Books from speakers in Session 1, “Opening Gambit”

National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear, by David Rothkopf. The foreign policy specialist examines the way U.S. leaders have coped with our unprecedented state of vulnerability, threat and crisis.

Marina Abramovic: 512 Hours, by Marina Abramovic. A catalogue of works from throughout the legendary performance artist’s career.

Books from speakers in Session 2, “What Are We Thinking?”

Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel, by Jason Padgett and Maureen Seaberg. Ever since a violent mugging, Padgett has seen the world in a completely new way. In this book, he explains how his brain injury gave him an unusual perspective.

Automotive Lighting and Human Vision, by Donald D. Hoffman et al. A textbook survey of the fundamentals of visual perception.

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, by David Eagleman. The neuroscientist takes us into the far reaches of the subconscious brain.

Books from speakers in Session 3, “Machines That Learn”

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, by Nick Bostrom. The philosopher parses the weighty issue of what it will mean when machines’ intelligence exceeds our own, and whether the force of this “superintelligence” will be beyond our control.

Books from speakers in Session 4, “Out of This World”

Exoplanet Atmospheres: Physical Processes, by Sara Seager. In this textbook, the astrophysicist lays out the common properties of all planetary atmospheres, focusing on “exoplanets” — that is, planets that don’t orbit our sun.

Lakes on Mars, edited by Nathalie Cabrol. In this volume, Cabrol and her co-editor, Edmond Grin, examine what we can learn about Mars’ history, present and possible future by studying its bodies of water.

How We’ll Live on Mars, by Stephen Petranek. You won’t be able to pick up this TED Book until after the conference (mark your calendar, it comes out in July), but in it, Petranek argues that our future residency on Mars is inevitable, and will come sooner than we might think.

Books from speakers in Session 5, “Life Stories”

The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas, by Anand Giridharadas. In this stirring work of nonfiction, journalist Giridharadas focuses on two lives that intertwine — a Bangladeshi immigrant to the United States who went on a quest to save his near-killer, an American, from death row.

Let IT Go, by Dame Stephanie Shirley with Richard Askwith. In this memoir, Shirley — an entrepreneur and philanthropist — tells her story, from arriving in England via Kindertransport to creating an incredibly successful software company staffed almost entirely with women.

Virtually Human: The Promise—and the Peril—of Digital Immortality, by Martine Rothblatt. A fascinating examination of the ethical issues related to digital lifeforms.

Ties That Bind: Stories of Love and Gratitude from the First Ten Years of StoryCorps, by Dave Isay. A compilation from the founder of the oral history project StoryCorps, who happens to be our 2015 TED Prize winner. It curates stories from the project that capture the depth and beauty of human relationships.

Books from speakers in Session 6, “Genes, Bugs, Animals, Us”

Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food, by Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak. Plant researcher Ronald and her coauthor, an organic farmer, argue that a combination of genetic engineering and organic farming is the key to sustainable agriculture.

Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA, by Maryn McKenna. The public health journalist examines how antibiotic-resistant staph infections spread — and the danger they pose.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book chronicles cancer’s history over the course of 4,000 years.

Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights, by Stephen Wise. The animal rights lawyer examines what level of cognitive development in animals should allow them to be treated as people under the law.

Books from speakers in Session 7, “Creative Ignition”

The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, by Manuel Lima. The tree diagram — showing relations between branches of knowledge, forms of life, even languages development — dates back to the 12th century. In this book, a data visualization researcher examines its history.

Books from speakers in Session 8, “Pop-Up Magazine”

A Kim Jong-II Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator’s Rise to Power, by Paul Fischer. Classified as a “nonfiction thriller,” this book tells the story of Kim Jong-II’s kidnapping of a South Korean actress and her director husband, whom he then forced to make films.

Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture, by Dana Goodyear. Through narrative and analysis, the New Yorker writer examines contemporary American cuisine.

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite, by Suki Kim. In this investigative memoir, Kim describes teaching English to the sons of North Korea’s ruling class under Kim Jong-Il.

Hidden Kitchens: Stories, Recipes, and More from NPR’s The Kitchen Sisters, by Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson. Silva and Nelson, a radio production duo known as The Kitchen Sisters, share stories from the radio series and their listeners.

Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology, by Alexis Madrigal. Madrigal investigates the technological experimentation that has paved the way for a green future.

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, by Steve Silberman. In his forthcoming book, Silberman presents findings from early autism research that will require a complete rethinking of the history of autism.

Songbook, by Alec Soth. A compendium of the photographer’s depictions of life across the United States.

Books from speakers in Session 9, “Just and Unjust”

The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence, by Gary Haugen. The human rights attorney examines the everyday violence that plagues impoverished communities and undermines anti-poverty efforts.

Books from speakers in Session 10, “Building from Scratch”

Fire: Nature and Culture, by Stephen Pyne. A history of humans’ use of fire, charting how the ability to control fire has given us the power to reshape the world for our own benefit, and been the source of disasters that have leveled cities and defined cultures.

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch, by Lewis Dartnell. A thought experiment about how to start over in a post-apocalyptic world, this book explains the fundamentals of how our modern technologies work.

Books from speakers in Session 11, “Passion and Consequence”

Distant Shores: Surfing the Ends of the Earth, by Chris Burkard. A showcase of the surf photographer’s work, which features ice just as prominently as it does sunshine.

Hussein Chalayan: From Fashion and Back, by Hussein Chalayan. A monograph of the fashion designer’s work, including catwalk and studio photography, as well as film stills.

Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, by Esther Perel. The relationship therapist examines what it takes to infuse domestic life with sexual desire. Watch her powerful TED Talk on the subject.

Books from speakers in Session 12, “Endgame”

Full Circle: My Life And Journey, by Ellen MacArthur. In this memoir, published just as MacArthur retired from sailing, tells the story of her career — including what it was like to circumnavigate the world on her own, spending 71 days alone at sea.

On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, by Alice Goffman. Goffman, a sociologist, lived side-by-side with a group of young African-American men in a distressed community in Philadelphia for six years. In this book, she chronicles the forces that marginalize entire communities.

How to Be Black, by Baratunde Thurston. This memoir and satirical self-help book is an incisive commentary on American racism.

TED2015 will be held March 16 to 20 in Vancouver, Canada. Stay tuned to the TED Blog for live coverage and behind-the-scenes surprises. Want to watch along at home? TED Live brings the conference experience into your living room, office or classroom. Find out more »

Attendees at TEDxGalápagos have some photo fun. While the Galápagos Islands are famous for their wildlife, the focus of this event was on: the people that live there. Photo: Courtesy of TEDxGalápagos

There aren’t many places on earth more mythical than the Galápagos Islands, the archipelago that sparked Charles Darwin to form his theory of evolution almost two centuries ago. Protected as a World Heritage Site, they’re bursting with life, from ancient tortoises to Darwin’s finches to bright sea creatures. But as a place for people to live, the Galápagos is surprisingly complicated.

“You can’t leave people out of the equation if you’re talking about conservation,” says Veronica Reed, co-host of TEDxGalápagos. “There are a lot of stories that people don’t know about, because these are not the things you hear when you hear about Galápagos. You only hear about the animals.”

This January, at the first TEDxGalápagos, the audience heard from a local fisherman who admitted that — far from being a hardcore conservationist — he’d been dumping used motor oil off his boat into the open ocean.

Alberto Granja had been dumping oil without a second thought — until he came to realize he was damaging his own fishing grounds. So he started a project to recycle used oil from across the islands; he has so far recovered half a million liters of oil.

“It was important to have people discussing their own issues and the problems they face,” Reed says, “and what they’ve done as individuals or as a community to work towards conservation—or, even, to realize what you’ve done against conservation.”

“What are you going to be able to sell tourists if the islands are destroyed?”

The speaker lineup for TEDxGalápagos included voices from the four inhabited islands of the archipelago. Photo: Courtesy of TEDxGalápagos

The event took place at Miguel Cifuentes Interpretation Center, part of Galápagos National Park. Photo: Courtesy of TEDxGalápagos

The Galápagos are an archipelago of 19 islands, but only four are inhabited. And each of the inhabited islands “is a world in its own,” Reed says. “If you do something with people from one island, people from another island don’t want to participate. So it’s really complicated.”

“One big issue for us was actually selecting the speakers, because everybody had something to say about the person we were choosing.”

Reed and her co-host (and husband) Renato Solines decided to hold TEDxGalápagos on Santa Cruz, which has the largest population, and recruited speakers from Santa Cruz and Floriana, and two more who had spent time in Isabela and Cristóbal, representing all four inhabited islands. The event encouraged a multi-island dialogue, helping people meet and listen to neighbors they might have criticized before.

“The idea of selecting the speakers was to try to select people who had a relationship with the islands and could tell a story about that relationship,” Solines says.

The event was held at the bright and airy Miguel Cifuentes Interpretation Center, part of Galápagos National Park. Eighty attendees — the maximum — signed up in advance, and although 40 didn’t show, 30 walk-ins took their place. That was expected, as on the islands most people travel by boat. “It’s very difficult for you to plan ahead of time,” Reed says.

But, she adds, “People were very eager and engaged from the first talk on. During the break, people gathered in a covered courtyard to talk about the ideas they heard.”

Half of those who RSVPed weren’t able to actually get to the event — to be expected in a place where boat travel rules. Photo: Courtesy of TEDxGalápagos

TED Fellow Colleen Flanigan spoke about coral reef ecosystems, and what they need from human beings in order to thrive. Photo: Courtesy of TEDxGalápagos

Booking and rehearsing the speakers was a huge challenge. Internet and cell phone connections are unreliable on the islands, and the Galápagos are more than 800 miles from the Ecuadorean mainland. The pair had to fly to the islands three times from their hometown in Quito, a two- to three-hour flight, to meet with everyone on their program. One speaker cancelled because the venue would have been a bumpy two-hour boat ride away. Another recommended speaker simply couldn’t be contacted by any means.

These difficulties are part of the reason Reed and Solines decided to launch the event in the first place. Reed, an architect and a TED Fellow, and Solines run an environmental design company, and they’re working with an Argentinian company to develop sustainability strategies for Seymour Airport on the island of Baltra. As they traveled back and forth on the project, they started to notice the exclusive focus, in discussions of the Galápagos, on animals and environmentalism. What about the people living there?

The difficulties and pressures that residents face are many, starting with overcrowding and mass tourism, poaching and pollution on land and sea, and lack of job and cultural opportunities for islanders. Talks at the event offered some new ways to think about those problems.

One speaker, mapping expert Daniel Orellana, is working on Galápagos 360˚, which lets people to tour the islands via Google Street View — a way of showing “as many people as possible the wonders of Galápagos, without the footprint,” Reed says.

