Just how the duck qualified as a life-changing event sounds like an April Fools’ Day joke. It is not.

Soon after the male mallard duck died, a live male duck from the same species approached it, mounted it, and — to put it in layperson’s terms — humped it for over an hour. Amazed, Moeliker did what any curious biologist would do: he grabbed his camera and his notebook, and recorded what happened. Moeliker described his bizarre observations six years later in a paper aptly titled “The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae).”

In 2003, this work earned Moeliker the Ig Nobel Prize in Biology. A parody of the Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobels honor research and work that “first make[s] people laugh and then make[s] them think.” In other words, just because research sounds ridiculous doesn’t mean it has no merit. As Ig Nobel founder Marc Abrahams tells the TED Blog over email: “Science is the continuing quest to discover — and to not overlook — things beyond or outside what we expect. The truly unexpected is surprising, sometimes funny, and, who knows, might even turn out to be important.”

Even Moeliker’s dead duck research has a practical side. Each year on June 5, Moeliker and the victimized duck — which he naturally had stuffed — co-lead a public discussion on how to prevent birds from hitting windows, a major cause of bird death worldwide. As Moeliker shares in his talk, it could be that the mixed-up sexual behavior of animals points to something larger — that our continuous morphing of landscapes may have an affect animal behavior and species’ ability to thrive.

For a full list of past Ig Nobel winners, head to their website. Or read on for a few of our favorites…

Category: Entomology
Year: 1994
Winner: Robert A. Lopez “for his series of experiments in obtaining ear mites from cats, inserting them into his own ear, and carefully observing and analyzing the results.”
Why he did it: Sounds uncomfortable, and it was by all accounts. Still, as Marc Abrahams reports in The Guardian, Lopez’s itchy experiment helped him prove that Otodectes cynotis mites could infect humans, which he suspected was the cause of at least one rash in a young girl who liked cuddling her mite-ridden cats.

Category: Public Health
Year: 2009
Winners: Elena Bodnar, Raphael Lee, and Sandra Marijan “for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.”
Why they did it: The concept for this invention may seem silly, and the drawings in the team’s patent don’t help, but during a biological or chemical terror attack you probably wouldn’t care.

Category: Safety Engineering
Year: 1998
Winner: Troy Hurtubise “for developing, and personally testing a suit of armor that is impervious to grizzly bears.”
Why he did it: Well, to see if he could survive a grizzly attack. But, according to Wikipedia, the suit may also have applications in riots, explosions and other dangerous situations in which you’d want protection.

Category: Peace
Year: 2000
Winner: The British Royal Navy “for ordering its sailors to stop using live cannon shells, and to instead just shout “Bang!”
Why they did it: According to the BBC, the Navy decided to forego live ammunition for the childlike verbal “bangs” after the government drastically cut military budgets.

Category: Biology
Year: 2002
Winners: N. Bubier, Charles Paxton, Phil Bowers and D. Charles Deeming “for their report ‘Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain.’”
Why they did it: According to the authors, an increase in ostrich farms and a lack of knowledge on how they breed in captivity spurred the research. Anecdotal evidence showed the birds got frisky whenever people were nearby, so the researchers decided to confirm whether it was true. It was. The authors concluded: “Courtship behaviour towards humans may be important in the reproductive success of ostriches in a farming environment.”

Category: Engineering
Year: 2010
Winners: Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and Agnes Rocha-Gosselin “for perfecting a method to collect whale snot using a remote-control helicopter.”
Why they did it: Being a whale doctor isn’t easy, especially when your patient weighs multiple tons and is swimming in the ocean. One way to monitor health is to check the microbes living in and on the whale to see if they may be causing disease. As these winners have shown, it’s possible to collect at least some of those whale microbes with the marvels of modern technology.

Category: Physics
Year: 2003
Winners: Jack Harvey, John Culvenor, Warren Payne, Steve Cowley, Michael Lawrance, David Stuart, and Robyn Williams “for their irresistible report ‘An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces.’”
Why they did it: As this Abrahams Q&A with Wired explains, the research took place in Australia, where sheep shearing is a major industry. Dragging the sheep to the equipment is difficult and dangerous and the scientists researched various floor configurations and materials to see what which surfaces made the job easiest.

This post originally ran on April 1, 2013. It was updated in 2015.

In today’s moving TED Talk, Jake Barton of the design firm Local Projects shares the idea at the core of the yet-to-open National September 11 Memorial Museum: that museum-goers need to be included in the telling of the story. Jake Barton: The museum of you “The event is so recent, somewhere between history and current events,” says Barton, explaining that more than a third of people around the world watched the Twin Towers collapse in real time, while another third heard about it within 24 hours. “You can’t have just a historian or curator narrating objectively in third person about an event like that when you have the witnesses to history who are going to make their way through the museum itself.”

Barton’s talk gives a behind-the-scenes look at how these exhibits weave together photos, videos, written history and oral narratives from people all around the world, and how the Memorial itself was designed to display all the names of those killed on 9/11 by “meaningful adjacencies.” It’s a talk that feels highly appropriate as we approach the 12th anniversary of this tragic day. 

As we share Barton’s talk, we’re also reminded of a talk given by filmmaker Steve Rosenbaum at TED University 2012. Rosenbaum has been documenting the entire process of creating the Museum and Memorial since it begun for a documentary, a book and a digital record of the decisions made. In the talk below, Rosenbaum takes us on a tour of the museum, which is built underground to show the architectural heart of the Twin Towers, and which is intended to be “a living institution.”

Today, we asked Rosenbaum to give us an update on what is happening with the museum right now, in both words and pictures. 

Last year, I stood in front of the TED community and shared a secret that I’d been keeping for almost a decade: I’ve had the privilege and responsibility of recording the conceptualization, design and construction of the National 9/11 Memorial Museum at Ground Zero. The talk I gave at TED University in 2012 gave my fellow TED attendees a look at the complex and often emotional work of curating the story of 9/11 for visitors, many of whom were too young to remember when the Twin Towers fell.

Today, that TED Talk has been viewed more than 70,000 times — and the feedback and conversations it has prompted have served to teach me many things about the 9/11 story and its importance, and about the disconnect between the speed of the current world we live in and the actual time that doing big, complex things take.

The question I get asked most often is this one: “When will the museum open?” It wasn’t a question I could answer at TED in 2012. But today, I’m happy to report that the opening is now within sight. Spring of 2014 is the answer — and my now, often weekly, visits to the site have given me a front row seat to what I know can say with confidence will be an extraordinary and important institution when it opens to the public.

There’s no doubt that the millions of visitors who’ve been to the Memorial, read the names and watched the waterfall over the parapets and into the voids below understand the gravity of what happened on the site. But for young people, the story is often left at: terrorists flew planes into builds and they collapsed. Once the museum opens, the story will gain remarkable detail and nuance. The names will have stories. The events will have context and — thanks to work of the Museum team — details, facts and knowledge will be brought out for public view.

Here are some images from the construction:

A young man looks at the 9/11 Memorial. He was no doubt very young, if even born, in 2001.

Foundation Hall: Construction is nearing completion.

“The Last Column” stands ready to be unveiled.

Engine 21 tells the story of the FDNY, the terrible loss of first responders and the heroic rescue operation.

This ambulance is being moved into its final position in the museum exhibition.

The stairs from the Pavilion leading down to the Memorial Museum underground.

Historic artifacts stand ready to tell the story of 9/11 when the Museum opens.

Every detail, from the words down to the letter size and the font choices, has been carefully considered.

Amy Weisser and professionals from the Museum team test different font sizes to be mounted on the Museum walls.

Me, filming on location.

The Museum’s Chief Curator Jan Ramirez inspects the footings of the original towers that will be preserved, so visitors can see the original architectural structure.

The museum team testing lettering on walls above the massive steel footings.

The project has had delays. An almost one-year construction shutdown was the result of a funding dispute — and then Superstorm Sandy poured water into the site through an adjacent World Trade Center project, resulting in necessary cleanup and construction work.

But now that’s all in the past. The construction is being completed. The museum exhibits and media displays are beginning to be moved to the site for testing and fine-tuning. The coming months will be full of twists and turns, as the full emotional weight of the story is brought to bear. It’s an exciting, nerve-wracking and pressure-filled time. And one that, after seven years, I’m excited to see made ready for public viewing. One thing I’m certain of: the story of 9/11 becomes more complex, and more important, as world events change the complexion and conversation about our role in a danger-filled political world.

On the TED stage I asked the question: “Where were you on 9/11?” Soon, we’ll all have a place to answer that question.

Nikola Tesla, named by The Oatmeal the “greatest geek who ever lived,” was born on this day in 1856. And on the occasion of his 157^th birthday, we’d like to share this great talk about the inventor who held more than 700 patents, including ones for alternating current, the radio, the remote control, the electric motors and neon lighting. The talk, given by illusionist Marco Tempest at TED2012, celebrates Tesla’s inventive mind, but is not purely a celebration. The talk also tells the story of the project that was Tesla’s undoing — a wireless telegraphy center in upstate New York that he envisioned being used to contact other planets. He became a recluse.

All in all, on Tesla’s birthday, it’s a meditation on the innovative spirit — and the importance of giving great thinkers the opportunity to dream, try and occasionally fail.

Michael Pritchard is very likely the only person to have stood on the TED stage and uttered the immortal phrase, “Let’s get a bit of that poo in there.” At TEDGlobal 2009 in Oxford, he demonstrated his then-new product, the Lifesaver bottle, which can be used to turn filthy, rabbit-dropping-infested water into sparklingly clean liquid that’s safe to drink. Pritchard even got TED curator Chris Anderson to have a taste.

