“Trust is on the decline, we should have more trust, and we need to rebuild it.” That’s a commonly heard suggestion for making a better world … but, says philosopher Onora O’Neill, we don’t really understand what we’re suggesting. She flips the question, showing us that our three most common ideas about trust are actually misdirected. What matters is not trust, but trustworthiness. And, “If you make yourself vulnerable to the other party, then that is very good evidence that you are trustworthy and you have confidence in what you are saying.”
Baroness Onora O’Neill is a philosopher who focuses on international justice and the roles of trust and accountability in public life.
The human brain is puzzling – it is curiously large given the size of our bodies, uses a tremendous amount of energy for its weight and has a bizarrely dense cerebral cortex. But: why? Neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel puts on her detective’s cap and leads us through this mystery. By making “brain soup,” she arrives at a startling conclusion.
Suzana Herculano-Houzel shrunk the human brain by 14 billion neurons – by developing a new way to count them.
The one thing all humans have in common is that each of us wants to be happy, says Brother David Steindl-Rast, a monk and interfaith scholar. And happiness, he suggests, is born from gratitude. An inspiring lesson in slowing down, looking where you’re going, and above all, being grateful.
Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, meditates and writes on “the gentle power” of gratefulness.
“We always get another opportunity. That’s the wonderful richness of life.”
Here’s a stat worth knowing: In the UK, 63% of men who finish short-term prison sentences are back inside within a year for another crime. Helping them stay outside involves job training, classes, therapy. And it would pay off handsomely – but the government can’t find the funds. Toby Eccles shares an imaginative idea for how to change that: the Social Impact Bond. It’s an unusual bond that helps fund initiatives with a social goal through private money – with the government paying back the investors (with interest) if the initiatives work.
Toby Eccles has created a radical financial instrument that helps private investors contribute to solving thorny public problems.
“An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport,” argues Enrique Peñalosa. In this spirited talk, the former mayor of Bogotá shares some of the tactics he used to change the transportation dynamic in the Colombian capital… and suggests ways to think about building smart cities of the future.
Enrique Peñalosa was the mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, between 1998 and 2000. He advocates for sustainability and mobility in the cities of the future.
Once the powerhouse of America’s industrial might, Detroit is more recently known in the popular imagination as a fabulous ruin, crumbling and bankrupt. But city planner Toni Griffin asks us to look again – and to imagine an entrepreneurial future for the city’s 700,000 residents.
Toni Griffin is an urban planner working to make cities more just and resilient.
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There’s also some advice from Patti Smith to artists: “New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities: Detroit, Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city.”
We’ve made incredible advances in technology in recent years, but too often it seems only certain fortunate people can benefit. Engineer Krista Donaldson introduces the ReMotion knee, a prosthetic device for above-knee amputees, many of whom earn less than $4 a day. The design contains best-in-class technology and yet is far cheaper than other prosthetics on the market.
Krista Donaldson is the CEO of D-Rev, a non-profit product development company improving the health and incomes of people around the world.
“The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment.” In a talk equal parts eloquent and devastating, writer Andrew Solomon takes you to the darkest corners of his mind during the years he battled depression. That led him to an eye-opening journey across the world to interview others with depression – only to discover that, to his surprise, the more he talked, the more people wanted to tell their own stories.
Andrew Solomon is a writer on politics, culture and psychology.
I haven’t forgotten about this thread. There hasn’t been much lately that I thought would have general appeal, but here’s one that did get my attention …
In this touching talk, Ash Beckham offers a fresh approach to empathy and openness. It starts with understanding that everyone, at some point in their life, has experienced hardship. The only way out, says Beckham, is to open the door and step out of your closet.
Ash Beckham approaches hard conversations from a place of compassion and empathy.
The talks that catch my interest are more likely those that offer a new way to look at our lives, not so much those that talk about a new invention. Although this one talks about a new invention, I think it’s important because of the scale of its impact … it could improve the lives of about a billion people … and because it comes out of a new way of looking at a problem.
Perhaps you’ve punched out a paper doll or folded an origami swan? TED Fellow Manu Prakash and his team have created a microscope made of paper that’s just as easy to fold and use. A sparkling demo that shows how this invention could revolutionize healthcare in developing countries … and turn almost anything into a fun, hands-on science experiment.
Manu Prakash is a bioengineer on a mission to bring radical new technology to global health.
Public policy expert Anne-Marie Slaughter made waves with her 2012 article, “Why women still can’t have it all.” But really, is this only a question for women? Here Slaughter expands her ideas and explains why shifts in work culture, public policy and social mores can lead to more equality – for men, women, all of us.
Anne-Marie Slaughter has exploded the conversation around women’s work-life balance.
I recently attended a streaming event for Ted 2014 in Vancouver. One day of the conference is streamed live. My favorites include Marc Kushner talking about the recent trends in architecture and a city planner, Amanda Burden from New York City talking about parks and more parks. These will likely go up on the Ted site or on Youtube in a few days or weeks.
This isn’t a TED talk, but could well be presented as a humorous scientific spoof on TED.
Hope you get a giggle from this: http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
I had a couple of friends, who obviously forgot first year science, going on this for a week. When they twigged on to it, they were eager to pull the prank on others.
Have some harmless fun! [I only like pranks that don’t cause any harm or insult to others ].
People often credit their ideas to individual “Eureka!” moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the “liquid networks” of London’s coffee houses to Charles Darwin’s long, slow hunch to today’s high-velocity web.
Steven Berlin Johnson examines the intersection of science, technology and personal experience.
Pakistani educator Ziauddin Yousafzai reminds the world of a simple truth that many don’t want to hear: Women and men deserve equal opportunities for education, autonomy, an independent identity. He tells stories from his own life and the life of his daughter, Malala, who was shot by the Taliban in 2012 simply for daring to go to school. “Why is my daughter so strong?” Yousafzai asks. “Because I didn’t clip her wings.”
Despite an attack on his daughter Malala in 2012, Ziauddin Yousafzai continues his fight to educate children in the developing world.
There’s an astronaut saying: In space, “there is no problem so bad that you can’t make it worse.” So how do you deal with the complexity, the sheer pressure, of dealing with dangerous and scary situations? Retired colonel Chris Hadfield paints a vivid portrait of how to be prepared for the worst in space (and life) – and it starts with walking into a spider’s web. Watch for a special space-y performance.
Tweeting (and covering Bowie) from the International Space Station last year, Colonel Chris Hadfield reminded the world how much we love space.
On March 17, 2014, a group of physicists announced a thrilling discovery: the “smoking gun” data for the idea of an inflationary universe, a clue to the Big Bang. For non-physicists, what does it mean? TED asked Allan Adams to briefly explain the results, in this improvised talk illustrated by Randall Munroe of xkcd.
Allan Adams is a theoretical physicist working at the intersection of fluid dynamics, quantum field theory and string theory.
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