world are demanding clean air — and cities are responding, says Monica Araya. In her home base of Amsterdam, for instance, the city is rolling out a plan to make all transportation fully emission-free by 2030. The city will ban petrol and diesel vehicles, starting with public buses and working up to all kinds of traffic, from taxis, trucks and ferries to personal cars and motorcycles. Other cities across the globe are following suit by electrifying transportation options and championing sustainable forms of travel. There is (and will be) resistance to change, Araya notes — our addiction to fossil fuels runs deep. So we need clever combinations of finance and policy. Whether we can create healthy cities, while meeting our transportation needs, all depends on the choices we make this decade. “The end of the internal combustion engine is within sight,” Araya says. “The question is no longer whether this will happen, but when.”

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Al Gore and climate activists Ximena Loría, Nana Firman, Gloria Kasang Bulus and Tim Guinee

Big idea: It’s been almost 15 years since Al Gore sounded the alarm on climate change with An Inconvenient Truth. Today, with the Climate Reality Project, he’s helping mold future leaders to build the movement for climate survival and social justice from the ground up.

How? Gore introduces us to four of the graduates of the Climate Reality Project, who each confront climate change on their own terms and on their own doorsteps: Ximena Loría, founder of Misión 2 Grados, an NGO influencing public policy in Central America; Nana Firman, “daughter of the rainforest” and advocate for climate justice among Indigenous peoples; Gloria Kasang Bulus, a Nigerian activist for women and education; and Tim Guinee, a first responder and climate change fighter in upstate New York. Together, they’re gathering local actors into a global, grass-roots movement that aims to turn the climate fight around. “The global pandemic, structural and institutional racism with its horrific violence, the worsening impacts of the climate crisis: all of these have accelerated the emergence of a new and widespread collective understanding of our connection to the natural world, the consequences of ignoring science and our sacred obligation to build a just society for all,” Gore says.

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Stephen Wilkes, photographer

Big idea: When we look at a landscape in the wild, we see only a moment in time. Photographer Stephen Wikes seeks to grasp the complex choreography of the natural world as it transitions from day to night — and to more deeply feel the impacts the human race is having on Earth’s ecosystems.

How? Using a special technique that captures the passage of time from day to night in a single image, Stephen Wilkes is able to photograph vanishing habitats and species in astonishing detail. These narrative images reveal how Earth changes over time, in all its beautiful complexity, and drive home the impacts of climate change with unprecedented force — from the threat of melting ice to the Arctic food chain to the disruption of flamingo migrations in Africa. “Our planet is changing before our eyes, but to witness that change is also to witness the remarkable relationships between all of nature — to see the infinite beauty of it, to learn how much bigger than us it is, and why it is worth fighting for,” Wilkes says.

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With an acoustic guitar on her knee, folk songwriter Raye Zaragoza sings her original song “Fight For You,” dedicated to everyone who stands up for the Earth. Later in the session, musician and actor Yemi Alade returns to sing “Africa,” a celebration song for a continent already experiencing the harmful effects of climate change.

Ignite: The talks of TED@WellsFargo

World-changing ideas that unearth solutions and ignite progress can come from anywhere. With that spirit in mind at TED@WellsFargo, thirteen speakers showcased how human empathy and problem-solving can combine with technology to transform lives (and banking) for the better.

The event: TED@WellsFargo, a day of thought-provoking talks on topics including how to handle challenging situations at work, the value of giving back and why differences can be strengths. It’s the first time TED and Wells Fargo have partnered to create inspiring talks from Wells Fargo Team Members.

When and where: Wednesday, February 5, 2020, at the Knight Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina

Opening and closing remarks: David Galloreese, Wells Fargo Head of Human Resources, and Jamie Moldafsky, Wells Fargo Chief Marketing Officer

Performances by: Dancer Simone Cooper and singer/songwriter Jason Jet and his band

The talks in brief:

Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez, sales and trading analyst

Big idea: As an immigrant, learning to thrive in America while watching other immigrants struggle oddly echoes what flight attendants instruct us to do when the oxygen masks drop in an emergency landing: if you want to help others put on their masks, you must put on your own mask first.

How? At age 15, Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez found herself alone in the US when her parents were forced to return to Mexico, taking her eight-year-old brother with them. For eight years, she diligently completed her education — and grappled with guilt, believing she wasn’t doing enough to aid fellow immigrants. Now working as a sales and trading analyst while guiding her brother through school in New York, she’s learned a valuable truth: in an emergency, you can’t save others until you save yourself.

Quote of the talk: “Immigrants [can’t] and will never be able to fit into any one narrative, because most of us are actually just traveling along a spectrum, trying to survive.”

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Matt Trombley, customer remediation supervisor

Big idea: Agonism — “taking a warlike stance in contexts that are not literally war” — plagues many aspects of modern-day life, from the way we look at our neighbors to the way we talk about politics. Can we work our way out of this divisive mindset?

How: Often we think that those we disagree with are our enemies, or that we must approve of everything our loved ones say or believe. Not surprisingly, this is disastrous for relationships. Matt Trombley shows us how to fight agonism by cultivating common ground (working to find just a single shared thread with someone) and by forgiving others for the slights that we believe their values cause us. If we do this, our relationships will truly come to life.

Quote of the talk: “When you can find even the smallest bit of common ground with somebody, it allows you to understand just the beautiful wonder and complexity and majesty of the other person.”

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Dorothy Walker, project manager

Big idea: Anybody can help resolve a conflict — between friends, coworkers, strangers, your children — with three simple steps.

How? Step one: prepare. Whenever possible, set a future date and time to work through a conflict, when emotions aren’t running as high. Step two: defuse and move forward. When you do begin mediating the conflict, start off by observing, listening and asking neutral questions; this will cause both parties to stop and think, and give you a chance to shift positive energy into the conversation. Finally, step three: make an agreement. Once the energy of the conflict has settled, it’s time to get an agreement (either written or verbal) so everybody can walk away with a peaceful resolution.