We spoke with Pritchard recently to find out what’s happened since his talk. There’s a lot to catch up on. For one thing, the Lifesaver bottle is now standard issue for the British military; every soldier in Afghanistan is armed with one. And Lifesaver has expanded, developing and introducing new sizes and products that go beyond the bottle. The Jerrycan, for instance, can process 20,000 liters of water — enough for a family of four for up to five years. The Cube is a disposable product designed for use in disaster zones; it’s currently in its second round of trials with Oxfam. The M1 system, meanwhile, is designed to provide drinking water to entire communities; it is currently being installed in remote regions throughout Malaysia. (See a video filmed on location at the bottom of the post.)

Michael Pritchard: How to make filthy water drinkable Pritchard explained why the Malaysian government was interested in giving this system a try.

“Traditional methods of trying to solve water poverty dictate that you put infrastructure in, you put pipework in, you put pumping stations in,” he says. But the inaccessibility of so many regions of Malaysia make this prohibitively expensive, consigning residents to a life of trekking hours to collect clean water or forcing them to spend much-needed money on bottled water. “You couldn’t have that and a military budget or a social security budget.”

The M1 tackles the problem by bypassing it altogether. Instead, the system connects to a house’s guttering system to convert rain into drinking water.

“There’s no pipework, no pump stations, and instant access to sterile drinking water on a permanent basis,” Pritchard said proudly. (Filters do need to be replaced, every two or three years, he estimates.) The first phase will be complete by October this year, impacting the lives of a million residents.

It’s fascinating to hear how the business itself has evolved, too. What began as a project in Pritchard’s garage — a result of his feelings of rage and helplessness on seeing those affected by the tsunami that washed through Asia in 2004 — has evolved from crisis management to an all-out attempt to end water poverty globally. “By 2015, we will have ended water poverty in Malaysia,” he said on the phone.

It’s enough to give you goosebumps, and certainly enough to raise the profile of both Pritchard and his 35-person company, based in Colchester, England.

In June, Pritchard was named an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honors, a pretty big deal in the United Kingdom. But for all the plaudits and progress, it’s clear that Pritchard is still just getting going. He recalls a trip back to a village in Haiti some two years after the earthquake disrupted so much life there in 2010.

“About 30 families in this beautiful fishing village had each been given a Jerrycan,” he said. “I spoke to this wonderful guy about how he was getting on with the product, how it was fitting into his life. And he told me all about how the kids are healthy, how water was great. I realized he’d forgotten the problems he once had, and it struck me how quickly a transition can be made. Put the means in someone’s hands and suddenly the whole world changes. They’re not walking four hours a day to get water any more, they’re not spending money on water. It’s changed everything.”

The end of global water poverty? A heady dream, but one that Pritchard is determined to ensure comes true.

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The Sleepy Man Banjo Boys captivate the audience at TED2013. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Jonny Mizzone didn’t come from Alabama with a banjo on his knee. No, this 11-year-old virtuoso hails from the state of New Jersey, where he and his two older brothers discovered the magic of bluegrass legends J.D. Crowe, Ralph Stanley, Clarence White and Earl Scruggs through YouTube. When he was eight years old, Mizzone posted a video of himself playing the banjo on Google’s video site, backed by brothers Robbie, now 14, on fiddle and Tommy, now 15, on guitar. The three shot into the stratosphere as YouTube sensations themselves, with many television appearances and two albums following. Soon J.D. Crowe nicknamed Jonny the “old midget,”  in disbelief that someone so young could play the banjo so well.

Sleepy Man Banjo Boys: Bluegrass virtuosity from ... New Jersey? At TED2013, the brothers — known as the Sleepy Man Banjo Boys thanks to the way Jonny liked to play while lying on his back with his eyes closed — thrilled the audience with three bluegrass-inflected ditties. We dare you not to delight as the three pass the lead from fiddle to guitar to banjo, grinning at each other all the while.

Interestingly, the origin of the word “banjo” is hotly contested. According to Wikipedia, some think the word is of Western African origin, while others believe it is Spanish or Portuguese. Either way, the instrument’s plucky sound has had a big impact on the TED stage. Here, more TED performances and talks involving the banjo.

Abigail Washburn: Building US-China relations ... by banjo Abigail Washburn: Building US-China relations … by banjo This TED Fellow thought she was going to study law in Beijing to work to improve US-China relations through policy … until a chance encounter with a Doc Watson song revealed a new way to approach this challenge.

David Holt: The joyful tradition of mountain music David Holt plays mountain music In this talk from TED2004, folk musician David Holt plays the banjo and shares the hilarious wisdom of Aunt Zip, a 105-year-old woman from the Appalachian Mountains.

John Francis: Walk the earth ... my 17-year vow of silence John Francis walks the Earth John Francis took a vow of silence for 17 years, and spent three decades traveling the globe by foot to hammer home the message of environmental respect. At TED2008, he not only talks … but plays the banjo.

Sleepy Man Banjo Boys: Teen wonders play bluegrass Teenaged boy wonders play bluegrass Another bravura performance from the Sleepy Man Banjo Boys. It was this great act during our Worldwide Talent Search that brought the brothers to the TED2013 stage.

Mena Trott: Meet the founder of the blog revolution Mena Trott tours her blog Mena Trott started a blog in 2001, sharing funny stories of her life. In the talk, she shares a post she wrote about wanting to buy a $300 banjo and having her husband tell her no. The reaction to it changed how she felt about the medium.

These TEDx Talks in French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish are as delicious as carved watermelon. Photo: TEDxBanskáBystrica

With the increased teaching of English around the globe, world languages are dying at a rate of one every 14 days. Patricia Ryan: Don't insist on English! In her classic talk from TEDxDubai, Patricia Ryan — an English speaker who has lived and taught in Arabic countries for over 30 years — argues that the focus on English is limiting creative thought. If one language can express thoughts that others can’t, why do we insist on equating intelligence with knowledge of English?

Dozens of TEDx events take place around the globe each week and, at them, talks are delivered in a wide variety of languages — celebrating the inherent creativity of a speaker’s native language. Here, collections of TEDx talks in Portuguese, French, Spanish and Russian, courtesy of the TEDx Blog. Because, as Ryan says, some things are just untranslatable.

Uma playlist de TEDx em portugues: 5 talks in Portuguese
These five talks in Portuguese bring us a little flavor of Brazilian and Portuguese culture. Travel with a microbiologist as he explores frozen climes and encounters carnivorous plants; learn about Girl Geek Dinners; and enjoy some hilarious stand-up comedy.

Une playlist de TEDx en francais: 5 talks in French
In the language of love, these five talks range far and wide across francophone culture, touching on topics from the impending zombie apocalypse to the Romani people to the five senses of computers. This playlist also includes Florence Servan Schreiber’s talk from TEDxParisSalon on the connection between gratitude and longevity that has been watched more than 45,000 times.

Una playlist de TEDx en espanol: 5 talks in Spanish
With just short of 400 million speakers worldwide, the Spanish language has a huge influence on international culture. In this series of talks, we hear from the son of a famous drug lord, a transgendered biologist working in Colombia and the creator of a cup made from 100% organic material.

5 Talks in Russian: TEDx’s first Russian playlist!
How can we consider a museum a living organism? Who really controls the internet? What would it be like to be a journalist in Kyrgyzstan? All these questions and more will be answered in this series of talks in Russian.

For more information on TEDx events and speakers, head to the TEDx Blog »

ShaoLan: Learn to read Chinese ... with ease! Her solution? A method she calls “Chineasy.” To achieve basic literacy, Hsueh says, you need only know 1,000 characters, and the top 200 allow you to comprehend 40 percent of basic literature. Chineasy involves pairing characters with facial expressions, body movements and images that conjure up words in English.

In her talk, Hsueh moves through eight foundational characters, describing mnemonic devices and showing artful depictions. “Open your mouth as wide as possible until it’s square,” she says. Are you doing it? Voila, the character for mouth: 口. Hsueh shows a graphic her team has designed of a person going for a walk, based on the character for person: 人. Fire is the character for person with what look like two arms waving, as if the person is engulfed in flames and yelling, “Help!”: 火. Hsueh also takes us through tree (木), mountain (山), sun (日), moon (月), and door (門), which “looks like a pair of saloon doors in the Wild West.”

These eight characters “are the building blocks for you to create lots more characters,” Hsueh explains. Using Chineasy’s simple, beautiful illustrations, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to many other words and phrases. In this talk, Hsueh takes us through almost 30 characters; here, some more examples based on those foundational eight.

1. In her talk, Hsueh shows the Chinese character for person, 人, which looks like a person strolling along. Multiply by two, and you’ve got the character for everyone:
   .
2. In her talk, Hsueh shows us how combining fire (火) and mountain (山) gives us a volcano (火山). What happens when we add a mouth (口) to a volcano? Think about it: the mouth of a volcano is … a crater!
   .
3. Hsueh shows us that the character for big (大) looks like a person (人) with her arms outstretched, as if to say, “Sooooo big!” Combine those two, and you get adult (大人):’
   .
4. Write two suns (日) side by side and you get the character for “bright”: 昍. On her Facebook page, Hsueh writes, “I promise you, this is a character that will impress your Chinese friends. This is such a rare character that 99 percent of Chinese native speakers/readers would struggle to tell you what it is, never mind how to pronounce it.”
   .
5. Here’s a really clever one that Hsueh brings up in her talk: the character for “to dodge” or “to avoid” is composed of a person (人) inside a door (門), as if the person is sneaking out! 閃 What she adds on her Facebook page is that this character has a second meaning, “flash.” As she explains, “this person is sneaking out at such speed that the shape of him dashing resembles a streak of light.”
   