Reed also invited one of her fellow TED Fellows — ecologist Colleen Flanigan — to talk about her work installing large, undulating metal forms in damaged coral reefs. By running low-voltage current through them, these skeletons attract minerals and become a scaffold for new corals. These sculptures can grow two to six times faster than wild corals on their own. “We thought it would be great for people to see how you can not only reduce the impact you have on natural ecosystems — but how you can have an impact in a positive way,” says Reed. “[Colleen’s] work shows that humans and the natural ecosystems can rely on each other. Her talk was very week-received.”

Speaking at TEDxGalapagos brought Flanigan to South America for the very first time. While there, she also did a workshop for kids and surfers from Santa Cruz, working with them on a collaborative sculpture. “It was great,” says Reed.

Next steps? Reed and Solines will need to figure out how to spread these TEDx Talks around the islands on video, given the lack of internet access. And the next TEDxGalápagos, they hope, will be held in about 18 months. The first was funded mostly out of their pockets, but they’re hopeful about sponsorship going forward. It’s also always easier to deal with obstacles the second time around. Right?

Attendees took their break outside, where they discussed ideas under sunny skies. Photo: Courtesy of TEDxGalápagos

While the event focused on people, the incredible wildlife made an appearance. Photo: Courtesy of TEDxGalápagos

Another wild inhabitant who made an appearance. Photo: Courtesy of TEDxGalápagos

Can’t wait for TEDGlobal 2014? We’re here to help! Spend the next two weeks curling up with these books by the wonderful speakers who will grace the stage in Rio.

Memoir

American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood, by Marie Arana. The writer’s classic, in which she shares her own experience growing up between Peru and the United States, which she describes as a “north-south collision.”

No Place to Hide, by Glenn Greenwald. In his new book, journalist Glenn Greenwald takes a detailed look at government snooping and tells the story of working with Edward Snowden to leak classified NSA documents.

Why Meditate: Working with Thoughts and Emotions, by Matthieu Ricard. Ricard, now a monk but once a biochemist, presents a clear guide to how to meditate.

Fascinating regions

Bolivar, by Marie Arana. The biographer and critic’s latest book follows Simón Bolívar’s career and life, from his campaign to liberate Colombia and Venezuela to his love affairs.

Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation, by Elizabeth Pisani. Pisani’s new book explores Indonesia in all its richness and contradiction.

The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-2011, by Misha Glenny. Glenny offers a comprehensive look at the history of the Balkans.

Big global problems

Migration and Remittances During the Global Financial Crisis and Beyond, edited by Dilip Ratha, Ibrahim Sirkeci and Jeffrey H. Cohen. In their 2012 book, the authors investigate the impact of the financial crisis on migrants from developing countries.

The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS, by Elizabeth Pisani. Wielding wit and political incorrectness, Pisani takes a bold look at how governments are reluctant to fund effective HIV prevention.

McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld, by Misha Glenny. The journalist unleashes a shocking fact—that domestic trade accounts for an estimated one-fifth of the global gross domestic product. In a feat of reporting, he then takes us inside some of those illegal economies.

Global stability

Cops Across Borders, by Ethan Nadelmann. The drug policy reformer’s book, originally published in 1994, examines the United States’ role in international law enforcement.

Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention, by Séverine Autesserre. The political scientist’s book, which came out earlier this year, examines peacebuilding interventions.

Stabilization Operations, Security and Development: States of Fragility, edited by Robert Muggah. Muggah, a specialist in security and development, offers a review of international stabilization efforts.

Rights, Resources and the Politics of Accountability, edited by Joanna Wheeler and Peter Newell. This 2006 book examines ways in which marginalized groups mobilize to fight for their rights.

Fiction

Ghana Must Go, by Taiye Selasi. This debut novel, published last year, follows a long-dispersed family as they gather in Ghana following their father’s death.

Art/Design/Architecture

Before They Pass Away, by Jimmy Nelson. The photographer documents over 30 remote tribes in more than 500 images.

Vik Muniz: Le Musée Imaginaire, by Vik Muniz and Eric Mézil. This volume accompanied a show in which Muniz, an artist, responded to the Collection Lambert in Avignon.

The Forces in Architecture, by Alejandro Aravena. The architect takes a technical look at his field in a book designed for architecture students and professionals.

Science

Novel Plant Bioresources, by Ameenah Gurib-Fakim. A biodiversity scientist presents a comprehensive resource for understanding under-utilized plant species.

Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines—and How It Will Change Our Lives, by Miguel Nicolelis. The neuroscientist explores how the brain creates thought, and the role machines will play in this process.

Measuring and Modeling the Universe, Volume 2, edited by Wendy L. Freedman. The astronomer’s 2010 textbook covers theories on the evolution of the universe.

Gastrointestinal Imaging Cases, by Jorge A. Soto, Stephen Anderson and Christine Menias. This 2013 textbook surveys more than 150 gastrointestinal cases.

The environment

Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Ocean, edited by Fabien Cousteau. This beautifully illustrated book dives into the ocean’s mysteries.

The Shaman’s Apprentice: A Tale of the Amazon Rainforest, by Mark Plotkin and Lynne Cherry. Plotkin and his coauthor focus on one boy’s quest to become a tribal shaman.

Antarctica 2041: My Quest to Save the Earth’s Last Wilderness, by Robert Swan. Swan, a polar explorer and environmentalist, looks at the state of the earth in light of the looming deadline of 2041, when the treaty protecting Antarctica is up for review.

Business and philanthropy

Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth, by Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, and Simone Ahuja. Radjou and his coauthors examine how to drive innovation in an increasingly unpredictable business landscape via jugaad, Hindi for a clever improvised solution.

Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World, by Michael Green and Matthew Bishop. The social progress expert and his coauthor look at the way billionaires are reshaping philanthropy.

The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works, by Ricardo Semler. Semler argues for employee satisfaction over corporate goals in this classic book, published a decade ago.

Stewart Thorndike, pictured above, makes horror films about women. Her latest revolves around a “haunted TED Talk” which begins to inspire terrifying events as four women retreat to a country hotel to bond.

Writer/director Stewart Thorndike is working on a trio of female-driven horror films — sharp, low-budget psychological thrillers. Her first installment, Lyle, stars Gaby Hoffman as a mother trying to protect her toddler from sinister forces. Thorndike is now running a Kickstarter campaign to fund the second film, Putney, which is billed as being about “a haunted TED Talk.” We wanted to know: what does that even mean?!? So we called her for a chat.

Can you tell me a little bit about Putney?

Putney tells the story of four women who go to the country to bond. The main character is inspired to do the whole trip because of a TED Talk, which is a hybrid of someone like Brené Brown’s, on vulnerability, and my own imagination. It gives her an idea to reconnect with her girlfriend of four years and their estranged best friend. They all go to this hotel where they used to go, the Putney — and an uninvited guest comes along and sort of ruins the dynamics. All these things go wrong, so the main character keeps retreating to go watch this TED Talk for advice. And the talk starts to give her stranger and stranger advice.

Do you watch a lot of TED Talks?

I am a big TED lover, but I don’t watch as many as many people I know. I think what interests me about messing around with one is that a lot of the horror I make is about taking contemporary, safe things and fooling around with them so they become scary. I didn’t start the story with the TED Talk craziness in mind. But when I started to think about the things that you might turn to for counsel and support, I thought of moms, and friends, and therapists, and TED Talks. A TED Talk is stamped with intellectual and pop-culture legitimacy. So it’s funny for me—and perverted and interesting—to mess around with that.

This is your second female-driven horror film. Why is having a female-driven narrative important to you?

Well, I’m a female writer and director, and I don’t write many stories with guys in them. So I have never even questioned it — I just make movies with women, because they’re the people who interest me. When you start looking at it, it’s like, man, we need them. We need so many more stories with women.

Why are you drawn to horror?

I was always drawn to the dark stuff, ever since I was a little kid, and I think women need horror just as much as men do. I think people need to test their philosophies and belief systems in the most exaggerated ways. Plus, I always argue that horror is the most sensual of all the genres. People are in a heightened state, everything’s a little altered, and you don’t know what’s real or what isn’t. It’s visually exciting for me to play with horror.

That’s really interesting. I am a very easily frightened person, and I tend to shy away from horror films.

I hear that sometimes. I’m really curious if women don’t like horror because men have taken over the brand and made a certain kind of movie that we just don’t want to watch — horror that’s geared towards 18-year-old boys. I think that the type of horror that is out there right now is about sadism, and a bad guy, and it’s very simple and thin. It’s a very clear sensation of: “I’m glad I’m not the character in this movie, running away from the chainsaw.” It’s a weird pornographic kind of sensation. You’re not thinking about anything. Sadism is simple; there is nothing there.

Right. When I think of watching horror, I feel disgust and fear. It’ll just be these unpleasant feelings, and I will want them to end.

But if you felt disgust and fear over what it’s like to take care of your dying father, and all those complications, it might be more interesting.

Very possibly. So how is the Kickstarter campaign going?

It’s awesome that Kickstarter exists. Films like this haven’t gotten made, and you wonder if it’s because there isn’t an audience, or because the machine that has been in charge of making movies has just decided there isn’t an audience. So being able to control how you’re going to show your movie, and find your fans and have them support your next movie—it’s really empowering. We’re down to the last days of our Kickstarter, and it’s exciting and cool that we have a way to get funding for a film without the usual, traditional models.

Will you find a way to make the film if you don’t make the Kickstarter goal?

I’m used to hustling, so we’ll certainly try.

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Want to see this movie? Support Thorndike’s Kickstarter, which ends September 18. In the meantime, she invites you to watch Lyle for free.

Organizers show off their shirts at a TEDxBeirutSalon. Photo: Courtesy of TEDxBeirut

In 2008, Patricia Zougheib was at work in Beirut, Lebanon, when she came across a video of Jill Bolte Taylor describing her own stroke. She was awed, and Googled the three red letters she noticed in the background—T-E-D. “I started watching one talk after the other,” she says, “and I got hooked, big-time.”

For a while, Zougheib kept her TED habit her own special secret, watching talks alone at her advertising job. “But then I thought, after one year, ‘No, this is too good not to be shared.’” She introduced her husband to TED, and the two decided to invite some friends over to their house to watch and discuss talks.

TEDxSKE, the first TEDx event in Lebanon, started as a gathering of six friends — but it has led to a boom of TEDx events in the country, most of them helmed by women. No one can explain why women are drawn to TEDx organizing here—but regardless of the reason, they are spreading ideas to attendees of both genders.