Quote of the talk: “There is a resolution to all conflicts. It just takes your willingness to try.”

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Charles Smith, branch manager

Big idea: The high rate of veteran suicide is intolerable — and potentially avoidable. By prioritizing the mental health of military service members both during and after active duty, we can save lives.

How? There are actionable solutions to end the devastating epidemic of military suicide, says Charles Smith. First, by implementing a standard mental health evaluation to military applicants, we can better gauge the preliminary markers of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression. Data is a vital part of the solution: if we keep better track of mental health data on service members, we can also predict where support is most needed and create those structures proactively. By identifying those with a higher risk early on in their military careers, we can ensure they have appropriate care during their service and connect them to the resources they need once they are discharged, enabling veterans to securely and safely rejoin civilian life.

Quote of the talk: “If we put our minds and resources together, and we openly talk and try to find solutions for this epidemic, hopefully, we can save a life.”

Rob Cooke, premier banker

Big idea: Work-related stress costs us a lot, in our lives and the economy. We need to reframe the way we manage stress — both in our workplaces and in our minds.

How? “We tend to think of [stress] as a consequence, but I see it as a culture,” says Rob Cooke. Despite massive global investments in the wellness industry, we are still losing trillions of dollars due to a stress-related decrease in employee productivity and illness. Cooke shares a multifaceted approach to shifting the way stress is managed, internally and culturally. It starts with corporations prioritizing the well-being of employees, governments incentivizing high standards for workplace wellness and individually nurturing our relationship with our own mental health.

Quote of the talk: “We all know retirement is all about saving more now, for later. What if we treated our mental health and overall well-being in the same capacity? Develop and save more of you now, for later in life.”

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Aeris Nguyen, learning and development facilitator

Big idea: What would our world be like if we could use DNA to verify our identity?

Why? Every year, millions of people have their identities stolen or misused. This fact got Aeris Nguyen thinking about how to safeguard our information for good. She shares an ambitious thought experiment, asking: Can we use our own bodies to verify our selves? While biometric data such as facial or palm print recognition have their own pitfalls (they can be easily fooled by, say, wearing a specially lighted hat or using a wax hand), what if we could use our DNA — our blood, hair or earwax? Nguyen acknowledges the ethical dilemmas and logistical nightmares that would come with collecting and storing more than seven billion files of DNA, but she can’t help but wonder if someday, in the far future, this will become the norm.

Quote of the talk: “Don’t you find it strange that we carry around these arbitrary, government assigned numbers or pieces of paper with our picture on it and some made-up passwords to prove we are who we say we are?  When, in fact, the most rock-solid proof of our identity is something we carry around in our cells — our DNA.”

France Villarta, communications consultant

Big idea: Modern ideas of gender are much older than we may think.

How? In many cultures around the world, the social construct of gender is binary — man or woman, assigned certain characteristics and traits, all designated by biological sex. But that’s not the case for every culture. France Villarta details the gender-fluid history of his native Philippines and how the influence of colonial rule forced narrow-minded beliefs onto its people. In a talk that’s part cultural love letter, part history lesson, Villarta emphasizes the beauty and need in reclaiming gender identities. “Oftentimes, we think of something as strange only because we’re not familiar with it or haven’t taken enough time to try and understand,” he says. “The good thing about social constructs is that they can be reconstructed — to fit a time and age.”

Quote of the talk: “To anyone reeling from forces trying to knock you down and cram you into these neat little boxes people have decided for you — don’t break. I see you. My ancestors see you. Their blood runs through me as they run through so many of us. You are valid. And you deserve rights and recognition. Just like everyone else.”

Dean Furness, analytic consultant

Big idea: You can overcome personal challenges by focusing on yourself, instead of making comparisons to others.

How? After a farming accident paralyzed Dean Furness below the waist, he began the process of adjusting to life in a wheelchair. He realized he’d have to nurture and focus on this new version of himself, rather than fixate on his former height, strength and mobility. With several years of rehabilitation and encouragement from his physical therapist, Furness began competing in the Chicago and Boston marathons as a wheelchair athlete. By learning how to own each day, he says, we can all work to get better, little by little.

Quote of the talk: “Take some time and focus on you, instead of others. I bet you can win those challenges and really start accomplishing great things.”

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John Puthenveetil, financial advisor

Big idea: Because of the uncertain world we live in, many seek solace from “certainty merchants” — like physicians, priests and financial advisors. Given the complex, chaotic mechanisms of our economy, we’re better off discarding “certainty” for better planning.

How? We must embrace adaptable plans that address all probable contingencies, not just the most obvious ones. This is a crucial component of “scenario-based planning,” says John Puthenveetil. We should always aim for being approximately right rather than precisely wrong. But this only works if we pay attention, heed portents of possible change and act decisively — even when that’s uncomfortable.

Quote of the talk: “It is up to us to use [scenario-based planning] wisely: Not out of a sense of weakness or fear, but out of the strength and conviction that comes from knowing that we are prepared to play the hand that is dealt.”

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Johanna Figueira, digital marketing consultant

Big idea: The world is more connected than ever, but some communities are still being cut off from vital resources. The solution? Digitally matching professional expertise with locals who know what their communities really need.

How? Johanna Figueira is one of millions who has left Venezuela due to economic crisis, crumbling infrastructure and decline in health care — but she hasn’t left these issues behind. With the help of those still living in the country, Figueira helped organize Code for Venezuela — a platform that matches experts with communities in need to create simple, effective tools to improve quality of life. She shares two of their most successful projects: MediTweet, an intelligent Twitter bot that helps Venezuelans find medicinal supplies, and Blackout Tracker, a tool that helps pinpoint power cuts in Venezuela that the government won’t report. Her organization shows the massive difference made when locals participate in their own solutions.