Rita Pierson leads off TED Talks Education, our first televised event, which will air on PBS on May 7. Photo: Ryan Lash

Rita Pierson is the kind of teacher you wish you had. An educator for 40 years, she is funny, sharp and simply has a way with words — so much so that today’s talk feels a bit like a sermon.

Rita Pierson: Every kid needs a champion In this talk, Pierson shares the secret to teaching students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds — make personal connections with them.

“I have had classes so low, so academically deficient that I cried. I wondered, ‘How am I going to take this group in nine months from where they are to where they need to be?” says Pierson, in this amazing talk. “I came up with a bright idea … I gave them a saying: ‘I am somebody. I was somebody when I came and I’ll be a better somebody when I leave. I am powerful and I am strong. I deserve the education that I get here’ … You say it long enough, it starts to be a part of you.”

Pierson’s talk will open our first-ever television special, TED Talks Education, which airs Tuesday, May 7 at 10/9c on PBS. It will be an exhilarating night, featuring talks from educators and innovators with bold ideas, plus performances from host John Legend. Set your DVRs and read lots more here »

In honor of Rita Pierson and TED Talks Education, I asked the TED staff: who is that one teacher who just really, truly influenced you?

“The teacher who changed my life was, serendipitously, my English teacher for kindergarten, 7th grade and senior year of high school. Ms. Barbato taught me how to write eloquently (I hope!), and she had this unexplained faith in me that really galvanized me as a student. What she taught me stuck with me through college and beyond.” —Olivier Sherman, Distribution Coordinator

“Mr. Eric Yang was only in his mid-twenties when I had him as my AP government teacher, but he was unforgettable. He was the first teacher I had who made keeping up with current events mandatory, forcing us to read news sources on our own time and not just from the textbook. He exuded discipline, and that was contagious.” —Thu-Huong Ha, Editorial Projects Specialist

“Mrs. Bailey was my English teacher. I loved her. I was the younger sister of an already very successful big sister, and that was a cloud over my head too. She held my hand and brought me into the sun with her love of the English language. She recommended books just to me, she made me feel special and I just couldn’t get enough of her. I went on a school trip to Amsterdam with her and she brought her husband, who was an artist. She changed my life.” —Juliet Blake, TED TV (who executive produced TED Talks Education)

“Mrs. Mendelson, my 8th-grade English teacher. This was my first year living in the U.S. I think she set the stage for future learning and she’s the main reason I have such good English right now, both written and spoken. So, thank you, Mrs. Mendelson.”  —Ruben Marcos, intern

“I still recall how awesome my 6th-grade teacher, Mr. Fawess, was. Middle school in general is basically Hades. I was extremely small, super nerdy, and had a unibrow, asthma and glasses — plus I left school once a week to take classes at the local high school. I got picked on a lot. Mr. Fawess came up with all these ways to take my mind off that — he talked to me about bullying and how to let things roll off your shoulder and gave me books I could read outside of class. He got me thinking about college early and what kinds of subjects I was most interested in. I consider myself lucky to have had such an inspiring teacher. If only he had discouraged me from dressing up as the skunk in our annual school play.” —Amanda Ellis, TEDx Projects Coordinator

“Robert Baldwin’s class ‘Essay and Inquiry.’ Every day: Walk into class. Sit down. Look at the handout on every desk. Read it. Start writing. Class ends — stop writing. Every day. Except Wednesday, when we’d put the desks in a circle and everyone would read something they’d written. The prompts were everything from simple questions like, “What’s your favorite memory of trees?” to readings from Rachel Carson or W.B. Yeats or Orson Welles. It was a whirlwind of ideas, and the constant writing forced us to wrestle with them, and (tritely but correctly) ourselves. It was like a boot camp in thinking. People I know who took, and loved, that class went on to some of the most amazing careers. Every time we get together, we gush about the quiet, unassuming, force of nature that was Mr. Baldwin. He would have hated that last sentence, because the metaphor is strained. But he also taught us to ignore authority, so I’m writing it anyway.” —Ben Lillie, Writer/Editor

“Mrs. Lewis, my 5th-grade teacher, read to us every week. She made us put our heads on the desk and close our eyes and then read wonderful stories to us: The Golden Pine Cone, The Diamond Feather ... It made our imaginations come alive.” —Janet McCartney, Director of Events

“My junior high school science teacher, Dr. Ernie Roy, with his outsized laugh and booming voice, was one of my very favorite teachers. He demonstrated to us how important we were to him by making what were obviously personal sacrifices on our behalf: when the lab needed equipment, we knew he had purchased some of it on his own; when we couldn’t get a bus for a field trip, he took a few of us in his own car (something which could have gotten him into quite a bit of trouble); and when a big science fair deadline loomed large, he opened the lab every weekend to help us with our experiments. At a point in my life when I didn’t have a lot of guidance or positive role models, he taught me a lot more than science; he taught me, by example, the power of sacrifice, discipline and self-respect.” —Michael McWatters, UX Architect

“Dr. Heller, my 10th-grade social studies teacher, taught me that passion is the key to learning. I had never met anyone from kindergarten to 10th grade that matched his raw passion for the meaning behind historical events, and it was so contagious.” —Deron Triff, Director of Distribution

“Rene Arcilla, a professor of Educational Philosophy at NYU, changed the way I think.  Prior to that class, I hadn’t truly been challenged about what *I* actually thought — much of my educational life was about regurgitating answers. Rene was the first teacher who asked me questions that he/we didn’t know the answers to. Realizing that I had to actually provide the answers from within myself, and not look to an outside source, was very difficult at first. It was a muscle I had to build. I owe a lot of who I am today — and even this job — to the introspective, critical and philosophical thinking I learned from Rene’s classes.” —Susan Zimmerman, Executive Assistant to the Curator

“Mr. Downey — 7th- and 8th-grade Humanities. Still the hardest class I’ve ever taken!  I’d credit Mr. Downey with helping me think more expansively about the world. Right before 8th-grade graduation, he showed us Dead Poets Society, and on the final day of class we all agreed to stand on our desks and recite ‘O Captain, my captain.’ It was all very dramatic and I think there were tears.” —Jennifer Gilhooley, Partnership Development

“I took my first painting class my sophomore year of high school and fell in love with it. My teacher, Ms. Bowen, told me I could use the art studio whenever I wanted to, and gave me access to all kinds of new paints and canvasses. I spent almost every lunch period there for a few years, and regularly stayed in the studio after school ended. One day, Ms. Bowen told me that a parent of a student I had painted expressed interest in buying the painting of her daughter. After that first sale, I painted portraits of kids in my school on a commission basis, and continued to do so for the remainder of my high school experience. Thanks to Ms. Bowen’s mentorship, I felt empowered to try to make money from something I was passionate about and loved to do. Here is one of the paintings.” —Cloe Shasha, TED Projects Coordinator

“I had a chemistry teacher, Mr. Sampson, who used to meet me at school an hour before it started to tutor me when the material wasn’t clicking. That was the first class I had ever really struggled with, and he made this investment to help me get through the material — but more importantly learn that I could teach myself anything.” —Stephanie Kent, Special Projects

“On the first day of my Elementary Italian Immersion class, I asked to be excused to use the restroom in English. Professor Agostini kept speaking rapidly in Italian as I squirmed in my seat. Since she seemed unclear about my request, I asked her again to no avail. Finally, I flipped through my brand-new Italian-English dictionary and discovered the words, ‘Posso usare il bagno per favore.’ Suddenly, she flashed me a smile, handed me the key, told me where to go in Italian, and pointed to my dictionary so I could learn how to follow her directions. Even though I only studied with her for one semester, I will never forget that I emerged from her class knowing intermediate-level Italian.” —Jamia Wilson, TED Prize Storyteller

“My history teacher in high school, Mr. Cook, challenged us to think hard about what happened in the past and directly related it to what was happening around us. He gave us ways to try and predict what could happen in the future. He was the first person to make me take ownership of what it meant to be a citizen and the social responsibility that came with that. Because he taught ‘World History’ rather than a regionally specific class, we learned extensively about other countries, and I am convinced he is the reason that I went abroad to Ghana in college and I am now still an avid traveler today.” —Samantha Kelly, Fellows Group

“The professor who taught me Intro to Women and Gender Studies my sophomore year of college completely changed my framework for thinking about human relationships within a hierarchy. She brought coffee and tea to class for us every morning to congratulate us for being so dedicated to learning as to choose an 8:30 a.m. class. When I emailed her to say I’d be out sick, she sent me a get-well e-card. And when, in a fit of undergraduate irresponsibility, I simply failed to do an assignment, she wasn’t the least bit mad — instead, I received a phone call from her a week after the end of the semester informing me that, because I’d done such good work, she couldn’t bear to give me the B+ I numerically deserved. It was incredible to see how fully she lived the subject she taught; the philosophy of compassion and equality.” —Morton Bast, Editorial Assistant

“My high school photography teacher, Susan Now. I’m convinced that the support I got from Susan got me through high school. Two years later, when I was freaked out about transferring colleges, I, without hesitation, called her for advice. She made me feel comfortable and challenged me to speak up and be confident with expressing myself as a student. So valuable!” — Ella Saunders-Crivello, Partnerships Coordinator

“Cliff Simon, one of my college professors, taught me that wisdom is the greatest pursuit, our skills and passions are transferable, and that fear will only ever always hold us back.  To this day, he’s a great mentor.  We’re now great friends, and I even officiated his wedding ceremony.” —Jordan Reeves, TED-Ed Community Manager