Zougheib knew TEDxSKE had reached a turning point when strangers started asking to join in. “It became an open house,” she says. “Of course, a limited open house, because our house can only fit 20 to 25 persons max.” Two years after it started, the weekly salon was still thriving. “I started saying, this salon is kind of changing our lives. Everyone is being affected by this,” Zougheib says. “I thought, if this small salon was having this much effect, we should do the big event with our speakers.” She gathered a team of regular TEDxSKE attendees to lead another, bigger salon and to launch the main event TEDxBeirut.

The scene at TEDxSKE, held in Patricia Zougheib’s home. Photo: Courtesy of TEDxSKE

At the same time, Reine Azzi, a teacher at Lebanese American University (LAU), was having her own TED moment. Scrolling through her Facebook feed, she came across one of Sir Ken Robinson’s talks, which an American friend had posted. “Because I’m a teacher, the title intrigued me, so I clicked,” she says. “And I fell in love with what he had to say.”

She watched all of Robinson’s talks and, the next day, approached her boss to ask about screening one of them as a lecture on campus. The event was small, but shortly after, someone introduced Azzi and Zougheib, who was still scouting locations for the inaugural TEDxBeirut salon. Azzi offered up the LAU campus, and the event drew 150 people.

Things snowballed. Azzi held the first TEDxLAU salon in 2012. Six salons and two main events later, “TEDxLAU events are always sold out. Always. It’s amazing,” Azzi says; the last salon, on mental health, sold out within 24 hours. “It’s as if students on campus were thirsty for events like these—events that are intellectual but at the same time humane … You don’t have a speaker who is just standing behind a table reading from a manuscript. You have a speaker who is sharing heart and soul with you.”

Balloons at a TEDxBeirutSalon. Photo: Nadim Kamel

TEDxBeirut, meanwhile, has held eight salons and two main events, which featured local speakers and drew 700, then 1,200, attendees. In fact, the organization grew so quickly that Zougheib quit her job and took 16 months to work solely on TEDxBeirut. “I loved it—it was the best 16 months of my life,” she says. Not sustainable, though (“neither for me nor my husband”), so she’s back at work and has passed TEDxBeirut off to a team of four co-leaders. But she is still actively spreading TEDx.

“Everyone started asking us, ‘Please come do your event at our university!’” Zougheib says. Instead of taking the event on the road, she encouraged people to get their own licenses. TEDx salons mushroomed across Lebanon; there are now about 10.

Natalia Geha, for one, attended TEDxBeirut a few years ago, and just held her first TEDxNDULouaize salon at Notre Dame University-Louaize in January, with musical performances in addition to talk screenings and discussions. “I think it’s interesting that TED is becoming so popular in Lebanon, because we really lack cultural events,” she says.

A TEDxSKE salon, held in a beautiful venue. Photo: Nadim Kamel

It’s a sentiment echoed by Zougheib almost verbatim. “The movement is spreading like no other movement I’ve seen, ever,” she says. “We didn’t have many cultural events happening here. There was a lack.”

Zougheib also points out that media—internationally, but within Lebanon, too—tend to focus on turmoil, to the exclusion of achievement. She wanted TEDxBeirut to be a platform for showing the inventiveness and creativity of her compatriots. “We all need nonpolitical platforms where we can express our ideas, talk about our inventions, say that young people are as lively as they are elsewhere,” she says. “We do have ideas, believe it or not. Even if we come from Lebanon.”

The cake at TEDxSKE’s 5th anniversary party. Photo: Patrick Abi Salloum

When TED Fellow Gabriel Barcia-Colombo saw an extraction of strawberry DNA for the first time, he was smitten. “I’d never thought about DNA being a beautiful thing before I saw it in this form,” he says in today’s talk, given at the TED Fellows Retreat.

Barcia-Colombo was inspired to join the public biotech lab Genspace, where biotechnologist Oliver Medvedik had shown him that gorgeous strawberry DNA. The two worked on extracting human DNA and, from there, Barcia-Colombo took the obvious next step: holding dinner parties dedicated toward the extraction of his friends’ DNA. (You have, too, right?)

“A lot of people, especially in the art community, don’t necessarily engage in science in this way,” Barcia-Colombo says. His artist friends were really excited about the experimentation, and he was excited about their excitement. He started collecting their DNA in little vials.

One day, it hit Barcia-Colombo that DNA’s spirals look quite like a vending machine’s coils. The synergy inspired him to create an installation piece, the DNA Vending Machine, that dispenses vials of DNA along with photo portraits of their human hosts.

To hear more about the creation of this absurdist vending machine, watch the talk above. And below, a few more creative applications for DNA.

1. DNA Portraits. Barcia-Colombo went human-scale with his DNA art. Nazim Ahmed and Adrian Salamunovic, on the other hand, went microscopic. Ahmed was working as a biotechnologist, and the images he had from his job sparked the duo’s imagination, as the two recount to Smithsonian.com. They swabbed their mouths, sent their DNA off to a lab, and got back digital images of the sequences, which they turned into canvas prints. Out of that whimsical move grew a business: DNA11, where you can order your very own DNA portrait.
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2. Mixology. Why simply isolate strawberry DNA when you can isolate strawberry DNA while making a cocktail? Oliver Medvedik, the Genspace cofounder Barcia-Colombo worked with, also a TED Fellow, has a recipe that should win an award for multitasking. Read about it, and watch Medvedik’s spunky tutorial, on our blog.
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3. Abstract Representation. What do you make of Takashi Murakami’s painting, “If the Double Helix Wakes Up…”? We love the trippy blue-and-green painting created in 2002, even if the artist hasn’t said much about what inspired it.
   
   
4. Stranger Visions. A hair stuck in the crack of a print hanging in her therapist’s office inspired the artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg to begin collecting genetic material while she was out and about—and then to create portraits of their owners based on the genetic codes. The images that comprise the resulting project, “Stranger Visions,” are collected on Dewey-Hagborg’s website. Read more about Dewey-Hagborg’s work on our blog, and check out the short documentary above.
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   DNA PORTRAIT from TED Blog on Vimeo.

   
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5. Origami. In his 2007 TED talk, Paul Rothemund explains how he makes origami out of strands of DNA — one very long, and many short — the little strands pulling the long one into a shape. Rothemund shows slides of a star, a smiley face, and even words, all made of DNA.
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6. DIY DNA. Want to extract your own DNA? LiveScience explains that it’s really easy—you can do it with “some common kitchen ingredients”! The hardest part is swishing Gatorade in your mouth for two minutes, which, as LiveScience notes, takes a little stamina. See the full recipe here.

Have your own ideas for innovative DNA projects? Share in the comments!

At TED2014, astronaut Chris Hadfield and journalist Jon Moollem will give talks, and Sting will perform.

TED2014, our 30^th anniversary conference, is less than a month away! If you’re counting the days like we are, get a head start by reading some of the insightful and compelling books by the groundbreaking thinkers who will speak in Vancouver.

Books from speakers in Session 1, “Liftoff”

• Being Digital, by Nicholas Negroponte. This 1995 bestseller grew out of Negroponte’s column exploring technology and explaining new inventions. (New at the time, that is. It’ll make for the perfect nostalgic read.)
• An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, by Chris Hadfield. In his new book, the astronaut gives an insider’s view on what it’s like to be in space—and the lessons he’s learned from that pursuit. (While you’re at it, check out Earth, Spirit of Place, which features Hadfield’s beautiful photography.)

Books from speakers in Session 4, “Wish”

• Climate Change: Picturing the Science, by Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe. Schmidt, a climate scientist, teamed up with Wolfe, a photographer, to illustrate the huge impact of shifting weather patterns via visuals of sinking villages, shrinking glaciers, and more.
• Business @ the Speed of Thought, by Bill Gates. In his book, Gates, who will speak with his wife and business partner Melinda, gives a prescient analysis of the ways in which technology can aid businesses, and its potential to transform the business landscape.
• Broken Music, by Sting. The singer-songwriter began penning his memoir when he turned 50. It gives a deep look into his past, from his childhood to the beginning of his success as a musician.

Books from speakers in Session 5, “Us”

• Functional Neuroimaging of Visual Cognition, by Nancy Kanwisher and John Duncan, editors. Kanwisher and Duncan present the accounts of various luminaries in cognitive neuroscience.
• Wild Ones, by Jon Mooallem. Mooallem, a journalist, examines our literal and imaginative relationships with wild animals, focusing on the polar bear, the Lange’s metalmark butterfly, and the whooping crane.
• Constructing the World, by David Chalmers. Chalmers, a philosopher, presents a model for understanding the world.

Books from speakers in Session 6, “Wired” 

• Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies, by Chris Kluwe. In this unconventional book, the football punter addresses issues from guns and the Pope’s Twitter feed to time travel and the end of the world.
• xkcd: volume 0, by Randall Munroe. The first xkcd book features selections from Munroe’s geek-oriented, but widely loved, webcomic.
• Manufacturing the Future, by Avi Reichental. In his forthcoming book, Reichental explains the ways in which businesses can benefit from 3D printing technology.

Also speaking at TED2014—David Epstein, Jennifer Senior and Andrew Solomon.

Books from speakers in Session 7, “Why?”

• Evelyn Evelyn, by Jason Webley, Amanda Palmer and Cynthia von Buhler. Two of this book’s author will be at TED2014—Webley will perform during session 7, while Palmer (who gave an incredible talk at last year’s conference) will appear during a special TED All-Stars list. It’s the illustrated story of a pair of conjoined twins’ story.
• Reflections, by Helder Guimarães. In this unfortunately out-of-print book, the magician reflects on his craft.
• Why Does the World Exist?, by Jim Holt. The philosopher explores one of the biggest questions in existence through various lenses by asking experts from physicists to philosophers to novelists.

Books from speakers in Sessions 8, “Hacked,” and Session 9, “Emergent”

• Not Exactly Rocket Science, by Ed Yong. The essays in this book, drawn from Yong’s blog of the same name, look at quirky and fascinating scientific findings.
• The Sports Gene, by David Epstein. What makes a star athlete? Epstein investigates the classic nature-versus-nurture debate as it applies to sports.
• Ant Encounters, by Deborah Gordon. Gordon, an ecologist, explains how ant colonies function (thrive!) without any centralized control or hierarchy.

Books from speakers in Session 11, “Unstress”

• All Joy and No Fun, by Jennifer Senior. Senior, a journalist, delves into the reality of how having children changes parents’ lives, particularly in light of the changes family structures have undergone in recent decades.
• Start with Why, by Simon Sinek. Sinek proposes several qualities that super-influential people share.