Quote of the talk: “Some people in Silicon Valley may look at these projects and say that they’re not major technological innovations. But that’s the point. These projects are not insanely advanced — but it’s what the people of Venezuela need, and they can have a tremendous impact.”

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Jeanne Goldie, branch sales manager

Big idea: We’re looking for dynamic hotbeds of innovation in all the wrong places.

How? Often, society looks to the young for the next big thing, leaving older generations to languish in their shadow until being shuffled out altogether, taking their brain power and productivity with them. Instead of discarding today’s senior workforce, Jeanne Goldie suggests we tap into their years of experience and retrain them, just as space flight has moved from the disposable rockets of NASA’s moon launches to today’s reusable Space X models.

Quote of the talk: “If we look at data and technology as the tools they are … but not as the answer, we can come up with better solutions to our most challenging problems.”

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Rebecca Knill, business systems consultant

Big idea: By shifting our cultural understanding of ability and using technology to connect, we can build a more inclusive and human world.

How? The medical advances of modern technology have improved accessibility for disabled communities. Rebecca Knill, a self-described cyborg who has a cochlear implant, believes the next step to a more connected world is changing our perspectives. For example, being deaf isn’t shameful or pitiful, says Knill — it’s just a different way of navigating the world. To take full advantage of the fantastic opportunities new technology offers us, we must drop our assumptions and meet differences with empathy.

Quote of the talk: “Technology has come so far. Our mindset just needs to catch up.”

Anastasia Penright, business consultant

Big idea: No workplace is immune to drama, but there are steps we can follow to remove ourselves from the chatter and focus on what’s really important.

How? No matter your industry, chances are you’ve experienced workplace drama. In a funny and relatable talk, Anastasia Penright shares a better way to coexist with our coworkers using five simple steps she’s taken to leave drama behind and excel in her career. First, we must honestly evaluate our own role in creating and perpetuating conflicts; then evaluate our thoughts and stop thinking about every possible scenario. Next, it’s important to release our negative energy to a trusted confidant (a “venting buddy”) while trying to understand and accept the unique communication styles and work languages of our colleagues. Finally, she says, we need to recognize when we’re about to step into drama and protect our energy by simply walking away.

Quote of the talk: “We have to learn to accept where people are and adjust ourselves to handle those situations … to recognize when it is time to professionally walk away from someone.”

Stacey Abrams’ State of the Union response and more updates from TED speakers

The TED community is brimming with new projects and updates. Below, a few highlights.

Stacey Abrams responds to the US State of the Union. Politician Stacey Abrams spoke from Atlanta on behalf of the Democratic party following the State of the Union address. In her speech, she focused on the fight against bigotry, bipartisanship in a turbulent America and voter rights. The right to vote is especially important to Abrams — last November, she lost the Georgia gubernatorial election by 55,000 votes, a loss that some pundits have attributed to voter suppression. “The foundation of our moral leadership around the globe is free and fair elections, where voters pick their leaders, not where politicians pick their voters,” she said. “In this time of division and crisis, we must come together and stand for, and with, one another.” Watch the full speech on The New York Times website or read the transcript at USA Today. (Watch Abrams’ TED Talk.)

Remembering Emily Levine. The extraordinary humorist and philosopher Emily Levine has passed away following a battle with lung cancer. Reflecting on life and death, Levine said, “’I am just a collection of particles that is arranged into this pattern, then will decompose and be available, all of its constituent parts, to nature, to reorganize into another pattern. To me, that is so exciting, and it makes me even more grateful to be part of that process.” Read our full tribute to Levine on our blog. (Watch Levin’s TED Talk.)

Could you cut the tech giants from your life? In a new multimedia series from Gizmodo, journalist Kashmir Hill details her six-week experiment quitting Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google — and shares surprising insights on how entwined these companies are in daily life. With help from technologist Dhruv Mehrotra, Hill blocked access to one company for a week at a time using a custom VPN (virtual private network), culminating with a final week of excluding all five tech companies. In just her first week of cutting out Amazon, Hill’s VPN logged over 300,000 blocked pings to Amazon servers! Check out the whole series on Gizmodo. (Watch Hill’s TED Talk.)

Exploring the historical roots of today’s biggest headlines. Alongside artist Masud Olufani, journalist Celeste Headlee will launch a new series at PBS called Retro Report that will explore current news stories, “revealing their unknown — and often surprising — connections to the past.” Each one-hour episode will trace the history of four news stories, including Colin Kaepernick’s NFL protests, modern-day drug approval laws and the US government’s wild horse care program. Retro Report will launch on PBS this fall. (Watch Headlee’s TED Talk.)

Customizable vegetables now for sale. Grubstreet has a new profile on Row 7, the seed company co-founded by chef Dan Barber that wants to change the way farmers, chefs and breeders collaborate and connect. Alongside breeder Michael Mazourek and seeds dealer Matthew Goldfarb, Barber hopes to design seeds that have the flavors chefs want, along with the qualities (like high yield and disease resistance) that farmers are looking for.  “We’re trying to deepen the context for the seeds, and this conversation between breeders and the chefs,” Barber said. By prioritizing taste and nutrition, Row 7 plans to engineer ever-evolving seed collections that meet the needs of both farmers and chefs. Row 7’s first seed collection is now available for purchase. (Watch Barber’s TED Talk.)

A promising new report on tobacco divestment. The Tobacco-Free Finance Pledge, led by oncologist Bronwyn King, has a new signatory: Genus Capital Investment, a leading Canadian fossil-free investment firm. Genus released a new report — based on a six-year study — about the financial impacts of divesting from tobacco stocks and removing tobacco from its portfolios. They found that over the past 20 years, tobacco divestment did not negatively affect index portfolios, and that in the past five years, portfolios that excluded tobacco actually outperformed the market. In a statement, King said, “This new research adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that investors do not need to invest in tobacco to achieve excellent returns.” Spearheaded by Tobacco Free Portfolios and the United Nations Environment Programme, the Tobacco-Free Finance Pledge was launched last year and has over 140 signatories and supporters. (Watch King’s TED Talk.)