“My 10th-grade biology teacher spoke and interacted with me like I was a grown-up individual and not one of a batch of ‘kids.’ He made us all fascinated with the subjects he taught because he spoke to us not at us. I always worked hard to match that capacity that he saw in me. He was only in his 50s when, a few years after I graduated, he died suddenly of a heart attack. Lots of sad former students.” —Ladan Wise, Product Development Manager

“Stephen O’Leary, my professor and mentor at the University of Southern California, showed me that the quality of my thinking could be directly traced to the quality of the authors I referenced in my bibliography. This realization motivated me to both seek and challenge everything I have read ever since. This habit likely played a part in me finding myself so passionate about being a part of TED.” —Sarah Shewey, TEDActive Program Producer

“My high school art teacher was equal parts smart and silly, and always insightful. Mr. Miller showed a bunch of restless seniors that art class wasn’t just about memorizing which painters influenced which periods. Instead, he taught us that art was — at its core — an exciting way to touch both the head and the heart. Mr. Miller took our  class to the Met in New York one warm spring afternoon, a trip I’ll never forget. Great art, he told us, was about great ideas, and not simply the pleasing arrangement of color, shape and form. Thank you, Russ Miller.” —Jim Daly, TED Books 

“Mrs. Presley, my 1st-grade teacher, advanced my reading skills to full-on chapter book independence … and for that I’ll be forever grateful! But the most valuable gift she gave me was self-esteem. At my school, we’d bring a brown bag lunch with our name written on the bag. I always wanted a middle name like the other kids, and this daily ritual made me feel the lack. I must have let my mom know, because she started to write middle names on my bag. At first it started: ‘Marla Ruby Mitchnick.’ Then ‘Marla Ruby Diamond Mitchnick,’ and then ‘Marla Ruby Diamond Violet Mitchnick,’ and so on. Mrs. Presley never skipped a single syllable — she just read it straight through, and I felt like a beloved and fortunate person with a beautiful name, surrounded by wonderful friends.” —Marla Mitchnick, Film + Video Editor

“I signed up for Journalism 1 in high school having no idea what I was getting myself into. Marcie Pachino ran a rigorous course on the joys of telling other people’s stories and on the extreme responsibility that comes with reporting news that might otherwise go unheard. She was kind and inspiring, but wouldn’t hesitate to give you an edit of an article that simply read ‘Ugh’ in big red letters. The key: you always knew she was right. I went on to become a journalist professionally and, in all my years of writing, I’ve never encountered a more demanding editor.” —Kate Torgovnick, Writer (the author of this post)

“Professor Stephen Commins completely changed my  learning experience at UCLA. He pushed the boundaries of what I thought I could accomplish as an undergrad, and having him as my research professor improved my quality of education tenfold. I’ll never forget in my last lecture with him, he left our class with this piece of advice: to work on poverty domestically before attempting to help those abroad, because you aren’t truly a development professional until you have done both.” —Chiara Baldanza, Coordinator

“My high school English teacher Veronica Stephenson went above and beyond to allow me the opportunity to dive into theater and acting in a very underfunded arts community. She saw passion in me, and engaged it by spending a lot of her own time and effort to help me pursue something I loved. I learned so much from her and got more personalized experience than I probably would have from a more arts-focused curriculum due solely to her faith in me.” —Emilie Soffe, Office Coordinator

Now it’s your turn. Who is the teacher who most inspired you? Please share in your comments.

Last week, while seeing a favorite band, I couldn’t help but notice the sea of undulating phones around me. With my view partially obstructed by shoulders, I found my eyes constantly settling onto the glowing screen of the guy in front of me, who was recording each and every song. The screen allowed me to see clearly, and yet it seemed a strange mediation of a moment that is all about the present. Yes, by recording the full show, you get to watch it later. But what did you really experience in the first place?

Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo Meanwhile, the group standing beside me at this concert had faces flushed from a little too much alcohol. They had their phones out too, the flashes going off periodically as they snapped shot after shot — arms excitedly slinging around each other. As soon as a photo was taken, they’d lean into the capturing phone and laugh as its owner typed out a message and posted it on Facebook. Was the liquor-soaked moment really one they wanted to share with everyone, co-workers included?

Both today’s talk, “Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo,” and today’s new TED Book from Damon Brown, Our Virtual Shadow: Why We Are Obsessed with Documenting Our Lives Online, take reflective looks at the nuances of what it means to have an online record of life. In his talk, Enriquez classifies social media fragments as “digital tattoos,” while Brown characterizes this mediated life as our “virtual shadow.”

Which concept meshes more with your view of our digital lives? Here, a deeper look at the two concepts.

What are they?

Digital tattoos:

“Tattoos really do shout,” says Enriquez in his talk. “What if Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, cell phones, GPS, FourSquare, Yelp, Travel Advisor — all these things you deal with every day — turn out to be electronic tattoos? And what if they provide as much information about who and what you are as any tattoo ever would?”

Virtual shadow:

As Brown writes in his book, “More than ever, we’re now focused on documenting and building the history of our lives, not on living the life unfolding right in front of us. It’s all about the check-in, the status update, the captured moment, rather than being fully present day to day. We’re each focused on what I call our virtual shadow: a collected narrative that, like a physical shadow, is symbolic of where our real selves have been, albeit a few steps behind.”

Is this a brand-new problem? Nope:

Digital tattoos:

“The Greeks thought about what happens when Gods, humans and immortality mix for a long time,” Enriquez says in the talk. “Lesson #1: Sisyphus. He did a horrible thing and was condemned for all time to roll this rock up — and it would roll back down. It’s a little like your reputation. Once you get that electronic tattoo, you’re going to be rolling up and down for a long time.”

Virtual shadow:

“Socrates had as much trouble with then-new technologies as we do with modern tech. Words were meant to be spoken, Socrates believed, rather than written down,” Brown tells the TED Blog. In his book, he adds, “[It’s] the same conflict humans have had throughout time: how do we successfully capture a potentially significant moment? It is the prehistoric caveman making images on the wall, the elementary-school class creating a time capsule, every man in an army platoon getting the same tattoo right before a battle.”

What’s the most disconcerting new technology out there?

Digital tattoos:

Says Enriquez, “Facial recognition is getting really good … Companies like Face.com now have about 18 billion faces online.”

Virtual shadow:

Writes Brown, “Google Glass can take pictures and video, check your email, text your friends, and surf the web — in short, it can record your whole life … Google claimed that they weren’t built for everyday use, but I doubt Apple planned on people texting while walking, either.”

How do we escape the grip our online lives have over us?

Digital tattoos:

Enriquez tells us, “Be cautious when faced with the choice of doing something boneheaded on Twitter or Facebook. Give it 12 hours.”

Virtual Shadow:

Brown writes, “The best way to separate mundane short-term memories from important long-term memories is to simply be as present as possible … The more aware you are of your surroundings, the more your brain can create a cohesive, solid memory. A rich memory — for instance, making love for the first time — isn’t created by an isolated sensation, like a gentle touch or the smell of a cologne, but from the collecting and connecting of all those inputs into one unforgettable multisensory experience. The brain doesn’t need better tools; it just needs us to be as present as possible when things are actually happening.”

How do photos and video play into this?

Digital tattoos:

“People don’t understand how quickly this has changed,” Enriquez tells the TED Blog. “There weren’t a lot of videos of September 11, because it was a pain in the rear to take video on 9/11. You needed a large camera and battery pack – you had to set up the camera. Now every one of us carries HD in our pockets … HD video is so simple, cheap and easy to use that it can affect a presidential campaign, like what happened with Romney.” He adds, “This 24-second news cycle, where a presidential candidate says something stupid on air and, ‘Gotcha!,’ is now beginning to apply to other people’s lives.”

Virtual shadow:

Brown writes in the book, “My favorite uncle shared some good news: He had pictures — hundreds of pictures — from our wedding day. He’d gotten some gorgeous shots, he said, and he couldn’t wait to send them to us. He also told me that he couldn’t wait to get the official video, since he’d been distracted and missed a lot. He was excited to watch a recap of what had happened while he was busy trying to capture the beautiful moments as they were actually happening.”

Is there potential for good with social media?

Digital tattoos:

“The really neat thing is that this is exactly the kind of stuff that allows a group like TED to be so successful and spread ideas,” Enriquez tells us. “And that allows Twitter to spread ideas in a very powerful way — to take on governments, take on bad officials, expose corruption, start movements, do Kickstarter. I’m not arguing [social media] shouldn’t exist. I’m saying that precisely because this stuff is so powerful, we should be careful.”

Virtual shadow:

“There is definitely much good that comes from social media. I’m a huge Twitter fan …. I think we just need to ask the same question we do with other activities: Is this affecting my quality of life?” he says to the TED Blog. “Saying technology is making us less attentive is a copout. Technology has always been an issue for us, whether it was a child in the ’50s watching too much TV or a caveman playing with a new discovery called fire. Like our ancestors, what we really need to do is find a smart way to integrate our newfound technology into our lives.”

So where do you stand, do you feel like the bits and pieces of you online are your digital tattoos, or that they comprise your virtual shadow? Or perhaps a little bit of both?

Watch Juan Enriquez’s TED Talk on digital tattoos »

Read Damon Brown’s TED Book about virtual shadows »

Sebastião Salgado: The silent drama of photography

I have so many questions — I’m a great admirer of your work. But let me begin with: why photography?

Photography came into my life when I was 29 — very late. When I finally began to take photographs, I discovered that photography is an incredible language. It was possible to move with my camera and capture with my camera, and to communicate with images. It was a language that didn’t need any translation because photography can be read in many languages. I can write in photography — and you can read it in China, in Canada, in Brazil, anywhere.