Books from speakers in Session 12, “Onward”

• Far from the Tree, by Andrew Solomon. Solomon tells the stories of families with children who have Down syndrome, schizophrenia, deafness, and other qualities that make them exceptional.
• Gabby, by Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly. Congresswoman Giffords was the victim of an assassination attempt in 2011. In this book, she and her husband, Kelly, tell the story of her brain injury and painstaking process of recovery.
• If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother, by Julia Sweeney. In this memoir, Sweeney explores what it’s like to be a child, and to be a parent.

Sign up for a TEDLive subscription to experience TED2014 remotely »

Starting March 17, follow TED2014 on the TED Blog »

Be a part of our next conference, TEDGlobal 2014, taking place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in October »

Christopher Ryan: Are we designed to be sexual omnivores? Ryan explains that our sexual patterns are an outgrowth of agricultural models—which accounts for only about five percent of human history. For the other 95 percent, human sexuality was “a way of establishing and maintaining the complex flexible social systems, networks, that our ancestors were very good at.” In hunter-gatherer societies, there were overlapping sexual relationships between members of a community—a more fluid system than the Victorian model we’re wedded to today. In fact, several contemporary societies around the world argue against the sexual myth we’ve built up, too.

“My hope is that a more accurate updated understanding of human sexuality will lead us to have greater tolerance for ourselves, for each other, greater respect for unconventional relationship configurations like same-sex marriage or polyamorous unions, and that we’ll finally put to rest the idea that men have some innate instinctive right to monitor and control women’s sexual behavior,” Ryan says. “And we’ll see that it’s not only gay people that have to come out of the closet: we all have closets we have to come out of.”

Below, read up on some more lines of research that suggest out-of-the-box ideas about our sexuality.

1. Question: Is bisexuality a sexual orientation, something that’s temporary or an outgrowth of the sexual fluidity we all exhibit?
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   Research: In a 2008 study, Lisa M. Diamond of the University of Utah presented the results of a decade-long assessment of nearly 70 women who identified as lesbian, bisexual, or sexually unlabelable. Five times over the course of the study, the women detailed their sexual identities, attractions, behaviors, and their social and familial relationships.
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   Results: Based on Diamond’s findings, bisexuality is not a “transitional stage that women adopt ‘on the way’ to lesbian identification” or an “experimental phase” for heterosexuals. Her results, instead, supported that, “Bisexuality may best be interpreted as a stable pattern of attraction to both sexes in which the specific balance of same-sex to other-sex desires necessarily varies according to interpersonal and situational factors,” she writes.
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2. Question: Which comes first—desire or arousal?
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   Research: In a study from 2004, described in this New York Times article, Ellen Laan, Stephanie Both and Mark Spiering of the University of Amsterdam examined participants’ physical responses to sexual images.
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   Results: The research indicates that we respond physically to highly sexual visuals before our mind even engages with them. In other words, desire doesn’t precede arousal—it’s the other way around. And we aren’t even aware it’s happening.
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3. Question: Do men and women respond differently to sexual images?
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   Research: The same New York Times article describes an Emory University study that tracked participants’ eye movements and brain activity while they looked at sexually explicit photos.
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   Results: Men and women didn’t have the same reactions, but they might not be the ones you’d expect. Men looked at the faces in the photographs much more than women did, and everyone quickly flipped past close-ups of genitalia. Brain activity was gender-dependent: in particular, men had a lot more activity in the amygdala than women did.
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4. Question: Does geography influence the body types we idealize and are attracted to?
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   Research: There’s a lot written about the effects of culture and media on the bodily standards we uphold. But the International Body Project, a survey of 7,434 people worldwide, aimed to investigate whether there were more base-level factors motivating our ideal body types, too.
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   Results: The researchers found that places with low socioeconomic status tended to value heavier female body types, while places with high socioeconomic status tended to favor thinner bodies—possibly because body fat acts as an indicator of status when resources are scarce. And the effect of media shouldn’t be underestimated: “Our results show that body dissatisfaction and desire for thinness is commonplace in high-SES settings across world regions, highlighting the need for international attention to this problem,” the researchers write.
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5. Question: Do men and women have different sex drives?
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   Research: A recent New York Times Magazine article describes a University of Wisconsin, Madison “meta-analysis” of more than 800 studies of our sexual habits conducted over 15 years.
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   Results: The researchers found that “the evidence for an inborn disparity in sexual motivation is debatable,” the Times Magazine piece reports. The study “suggests that the very statistics evolutionary psychologists use to prove innate difference — like number of sexual partners or rates of masturbation — are heavily influenced by culture. All scientists really know is that the disparity in desire exists, at least after a relationship has lasted a while.” Women’s desire does decrease, but not as a matter of course—as a result of monogamy in particular.

Photo credit: iStock

Sheryl Sandberg shakes hands with Pat Mitchell, who urged her to talk about women and leadership at TEDWomen in 2010. The talk became Sandberg’s book, Lean In. Photo: Kristoffer Heacox

During an interview at TEDWomen 2013, host Pat Mitchell asked Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to explain how her 2010 TED Talk evolved.

Sheryl Sandberg: So we leaned in ... now what? “I asked myself the question that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and my boss, asks all of us, which is: What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?” Sandberg said. Her answer: “I would get on the TED stage and talk about women and leadership. And I did. And survived.”

And let’s be honest, she didn’t just survive. Her talk has been viewed more than 3 million times so far. It spawned a best-selling book, Lean In. In fact, with her talk, Sandberg launched a full-scale movement Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders : there are now over 12,000 “Lean In Circles,” essentially support groups for working women, across 50 countries. “I’m grateful, I’m honored, I’m happy,” says Sandberg. “And it’s the very beginning.”

In today’s talk, Sandberg reveals that friends thought she’d be ending her career by talking about women and leadership publicly, and that she had to be nudged to put anything personal in her talk. To hear this — and why Sandberg thinks we should ban the word “bossy” — watch the talk. And below, a collection of writing on women and the workplace to take in along with Sandberg’s new talk.

1. A good place to start, of course, is with Lean In, the 2013 book that grew out of Sheryl Sandberg’s talk. In the book, she delves more deeply into both the personal and the larger cultural aspects of her argument that women shouldn’t leave their jobs mentally before they actually have to leave. “Sandberg’s advice to young women to be more ambitious, which can sound like a finger-wagging admonishment when taken out of context, is framed here in more encouraging terms,” Anne-Marie Slaughter writes in the New York Times Book Review. “Most important, Sandberg is willing to draw the curtain aside on her own insecurities. She describes the many times in her career when she was deeply unsure of herself, and the uncertainty that has never entirely gone away.”
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2. Speaking of Anne-Marie Slaughter, her 2012 article in The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” is another seminal part of the recent women-in-business conversation. Anne-Marie Slaughter: Can we all "have it all"? Like Sandberg, Slaughter movingly portrays the challenges she’s faced in her high-powered career. Slaughter explains that she believed that women could have it all, but has found that she has had to make many compromises along the way. In her piece, she offers several suggestions for how the workplace could be made more hospitable to women. Slaughter gave a fantastic talk expanding on her ideas at TEDGlobal 2013: “Can we all ‘have it all?’” In this powerful talk, she shares how it will take large shifts in work culture, public policy and social mores to change the status quo — but that this will have incredible payoffs for both men and women.
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3. Debora Spar, the president of Barnard College, agrees that women cannot have it all. In her 2013 book Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection, she argues that this quest for perfection—for “it all”—has been damaging for women, setting up unrealistic and in fact impossible expectations.
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4. In a piece for New York Magazine’s “The Cut” entitled “We’re All Bystanders to the Sandberg-Mayer Mommy Wars,” Ann Friedman points out that everyone deserves a healthy work-life balance, not just women with children. “I want all working women to have opportunities — and all working men to have life balance, too — but have caught myself thinking, why is it easier to ask me to work during my three-day weekend than it is to demand my co-worker check e-mail while on vacation with her kids?” Friedman writes. “‘Work-life balance’ has become synonymous with ‘upper-class working moms,’ and that’s a problem for everyone.”
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5. A decade ago, Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever were already puzzling over one stark gender divide: the difference between men and women’s salaries. In their compelling academic book, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide, Babcock, a professor of economics, and Laschever, a writer, argue that the discrepancy stems from the fact that while men often negotiate their salaries up, women tend to take what they’re given—which, over time, can bloom into a huge monetary differential.
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6. Finally, read (and watch) Sheryl Sandberg’s 2011 commencement speech at Barnard College. “I truly believe that only when we get real equality in our governments, in our businesses, in our companies and our universities, will we start to solve this generation’s central moral problem, which is gender equality,” Sandberg says. “We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.”

If you’re dreading the inevitable day your New Year’s resolutions—to lose weight, get a better job, and drink less, perhaps?—fall flat, it might be because you need different resolutions. Instead of focusing on outcomes, why not set your sights on process this year? Here, 10 resolutions inspired by TED Talks. They just might inspire you in turn.

Young-ha Kim: Be an artist, right now! Resolution #1: Make time to make art. From the talk: Young-ha Kim’s “Be an artist, right now!” “There are hundreds of reasons why we can’t be artists right now,” says Korean author Young-ha Kim—that is, all the reasons we invent when we’re too scared or intimidated. But, Kim reminds us, “We are all born artists.” Unleash those suppressed artistic impulses: take an acting class, buy some paint, or just sit with a notebook and write like crazy.

Amy Webb: How I hacked online dating Resolution #2: Take charge of your love life. From the talk: Amy Webb’s “How I hacked online dating“ Amy Webb finds the saying “true love will find you when you least expect it” nonsensical. Why wait around rather than go after what you want? In her own search for a husband, Webb tossed this saying out the window and approached online dating with a data-driven strategy—and a clear goal. She got it.

Nilofer Merchant: Got a meeting? Take a walk Resolution #3: Walk more, sit less. From the talk: Nilofer Merchant’s “Got a meeting? Take a walk” We sit even more than we sleep, and it’s terrible for our health. So for 2014, make a commitment to getting up: schedule walking meetings and get-togethers, use a treadmill desk, or work standing up. At least part of the time.

David Steindl-Rast: Want to be happy? Be grateful Resolution #4: Practice gratefulness daily. From the talk: David Steindl-Rast’s “Want to be happy? Be grateful” Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast explains that gratefulness is our path to happiness, and that all it takes is a shift in perspective: stop what you’re doing, open yourself up to the opportunities around you, and act on them. Do this as much as you can, even if it means writing yourself reminders and posting them all over your apartment.

Amanda Palmer: The art of asking Resolution #5: Ask for what you want. From the talk: Amanda Palmer’s “The art of asking” In a talk about her career as an alt-rock performer, Palmer describes the community of fans she’s created by asking for favors, and how much of her career rests on this simple act. You won’t get everything you ask for, of course—but you won’t get anything you don’t ask for.