An HBO feature on superhuman tech. On Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, bionics designer Hugh Herr presented his team’s latest prosthetics and explained why he thinks bionics will soon revolutionize sports. Herr spoke to Soledad O’Brien about a future of enhanced athletic ability, saying “There’s going to be new sports … power basketball, power swimming, power climbing. It’ll be a reinvention of sports and it’ll be so much fun.” In a teaser clip, O’Brien tried on a pair of lower-leg exoskeletons developed at Herr’s MIT lab; the full episode can be viewed on HBO. (Watch Herr’s TED Talk.)

 

Have a news item to share? Write us at contact@ted.com and you may see it included in this round-up.

Belonging: Talks on family, love and loss from the TED World Theater

What does it mean to belong? For many, belonging provides the foundation of all comfort, a sense of conviction that others have your back, that all will be well. But sometimes belonging can be less tangible, more illusory or fleeting — it can disappear without warning.

At TED Salon: Belonging — an evening of talks curated and co-hosted by TED’s head of curation, Helen Walters, and curation coordinator Lorena Aviles — six speakers explored what belonging is really all about. They shared personal meditations on where they find hope for a more welcoming world and shone a light on the breakthroughs and ideas that might get us there. After an effusive, joyful performance of “Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed on Freedom)” by the Resistance Revival Chorus, the session kicked off with attorney Mónica Ramírez.

Elevate those who pick, pack and plant the food we eat every day. Marginalized people are not looking for saviors, says attorney Mónica Ramírez: “They’re looking for individuals who will support them, as day by day they get up and do the best they can to save themselves.” As the daughter and granddaughter of migrant farm workers, Ramírez knows firsthand the problem that affect these often-unseen and isolated groups — from wage theft and sexual harassment to dangerous working conditions. She has been an advocate for these communities nearly her entire life, and what she’s learned is both simple and profound: “If we want to solve problems, we need to call on the very best experts who can bring the very best solutions.” The experts she has in mind? The people directly impacted by some of society’s worst problems, who are best suited to share their truths with the world. Advocates like Ramírez, and citizens in solidarity, must make space for the voices not commonly heard.

Build community when you feel isolated. As the executive director of the Sadie Nash Leadership Project, Chitra Aiyar works to help low-income youth of color develop the skills they need to thrive in college. When some of the college students Aiyar works with described feeling alienated on campus, she realized they would need to find real community if they were going to succeed. The research backs this up: only 11 percent of low-income first-generation students graduate from college after six years, and 45 percent drop out after their first year. “If you are spending energy thinking about whether you belong, you can’t concentrate on school … and every challenge, every hardship is a reinforcement [of that],” Aiyar says. To combat this, she encourages her students to cultivate spaces for other marginalized students to connect and help each other grow. She was inspired by the pre-med program at Xavier University — where, instead of pitting students against each other by warning of high dropout rates, professors encourage students to see each other as teammates working toward the same goals. Aiyar details three steps to move toward this new kind of community: first, imagine your goal and broaden it beyond yourself; then, start an activity that connects you to others with similar goals — like offering feedback on a classmate’s paper; and finally, take the opportunity to redefine your relationship to your community. Instead of feeling outcast, Aiyar says, her students could see themselves as actively engaged in a larger community that supports them. “We all have times that we don’t feel like we belong,” she says. “If we take the time to make sure that other people belong, in that process, we’ll find belonging as well.”

Reimagining the US-Mexico border wall. What is a border? It’s a line on a map, a place where cultures, languages and beliefs mix and merge. And it’s a place of beautiful, sometimes violent and occasionally ridiculous complexity, says architectural researcher Ronald Rael. Rael studies the US-Mexico border, where nearly 700 miles of wall divide the two countries — “an arcane, medieval architecture … an overly simplistic response to a complex set of issues,” he says. It’s estimated that the wall approved in 2006 will cost $49 billion to construct and maintain over the next 25 years — not including the additional $70 billion estimated for the walls currently proposed. Beyond that, there’s the human toll: more than 7,000 people have died trying to cross the border. To communicate the financial and human cost of the wall, Rael designs moving, sometimes satirical souvenirs — things like postcards, “bordergames” and snow globes that reimagine the social and economic realities of the border. They nod to activities like “wall y ball,” a borderland version of volleyball played across the wall, or patrol agents purchasing treats from vendors through the divide — activities that question the meaning of a “wall.” “There are not two sides defined by a wall — it is one landscape divided,” he says. “We should be designing a ‘Reunited States,’ not a ‘Divided States.'”

We belong to the living world. What do poetry and astrophysics have in common? More than you would expect, says poet Marie Howe. Howe is a professor of “ecopoetry,” which asks the human ego to step outside the picture — “to let the whole living world move into the poem, instead of the human, I, I, I, I.” Reading her poem “The Singularity,” which is inspired by the physics that created the earth, she plays on a big idea: that more than 13 million years ago everything that existed was incredibly small — tiny, compacted density. Physicist Stephen Hawking called this tiny dense material “the singularity,” giving birth to the title of her poem. Howe reads with passion, the final line reverberating through the room: “No I, no we, no one. No was. No verb. No noun. Only a tiny tiny dot brimming with is is is is is. All. Everything. Home.”