Photography allowed me to see anything that I wished to see on this planet. Anything that hurts my heart, I want to see it and to photograph it. Anything that makes me happy, I want to see it and to photograph it. Anything that I think is beautiful enough to show, I show it. Photography became my life.

You started as a social activist before you were a photographer. Is that how you think of yourself still — as an activist?

No, I don’t believe that I’m an activist photographer. I was, when I was young, an activist — a leftist. I was a Marxist, very concerned for everything, and politics — activism — for me was very important. But when I started photography, it was quite a different thing. I did not make pictures just because I was an activist or because it was necessary to denounce something, I made pictures because it was my life, in the sense that it was how I expressed what was in my mind — my ideology, my ethics — through the language of photography. For me, it is much more than activism. It’s my way of life, photography.

You do these very large, long-term projects. Can we talk a bit about your process at the beginning of a project? How do you conceive of it? How do you build it in your mind before you start?

You know, before you do this kind of project, you must have a huge identification with the subject, because the project is going to be a very big part of your life. If you don’t have this identification, you won’t stay with it.

When I did workers, I did workers because for me, for many years, workers were the reason that I was active politically. I did studies of Marxism, and the base of Marxism is the working class. I saw that we were arriving at the end of the first big industrial revolution, where the role of the worker inside that model was changed. And I saw in this moment that many things would be changed in the worker’s world. And I made a decision to pay homage to the working class. And the name of my body of work was Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age. Because they were becoming like archaeology; it was photographs of something that was disappearing, and that for me was very motivating. So that was my identification, and it was a pleasure to do this work. But I was conscious that the majority of the things that were photographed were also ending.

When I did another body of work, Migrations, I saw that a reorganization of all production systems was going on around the planet. We have my country, Brazil, that’s gone from an agricultural country to a huge industrial country — really huge. A few years ago, the most important export products were coffee and sugar. Today, they are cars and planes. When I was photographing the workers, I was looking at how this process of industrialization was modifying all the organizations of the human family.

Now we have incredible migrations. In Brazil, in 40 years, we have gone from a 92% rural population to, today, more than 93% urban population. In India today, more than 50% of the population is an urban population. That was close to 5%, 30 years ago. China, Japan … For many years of my life, I was a migrant. Then after that, I became a refugee. This is a story that was my story. I had a huge identification with it and I wanted for many years to do it.

My last project is Genesis. I started an environmental project in Brazil with my wife. We become so close to nature, we had such a huge pleasure in seeing trees growing there — to see birds coming, insects coming, mammals coming, life coming all around me. And I discovered one of the most fascinating things of our planet — nature.

I had an idea to do this for what I think will be my last project. I’ve become old — I’m 69 years old, close to 70. I had an idea to go and have a look at the planet and try to understand through this process — through pictures — the landscapes and how alive they are. To understand the vegetation of the planet, the trees; to understand the other animals, and to photograph us from the beginning, when we lived in equilibrium with nature. I organized a project, an eight-year project, to photograph Genesis. I talked about how you have to have identification for a project — you cannot hold on for eight years if you are not in love with the things that you are doing. That’s my life in photography.

When you do these large projects, how do you know when it is finished?

Well, I organize these projects like a guideline for a film — I write a project. For the start of Genesis, I did two years of research. When this project started to come into my mind, I started to look around more and more and, in a month, I knew 80% of the places that I’d be going and the way that we’d be organizing it. We needed to have organization for this kind of thing, so I organized a kind of unified structure. I organized a big group of magazines, foundations, companies, that all put money in this project. And that’s because it’s an expensive project — I was spending more than $1.5 million per year to photograph these things, to organize expeditions and many different things. And then I started the project. I changed a few things in between, but the base of the project was there.

Given the changes in digital media, if you were to start a new project now, do you think you’d still go through photography? Or would you try something different?

I would go to photography. One thing that is important is that you don’t just go to photography because you like photography. If you believe that you are a photographer, you must have some tools — without them it would be very complicated — and those tools are anthropology, sociology, economics, politics. These things you must learn a little bit and situate yourself inside the society that you live in, in order for your photography to become a real language of your society. This is the story that you are living. This is the most important thing.

In my moment, I live my moment. I’m older now, but young photographers must live their moment — this moment here — and stand in this society and look deeply at the striking points of this society. These pictures will become important because it’s not just pictures that are important — it’s important that you are in the moment of your society that your pictures show. If you understand this, there is no limit for you. I believe that is the point. As easy as this, and as complicated as this.

Robert Gordon: The death of innovation, the end of growth Economists Robert Gordon and Erik Brynjolffson see very different things when they look at the stagnation of the U.S. economy in recent years. It’s almost as if they’re looking at an optical illusion image – one seeing a candlestick while the other sees two faces just inches apart. In today’s talks, they both outlined their thoughts.

Gordon sees the candlestick — he believes that the growth could be tapering off for good and that our best innovations may be behind us. As he points out, between 1900 and 1960, we went from traveling by a horse and buggy to taking Boeing 707s. But in the sixty years since, we haven’t learned to go any faster at a mass commercial level. What’s wrong? In his talk, he outlines four headwinds which are keeping us from continued growth at the pace of the past two centuries: demographics, education, debt and inequality.

Erik Brynjolfsson: The key to growth? Race with the machines Meanwhile, Brynjolfsson sees the faces. He says that the stagnation may simply be growing pains as we move from an economy based on production to one based on ideas. He also looks to the past for an example, taking us back 120 years to the Second Industrial Revolution. While all the tools were in place for mass production, it took three decades for productivity to skyrocket. The first generation of managers — who had old ideas about systems and workflows – had to age out of the system for growth to start. This is where Brynjolfsson thinks we are now. He sees another wave of innovation in our future — if humans can learn to work alongside computers and robots in more symbiotic ways.

Click the links above to watch these two fascinating talks. And then watch this 12-minute debate between the Gordon and Brynjolfsson on what it means to work today … and what it will mean in the future.

Do you think we are witnessing the end of innovation? Is growth over? Did either speaker here change your opinion? Explain in the comments.

At TED2013, Rose George talks about a major global health problem—the 2.5 billion people who live without toilets. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

A single gram of poop contains 50 diseases, one million bacteria, 1,000 parasites, 100 worm eggs and 10 million viruses, by journalist Rose George’s tally. For people who have flushing toilets, this is something that they rarely have to think about. But for the 2.5 billion people in the world who have no toilet at all, feces is to blame for a devastating toll of disease.

Consider these other numbers. Four thousand children die every day from diarrhea, a common symptom from exposure to many of those fecal microbes. That’s more than die from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and measles combined. Each year, $260 billion is lost because of lack of sanitation. Despite this, just 10 to 25 percent of related budgets focus on sanitation, compared to 75 to 90 percent for clean water. Rose George: Let's talk crap. Seriously. Clean water is no help when it is continuously contaminated by poor sanitation.

In today’s talk, given at TED2013, George describes how she “plunged into the world of sanitation, toilets, and poop,” an odoriferous adventure that she chronicled in her 2009 book The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters. If you’re hankering for even more dirty talk, we spoke with George about people’s reactions to her project, the surprisingly wide-ranging impact of sanitation and the future of poop.

In your talk, you start off with a story about your own bathroom experience — the first time you thought, “Wait, where is this stuff going?” What happened after that? How does a reporter start researching poop?

Well, there’s a long story and a short story. I’ll give you the short one. The first thing I did when I decided that I was going to dive into the world of poop was look at who was doing stuff in that world. The first I came across was the World Toilet Organization. So one of the first things I did was to go to their annual show in Moscow. I ended up in a Russian winter near the Kremlin, and the WTO had its exhibit on one floor and, on the floor below, was a fur coat exhibition. There were more people in the fur coat exhibition.

It’s quite a select gathering of people. It’s certainly changed over the past six years, but at that point, it was really quite a small field. That’s where I started making my acquaintances and getting to know who was who and who was doing what. A few people I met in that couple of days ended up being written up in the book — like Joe Madiath in Orissa, and Jack Sim. This guy Scott Chapman, who I met in the café, looked really bored. We started having this conversation, and he said, “Why should I be interested in toilets?” I started telling him what I had learned by that point — that 2.6 billion people don’t have a toilet — and he looked really surprised. He became a really enormous toilet evangelist. So that was really quite fun to watch.

That is where I started, and then I went to a couple of other WTO events. I just ended up sort of wandering around the world with people who I found were doing interesting things.

What was it like pitching the topic of poop to editors and your agent? What was their reaction? Did they get it initially, or did it take some convincing?

I have two main publishers. My first was the British publisher Portobello. It was bit of a weird process because I went to them with another idea for a book, about Darfur. For various reasons nobody wanted it, and the publisher there, we were sitting in his little office and he said, “Rose, I don’t want that book but I do want you.” I can’t remember the exact list [I pitched him] but toilets was about number three. His face was not that impressed. And he said, “Um yeah, well, what do you mean?” So I started on my 2.6 billion, and Sulabh International, and untouchables in India who have to clean toilets with their bare hands in this day and age. And I do remember that he actually got up out of his chair with excitement, and from then on was fully behind it.