Angela Lee Duckworth: Grit: The power of passion and perseverance Resolution #6: Allow yourself time to meet your goals. From the talk: Angela Lee Duckworth’s “The key to success? Grit” “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals,” psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth says. “Grit is living life like a marathon, not a sprint.” Grit is also essential for success. If you expect to meet your goals immediately and give up when you don’t, you’ll probably be giving up a lot. But if you expect setbacks and can give your goals some breathing room, you have a much better shot.

Karen Thompson Walker: What fear can teach us Resolution #7: See your fears as an act of the imagination. From the talk: Karen Thompson Walker’s “What fear can teach us” David Steindl-Rast (see Resolution #4) says everything is an opportunity. Fear is no exception. In this talk, novelist Karen Thompson Walker explains that fear doesn’t need to be something we conquer and fight. “What if we thought of fear as an amazing act of the imagination?” she asks. To fear something, we have to first create it in our minds, out of nothing—that is, fear involves writing a story.

Lisa Bu: How books can open your mind Resolution #8: Read books that challenge your perspective and beliefs. From the talk: Lisa Bu’s “How books can open your mind” Lisa Bu explains the huge shift in perspective that reading prompted, and explains books’ formative role in her life. “Books have given me a magic portal to connect with people from the past and present,” she says. Don’t just stick to what you know: read outside the box.

Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend Resolution #9: Make your stress work for you instead of against you. From the talk: Kelly McGonigal’s “How to make stress your friend” Psychologist Kelly McGonigal explains that it isn’t stress itself that’s bad for you—it’s believing that stress is bad for you. Reframing your stress as helpful for your performance actually changes your physiological response.

Abha Dawesar: Life in the "digital now" Resolution #10: Take breaks from your devices. From the talk: Abha Dawesar’s “Life in the ‘digital now”‘” “Our full sense of self needs both immersive experience and the flow of time,” says novelist Abha Dawesar. The digital world, she argues, removes us from that and chops time into bits to be archived. But we can choose to live otherwise, to live in the real, undigitized world — at least sometimes — and let ourselves be truly present. “We can choose those moments that restore the flow of time instead of fragmenting it,” Dawesar says. “We can slow down and we can tune into the ebb and flow of time. We can choose to take time back.”

This post was originally published in December of 2013 and was resurfaced on December 26, 2014. Want more New Year’s Resolution-inspiring talks? Watch this playlist of talks:

1. Karen Thompson Walker’s debut novel, The Age of Miracles, quickly took off when it was published last year. Walker imagines a world in which the rotation of the earth progressively slows down, with serious consequences. In her TED Talk, Walker discusses the creative potential that fear holds. After all, what is The Age of Miracles if not a beautifully written nightmare?
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2. Babyji, by Abha Dawesar, is a coming-of-age story that follows Anamika Sharma, a student in 1980s Delhi. The 2005 novel, which won the Barbara Gittings Prize in Literature/Stonewall Award from the American Library Association and a Lambda Literary Prize, “achieves an impressive balance between moral inquiry and decadent pleasure,” Publisher’s Weekly declared. Watch Dawesar’s talk on how technology has fractured our experience of time.
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3. When Pico Iyer published his first novel, Cuba and the Night, in 1996, he’d already written three travel books. Set in Havana, this novel shows the depth of his travel-writing experience, offering what The New York Times called “atmospheric and haunting glimpses of life in the Cuban countryside.” Watch Iyer’s talk on the meaning of home.
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4. Korean novelist Young-ha Kim’s latest book, Black Flower, follows Korean emigrants forced into slave labor in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in 1905. Watch Kim’s talk on why we should all make art right now, and read excerpts from Black Flower and Kim’s other works.
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5. For family reading, turn to Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s Lunch Lady series. The graphic novel series follows the adventurous, crime-fighting double life of a school lunch lady. In his TED talk, Krosoczka describes his journey to becoming a children’s book author and illustrator.
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6. Canadian spoken-word artist Shane Koyczan’s novel in verse, Stickboy, tells the story of a bullied child who becomes a bully himself. Watch Koyczan perform his poem “To This Day” with violin accompaniment on the TED stage.
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7. Software developer-cum-novelist Daniel Suarez’s newest cyberthriller, Kill Decision, pushes the reality of our technological war efforts a little bit further than reality. In his talk, Suarez describes the dangers of autonomous robotic weapons.
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8. By day, Andrew Fitzgerald works with journalists and news organizations at Twitter; by night, he’s a novelist and journalist himself. The Collective is his 2010 novel. In his talk, Fitzgerald draws from both lives in an exploration of Twitter fiction.

Paul Piff shares some of his research on the science of greed at TEDxMarin.

How does being rich affect the way we behave? In today’s talk, social psychologist Paul Piff provides a convincing case for the answer: not well.

Paul Piff: Does money make you mean? “As a person’s levels of wealth increase, their feelings of compassion and empathy go down, and their feelings of entitlement, of deservingness, and their ideology of self-interest increases,” he says in his talk from TEDxMarin. Through surveys and studies, Piff and his colleagues have found that wealthier individuals are more likely to moralize greed and self-interest as favorable, less likely to be prosocial, and more likely to cheat and break laws if it behooves them.

The swath of evidence Piff has accumulated isn’t meant to incriminate wealthy people. “We all, in our day-to-day, minute-by-minute lives, struggle with these competing motivations of when or if to put our own interests above the interests of other people,” he says. That’s understandable—in fact, it’s a logical outgrowth of the so-called “American dream,” he says. And yet our unprecedented levels of economic inequality are concerning, and since wealth perpetuates self-interest, the gap could continue to widen.

The good news: it doesn’t take all that much to counteract the psychological effects of wealth. “Small nudges in certain directions can restore levels of egalitarianism and empathy,” Piff says. Simply reminding wealthy individuals of the benefits of cooperation or community can prompt them to act just as egalitarian as poor people.

To hear more of Piff’s thoughts on the effects of having—or lacking—wealth, watch his compelling talk. Below, a look at some of studies from Piff’s lab and elsewhere.

Finding #1: We rationalize advantage by convincing ourselves we deserve it

The study: In a UC Berkeley study, Piff had more than 100 pairs of strangers play Monopoly. A coin-flip randomly assigned one person in each pair to be the rich player: they got twice as much money to start with, collected twice the salary when they passed go, and rolled both dice instead of one, so they could move a lot farther. Piff used hidden cameras to watch the duos play for 15 minutes.

The results: The rich players moved their pieces more loudly, banging them around the board, and displayed the type of enthusiastic gestures you see from a football player who’s just scored a touchdown. They even ate more pretzels from a bowl sitting off to the side than the players who’d been assigned to the poor condition, and started to become ruder to their opponents. Moreover, the rich players’ understanding of the situation was completely warped: after the game, they talked about how they’d earned their success, even though the game was blatantly rigged, and their win should have been seen as inevitable. “That’s a really, really incredible insight into how the mind makes sense of advantage,” Piff says.

Finding #2: People who make less are more generous…on the small scale

The study: Piff brought rich and poor members of the community into his lab, and gave each participant the equivalent of $10. They were told they cold keep the money for themselves, or share a portion with a stranger.

The results: The participants who made under $25,000, and even sometimes $15,000, gave 44% more to the stranger than those making $150,000 to $200,000 per year.

Finding #3: People who make less are more generous…on the large scale

The study: A 2012 Chronicle of Philanthropy study examined Internal Revenue Service records of Americans who earned at least $50,000 in 2008, then charted charitable giving across every state, city and ZIP code in the US.

The results: On average, households that earned $50,000 to $75,000 gave of 7.6 percent of their income to charity, while those who made make $100,000 or more gave 4.2 percent. Rich people who lived in less economically diverse—that is, wealthier—neighborhoods gave an even smaller percentage of their income to charity than those in more diverse neighborhoods: in ZIP codes where more than 40 percent of people made more than $200,000 a year, the average rate of giving was just 2.8 percent.

Finding #4: Rich people are more likely to ignore pedestrians

The study: In California, where drivers are legally required to stop for pedestrians, Piff had a confederate approach a crosswalk repeatedly as cars passed by, trying to cross the street. He videotaped the scenario for hundreds of vehicles over several days.

The results: The more expensive the car, the less likely the driver was to stop for the pedestrian—that is, the more likely they were to break the law. None of the drivers in the least-expensive-car category broke the law. Close to 50 percent of drivers in the most-expensive-car category did, simply ignoring the pedestrian on the side of the road.

Finding #5: Poverty impedes cognitive function 

The study: In this study published a few months ago, researchers Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir and others measured farmers’ mental function a month before their harvests (when they were hurting for money) and then again a month after (when they felt flush). In a separate part of the study, they had poor and well-off participants think about finances, then determined the participants’ cognitive performance.

The results: As Mullainathan details in The New York Times, the same farmers performed worse before the harvest, when they had less money, than afterward, when they had more. And not just a little worse: their I.Q. before the harvest was 9-10 points lower, the same detriment caused by an entire night without sleep. As for the other part of the study: when poor participants thought about finances, they performed worse. Rich participants weren’t affected at all.

Finding #6: Those with less are better at reading facial expressions

The study: In 2010, a series of studies out of UCSF asked more than 300 upper- and lower-class participants to analyze the facial expressions of people in photos, and of strangers in mock interviews, to discern their emotions.

The results: The lower-class participants were better able to read faces in both cases. That is, they exhibited more “emotional intelligence, the ability to read the emotions that others are feeling,” as one of the study authors told NBC. But, if upper-class participants were told to imagine themselves in the position of lower-class people, it boosted their ability to detect other people’s emotions, counteracting the blinders-like effect of their wealth.