The price of perfection. “The way we’re taught to live has got to change,” says Casey Gerald. By his late 20s, Gerald was on top of the world, or so it seemed: he had earned degrees from Yale and Harvard, worked on Wall Street and in Washington, started a nonprofit, and yes, given a TED Talk. Still, he recalls, “I was real cracked up — not exactly having a nervous breakdown, but not too far off.” While he’d attained success, he had done so while buffing away the raw edges of his life — his homosexuality, his pain, his very human messiness — and reducing it to an uncomplicated, untrue story of a poor kid “from the other side of the river” who made it. Many of us engage in similar acts of revision just so we can be accepted by the right people, schools and jobs, Gerald says — but he’s come to realize this revision is equivalent to self-erasure. He says it’s time for us to show courage, to embody what he calls “the raw strange magic of ourselves,” and to stand with others in their vulnerability.

Let’s get the country singing! A collective of more than 60 women, the Resistance Revival Chorus gathers in sisterhood to sing and show how joy can be an act of resistance. To close out the night, the chorus fills the TED World Theater with the music of the labor movement, performing a rousing performance of “The Rich Man’s House.”

José Andrés is nominated for 2019 Nobel Peace Prize and other updates from TED

Below, we’ve highlighted a few of our favorite news stories from the TED community.

Congratulations to Nobel Peace Prize nominee José Andrés! For his work in food and hunger humanitarianism, acclaimed chef José Andrés has been nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico, Andrés was compelled to help feed those impacted by the storm; he traveled to the island with a team of dedicated chefs and served meals to over 3 million people. This wasn’t Andrés’ first time (or last time) responding to disaster with empathy and aid — he leads World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit that provides solutions to global health and food challenges, which Andres founded following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Though Nobel Peace Prize adjudications are famously secretive, U.S. Representative John Dulaney confirmed that he submitted Andrés’ nomination, according to the Washington Post. In February, Andres was also named the James Beard Foundation’s Humanitarian of the Year. (Watch Andres’ TED Talk.)

A new exposé on Shell and Eni’s shady oil deal in Nigeria. Global Witness, the international investigative NGO co-founded by 2014 TED Prize winner Charmian Gooch, has released a striking new report exposing new details of an agreement in 2011 between oil giants Shell and Eni. The report reveals that Shell and Eni’s deal with the Nigerian government included suspiciously generous terms for the oil companies at the expense of the country’s public. Experts commissioned by Global Witness estimate that nearly $6 billion in potential government revenue was lost — double Nigeria’s annual health and education budget. In Italy, the deal is also at the center of a landmark corruption trial; prosecutors allege that $525 million in bribes were paid out to Nigerian officials by Shell and Eni, including then-president Goodluck Jonathan. “The money Nigeria is set to lose could educate the next generation and pay for key infrastructure the country needs,” the report states. (Watch Gooch’s TED Talk.)

Meet 2018’s Berkeley-Rupp Prize winner. Architect and activist Deanna Van Buren has been awarded UC Berkeley’s biennial Architecture Prize & Professorship, which awards $100,000 to a design practitioner who has made “a significant contribution to advancing gender equity in architecture, and whose work emphasizes a commitment to sustainability and community.” Van Buren leads Oakland-based design and development firm Designing Justice + Designing Spaces and is widely known for her work developing restorative justice centers and advocating for marginalized communities, particularly those affected by mass incarceration. Congratulations! (Watch Van Buren’s TED Talk.)

Economic empowerment of rural women. In an interview with Roshni Nadar Malhotra for Vogue India, Chetna Gala Sinha shares her work process and details the urgency of economic empowerment of women. At this year’s World Economic Forum, which Sinha co-led alongside six other women, she launched the first Securities and Exchange Board of India-registered fund for women micro-entrepreneurs. “Policy makers have to make the change happen and it has to be a collaborative effort with the community … the corporate sector has to also bring the business in—big corporations need to go that extra mile and realise the social value of what they do,” she says. (Watch Sinha’s TED Talk.)

24 years later, Tony Hicks has been granted parole. At TEDWomen 2017, Ples Felix and Azim Khamisa shared their intertwined story of grief, forgiveness and grace: in 1995, Felix’s 14-year-old grandson Tony Hicks shot and killed Khamisa’s son Tariq as part of a gang initiation. Following his son’s death, Khamisa reached out and connected with Felix in hopes to heal from their shared trauma. Since then, they have traveled the country advocating for a safer world free of youth violence through the Tariq Khamisa Foundation (TFK). 24 years after Hicks’ imprisonment, he has been granted parole and will likely be released from prison in early 2019. In a statement from TKF, Khamisa says: “We are thrilled. Tony has worked hard for this … Because he can tell his powerful story firsthand, he will save the lives of thousands of children.” (Watch Felix and Khamisa’s TED Talk.)

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

We live in contentious times. Yet behind the dismaying headlines and social-media-fueled quarrels, people around the world — millions of them — are working unrelentingly to solve problems big and small, dreaming up new ways to expand the possible and build a better world.

At “We the Future,” a day of talks at the TED World Theater presented in collaboration with the Skoll Foundation and the United Nations Foundation, 13 speakers and two performers explored some of our most difficult collective challenges — as well as emerging solutions and strategies for building bridges and dialogue.

Updates on the Sustainable Development Goals. Are we delivering on the promises of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the collection of 17 global goals set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, which promised to improve the lives of billions with no one left behind? Using the Social Progress Index, a measure of the quality of life in countries throughout the world, economist Michael Green shares a fresh analysis of where we are today in relationship to the goals — and some new thinking on what we need to do differently to achieve them. While we’ve seen progress in some parts of the world on goals related to hunger and healthy living, the world is projected to fall short of achieving the ambitious targets set by the SDGs for 2030, according to Green’s analysis. If current trends keep up — especially the declines we’re seeing in things like personal rights and inclusiveness across the world — we actually won’t hit the 2030 targets until 2094. So what can we do about this? Two things, says Green: We need to call out rich countries that are falling short, and we need to look further into the data and find opportunities to progress faster. Because progress is happening, and we’re tantalizingly close to a world where nobody dies of things like hunger and malaria. “If we can focus our efforts, mobilize the resources, galvanize the political will,” Green says, “that step change is possible.”