Then on the back of that book deal was a four-part series for Slate on the world of sewage. I went down to the sewers in London and looked at a campaigning group in London called RATS, Rowers Against Thames Sewage, and I went to Sewage School and hung out with kids learning to make sewage soup and how to clean sewage. And it was great — really good fun. Subsequently, I ended up getting a publishing contract with Metropolitan Books, and they were absolutely behind it from the beginning. There was never any question — which is weird. There is certainly a perception that Americans are more prudish about this kind of stuff, but that absolutely has not been the case. Americans have been much more enthusiastic about this book all the way through, and I’ve done far more American radio interviews, far more American publicity, and I still get emails from Americans and Canadians. So that’s been quite a revelation for me.

Why do you think this topic is so taboo in general? Obviously there are various reactions depending on where you are, but why in general do you think this is something we don’t talk about enough?

I actually don’t think it’s true that it is taboo — I just think there’s no avenue for discussion about it. It’s been my experience that people are very happy to talk about it. When I was doing the research, which was a two-year process, honestly only about two or three people changed the subject. And I was asked all the time what I was working on, and I’d always say ‘toilets’ or ‘public health’ or ‘sanitation.’ Invariably, people would pause just to take that in. Then they would go, “Oh, well I’ve got a great toilet story!” The thing is, we do or think about this stuff every day. Every parent with a toddler has to think about it when they change a nappy or diaper. Everyone who has to find a decent toilet in a shopping mall has to think about it. Everybody has to think about it because they spend a lot of time in the toilet.

I think there are two areas where poop still is taboo. I think it’s been taboo in advertising on TV. The toilet industry and the toilet paper industry have felt unable to be frank about their product, but I think that is changing quite a lot. In the last few years, there have been lots of plain-speaking toilet paper ads that I’ve seen in the US and in the UK as well. But the more important place where I do think it is very taboo still is in the corridors of power, and in the people who fund sanitation as a development issue. Certainly when I started, it was considered for some reason unspeakable. Politicians don’t think it is a vote-getter because they don’t hear people demanding toilets — whereas they do demand clean water. The other thing is that it sort of gets kicked around between various ministries. Because sanitation has so many effects across all aspects of development — it affects education, it affects health, it affects maternal mortality and infant mortality, it affects labor — it’s all these things, so it becomes a political football. Nobody has full responsibility. There’s no Minister of Sanitation. There doesn’t necessarily need to be one, but the responsibility for it in a political environment gets shared around and doesn’t really get the attention it deserves.

I think that’s changed now because sanitation has become a human right, so governments are going to be obliged to take it seriously. I think that’s a wonderful change. I think the taboo is breaking all over the place, so it is quite exciting.

You mentioned all the different areas that poop and sanitation actually touch. In your talk, you also mention education and economics. At what point in your research did you realize that your topic had such wide impact? Was it a gradual process, or was it something you had a hunch about early on?

It was definitely a learning process. I mean, everybody is an expert on poop, really, but I started out not knowing how to make the connection. Because none of it is rocket science. If you have a girl who doesn’t have a toilet at school, she is not going to want to go to school when she’s got her period. It’s pretty straightforward. But I just didn’t make the connection. Only along the way, it was talking to people like Joe Madiath or the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, the UN advocacy agency that deals with sanitation — people who were in the field. The other thing was there wasn’t much connection between people working in sanitation. There’s all sorts of divisions in development — in water, and health, and education and sanitation — so you kind of have to learn from all sorts of people.

But the economics, that was actually specifically a guy called Guy Hutton who’s been really, really excellent at putting together the economic argument. And again it makes sense. If people can’t work, obviously there’s going to be an economic impact. But I would have never linked that to the toilet.

When you started your research, did you have a hunch that toilets would have such a serious impact on human health?

I had no idea that people — that children — were dying of diarrhea at the rate that they do. That was a real shock – in fact, I still find that shocking. It’s completely shameful because it is so preventable.

Another thing I found really striking were the unexpected health aspects. For example, malnutrition: Children who are malnourished, you can find them in a well-fed family. Relatively recently, people have figured out, it sometimes is because they have diarrhea. So no matter how many high-protein foods the child is given, it goes straight through them. There’s now been research that links sanitation to stunted growth. That’s pretty new to me. And vaccinations. When my book came out, someone wrote to me who is a vaccinator. And he wrote, “You know, people just don’t realize that sometimes because these kids are malnourished and because they have diarrhea, we have to give them six or ten times the amount of vaccine to take it in. People don’t know the connection.” They don’t link sanitation to all these things. I find that really fascinating.

On a lighter note, what was the silliest thing you learned about toilets or poop? Were there any crazy gold-plated toilets, or crazy advanced Japanese toilets?

Oh yeah. I used to work at Colors magazine as a writer and researcher, before I started writing the book, and someone had a bit of an obsession with toilets. We used to regularly feature the latest gold-plated toilet, usually from somewhere in Asia. And then there is of course a senator in South Korea who built a toilet-shaped museum, or a toilet-roll-shaped museum, I think. There’s all kinds of stuff. And I think it is important to have the funny humor stuff, because that is what disarms people and makes it easier to talk about.

People like Sulabh International, a fantastic Indian NGO that has built toilets all over India, they know that, so they set up the International Museum of Toilets, which is in a compound near the international airport in Delhi. And it’s great. It’s just one room, but it’s got replicas of toilets and it’s pretty humorous. They have a copy of a French commode in the shape of books.

Wacky is fine — I knew I had to have some humor in it. Sulabh really helped, and Japan helped as well. But I always was careful and determined not to write a book of toilet humor. Other people have done that, and that’s fine, but it is a serious subject. It was quite tricky doing that balancing act.

Yeah. I’ve been to Japan and I was amazed about the toilets and the technology they have.

Once you use a Japanese toilet, you’re spoiled.

Are there any sanitation initiatives that you think are doing a particularly good job acknowledging this poop problem and trying to address it? I’m thinking in particular of the Gates Foundation’s Toilet Challenge.

Over the last two or three years it’s been really exciting because a lot has changed. I think the Gates Foundation should absolutely be applauded, because I think they’ve been really instrumental in that. As soon as Bill and Melinda Gates started talking about toilets — and they openly use the word ‘toilet’ — that gave the subject huge legitimacy that it didn’t have before. I think that’s broken the ice for NGOs that were maybe a little shy about talking about toilets. They disguised it as water-related illnesses, or as ‘people need water.’ And they do. But what’s the dirtiness in the water? It’s usually poop. I think that’s been an opening of the floodgates a little bit.

And there’s all sort of exciting stuff going on. Sanitation hackathons, people working on apps. Matt Damon doing his famous press conferences. All that is really, really great. And it’s new. It makes me hopeful actually that maybe something has changed.

Speaking of the Toilet Challenge, do you have a favorite amongst the winners?

No I don’t, actually, and I’m sort of careful not to. When people ask me, “What’s the best toilet? What’s the best solution?” I’ve always said the solution is flexibility. The solution is understanding that we need all sorts of solutions. So I think they’re all great. This is a bit of a cop-out, but my favorite is the actual job description that they put out, which is that it has to be low-cost and it has to be sustainable. To me, that is brilliant. I don’t mind beyond that. The more ideas, the better. It’s pretty obvious if you travel in the developing and the developed world, it’s not one-solution-fits-all. Some countries have more water than others — some can afford to use clean water to flush their poop away and some can’t.

So I think the best thing that reinventing the toilet did is not provide actual innovations in toilets — which is true, it does need innovating — but make us examine the system itself, which has been unquestioned for so long and is high-energy and high-cost. Even in the US and the UK, our sewers are crumbling. It’s a pretty unsustainable system. I think that’s what they’ve done that is really valuable. 

One last question: What do you find most hopeful about the future of poop?

That we’re talking about it. For heaven’s sake, I’ve just done a TED Talk on it. Six years ago, I never would have thought that was possible. I think things have changed so rapidly in the past few years, and I am really hopeful, actually, even though the statistics are still so woeful. Even though it’s the most off-track in the Millennium Development Goals, I think there is a legitimacy around it now. There are ads on American TV for, I can’t remember which toilet paper, but they were saying toilet paper doesn’t clean you — it’s like having a shower with a dry towel. And I think, “Oh, I said that!” But it’s great to see it on TV. I remember four or five years ago, Toto put an ad in Times Square showing bare bottoms, and they had to be taken down. So I really think there’s hope that this is going to be a more talkable subject. And maybe when people get an invitation from an NGO or a charity, maybe they’ll give money for a toilet and not just a clean water supply.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

In 1812, four men met for a “philosophical breakfast” at Cambridge University: Charles Babbage, John Herschel, Richard Jones and William Whewell. Over food and drinks, they debated the state of knowledge –- imagining a world in which thinkers drew conclusions based on data, where research was done for the good of humanity rather than for financial gain, where researchers questioned each other in the name of moving each other forward and where research received outside funding rather than requiring an individual to pay for it themselves.

Laura Snyder: The Philosophical Breakfast Club In today’s talk, historian Laura Snyder gives us an introduction to the discussions of these four men, who eventually became known as The Philosophical Breakfast Club. While their ideas form the basis of scientific inquiry now, their concepts were radical at the time, says Snyder in this talk from TEDGlobal 2012. It would be another 20 years before the term “scientist” would be coined — by Whewell. To hear about the word’s dramatic unveiling, watch this talk.

The Philsophical Breakfast Club members went on to great things. Babbage invented the first mechanical calculator, and the first prototype of a computer. Herschel was an astronomer who mapped the stars – and also invented photography. Jones was an economist who inspired Marx. And Whewell – who also originated the words cathode and ion — spearheaded global research with his work on tides.

Interestingly, groundbreaking work often seems to happen in groups. Throughout history, clubs of writers, philosophers and artists have formed, with thinkers in the same area gathering for discussion and collaboration. For some of these groups, multiple members went on to renown. It begs the question: Can collectivity push talented individuals to greater things than they could achieve on their own?