1. Watch: “Want to be happy? Be thankful.” This TED Talk from David Steindl-Rast is the perfect Thanksgiving appetizer. In it, the Benedictine monk and interfaith scholar talks about what, exactly, it means to be grateful and offers a simple process for living gratefully: stop, look and go. Instead of rushing through life, he asks us to see the opportunities that are available and open ourselves up to them. This isn’t an idle or even simply personal concern: gratefulness has broad social implications. “If you’re grateful, you’re not fearful, and if you’re not fearful, you’re not violent. If you’re grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not out of a sense of scarcity and are willing to share,” Steindl-Rast says. 
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2. Read: “A Serving of Gratitude May Save the Day.” This 2011 article in The New York Times shares that gratitude “has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners.” From there, writer John Tierney consults psychologists whose work falls in the area of gratitude for tips on how to feel more of it during the hectic Thanksgiving season. It’s a very cool survey of the research going on in this area.
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3. Watch: Jimmy Fallon’s Thank You Notes. In this long-standing segment on Friday night episodes of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, the star of the show picks up a pen and writes thank you notes as piano music swells in the background. In recent episodes, Fallon has given sarcasm-tinged thank yous to peer pressure and the nub at the bottom of a banana. In fact, this segment is so popular that it even became a book. As the Amazon page reads, “Jimmy Fallon is very thankful. And in this first book to come from his TV show, he expresses his gratitude for everything from the light bulb he’s too lazy to replace to the F12 button on his computer’s keyboard.” Yes, there is a volume 2.
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4. Read: “Are You Thankful or Are You Grateful?” And in an essay commissioned for Thanksgiving 13 years ago, David Steindl-Rast describes the difference between thankfulness and gratefulness. “In a moment of gratefulness, you do not discriminate. You fully accept the whole of this given universe, as you are fully one with the whole,” he writes. “In the very next moment, when the fullness of gratitude overflows into thanksgiving, the oneness you were experiencing is breaking up. Now you are beginning to think in terms of giver, gift and receiver. Gratefulness turns into thankfulness. This is a different fullness. A moment ago you were fully aware; now you are thoughtful. Gratefulness is full awareness; thankfulness is thoughtfulness.”
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5. Watch: “7 TED Talks to help you give thanks.” From Louie Schwartzberg’s incredible time-lapse photography that inspires deeper reflection on the wonder of nature, to Tania Luna’s inspiring reflection on how a childhood of scarcity allowed her to fully appreciate life as an adult—this playlist of talks is sure to leave you in the right spirit for gratitude.
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6. Read: Zen Habits. In 2005, Leo Babauta — a father of six kids then living in Guam (he’s now in San Francisco) — radically changed his life. He began focusing on spirituality by honoring his emotions, his physical well-being, and the current moment. Soon after, he began this blog, in which he shares his experiences and offers tools for becoming more mindful. Like this: “Put the word ‘Breathe’ as a screensaver or desktop pic, or put it up as a note on your wall or fridge or on your desk. Then do it every time you see the word.”
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7. Listen to: Tara Brach’s podcast. After college, Tara Brach spent 10 years in an ashram, then attended a Buddhist Insight Meditation retreat. “I knew that this was a path of true freedom,” she says on her website. Now armed with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and a five-year Buddhist teacher training program, Brach works as a psychotherapist and meditation teacher and runs the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC. She offers free recordings of her beautiful talks and meditations. They are also available on iTunes.
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8. Read: thxthxthx: Thank Goodness for Everything. Leah Dietrich is brilliant — and hilarious — at being thankful for the mundane. On what look like oversized Post-It notes, she scrawls hand-written thank you notes that raise a chuckle. This effort started as a blog, then became a book and a Twitter feed. A classic, to give you a taste: “Dear Words, Thank you for letting me make art with you. I can’t really draw well, so you’re a big help. See you soon. Love, Leah.”
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9. Watch: Brené Brown on how increasing vulnerability leads to gratitude. Social scientist Brené Brown became a TED superstar for sharing her observations on vulnerability, gleaned from thousands of interviews. Something she didn’t expect to find during the course of her research: “I did not interview in all that time a person who would describe themselves as joyful or their lives as joyous who did not actively practice gratitude. For me, it was very counterintuitive.” Watch her TED Talk, and then hear her explanation of the relationship between joy and gratitude in this short video. 
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10. Watch: Room to Breathe. The 2012 documentary Room to Breathe follows a class of San Francisco middle school students as they undergo training by a therapist from Mindful Schools. This Oakland-based nonprofit helps make mindfulness a part of education, defining it as “a particular way of paying attention. It is the mental faculty of purposefully bringing awareness to one’s experience.”
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11. Read: It’s Easier Than You Think. In this book, Sylvia Boorstein, a Jewish-Buddhist meditation teacher and psychotherapist, demystifies spirituality and mindfulness. “Being a meditator and developing equanimity do not mean becoming weird,” she writes at the outset. The idea: spirituality and mindfulness can coexist with drinking coffee or being a passionate football fan. It isn’t about the tools you use or what you do, it’s how you do it.
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12. Study: A step-by-step guide to gratefulness. David Steindl-Rast and his colleagues run Gratefulness.org, a website that is full of wisdom on the art of thankfulness. One of the most interesting things on the site: this collection of articles, which is designed as a journey of personal reflection or as a guide for group study.

This piece was originally posted in November of 2013. It was updated for Thanksgiving 2014.

Steve Howard talks about IKEA’s super-sized sustainability strategies at TEDGlobal 2013. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

The IKEA Monkey. Last year, a monkey wearing a coat was found wandering the aisles of an IKEA in Toronto. The people of the Internet jumped on board, creating an Ikea Monkey Twitter account, photoshopping the monkey into tons of photos, and tweeting with the hashtag #IkeaMonkey. On December 10, 2012, Canadian journalist Tom Podolec tweeted, “#IkeaMonkey is a Rhesus Macaque Monkey Approx. 7 months old. In good health; stressed. Jacket is wool and said to be his favourite.” The monkey’s owners were fined for having a prohibited animal.

The IKEA Song. What happens when you write a song about wooing a lady in an IKEA store? This video from singer/songwriter Brad Go.

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Hot Malm. The best way to describe Hot Malm is as an “IKEA-themed porn parody site.” A pair of twin beds is captioned “Twin Blonde Malms,” a shot of a bed’s headboard reads “Hot Malm from Behind,” and “Check out the Pussy on this Hot Malm” refers to a cat on a bed. (MALM, remember, is an IKEA bedroom series.) Bonus: the Ikea Monkey sits in a corner of the website, with a speech bubble: “Feeling lonely? Click here now!”

“Fireflies” Parody in Ikea. And then there’s this, which a description would ruin, so…

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If Ikea Made Instructions for Everything. A 2010 College Humor piece illustrates IKEA-style directions for creating a “HÖUSS,” “TRÜSST,” a “HÄDRÖNN CJÖLIDDER,” and more.

Herding Cats. IKEA itself can rival the cleverest parodists: in a 2010 experiment, the store released 100 cats into a UK store. Watch to the end—slow-mo shots of cats in IKEA are surprisingly moving.

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Room 23. This quite remarkable four-minute short film, created in 48 hours as part of a contest in the Netherlands, imagines the lives of IKEA catalog models.

A store full of drama. And finally, we have to give it up to artist Guy Ben Ner. He shot this drama in IKEA  (sans permission) … with his real family.

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This advice struck Webb, who works with data for a living, as preposterous.  She had calculated that, in the entire city of Philadelphia, only 35 men had all the qualities she was look for and was still single. “I can take my grandmother’s advice and sort of ‘least expect’ my way into maybe bumping into the one [of them] — or I can try online dating,” she says.

Online dating is, in fact, the second most popular way couples meet in today’s technologically-mediated world. But when Webb began the journey, she found it much more fraught than she’d anticipated. “I like the idea of online dating because it’s predicated on algorithms,” she says. “These algorithms had a sea full of men that wanted to take me out on lots of dates—what turned out to be truly awful dates.”

At this point, Webb decided to get really systematic, and to find out how to make online dating work for her. She made a list of 72 items that she was looking for in a man, then ranked them by priority. She created a fake male profile so she could decode popular women’s strategies and then reverse-engineer her own profile. When she applied her rigorous ratings system to her plethora of possible matches, she wound up with just a single person who met all her criteria.

They went on what turned out to be a good date. In fact, a very good one. To see just how good, watch the talk.

Ahhhh, online love. Read on for some more delightful (and wonderfully nerdy) online dating stories we found, well, online.

1. “Geeklover,” who posts her tale on The-Gaggle.com, joined the dating site Geek2Geek (yup: a dating site for geeks) by force. In other words, her friends created a profile for her as a joke. But after she clicked around the site a bit, she thought that maybe it wasn’t such a bad place for her, a self-described history nerd, to find love. She spiffed up her profile and went on a good date with a major video game enthusiast. But it took a chance encounter between them in real life — on the New York subway to be exact — for both of them to realize that they actually had real potential.
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2. An adorable OKCupid Success Story: the first time Andrea and Michael IMed through the site, they talked for 12 hours. Despite the fact that they lived 1330 miles apart, they began talking daily, for months, before finally meeting. Less than a year later, they got engaged and are currently planning their wedding. Andrea’s best advice to anyone else hoping for love on the site: “Answer as many questions as you can … our match % was 97!”
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3. Willard Foxton’s date tried to “sexily nibble” him over dessert. Instead, she bit him; he bled and became ill. “So yeah, an infected human-bite wound. Beat that for a dating story,” he writes in The Independent. But Foxton persevered, and in fact decided to blog about his dates, committing to 28 in total, with 14 from mainstream sites and 14 from more specific ones “such as BikerDating, Sea Captain dating or Godmother (which matches royals with commoners).” Spoiler alert: as with the stories above, it also worked.
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4. Earlier this year, after it was discovered that Notre Dame linebacker Mant T’eo’s deceased online girlfriend had never existed, CNN asked readers to share their stories of online dating hoaxes. Barbara Hassan began online dating through Match.com in 2010 and started corresponding with an “architect/construction manager who built and designed a building in Nigeria for orphans.” She, of course, realized this wasn’t true when he asked her to pay for a $2700 plane ticket to the United States. A year later, she felt bold enough to try online dating again — this time with great success. How did she bond with her now husband? They both shared their tales of being scammed by online paramours.
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5. When Gemma discovered her partner was cheating on her with women he met using the website Plenty of Fish, Gemma ended the relationship — and joined POF herself. Here, she gives the nuts and bolts of her unusual success story.

All this said, not everyone is thrilled with the sweet nerds they meet online. Take, for example, writer Alyssa Bereznak who wrote the Gizmodo essay, “My Brief OKCupid Affair with a World Champion Magic: The Gathering Player.” After two dates, she broke things off with him, concluding, “Maybe I’m shallow for not being able to see past Jon’s world title. I’ll own that. But there’s a larger point here: that judging people on shallow stuff is human nature; one person’s Magic is another person’s fingernail biting.”

What has your experience been with online dating? Do you prefer to leave love up to serendipity, or do you relish the opportunity for data to guide you on the way?

This post originally ran in October of 2013. It was updated for Valentine’s Day 2015.

James Flynn points out a fascinating dynamic at TED2013, that we appear to be getting smarter. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

In the 1980s, psychologist James Flynn discovered that, over the past century, our average IQ has increased dramatically. The difference, in fact, is so stark that the phenomenon garnered its own name: the Flynn effect.