A quest for planetary balance. In 2015, we saw two fantastic global breakthroughs for humanity, says sustainability expert Johan Rockström — the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. But are the two compatible, and can be they be pursued at the same time? Rockström suggests there are inherent contradictions between the two that could lead to irreversible planetary instability. Along with a team of scientists, he created a way to combine the SDGs within the nine planetary boundaries (things like ocean acidification and ozone depletion); it’s a completely new model of possibility — the Earth-3 model — to track trends and simulate future change. Right now, we’re not delivering on our promises to future generations, he says, but the window of success is still open. “We need some radical thinking,” Rockström says. “We can build a safe and just world: we just have to really, really get on with it.”

A plan to empower Generation Unlimited. There are 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 in the world, one of the largest cohorts in human history. Meeting their needs is a big challenge — but it’s also a big opportunity, says the executive director of UNICEF, Henrietta Fore. Among the challenges facing this generation are a lack of access to education and job opportunities, exposure to violence and, for young girls, the threats of discrimination, child marriage and early pregnancy. To begin addressing these issues, Fore is spearheading UNICEF’s new initiative, Generation Unlimited, which aims to ensure every young person is in school, learning, training or employment by 2030. She talks about a program in Argentina that connects rural students in remote areas with secondary school teachers, both in person and online; an initiative in South Africa called Techno Girls that gives young women from disadvantaged backgrounds job-shadowing opportunities in the STEM fields; and, in Bangladesh, training for tens of thousands of young people in trades like carpentry, motorcycle repair and mobile-phone servicing. The next step? To take these ideas and scale them up, which is why UNICEF is casting a wide net — asking individuals, communities, governments, businesses, nonprofits and beyond to find a way to help out. “A massive generation of young people is about to inherit our world,” Fore says, “and it’s our duty to leave a legacy of hope for them — but also with them.”

Improving higher education in Africa. There’s a teaching and learning crisis unfolding across Africa, says Patrick Awuah, founder and president of Ashesi University. Though the continent has scaled up access to higher education, there’s been no improvement in quality or effectiveness of that education. “The way we teach is wrong for today. It is even more wrong for tomorrow, given the challenges before us,” Awuah says. So how can we change higher education for the better? Awuah suggests establishing multidisciplinary curricula that emphasize critical thinking and ethics, while also allowing for in-depth expertise. He also suggests collaboration between universities in Africa — and tapping into online learning programs. “A productive workforce, living in societies managed by ethical and effective leaders, would be good not only for Africa but for the world,” Awuah says.

Songs of hardship and joy. During two musical interludes, singer-songwriter Ayọ and guitarist Marvin Dolly fill the TED World Theater with the soulful, eclectic strumming of four songs — “Boom Boom,” “What’s This All About,” “Life Is Real” and “Help Is Coming” — blending reggae, R&B and folk sounds.

If every life counts, then count every life. To some, numbers are boring. But data advocate Claire Melamed says numbers are, in fact, “an issue of power and of justice.” The lives and death of millions of people worldwide happen outside the official record, Melamed says, and this lack of information leads to big problems. Without death records, for instance, it’s nearly impossible to detect epidemics until it’s too late. If we are to save lives in disease-prone regions, we must know where and when to deliver medicine — and how much. Today, technology enables us to inexpensively gather reliable data, but tech isn’t a cure-all: governments may try to keep oppressed or underserved populations invisible, or the people themselves may not trust the authorities collecting the data. But data custodians can fix this problem by building organizations, institutions and communities that can build trust. “If every life counts, we should count every life,” Melamed says.

How will the US respond to the rise of China? To Harvard University political scientist Graham Allison, recent skirmishes between the US and China over trade and defense are yet another chapter unfolding in a centuries-long pattern. He’s coined the term “Thucydides’ Trap” to describe it — as he puts it, the Trap “is the dangerous dynamic that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power.” Thucydides is viewed by many as the father of history; he chronicled the Peloponnesian Wars between a rising Athens and a ruling Sparta in the 4th century BCE (non-spoiler alert: Sparta won, but at a high price). Allison and colleagues reviewed the last 500 years and found Thucydides’ Trap 16 times — and 12 of them ended in war. Turning to present day, he notes that while the 20th century was dominated by the US, China has risen far and fast in the 21st. By 2024, for instance, China’s GDP is expected to be one-and-a-half times greater than America’s. What’s more, both countries are led by men who are determined to be on top. “Are Americans and Chinese going to let the forces of history draw us into a war that would be catastrophic to both?” Allison asks. To avoid it, he calls for “a combination of imagination, common sense and courage” to come up with solutions — referencing the Marshall Plan, the World Bank and United Nations as fresh approaches toward prosperity and peace that arose after the ravages of war. After the talk, TED curator Bruno Giussani asks Allison if he has any creative ideas to sidestep the Trap. “A long peace,” Allison says, turning again to Athens and Sparta for inspiration: during their wars, the two agreed at one point to a 30-year peace, a pause in their conflict so each could tend to their domestic affairs.

Can we ever hope to reverse climate change? Researcher and strategist Chad Frischmann introduces the idea of “drawdown” — the point at which we remove more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than we put in — as our only hope of averting climate disaster. At his think tank, he’s working to identify strategies to achieve drawdown, like increased use of renewable energy, better family planning and the intelligent disposal of HFC refrigerants, among others. But the things that will make the biggest impact, he says, are changes to food production and agriculture. The decisions we make every day about the food we grow, buy and eat are perhaps the most important contributions we could make to reversing global warming. Another focus area: better land management and rejuvenating forests and wetlands, which would expand and create carbon sinks that sequester carbon. When we move to fix global warming, we will “shift the way we do business from a system that is inherently exploitative and extractive to a ‘new normal’ that is by nature restorative and regenerative,” Frischmann says.