Below, a few clubs notable for their influence on modern thought.

The Socrates School
Notable members: philosophers Socrates, Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato, who in turn taught Aristotle
Time frame: Approximately 400 years BC
Not at all a school with desks and a blackboard, this group was known for asking big questions about politics, human nature, life and reality, and debating the answers in riveting discussions, many of which were captured on paper in texts like Plato’s Dialogues. Socrates devoted his life to teaching the youth of Athens and, together, this group set the foundations for Western philosophy.

The Bloomsbury Group
Notable members: writers Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, economist John Maynard Keynes, critic Clive Bell and painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant
Time frame: 1907 through the 1930s
While it’s clear that they had meetings, often at the home of Clive and Vanessa Bell in the Bloomsbury district of Central London, this circle of thinkers is hard to pin down as they denied being a formal group at all. The network included husbands, wives, siblings, friends and rivals, all exploring concepts of modernity in literature, criticism, economics and art.

Stratford-on-Odeon
Notable members: writers Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein, poet Ezra Pound, composer George Antheil, artist Man Ray
Time frame: 1920s
“Stratford-on-Odeon” was James Joyce’s nickname for the bookstore Shakespeare and Company, in Paris’ Left Bank on the Rue de l’Odéon. The store became a hub for British and American modernists, and store owner Sylvia Beach published James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922. The store was closed during the German occupation of Paris in WWII — despite Hemingway’s fabled effort to liberate it himself. (A second bookstore, popular with the Beat Generation, continues to exist at 37 rue de la Bûcherie.)

The Algonquin Round Table
Notable members: writers Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, George S. Kauffman, Franklin Pierce Adams, Marc Connolly, Edna Ferber
Time frame: 1920s
This New York City writers group formed as a lark, convened to share wisecracks and snide remarks among a group of humor writers, critics, columnists and playwrights, many associated with the young New Yorker magazine. The group ended up meeting almost daily for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel.

The Inklings
Notable members: writers J.R.R Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Roger Lancelyn Green, Adam Fox, Nevil Coghilland
Time frame: 1930s and 1940s
A literary discussion group at Oxford, the Inklings would read and discuss each others’ work — most famously helping Tolkien shape The Lord of the Rings. While meetings were generally held in C.S. Lewis’ room, some were held at an Oxford pub called The Eagle and the Child.

The Factory
Notable members: artists Andy Warhol and his stars Edie Sedgwick and Gerard Malanga, artist Salvador Dali, writers Allen Ginsburg and Truman Capote, musicians Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger, designer Betsey Johnson
Time frame: The 1960s
The Factory was the name of Andy Warhol’s 1960s studio in New York City. The aluminum-foil-covered space became a gathering spot for artists, filmmakers and musicians, many who were pioneering experimental art. The Factory was also famous for wild parties and sexual exploration – and for being the place where many of our modern ideas of fame were formed.

Guy Hoffman isn’t just a roboticist — he’s also an animator and a jazz musician. And so as he set out to build robots that communicate with people, he took inspiration from what he learned in animation school and focused on subtle, fluid movements — the kind created by going frame-by-frame. He also took an acting class, so he could think more about how emotions are expressed through movement. And of course, he wanted robots that could enjoy music with him.

Watch today’s talk — Robots with “soul” — to see two of Hoffman’s creations in action. First, there’s Shimon, a robotic marimba player who is able to improvise with a human pianist or freestyle with a rapper. And then there’s Travis, a two-headed robotic speaker that jams to music along with you.

Naturally, Hoffman’s work reminds us of a few prior inventions that attempted to make a robot more like a companion. See them in chronological order below.

Giga Pets
Often credited as the “first virtual pet,” Giga Pets were released in 1997 by Tiger Toys. While the 2-bit graphic keychain critters seem quaint now, they were much-loved at the time for their ability to tell their owners when they were hungry. (Yes, they grew with proper care.) Below, a vintage commercial.

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The Furby
For anyone who scoured toystores and braved unthinkable lines during the holiday season of 1998 — in hopes of getting their hands on a Furby  — the concept of an electronic pet will sound familiar. The owl-like robotic toys started out speaking “Furbish.” But over time – with human interaction – they learned bits of English and developed personalities. According to Wikipedia, more than 40 million were sold in their first three years on the market. Hasbro revived Furbies in 2012 – this time with an app that allows people to translate Furbish as well as feed the little guys.

AIBO
A year after the Furby, Businessweek ran an article about a new offering from Sony – the robotic puppy AIBO. The article opened, “Toshi T. Doi, Sony Corp.’s leading computer engineer, is obsessed with robots. His small, third-floor lab is a breeding ground for robotic pups taking their first wobbly steps, chasing balls, and barking for attention. ‘We’re getting ready for the age of digital creatures,’ says Doi.” These cute pups, which cost more than $2000, lasted through 2005.

i-Cybie
AIBO inspired many a robotic dog—the cutest of which was i-Cybie, from Silverlit Toys. I-Cybie could respond to voice commands, a la “wag your tail,” and exhibited what seemed like real emotions. The adorable metal dog could even pick itself up if it fell down. Read this New York Times piece on how this virtual pet arrived in the U.S.

PARO 
PARO, the “healing robotic seal,” comes to life when you say his name. Thanks to tactile sensors, writes Mashable, he responds to petting and coos excitedly when you rub his forehead. Why was he designed? Japanese company AIST explains on their website that he was created to provide the benefits of animal therapy – reduced stress, emotional stimulation – to people in hospitals and other environments where a real-life pet wouldn’t be allowed. He’s been covered in The New York Times … and tested by Barack Obama.

Pleo
Who wouldn’t want a miniature dinosaur? In the TED Talk “Caleb Chung plays with Pleo,” the famed toy designer introduces us to Pleo, a robotic dinosaur that acts like a pet. Pleo is curious about the world around it and explores, plays and even learns. The bot responds to touch and, of course, cuddles. Reborn in 2010 as Pleo rb, these bots now have born-in personality traits — think courage and obedience — and go through a four-stage life cycle.

Romo
And finally there’s Romo, “your robot friend,” who takes advantage of the powerful processor available in every smartphone. Your iPhone docks into a robotic base that looks a bit like a white and blue tank and, when you download the Romo app, it springs to life — giving you facial expressions and responding to your movements. Romo can be driven, and perform simple tasks, like being your roaming photographer or videographer. Romo was created by childhood pals Keller Rinaudo, Phu Nguyen and Peter Seid, and at TED203, Rinaudo showed what Romo can do. “We think if you’re going to have a robot in your home, that robot should be a manifestation of your imagination,” says Rinaudo in his talk, “A mini robot — powered by your phone.” “We don’t know where the future of robots will go. But what we do know that it isn’t 10 years or $10  billion away … The future of personal robotics is happening today.”

Today, we remember the 11 million lives taken during the Holocaust — a catastrophe that thoroughly transformed our world. As we take time to honor lives lost, we look towards people like Viktor Frankl, who gave this talk “Why to believe in others.”

A Holocaust survivor and renowned author, in this rare clip, Frankl discusses the importance of searching for the meaningful, not the material. His firsthand experience with suffering has not disheartened him; instead, he discusses the importance of optimism and positivity. Viktor Frankl delivered this talk in 1972, but his message is just as applicable now –- and today of all days — as it was some 40 years ago.

Below, some more talks to watch to help us remember the Holocaust, and learn to move forward and prevent acts of genocide in the future.

Bernie Dunlap: The life-long learner Ben Dunlap: The life-long learner When Ben Dunlap tells the story of his life, it is as though it was all preparation for his encounter with Hungarian Holocaust survivor Sandor Teszler. In this touching talk from TED2007, he shares the invaluable lessons learned from their sweet friendship.

Sarah Kaminsky: My father the forger Sarah Kaminsky: My father the forger At TEDxParis 2011, Sarah Kaminsky shares the story of her father’s life — a story she herself did not hear until she was an adult, when she learned of his role in World War II as a master forger, as he sacrificed his time and risked his life to save countless others.

Moshe Safdie: Building uniqueness Moshe Safdie on building uniqueness Architect Moshe Safdie designed Yad Vashem, Jerusalem’s Holocaust Remembrance Museum. In this talk from TED2002, he explains the motivations behind its design — the emotions he wished to evoke, and how he honored victims through its building.

Samantha Power: A complicated hero in the war on dictatorship Samantha Power on a complicated hero In this talk from TED2008, Samantha Power opens a discourse for understanding how genocides like the Holocaust are able to continue for years, despite public knowledge. Power emphasizes the need for a truly global movement in order to prevent crimes of such great magnitude.

Below, some TED Talks that examine Thatcher’s legacy — in politics, social policy, even science funding.

David Cameron: The next age of government David Cameron: The next age of government “We have lost a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton,” current Prime Minister David Cameron said of Thatcher today, upon returning to the UK from a European tour to pay tribute to the so-called “Iron Lady.” In this talk given at TED2010, Cameron shares his thoughts on how governments will need to adapt as global power dynamics shift toward individuals.

Lemn Sissay: A child of the state Lemn Sissay: A child of the state In this talk from TEDxHousesofParliament, British poet and playwright Lemn Sissay talks about growing up as a “ward of the state,” without parents to care for him. As he says, “Margaret Thatcher was my mother.” A moving talk about why so many people who grew up this way feel the need to hide their pasts.

Elizabeth Pisani: Sex, drugs and HIV -- let's get rational Elizabeth Pisani: Sex, drugs and HIV – let’s get rational At TED2010, public health expert Elizabeth Pisani shares a counter-intuitive policy that Margaret Thatcher was the first to put into practice – the creation of a national needle exchange program for intravenous drug users to prevent the transmission of HIV.