In today’s talk, Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents’, given at TED2013, Flynn explains that if you scored people a century ago against today’s norms, they’d have an IQ of 70, while if you score us against their norms, we’d have an average IQ of 130. In the years since his original discovery, Flynn has investigated just what this evolution is all about. Hint: our ancestors weren’t on the verge of mental retardation, nor are we all intellectually gifted.

James Flynn: Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents' Flynn argues that the effect comes down to three types of thinking we currently practice that we didn’t a century ago: “classification, using logic on abstractions, taking the hypothetical seriously,” as he puts it. In other words, kids are tested in school on their ability not just to recite facts, but to apply logic to abstract scenarios. These types of thinking are also demanded by our jobs, as cognitively demanding professions have risen in popularity and importance. “Some of the habits of mind that we have developed over the twentieth century have paid off in unexpected areas,” he says.

Flynn delves into this dramatic change in his book, Are We Getting Smarter?, which you should definitely pick up if you’re interested in this subject. Below, some more fascinating reading on Flynn’s work.

1. In an interview last December with Smithsonian.com, Flynn presented some surprising nuggets he’d come across in his research. He noted that the gap between adults’ vocabularies and their children’s is increasing. Meanwhile, he also pointed out that the word “teenager” didn’t exist in 1950. Finally, a rather depressing thought: “The brighter you are, the quicker after the age of 65 you have a downward curve for your analytic abilities. For a bright person, you go downhill faster than an average person.”
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2. Flynn also spoke with Scientific American about his latest book and findings, and he beautifully explained the evolution of our mindset: “We have no idea of the gulf that separates our mind from people 100 years ago in America. We’ve put on scientific spectacles and they had on utilitarian spectacles. They were splitters. If you’re making use of the environment for advantage, you distinguish things. This animal leaves this track. This dog is good for hunting and that one isn’t. We’re lumpers; we’re used to thinking that you classify the world as a prerequisite to understanding it, and we’re highly willing to use logic on the abstract.”
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3. In Flynn’s original 1984 article, “The Mean IQ of Americans: Massive Gains 1932 to 1978,” he argued that, “The period in question shows the radical malleability of IQ during a time of normal environmental change; other times and other trends cannot erase that fact.”
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4. A 2005 piece in Wired told the story of Flynn’s discovery, which flowered from a combination of happenstance, a keen eye and dogged data collection.
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5. The Flynn effect got the Malcolm Gladwell treatment in a 2007 New Yorker piece following the publication of Flynn’s What Is Intelligence? “An I.Q., in other words, measures not so much how smart we are as how modern we are,” Gladwell wrote. “This is a critical distinction.”
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6. And the Flynn effect got the James Flynn treatment in a September 2012 Wall Street Journal essay. Here, Flynn gave a series of sample test questions to demonstrate our minds’ evolution:
   
   • 1. [gun] / [gun] / [bullet]. 2. [bow] / [bow] / [blank]. Pictures that represent concrete objects convey the relationship. In 1910, the average person could choose “arrow” as the answer.
   • 1. [square] / [square] / [triangle]. 2. [circle] / [circle] / [blank]. In this question, the relationship is conveyed by shapes, not concrete objects. By 1960, many could choose semicircle as the answer: Just as the square is halved into a triangle, so the circle should be halved.
   • 1. * / & / ?. 2. M / B / [blank]. In this question, the relationship is simply that the symbols have nothing in common except that they are the same kind of symbol. That “relationship” transcends the literal appearance of the symbols themselves. By 2010, many could choose “any letter other than M or B” from the list as the answer.
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7. In a largely positive Guardian review of Flynn’s most recent book, the writer ended by lamenting Flynn’s discovery of the “Bright Tax” (see #1, above): “In fact, this reviewer is so depressed by Professor Flynn’s musing about ageing that he has resolved to devote all his remaining analytical capabilities to designing a rocket-powered stair-lift. The aim: to get to the top before he has forgotten what he was coming upstairs for.”

Photo: ThinkStock.

“Science, we generally are told, is a very well-ordered mechanism for understanding the world, for gaining facts, for gaining data,” biologist Stuart Firestein says in today’s TED talk. “I’d like to tell you that’s not the case.”

Stuart Firestein: The pursuit of ignorance Instead, Firestein proposes that science is really about ignorance — about seeking answers rather than collecting them. He ‘fesses up: “I use this word ‘ignorance’ to be at least, in part, intentionally provocative, because ignorance has a lot of bad connotations and I clearly don’t mean any of those. I don’t mean stupidity, I don’t mean a callow indifference to fact or reason or data,” he explains. “I mean a kind of ignorance that’s less pejorative, a kind of ignorance that comes from a communal gap in our knowledge, something that’s just not there to be known or isn’t known well enough yet or we can’t make predictions from.”

Firestein explains that ignorance, in fact, grows from knowledge — that is, the more we know, the more we realize there is yet to be discovered. The purpose of gaining knowledge is, in fact, “to make better ignorance: to come up with, if you will, higher quality ignorance,” he describes. “The purpose is to be able to ask lots of questions — to be able to frame thoughtful, interesting questions — because that’s where the work is.”

The Columbia University professor of biological sciences peppers his talk with beautiful quotations celebrating this very specific type of ignorance. Here, a few he highlighted, along with a few other favorites:

1. “Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.” James Clerk Maxwell, a nineteenth-century physicist quoted by Firestein.

2. “Part of what we also have to train people to do is to learn to love the questions themselves. If all you want in life are answers, then science is not for you. We have things that always give you answers to things–like religion… In science, on the frontier, the answers haven’t come yet. That’s why we have people working on the frontier.” Neil deGrasse Tyson on Bullseye.

3. “The great obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents and the ocean was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.” Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers.

4. “Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating 10 more.” George Bernard Shaw, at a dinner celebrating Einstein (quoted by Firestein in his book, Ignorance: How it Drives Science).

5. “Every answer given on principle of experience begets a fresh question.” Immanuel Kant‘s Principle of Question Propagation (featured in Evolution of the Human Diet).

6. “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” Socrates, quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosphers (via the Yale Book of Quotations).

7. “Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian — ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.” Lytton Strachey, biographer and critic, Eminent Victorians, 1918 (via the Yale Book of Quotations).

8. “In an honest search for knowledge, you quite often have to abide by ignorance for an indefinite period.” Erwin Schrodinger, quantum physicist (quoted in Gaither’s Dictionary of Scientific Quotations).

9. “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovered exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “Fit the Seventh” radio program, 1978 (via the Yale Book of Quotations).

10. “Ignorance follows knowledge, not the other way around.” Stuart Firestein, Ignorance: How It Drives Science.

George Monbiot gets in touch with his rewilding side at TEDGlobal 2013. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

George Monbiot begins today’s talk by recalling a time he was “ecologically bored.”

“We evolved in rather more challenging times than these, in the world of horns and tusks and fangs and claws,” explains Monbiot, an investigative journalist who found himself deeply dissatisfied returning to the United Kingdom after years reporting in the tropics. George Monbiot: For more wonder, rewild the world “We still possess the fear and the courage and the aggression required to navigate those times. But in our comfortable, safe, crowded lands, we have few opportunities to exercise them without harming other people.”

In his search for a solution to this stupor, Monbiot discovered his current passion: rewilding.

It’s a term, coined by activist Dave Foreman and broadened by Michael Soulé and Reed Noss in the 1990s, that Monbiot explains has two meanings. The first involves the mass restoration of ecosystems through attention to “trophic cascades” — the ecological processes that start at the top of a food chain and tumble down to the bottom, affecting the entire ecosystem in the process. The second involves the rewilding of places humans live—restoring some of the fauna that we’ve wiped out through hunting and habitat destruction.

“Paleoecology—the study of past ecosystems crucial to an understanding of our own—feels like a portal through which you may pass into an enchanted kingdom,” Monbiot says. “The story rewilding tells us is that ecological change need not always proceed in one direction. It offers us the hope that our silent spring could be replaced by a raucous summer.”

Below, a few experiments in rewilding, drawn from Monbiot’s talk and elsewhere.

1. Bringing wolves back to Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
   Yellowstone National Park had become overrun with deer, which grazed away the vegetation dramatically. For years, biologists like Dave Foreman suggested a solution: bringing wolves back to the park, as the last ones were killed off in 1926. In 1995, wolves were finally reintroduced to Yellowstone, and the effects were dramatic. The wolves brought the deer population down to a sustainable population — but more importantly, they radically changed the behavior of the remaining deer. These deer started to move more often and avoid places in the park where they could easily be trapped, which in turn grew thick with vegetation. This allowed birds and beavers to move in, and the beavers’ dams became habitats for otters, muskrats, ducks, fish, reptiles and amphibians. The wolves also killed coyotes, which allowed for more rabbits and mice, which in turn boosted the populations of weasels, hawks, foxes and badgers. Meanwhile, ravens, bald eagles and bears fed on the carrion that the wolves left. In fact, even the river patterns in the park changed: the regenerating vegetation stabilized the riverbanks, which yielded less to erosion and took on straighter water flow. “The wolves, small in number, transformed not just the ecosystem of Yellowstone National Park—this huge area of land—but also its physical geography,” Monbiot explains in his talk.
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2. Saving whales in the southern oceans
   As a second example, Monbiot describes an unexpected way in which whales are a lynchpin of the ocean ecosystem — through their excrement. Whales feed at great depth, but come up near the water’s surface as they produce large fecal plumes. Up there, sunlight allows photosynthesis to take place, which results in the growth of phytoplankton. Zooplankton, which feed on phytoplankton, prosper in turn; and they feed fish and krill—which feed whales. Not only that, but whales’ movements push phytoplankton—which absorbs carbon—back up toward the water’s surface, where it can continue to survive and reproduce. According to Monbiot, at their usual historic populations, whales were probably responsible for sequestering tens of millions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year. So the management of whaling, and whale conservation by groups like the International Whaling Commission is, in this sense, a form of rewilding.
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3. Restoring trees in Glen Moriston, Scotland
   Dundreggan, a 10,000-acre estate in the Scottish Highlands, is currently overgrazed by deer and sheep, which have decimated the local vegetation. In an ongoing, decades-long process, the organization Trees for Life is reforesting the area. “Our vision is to turn Dundreggan into one of Scotland’s finest native woodlands, abundant in wildlife, and protected for generations to come,” the website reads. The organization’s long-term goal is to restore the native forest of oak, hazel, ash and Scots pines to over half of the land. By 2058, they expect to see animals like the red squirrel, European beaver and wild boars return to the area.
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4. Bringing beavers to mid Wales
   The Cambrian Wildwood, a Wales Wild Land Foundation project, aims to restore Blaeneinion, 75 acres of land in mid Wales. The initiative, which launched in 2008, is reforesting the area with broadleaf trees, creating orchards. They are also introducing beavers to the area. “Alongside the reforestation of roughly 50 acres of pastureland, the project will incorporate subsistence organic food-growing, beekeeping, rearing small livestock and poultry, propagation of productive local fruit varieties, mushroom production, teaching components, social events, aquaculture and much, much more,” the website promises.
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5. A jaguar reserve in Sonora, Mexico
   It sounds strange, but it’s true — jaguars were once a fixture of the southern United States and northern Mexico.  The Northern Jaguar Project works to restore habitats for jaguars and other threatened and endangered species in the area. Currently, an estimated 80-120 jaguars inhabit their Northern Jaguar Reserve in northeastern Sonora, which was established in 2003. In 2008, the reserve raised funds to purchase more land and the reserve is now a stunning 35,000-acre ranch where jaguars roam undisturbed.
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6. Revegetating the White River National Forest. Colorado
   The White River National Forest is a 2.3 million acre park in the Rocky Mountains. The Wilderness Workshop, founded in 1967, aims to keep large swaths of it truly wild — free of roads that fragment wilderness, free of human crowds that can disrupt animals and free of logging, mining and gas drilling which can harm the ecosystem. While much of their work is about defending the wilderness as it stands, their Habitat Restoration Program is about peeling back the effects of past damage and letting the land heal itself. The Program’s projects work on erosion control, weed removal, revegetation and, of course, reintroduction of native plant and animal species.
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7. Bringing trout to South London
   In 1805, the River Wandle was described as “the hardest worked river for its size in the world.” Ninety mills used the river then and, until very recently, it was routinely mowed of natural features to keep its water moving quickly. The last trout was caught in the river, which joins with the Thames, in 1934.  In this article, Monbiot describes The Wandle Trust, which aims to restore the river by cleaning it out, redirecting its flow and restocking it with fish. Now, shrimp, insects and trout flourish in the river … even in proximity to the big city. “Astonishingly in view of where it has come from—historically and geographically—it looks in places like the kind of chalkstreams you would expect to find flowing through some of the most bucolic landscapes in England,” writes Monbiot.