The end of energy poverty. Nearly two billion people worldwide lack access to modern financial services like credit cards and bank accounts — making it difficult to do things like start a new business, build a nest egg, or make a home improvement like adding solar panels. Entrepreneur Lesley Marincola is working on this issue with Angaza, a company that helps people avoid the steep upfront costs of buying a solar-power system, instead allowing them to pay it off over time. With metering technology embedded in the product, Angaza uses alternative credit scoring methods to determine a borrower’s risk level. The combination of metering technology and an alternative method of assessing credit brings purchasing power to unbanked people. “To effectively tackle poverty at a global scale, we must not solely focus on increasing the amount of money that people earn,” Marincola says. “We must also increase or expand the power of their income through access to savings and credit.”

An innovative way to help rural farmers save. While working for a microfinance company in Kenya, Anushka Ratnayake realized something big: small-scale farmers were constantly being offered loans … when what they really wanted was a safe place to save money. Collecting and storing small deposits from farmers was too difficult and expensive for banks, and research from the University of California, Berkeley shows that only 14–21 percent of farmers accept credit offers. Ratnayake found a simpler solution — using scratch-off cards that act as a layaway system. MyAgro, a nonprofit social enterprise that Ratnayake founded and leads, helps farmers save money for seeds. Farmers buy myAgro scratch cards from local stores, depositing their money into a layaway account by texting in the card’s scratch-off code. After a few months of buying the cards and saving little by little, myAgro delivers the fertilizer, seed and training they’ve paid for, directly to their farms. Following a wildly successful pilot program in Mali, MyAgro has expanded to Senegal and Tanzania and now serves more than 50,000 farmers. On this plan, rural farmers can break cycles of poverty, Ratnayake says, and instead, enter the cycle of investment and growth.

Durable housing for a resilient future. Around the world, natural disasters destroy thousands of lives and erase decades of economic gains each year. These outcomes are undeniably devastating and completely preventable, says mason Elizabeth Hausler — and substandard housing is to blame. It’s estimated that one-third of the world will be living in insufficiently constructed buildings by 2030; Hausler hopes to cut those projections with a building revolution. She shares six straightforward principles to approach the problem of substandard housing: teach people how to build, use local architecture, give homeowners power, provide access to financing, prevent disasters and use technology to scale. “It’s time we treat unsafe housing as the global epidemic that it is,” Hausler says. “It’s time to strengthen every building just like we would vaccinate every child in a public health emergency.”

A daring idea to reduce income inequality. Every newborn should enter the world with at least $25,000 in the bank. That is the basic premise of a “baby trust,” an idea conceived by economists Darrick Hamilton of The New School and William Darity of Duke University. Since 1980, inequality has been on the rise worldwide, and Hamilton says it will keep growing due to this simple fact: “It is wealth that begets more wealth.” Policymakers and the public have fallen for a few appealing but inaccurate narratives about wealth creation — that grit, education or a booming economy can move people up the ladder — and we’ve disparaged the poor for not using these forces to rise, Hamilton says. Instead, what if we gave a boost up the ladder? A baby trust would give an infant money at birth — anywhere from $500 for those born into the richest families to $60,000 for the poorest, with an average endowment of $25,000. The accounts would be managed by the government, at a guaranteed interest rate of 2 percent a year. When a child reaches adulthood, they could withdraw it for an “asset-producing activity,” such as going to college, buying a home or starting a business. If we were to implement it in the US today, a baby trust program would cost around $100 billion a year; that’s only 2 percent of annual federal expenditures and a fraction of the $500 billion that the government now spends on subsidies and credits that favor the wealthy, Hamilton says. “Inequality is primarily a structural problem, not a behavioral one,” he says, so it needs to be attacked with solutions that will change the existing structures of wealth.

Nothing about us, without us. In 2013, activist Sana Mustafa and her family were forcibly evacuated from their homes and lives as a result of the Syrian civil war. While adjusting to her new reality as a refugee, and beginning to advocate for refugee rights, Mustafa found that events aimed at finding solutions weren’t including the refugees in the conversation. Alongside a group of others who had to flee their homes because of war and disaster, Mustafa founded The Network for Refugee Voices (TNRV), an initiative that amplifies the voices of refugees in policy dialogues. TNRV has worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other organizations to ensure that refugees are represented in important conversations about them. Including refugees in the planning process is a win-win, Mustafa says, creating more effective relief programs and giving refugees a say in shaping their lives.

Conversations with people who send hate mail. Özlem Cekic‘s email inbox has been full of hate mail and personal abuse for years. She began receiving the derogatory messages in 2007, soon after she won a seat in the Danish Parliament — becoming one of the first women with a minority background to do so. At first she just deleted the emails, dismissing them as the work of the ignorant or fanatic. The situation escalated in 2010 when a neo-Nazi began to harass Cekic and her family, prompting a friend to make an unexpected suggestion: reach out to the hate mail writers and invite them out to coffee. This was the beginning of what Cekic calls “dialogue coffee”: face-to-face meetings where she sits down with people who have sent hate mail, in an effort to understand the source of their hatred. Cekic has had hundreds of encounters since 2010 — always in the writer’s home, and she always brings food — and has made some important realizations along the way. Cekic now recognizes that people of all political convictions can be caught demonizing those with different views. And she has a challenge for us all: before the end of the year, reach out to someone you demonize — who you disagree with politically or think you won’t have anything in common with — and invite them out to coffee. Don’t give up if the person refuses at first, she says: sometimes it has taken nearly a year for her to arrange a meeting. “Trenches have been dug between people, yes,” Cekic says. “But we all have the ability to build the bridges that cross the trenches.”