Gordon Brown: Global ethic vs. national interest Gordon Brown on global ethic vs. national interest Gordon Brown, Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010, has revealed himself to be a great admirer of Thatcher because she was a “conviction politician.” In this Q&A that followed Brown’s talk on wiring the web for global good at TEDGlobal 209, TED Curator Chris Anderson asks Brown how he balances the needs of his own citizens with the needs of the world.

Brian Cox: CERN's supercollider Brian Cox: CERN’s supercollider At TED2008, physicist Brian Cox shares a funny anecdote about getting funding for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN from Margaret Thatcher. Apparently, Thatcher said to him, “ If you guys can explain, in language a politician can understand … what this Higgs particle does … you can have the money.”

Lawrence Lessig talks about a fundamental corruption at the core of the U.S.’s political system. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

“Once upon a time, there was a place called Lesterland,” Lawrence Lessig begins today’s talk. “Of its 311 million people, it turns out 144,000 are called Lester,” Lessig says.

Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim In Lesterland, this .05% of the population is granted extraordinary power. Each election cycle, there’s a general election, in which the people get to vote, and a Lester election, in which only the Lesters can vote. “In order to run in the general election, you must do extremely well in the Lester election,” Lessig explains. “So we have a democracy, no doubt, but it’s dependent upon the Lesters and dependent upon the people. It has a competing dependency—we could say a conflicting dependency—depending on who the Lesters are.”

The trick: the United States is Lesterland, only instead of the Lester election, we have the “money election.” As in Lesterland, to run in the general election, you’ve got to win with the funders first. The “relevant funders” comprise .05% of the population; in fact, Lessig says, just 132 Americans, or .000042% of the country, gave 60% of the latest Super PAC funds. So holding office has become about catering to the funders rather than the general public—and sometimes the funders’ interests run counter to everyone else’s.

Lesterland, then, provides a piercing allegory for what Lessig describes as our political system’s fundamental corruption. “The corruption I’m talking about is perfectly legal. It’s a corruption relative to the framers’ baseline for this republic,” Lessig says. “It’s a pathological, democracy-destroying corruption.”

To hear what we can do to correct this corruption, watch Lessig’s talk or read the companion TED Book, Lesterland.

Because we’re so moved by Lessig’s Lesterland analogy, below we’re rounded up more examples of allegories that have described — sometimes brilliantly, sometimes less so — political and societal problems.

1. Whether or not L. Frank Baum intended for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to be read as an allegory, it’s been interpreted as one for decades. Henry M. Littlefield wrote in 1964, “Dorothy is Baum’s Miss Everyman. She is one of us, levelheaded and human, and she has a real problem. For all the attractions of Oz, Dorothy desires only to return to the gray plains and Aunt Em and Uncle Henry … Dorothy sets out on the Yellow Brick Road wearing the Witch of the East’s magic Silver Shoes. Silver shoes walking on a golden road; henceforth Dorothy becomes the innocent agent of Baum’s ironic view of the Silver issue.” Littlefield continues dissecting the Oz storyline for its parallels to late-1800s economics and Populism, writing, “Baum created a children’s story with a symbolic allegory implicit within its story line and characterizations … The relationship and analogies outlined above are admittedly theoretical, but they are far too consistent to be coincidental.”
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2. In James Cameron’s 2009 film Avatar, the Na’vi — an alien race — is threatened by invading Earthlings. It’s been analyzed as an allegory for a “surprising” range of situations, as Joshua Keating posted on Foreign Policy at the time, from the exploitation of Chinese citizens to the exploitation of an indigenous tribe in India to a justification of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.
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3. The new documentary Room 237 argues that Stanley Kubrik’s 1980 film The Shining wasn’t just a horror film, but an intricate and meaning-laden work filled with “important and, in some cases, truly dark meanings,” per Bill Wyman on the New Yorker’s blog. What meanings, exactly? Less clear: as Wyman has it, the supposed allegories involve “the Holocaust (stemming from Nicholson’s German typewriter), the Apollo Space project, fairy tales, and more and more and more.”
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4. Perhaps the paradigmatic political allegory is George Orwell’s Animal Farm, which uses, yes, a farm full of animals to depict and critique the situation in 1940s Russia. “Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole,” Orwell later wrote.
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5. Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis depicts a city of “soaring towers of glass and steel” sustained by a working class “far below, in cellars and catacombs,” as David Edelstein put it in Slate in 2002. Although the film is sometimes seen as a Marxist appeal, Edelstein argues that it’s much more nuanced than that. “Part of what makes Metropolis such a complicated allegory is Lang’s fear of the fascism of the mob,” Edelstein writes. “Lang understood why the mob would want to tear the city down. But he also believed that the technology it embodied promised a better life for people of all classes, and that only the innocent would suffer in the course of a revolt.”

A TED2013 attendee takes a ride on a Boosted Board. Photo: Michael Brands

When engineering grad students Sanjay Dastoor, John Ulmen and Matthew Tran met at Stanford University, they lamented the fact that there was no good way to get around campus. And so, they invented one: a longboard skateboard fashioned with an electric motor.

Sanjay Dastoor: A skateboard, with a boost In today’s talk, given at TED2013, the three give demo their Boosted Boards — which charge off a wall outlet, run for 1,000 kilometers on a dollar’s worth of electricity and are powerful enough to go up the famous hills of San Francisco at 10 miles per hour. They are small enough to be carried in hand and have a battery range of six miles.

“That covers half of the car trips in U.S. alone,” explains Dastoor.

It’s a fascinating concept — one that would make any skateboard-enthusiast a happy commuter. To see the boards in action, watch this high-energy talk. And below, see several more unusual vehicles that could someday greatly improve the morning commute.

A car that folds
Mentioned in Kent Larson’s TEDx Talk “Brilliant designs to fit more people in every city,” the Hiriko is a tiny two-person vehicle that folds in order to minimize its parking footprint. Three of these small vehicles can fit into one traditional parking space — which would greatly alleviate one of the biggest hassles of car ownership. As the Hiriko website explains, these vehicles are 100% electric and maneuver by spinning — which is just really cool.

An electric bike with handlebars that become a lock
Several electric bicycles are already on the market, even though they aren’t legal in every city. However, the nCycle is a particularly stylish and smart approach to the concept, which design blog Core77 brought to our attention. Designed with its battery inside a space-age frame, it’s meant to be both sturdy and lightweight. It’s handlebars morph into a lock and it has speakers in the back headlights.

A motorcycle meets a unicycle
Another design created for urban commuters, the RYNO (left) is a singe-wheel scooter that looks like something a gang in a sci-fi film would ride. Expected to go into production this year, this vehicle runs on a battery that takes an hour and a half to charge, and lets riders go, go, go for about 20 miles, according to Discovery.com. This vehicle self-balances, but if you want the security of a second wheel — the BMW Halbo (right) may be the vehicle for you.

A swing for the subway
A group of Washington D.C. Metro riders caused quite a stir when they posted this video of their “Metro Swing” on Vimeo in 2011. The swing attaches to the metal bars of the Metro, and allows anyone to make their own seat and — if there’s room — to channel their inner 5-year-old by swinging. Though it appears to be farce, they should consider manufacturing it.

A gyroscopic wheel for one
The Yamaha Wheel Rider looks like it could be a flying saucer. Only instead of moving through the air on its flat face, it rolls along the road on its edge, a la a tire. As The New Ecologist shares, this concept vehicle was designed by Yuji Fujimura and the fin in the back contains its turn signals. An even more beautiful version of a similar idea — Sanu K R’s personal transport system, which the designer tells Gizmag drives via a joystick and stays upright thanks to gyroscopic sensors.

The personal jetpack
It’s not at all a cheap option — it costs a reported $100,000. But in September of 2012, The Daily Mail told the tale of a British businessman who used a jetpack to travel 40 miles up the Thames to work. This man imported his jetpack from manufacturer JetLev. And this futuristic turn reminds us of Yves Rossy’s TED Talk, “Flying with the Jetman.”

And a Boosted Boards bonus shot: Jim Carrey tests out the board at TED2013. This shot was snapped by Tony Hawk who wrote on Instagram, “Came to #TED2013 for @amandapalmer, stayed to see Jim Carrey ride an electric skateboard (aka@boostedboards). My life is [still] weird.”

Kees Moeliker proudly displays a dead mallard at TED. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Kees Moeliker: How a dead duck changed my life In the days leading up to TED2013, we at the TED Blog revealed the best props at TEDs past and showed you the speakers who’d brought animals on stage with them. Little did we know that, on the day two of the conference, we’d meet a speaker who’d combine both.

In today’s talk, given at TED2013, Kees Moeliker illuminates how finding a dead duck one summer day changed the course of his professional life. It’s an incredible, hilarious and unexpected story. And to highlight the importance of said duck, Moeliker physically brought it on stage with him. Dead for nearly eighteen years (Moeliker found this duck outside of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, where he works, in 1995 and had him stuffed for posterity), Moeliker took the taxidermied duck out of a plastic bag and passed it to a brave audience member.

Below, see the hilarity that ensued as this odd artifact made the rounds.

An audience member cradles the dead duck. While some in the audience appear disturbed, others glow. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Richard Turere, who gave the talk “My invention that made peace with lions,” cracks up at this surprising talk.

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And while you’re at it, watch 9-year-old Chirag Singh’s adorable talk from TEDxYouth@BommerCanyon, “My passion for Pi.”

Note: This post originally published on 3/14/2013.