Paul Kemp-Robertson talks about how non-government currencies are gaining consumer trust at TEDGlobal 2013. Photo: Bret Hartman

“Is there a reason for governments to be in charge of money?” asks Paul Kemp-Robertson in today’s talk. Judging by the new raft of alternative currencies—from digital coins to point systems that reward customers of a certain brand—the answer might someday be “no.” Again.

Paul Kemp-Robertson: Bitcoin. Sweat. Tide. Meet the future of branded currency. As Kemp-Robertson suggests, many people seem to trust brands more than governments these days. Since currency is, in a sense, an expression of the brand value of a government, why shouldn’t commercial brands also make currency?

Kemp-Robertson reminds us that, once, they did. As an example, before the US Civil War, 1,600 different corporations, mainly private banks, issued paper banknotes. The government only issued coins, a mere 4 percent of American currency. The Civil War upended that system (read more) and eventually led to the creation of a single currency issued by the Federal Reserve System.

Here, learn more about 10 kinds of alternative currency in use today, from Kemp-Robertson’s talk and beyond.

1. Bitcoin. The world’s best-performing currency, according to Kemp-Robertson, Bitcoin’s value is tied to the performance of a computer network. It’s “completely decentralized—that’s the sort of scary thing about this—which is why it’s so popular,” Kemp-Robertson says. “It’s private, it’s anonymous, it’s fast, and it’s cheap.” Bitcoin is a case study in the increasing desire to place trust in technology over traditional institutions like banks.
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2. Litecoins. A virtual currency based on the Bitcoin model, Litecoins have a higher limit: “The number of coins that can be mined is capped at 21 million Bitcoins and 84 million Litecoins,” explained a recent Wall Street Journal post, which also noted that Bitcoins are worth more and currently accepted more widely.
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3. BerkShares. While Bitcoin and Litecoins are worldwide currencies, BerkShares are hyper-local: they’re only accepted in the Berkshires, a region in western Massachusetts. According to the BerkShares website, more than 400 Berkshires businesses accept the currency, and 13 banks serve as exchange stations. “The currency distinguishes the local businesses that accept the currency from those that do not, building stronger relationships and greater affinity between the business community and the citizens,” the site reads.
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4. Equal Dollars. Philadelphia is also trying out a local currency with Equal Dollars. When you sign up to participate, you receive 50 Equal Dollars; to earn more, you can offer your own possessions in an online marketplace, volunteer or refer friends.
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5. Ithaca Hours. Another hyperlocal currency, Ithaca Hours—usable only in Ithaca, New York—also hopes to boost “local economic strength and community self-reliance in ways which will support economic and social justice, ecology, community participation and human aspirations.” (For a full list of local currencies in the US, go here.)
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6. Starbucks Stars. Use of Starbucks’ Stars is limited not to a particular geographic locality, but to the corporate ecosystem that is Starbucks. Once you get a Starbucks Card, you can earn Stars—which buy drinks and food—by paying with the card, using the Starbucks app, or entering Star codes from various grocery store products. According to Kemp-Robertson, 30 percent of transactions at Starbucks are made using Stars.
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7. Amazon Coins. Another company-specific currency, Amazon Coins, can be exchanged for “Kindle Fire apps, games, or in-app items.” You get 500 Amazon Coins, worth $5, by purchasing a Kindle Fire, or can buy more Coins at a slight savings.
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8. Sweat. Kemp-Robertson points to a particularly innovative business-specific currency in Nike’s “bid your sweat” campaign in Mexico. Your movements, energy, and calorie consumption are tracked and can be exchanged for goods, ensuring a “closed environment”—only people who (a) own and (b) use their Nike products are welcome.
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9. Tide detergent. This is a barter system that’s about as far from government-backed as you could get: in 2011, it was discovered that across the US, thieves had been stealing 150-ounce bottles of Tide detergent to trade for $5 cash or $10 worth of weed or crack cocaine. An article in New York Magazine from earlier this year details the fascinating story and what it says about Tide’s super-successful branding.
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10. Linden Dollars. Linden Dollars, usable within the online community Second Life, can be bought with traditional currency or earned by selling goods or offering services to other Second Life residents. Many people earn actual Linden salaries—some to the tune of a million Linden Dollars—says this article from Entrepreneur.com.
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11. BONUS: Brownie Points. Granted by the universe as a reward for good deeds. Not exchangeable for tangible goods, just self-satisfaction, which we think is also important.

TED Fellow Jinha Lee speakers at TED2013 about collapsing the boundary between humans and computers.

“Throughout the history of computers, we’ve been striving to shorten the gap between us and digital information, the gap between our physical world and the world in the screen,” interface designer Jinha Lee says in today’s talk.

Jinha Lee: Reach into the computer and grab a pixel Lee points out that the gap has become shorter and shorter—it’s now “less than a millimeter, the thickness of a touchscreen glass,” he says. But his goal is to dissolve the boundary completely. In this talk, given at TED2013, he shows off a tool he invented that penetrates into a screen. He also reveals a technology that creates a digital workspace between a keyboard and translucent screen, allowing us to reach into digital worlds with our hands. And his wild ideas don’t stop there.

“If you remove this boundary,” says Lee, “the only boundary left is our imagination.”

Of course, we’ve been questioning what it means, on a deeper level, to shorten the gap between our digital technologies and ourselves since computers were invented, in terms of not only interacting with computing devices, but also making them ever more human. Here, media that either exemplify or address our increasing entwinement with our technologies.

1. Sergey Brin: Why Google Glass? At TED2013, Google co-founder Sergey Brin explained the logic behind what is arguably the most radical example of dissolving the boundary between us and computers: Google Glass. A voice-activated headset, Glass allows you to search the web, take a photo or video, send a message, make a call—basically, do anything you can do with your smartphone, but without taking your eyes off whatever’s in front of you.  (Read what the TED staff thinks after roadtesting Google Glass.)
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2. Radiolab’s episode “Talking to Machines,” which aired in 2011, remains a classic and features several stories in which computers have so successfully imitated human beings that, well, it’s a little freaky.  The episode begins with the story of a man who fell in love with a chatbot that learns from every conversation it has. There’s also a consideration of just why we feel for Furby, that cute little robot animal with personality. (Read the TED Blog’s exploration of toys that blur the line between pet, robot and friend.) And finally, Jon Ronson (watch his talk) interacts with Bina48, a robot modeled after a real woman.
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3. Studio 360 also dealt with computers’ human capacity in the 2011 episode “Are computers creative?” that investigated the question of whether computers can make art. The episode introduces us to AARON, a computer program that’s been painting for four decades and a filmmaker who opted for an algorithm over an editor.
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4. One of the first attempts to quantify and qualify the difference between humans and computers is known as the Turing test. Invented in 1950 by Alan Turing, the test involves a scientist conversing via text with a human and with a computer, and trying to deduce which is which. For more on this test, take a look at the work of Brian Christian, who recounts his own participation in the annual Turing test competition in his book, The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive.
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5. For a bit of time travel, read the 2002 New York Times piece “Human or Computer?” on the invention of Captcha, that modern-day Turing test that uses the ability to read distorted text as the marker of whether a user is a human or a bot.
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6. The TED Radio Hour episode “Do we need humans?” examines the possibility of a robot-reliant future of humanity, looking at how interactions between humans will change as technology accelerates. The episode includes interviews with four TED speakers who explore ideas of lifelike robots and connectivity in their talks: Sherry Turkle (watch her talk), Cynthia Breazeal (watch her talk), Andrew McAfee (watch her talk) and Abraham Verghese (watch his talk).
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7. Sebastian Thrun: Google's driverless car If Google Glass aims to seamlessly integrate technology into our daily interactions, another Google product—the self-driving car—addresses a different goal: using robots to complete previously human responsibilities. At TED2011, Sebastian Thrun explains his belief in the car’s potential to save lives by avoiding accidents, reveals test-drive footage and shares that — at that point — Google’s self-driving cars had driven more than 140,000 miles so far. (Read the TED Blog’s 5 fascinating cars of the future.)
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8. Along similar, but possibly more unsettling, lines: the recent article in The Atlantic, “The Robot Will See You Now,” which looks at evidence that robots might be better at some things than doctors. IBM’s Watson, the supercomputer that famously took down Ken Jennings on Jeopardy (watch his TED Talk about the experience), is now examining medical case histories at Memorial Sloan-Kettering hospital in New York — and doing an incredible job of recommending tests and treatments, based on the latest research.