Humanizing our future: A night of talks from TED and Verizon

There are moments when the world begins to shift beneath our feet. Sometimes slowly, sometimes dramatically. Now more than ever we are living and working in an era of exponential technological advancement. How we address rapid change, what collaborative relationships we create, how we find our humanity — all this will determine the future we step into.

For the first time, TED has partnered with Verizon for a salon focused on building that future. In a night of talks at the TED World Theater in New York City — hosted by TED curators Bryn Freedman and Kelly Stoetzel — six speakers and one performer shared fresh thinking on healing our hospital system, empowering rural women, creating a safer internet, harnessing intergenerational wisdom and much more.

How intergenerational wisdom helps companies thrive. In 2013, Chip Conley, who built a multi-decade career running boutique hotels, was brought into Airbnb to be the mentor of CEO Brian Chesky. Conley was 52 (and thus 21 years older than Chesky) and he wondered what, if anything, he could offer these digital natives. But he realized he could become what he calls a “Modern Elder,” someone with the “ability to use timeless wisdom and apply it to modern-day problems.” For instance, he shares with the younger employees the people skills he gained over decades, while they teach him about technology. Nearly 40 percent of Americans have a boss who is younger than them — and when people of all ages exchange knowledge and learn from each other, good things happen. “This is the new sharing economy,” Conley says.

Can hospitals heal our environmental illness? “It’s not possible to have healthy people on a sick planet,” says healthcare change agent Gary Cohen. Working in healthcare for 30 years, Cohen has seen firsthand the pollution created by hospitals in the United States — if American hospitals were a country, he says, they would have more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire United Kingdom. Cohen suggests that it’s time for hospitals to go beyond medical practice and become centers of holistic community healing. What could that look like? Investment in sustainable, renewable energy and transportation, green and affordable housing, and partnership with schools to pool local food resources. “Transform hospitals from being cathedrals of chronic disease to beacons of community wellness,” Cohen says.

Empowering rural women through solar-powered education. The innovators best prepared to cope with the issues of the future won’t be found in Silicon Valley or at an Ivy League school, says Barefoot College CEO Meagan Fallone. Instead, they’ll be found among the impoverished women of the Global South. Fallone works on groundbreaking programs at Barefoot College, a social work and research center, helping illiterate women break cycles of poverty through solar power education and training. Nearly 3,000 women have completed Barefoot College’s six-month business and solar engineering curriculum, and their skills have brought solar light to more than one million people. Following the success of the solar education program, and at the request of graduates, Barefoot College developed a follow-up program called “Enriche,” which offers a holistic understanding of enterprise skills, digital literacy, human rights and more. By democratizing and demystifying technology and education, Fallone says, we can empower illiterate women with the skills to become leaders and entrepreneurs — and make real change in their communities.

Dystopia is a choice. From The Matrix to Black Mirror, many of us crave science-fiction tales of rogue technologies: robots that will take our jobs, enslave us, destroy us or pit us against one another. Is our dread of dystopia a self-fulfilling prophecy? Rima Qureshi offers a warning — and some hopeful advice to remind us that dystopia is a choice. Our love for dystopia courts actual disaster through “target fixation”: the phenomenon where a driver or a pilot panics when a hazard looms, and thus becomes more likely to actually strike it. Although we should always keep cyber threats in our peripheral vision, Qureshi says, we should remain focused on the technologies that will help us: virtual classrooms, drones that race into burning buildings to find survivors, or VR that allows doctors to perform surgery remotely. We should not assume the future will be terrible (though we can still enjoy the next apocalyptic movie about how technology will destroy us all).

How drums build community. In 1995, entrepreneur Doug Manuel made a trip to West Africa and fell in love — with a drum. That drum is called the djembe, a rope-tuned instrument played with the hands; it’s one of the world’s oldest forms of communication. “With its more than 300 different traditional rhythms, it’s accompanied every aspect of life — from initiations to celebrations and even sowing the seeds for an abundant harvest,” Manuel says. Since his life-changing trip, Manuel has used the djembe to develop team-building programs and build bridges between Africa and the West. In a live demo of his work, Manuel invites the audience to try their hands at the djembe during two upbeat drum lessons. Backed by two professional drummers, Manuel teaches a few beats — and shows how the djembe can still bring people together around a collective rhythm.

Healing the pain of racial division. During the Civil Rights era, Ruby Sales joined a group of freedom fighters in Alabama, where she met Jonathan Daniels, a fellow student. The two became friends, and in 1965 they were jailed during a labor demonstration, ostensibly to save them from vigilantes. After six days in jail, the sheriff released the activists — but shortly after, they were attacked by a man with a shotgun. Daniels pulled Sales out of the way, and he was killed by the blast. In this moment, Sales witnessed “both love and hate coming from two very different white men that represented the best and the worst of white America.” Traumatized, she was stricken silent for six months. Fifty years later, our nation is still mired in what Sales calls a “culture of whiteness”: “a systemic and organized set of beliefs … [that] maintain a hierarchical power structure based on skin color.” To battle this culture, Sales calls for each of us to embrace our multi-ethnic identities and stories. Collectively shared, these stories can relieve racial tension and, with the help of connective technology, expand our vistas beyond our segregated daily lives.

What the internet is missing right now. Technology architect Fadi Chehadé helped set up the infrastructure that makes the internet work — basic things like the domain name system and IP address standards. Today as an advisory board member with the World Economic Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and a member of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, Chehadé is focused on finding ways for society to benefit from technology and on strengthening international cooperation in the digital space. In a crisp conversation with Bryn Freedman, curator of the TED Institute, Chehadé discusses the need for norms on issues like privacy and security, the ongoing war between the West and China over artificial intelligence, how tech companies can become stewards of the power they have to shape lives and economies, and what everyday citizens can do to claim power on the internet. “My biggest hope is that we will each become stewards of this new digital world,” Chehadé says.